Is it really fair to judge Sandy when we don't exactly know how much the Wilpons are holding him back? The whole Reyes fiasco has the Wilpons stench all over it. Realistically Sandy can only be blamed for a bad bullpen and selecting and wasting a second round draft pick. A pick that he felt wasn't even worth slot.

The fact that they haven't had a lot of money to spend shouldn't gloss over the fact that their evaluations have been bad.

What little money they have had to spend they've spent poorly.

There are errors of commission and errors of omission.

The errors of commission are easy to pick out--Castillo, Ollie, Bay.

One way for a GM to avoid errors of commission is to limit activity. But that's one of the ways you end up with Dillon Gee on the shelf and hoping against hope that Johan Santana and Chris Young will be able to take the ball every fifth day so you don't have to start Miguel Batista and Jeremy Hefner in meaningful late July games.

And one of the pitchers Batista is facing is Chris Capuano, who you had on your own team last year.

Eh, I don't think you can be too hard on them for a lack of rotation depth. Most teams would be scrambling if they had two of their starters go down for the year, particularly when it's two who were supposed to be more reliable innings eaters.

I think dealing with a $45m payroll cut in one season takes a lot of the creative juices away from constructing a team, honestly.

I don't dig Sandy's slow white guys who walk philosophy percolating below the surface, but...

1. Who would have expected Santana, Niese and Dickey to have been as dominant as they have been...?
2. Who would have expected Pelfrey, the best innings eater, and Gee to go down with injuries...?
3. Who would have expected that Davis, Ramirez and Torres would have turned into pumpkins...?
4. Who would expected they would be tantalizingly close to contending--it sort of screwed up the works a bit.

My problems, specifically:
1. have been this year's draft, which IMO, was as mediocre as any team in MLB
2. Continuing to allow mediocre talent to clog up the roster needlessly, and an unwillingness to try something new regarding some guys, yet throwing out others before they have had a legitimate chance.
3. A somewhat inflexible promotion policy
4. A few head-shaker deals in the offseason.

His successes...
1. Last year's draft was excellent. Letting McDonald go was obviously an egregious error.
2. Beltran for Wheeler
3. Ramirez and Torres for Pagan...don't care if it worked out as planned, it was a solid trade
4. Reluctance thus far to trade prospects for a pipe dream
5. Re-upping Dickey and Niese

Those players were not any better than Sandy's. Maine was a prospect acquired for a big league regular mid-rotation SP. And he was not better than Wheeler. For the others, you are cherry picking Omar's best moves over a number of years. And they are still no better than guys like Hairston, Quintanilla, Baxter, and Young.

But for Omar you are ignoring all of the ones who didn't work out, like Cairo, Koo, Ishii, Offerman, Woodward, Mientkiewicz, Acosta, Graves, Franco, Marrero, Ledee, DeFelice, Soler, Julio, Williams, and Lima. And that's just 2005-2006, Omar's "good" years.

I realize some are disappointed our new highly touted braintrust haven't turned out to be miracle workers. But the objective evidence as demonstrated suggests they have actually been above average on these smaller moves. I think it's revisionist history to argue the previous regime was any better.

I think 18 months is not enough to evaluate Sandy considering he experienced the reverse situation to Omar for the first few off-seasons.

--In his first off-season, Omar was able to increase payroll (seemingly a modest $6m, but it was nearly 7%), and signed Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran in 2005 to contracts worth around $26m.
--In 2006, he added Wagner, Delgado and LoDuca (and did some of his best bargain basement trading and signing). Added contracts of net value $0m somehow since the payroll was the same as 2005.
--From 2007-2009, payroll increase by $34m and the end of Omar was near.

Sandy saw a decrease in payroll in one year (roughly $45m), that Omar was able to increase over his 5 years.

The real evaluation will be when Sandy has the ability to add payroll, and his third year of the draft.

What does payroll have to do with Alderson whiffing in the draft and failing to get fair compensation for Jose Reyes. Let me remind you, picking 12th, the Mets had a chance to acquire arguably the best player in the draft and Alderson whiffed. Later in the same draft at #35 Alderson could have atoned for his earlier mistake of missing Giolito and again he missed. As for Reyes,the Mets got absolutely nothing for a player who was the NLs batting champion and a legitimate MVP candidate.

In my original post, I purposely did not refer to any "incidental" trades because any GM no matter how good or bad will have some trades that will be good and some that will be bad. The only trade I mentioned was the wheeler deal and I gave him full credit for that. However, whiffing in THIS draft is unforgivable. Alderson did not have to be some genius to pick Giolito and/or Mccullers. These were no brainer moves that any fan would have made. He did not need to be some wunderkind to realize that allowing Reyes to walk away without compensation was not an option. All it required was simple understanding of how to procure talent that any GM should know. And, it certainly did not have anything to do with payroll.

Talk about belaboring the point. Cecchini was a fine pick at the spot, if a bit safe. Giolito might have been a better pick, but it's arguable, particularly when you consider money and risk. You can harp on not picking Giolito all day (which seems to be your biggest gripe), but if three years from now he's got less than a hundred innings under his belt due to (predictable) injuries and Cecchini is having a good year at Double-A, you're wrong and the Meta made the right call. There are reasons that the guy who was arguably the best player in the draft fell to the middle of the first round, notably signability and injury risk.

So you would rather take Michael Bay over Martin Scorsese? Exciting, is your reason.

Sandy has proven to be more of a PLW then Omar. He actually spends in the draft and emphasizes player development over Omar's guy Bernazzard promoting guys from DSL to AA.

No.

But I'll take Guillermo del Toro over him.

If you make a great movie, it isn't the director's fault that the projector keeps breaking down

I did belabor the point because the poster alluded to payroll being a factor and I wanted it to be clear that payroll had nothing to do with these moves.

As far as your point about Lucas Giolito vs Cecchini I will ask the reverse: What if three years from now Giolito does develop into the ace TOR starter that he is expected to become. How would you feel then, especially knowing the Mets could have had him for less than three million dollars?

Also, Giolito was not my only complaint. I mentioned not picking Mccullers and letting Reyes walk without proper compensation as other examples; something you conveniently forgot to mention.

Giolito's injury is a fair concern but elbow injuries are not the career enders they used to be. Stephen Strasburg recovered quite well from his elbow and some would say he is better than ever. And Strasburg is certainly not the only example of pitchers recovering from elbow problems.

Finally, procurement of talent is one of if not the most important factor in determining a winning franchise. The Washington Nationals are keenly aware of this. That is why they drafted Anthony Rendon and now Lucas Giolito the best talent available, despite injury and signability concerns. You simply need to look at the standings to see which approach has been working. The Mets would do well to follow this template.