As we all know there are ( barring off days) less than a months worth of games left in the Mets season.
As it stands right now the Mets trail the Division leading Atlanta Braves by twelve games and the Wild Card Leading Phillies by eleven games – with six other teams ahead of them. The Mets hopes at making the post season are dead and we have seen the body on the coroners table for a while now – whether ownership wants to admit it or not. But pretty soon there will be a autopsy performed on the cadaver which is listed as the 2010 New York Mets. And while many people will speculate and wonder out loud what could have been, what should have been and what would have been. I’ll just be asking why ?!?
Such as :
Other than Jason Bay, why didn’t the Mets try to reinforce a mediocre starting rotation with one of the few available above average pitchers that were on the market last winter ?
Why did Gary Matthews Jr and Frank Catolonotto on the opening day roster when both didn’t deserve to make the team coming out of spring training ?
Why did Omar relent to Jerry’s wishes and have Jennry Mejia start the season in the bullpen when he should have been gaining experience as a starter in the minors?
Why would the Mets honor the ’00 Mets during the Subway Series? If you ask me it’s kinda like cutting the stitches off of a wound that has yet to heal.
Why Didn’t Fred and Jeff fire Jerry and the coaching staff on that first road trip to Atlanta this past May?
Why were there no moves during the All Star Break ?
Why did it take so long to release Alex Cora?
Why did we only get back Joachim Arias in the Jeff Francouer trade ?
Why isn’t Don King promoting a Francisco Rodriguez / Mike Tyson fight?
Why is Oliver Perez still on the team !!!?!!!
And lastly – why doesn’t ownership and the front office stop treating us like we are little children whose relative has just died – and just admit that the season is over !!!
Oh – and why do I bother ?
” Why ask why ?”
And with that said …. HERE COMES THE INFAMY !!!!
Celebrating birthdays today are :
Future Hall of Famer ( better be as a Met!)and possibly the best offensive catcher in Mets history, Mike Piazza (1968) is 42. I wish we still had his bat in the line up.
Light hitting utility infielder from ’97-’99, Luis Lopez is 40 (1970) .
Back up catcher for the ’03 Mets,Joe DePastino is 37 (1973).
New York Mets releasedreserve catcher, Barry Lyons on September 4, 1990.
Since Mo Vaughn is following the Mets in Chicago he figured that he would dress up like Aretha Franklin and sing “Freedom” while eating some white toast and two fried chickens while drinking a Coke !
10 comments
stickguy
9/4/2010-8:01am at 8:01 am (UTC -4)
I am not sure why so many people want the team to come out and publically state that they are out of the race. Teams just don’t do this. And frankly, there is no need. Fans can read the standings, and either hold out hope for a miracle, or see reality. And yo can look at actions to see which way the team is leaning!
For most of your points, they get a “damned if I know” or “omar doesn’t fully know what he is doing” or “the budget did not allow it”. But, I few I have an opinion on.
- Why did it take so long to release Alex Cora?: they don’t like to eat contracts, and Omar liked him. and they must have felt he brought enough to thte table (intangibles?) to be as good as the weak other options like tejada or hernandez
-Why did we only get back Joachim Arias in the Jeff Francouer trade ?: because frenchy sucks and it was surprising they got anything back.
- Why is Oliver Perez still on the team !!!?!!!: because all along they have felt that they could get some kind of return for him in the off season, and were not going to flat out eat 12mill+ this year remainder without exploring all those options. and it didnt bother the club to have him buried in the pen.
stickguy
9/4/2010-8:16am at 8:16 am (UTC -4)
also, IMO, a big reason jerry and the gang never got booted, even late for an interim, is Omar’s status. I think it means there is a better chance they already decided omar is gone, and did not want to make any on field moves until the new GM was there to make them?
could also be related to lack of moves at the deadline. Possibly they decided that the team wasn’t good enough that whatever marginal moves available wouldn’t have made the difference, and/or again they wanted the new guy to make the decisions on prospects to keep/trade?
maybe grasping at straws here, but I like to hope that someone, somewhere, has a clue or a plan!
rustyjr
9/4/2010-9:31am at 9:31 am (UTC -4)
It was a mostly rhetorical articly but your points are appreciated & duly noted
stickguy
9/4/2010-10:09am at 10:09 am (UTC -4)
yeah, but some of the points are valid discussion items! and I am sure you will find differing opinions among the posters.
besides, I am doing what I can to keep the RD from sinking into the cesspool that MB to some extent, and many of the other sites, have become lately. hatred, negativity, and flat out idiocy rules the day.
I never realized how many met fans must have ridden the short bus until I started looking at the comment section on some of those other sites.
rustyjr
9/4/2010-10:29am at 10:29 am (UTC -4)
Lol I embrace the debate – that’s why I asked these questions
stickguy
9/4/2010-10:12am at 10:12 am (UTC -4)
quick alternate theory:
wilpons knew after last season they probably needed major changes, but let the injury stuff (and $) sway them into 1 more shot for this crew.
realized early on that the team was flawed, and that is why they did little during the year, expecting to clean house in the off season. so, stand pat and let the farm mature became the plan of the year.
metsfan4decades
9/4/2010-11:16am at 11:16 am (UTC -4)
Looking at all your questions Rusty just keeps me pointing back to the common denominator in just about all of them: Omar.
Nothing personal, but Omar must go – at least as far as the GM job is concerned. Just about everyone of those decisions point back to him.
He rolled the dice with MOP and came up short with Perez and Maine. Just about every single fan realized we needed at least one more solid SP. Sure, he signed us Taka and Dickey but neither were established starters in the ML. He just plain got lucky there.
Cat, Jacobs, GMJ: Omar mainly went down the path of experience instead of looking at latent. GMJ was/is done. Jacobs was never going to be other than what he is. Cat wasn’t such a bad choice for the bench at the time but that didn’t work out either.
Mejia was a decision, IMO, based more on fan approval and ticket sales than anything else. He should have started out in in the minors honing his craft and maybe, just maybe, he would have been ready to crack the rotation mid season.
Alex Cora I didn’t have much of a problem with. No one saw him getting as much playing time as he did b/c no one forsaw the Reyes’ thyroid problem and injuries. They released him before the option kicked in so to me, no harm, no foul.
Stick’s right: we’re lucky to have gotten anything back for Francoeur.
IMO, the entire coaching staff should have been replaced by the end of May. And that includes Omar. No telling how much different this season might have been had Jeff made that decision.
The Perez saga and KRod circus are just two more incidents that further lend to the perception of this franchise as a joke.
I can’t say this enough: Omar must go. Reassign him, whatever. We need a new GM. One that Jeff trusts implicitly. One that brings a fresh approach that hopefully will go along way towards turning this franchise from the circus it’s become lately to a solid, contending team.
GravediggerHebner
9/4/2010-11:44am at 11:44 am (UTC -4)
Mostly rhetorical my butt! You’re getting answers pal whether you like it or not!
They didn’t try to reinforce the pitching staff because they had (for no reason that I understand) faith in John Maine and Oliver Perez plus they believed the available pitchers on the market were being overpaid (and without doing research, based on recollection I agree with this 2nd point).
GMJ and Cat were poor choices to fill roles that needed to be filled. They fit Omar’s modus operandi of giving scrap heap players another shot to rediscover the old magic but unfortunately Omar tries to fill far too many spots on the 40-man (and by extension the 25-man) roster this way and we all see the results. I had no issue with GMJ until Jerry started him. As a 4th/5th OF that might play once a week I was fine with him. Cat was years removed from productivity as best as I can tell maybe Omar thought getting a shot close to home (Smithtown baby!) would invigorate him. Bottom line, 0 for 2 on those guys just like 0 for 2 on Maine & Perez.
I don’t know exactly how Mejia wound up in the majors this spring but for the sake of discussion I’ll agree that Manuel wanted him and Omar wanted to send him down but relented. In that context the reason Omar relented was because his other plans for the bullpen were so poor. Escobar is a guy whose signing I liked but as “extra” not as “the guy” and since no one else was “the guy” (Igarashi?) perhaps Omar realized how much he’d failed to fill the bullpen and gave Jerry a bone. Another Oh-fer for Omar.
I’ve got nothing on the specific opponent while honoring the 2000 team. I can see your point but I didn’t really care who the opponent was I was just happy to see those players from that team. I’m sure someone would have asked “why the hell are they doing this when the Padres are in town?” had they done that.
Why didn’t they fire the coaches in May? I don’t know. I know I would not have done so. Too early IMO to fire guys you considered worthy just a month ago.
There were no moves during the All-Star break because Omar only knows how to do 2 things – sign veteran free agents to big contracts or acquire scrap heap extra-type players and neither opportunity presented itself at that stage of the season.
No clue on the length of time to release Cora.
Who did you want to get for Francoeur? He’s a bad player, the Mets traded a bad player for a bad player. The only thing (IMO) that would have been better would have been to release the bad player and get nothing, I guess Omar wanted to take a flier on another scrap heap player because they are his favorite thing.
I have nothing to say about Don King except that it never fails to crack me up when I see him.
IMO Perez is on the team for 1 or maybe 2 reasons. 1, the fear that he will “figure it out” on the Mets dime while on another team; 2, the Mets are playing the role of grade school teacher and have essentially placed Ollie in the corner for chewing gum.
I can’t think of a team that ever had a press conference to state to their fans “we’re out of it, no playoffs, thanks for coming.” So why would I expect the Mets to do so? I would like if they could do a better job of admitting that truth in more relevant ways such as adjusting the roster to reflect a look toward the future and then concurrently using that roster appropriately but the way this situation is being handled is a microcosm for the Mets currently – they don’t know what they’re doing and they don’t know how to do it, so the GM continues to have players on the roster that have little-to-no future on the team and the manager continues to play them.
On a lighter note Happy Birthday Mike Piazza! and Why ask why, try Bud Dry!
metsfan4decades
9/4/2010-12:01pm at 12:01 pm (UTC -4)
Well, I would have like the coaching staff gone after last season but for whatever reason (probably the injury plagued ’09) they gave them a pass.
To me…two months was long enough to see nothing much had changed. We got off to an awful start. Sure, by the ASB we were looking pretty good. By the time we started sliding again, I really don’t know if it would have made a difference to change out the staff by 1 Aug. Probably a little too much water under the bridge at that point but really no way of knowing.
That’s why I stand by my opinion of last Sep that Omar and the coaching staff should have been replaced then. This FO gives out so many second and third and forth chances to those that didn’t get it done that I’d like to apply for a job to work for them….
Ceetar
9/4/2010-12:01pm at 12:01 pm (UTC -4)
Well, GMJr did hit in the Spring. He was a reasonable gamble guy as a backup (Jerry fails for starting him). The word was Beltran was supposed to start full rehab in early April, right around Opening Day. So his days were numbered anyway. The Mets pretty much handled it correctly. He didn’t hit, and Beltran stayed hurt, so they released him for other options. Catalanotto had been a decent PH/bench guy in Spring Training. (Jerry fails for batting him 4th) He didn’t hit, and was released, probably with too few AB to really see if he was going to contribute. it was like 14 or something.
Frenchy sucks. That we got someone back was shocking.
Mejia was an okay move. Jerry mishandled him, but he got much needed exposure which I think helped him grow as a ballplayer. With a young pitcher’s innings limits and what not, this didn’t stunt his growth at all, and actually helped. This was a solid eval move noting a guy who could handle the big leagues, giving him the exposure to it, but still developing him.
The Mets didn’t honor the ’00 team. SNY simply did a special on them that happened to be on the Subway Series weekend. Don’t know why, maybe they figured it’d attract more viewership that weekend. It may have.
They didn’t fire the coaches in Atlanta because they had their head in the sand in the offseason that it wasn’t Jerry’s fault. Despite there being compelling evidence, they chose to trust that evaluation. Or it may be that they determined a _real_ search for a manager could not take place during the season and that Jerry wouldn’t make or break this team. (He tried, but Bay’s concussion/slump and Beltran’s slow recovery and Castillo’s bone bruise and Maine’s botched surgery all contributed) They figured that the season was going to be a gamble anyway, and that it wasn’t in their best interest. I disagree, but the signs do seem to point to them not believing in this team and not wanted to get suckered into liking an interim guy.
Cora was, and had been, a solid backup MI guy. He was overexposed, and has been going downhill. I don’t know that they waited “too long” to replace him though. Cora was never really the issue, Manuel played him too long at times, and they should’ve managed the roster better (Reyes on DL with the oblique, Castillo either playing every day or DL’d with the bone bruise a month earlier) to have a ‘better’ MI to play. Cora’d been pretty clutch, a nice guy, all that stuff. I don’t think he was a liability but they released him right around the time they gave up, because backup MIs have no place on a team that’s out of it.