Mets Are Better Off Without Zito

An article by Joe D    Comments Off

I know you’re all dying to hear what I’ve got to say with regard to the Barry Zito saga. Well, I just checked out of rehab… and my wrists are healing so nicely they let me out a week early …  and… I’m only kidding!

Of course I am as disappointed as the rest of you. Did I want Zito? Yes, I did. But you know what, it wasn’t meant to be. This guy was all about the money. Nobody picks Scott Boras as an agent because he is warm and fuzzy or because he’s the life of the party. He gets his clients because they know he will sell his own mother and use every dirty trick under heaven to get his clients the big bucks. I wish San Francisco all the luck in the world with him because they will regret the day they made him that outrageous offer.

I now want to make it absolutely clear to each of you that despite all of my previous posts about how bad I wanted Barry Zito to pitch Opening Day for the Mets in 2007, I don’t blame Omar Minaya one bit for walking away from this terrible contract. Seven years on a pitcher is insane. $100 million dollars on a pitcher is disastrous. As a matter of fact the only other pitchers ever to sign deals for $100 million dollars or more, were Mike Hampton and Kevin Brown, and we all know how disastrous those contracts turned out.

I now posses a whole new view on the Mets starting pitching. There is tons of upside in our pitching rotation with guys like John Maine, Mike Pelfrey, Oliver Perez, Philip Humber and even the newly acquired Jason Vargas. These youngsters are all bursting with talent and currently are, or once were, among the best pitching prospects in baseball. If just one of them realizes their potential, it will mean big things for the Mets in 2007.

We know what we have with Tom Glavine and Orlando Hernandez. Despite their advanced ages, you can count on them for 6 or 7 quality innings each time they take the mound. It’s already safe to say that John Maine has become a viable #3 pitcher and quite possibly be on the verge of even more improvement if you read what the scouts are saying. Then we have 4 former 1st Round Picks! That’s right, Pelfrey, Perez, Humber and Vargas were all selected in the first round of the amateur draft.

All I’m trying to say is that all is not lost. Mets fans have plenty to be happy about. We have just come off an amazing season that none of us could have expected. We go into 2007 with a core of players that are young, and talented, and getting better every day.

The truth is that this current version of the Mets is far better than the team that started the 2006 season. Now before you all throw something at me, just stop and think about it. This season we will have Orlando Hernandez and John Maine for an entire season not just 15 starts, last season at this time we still had Kris Benson and Victor Zambrano in the rotation. Last season Pedro Martinez was pretty much hurt all year, this season we will have a healthy Pedro Martinez coming back in July. 

On offense we finally have someone who can bash left-handed pitching in Moises Alou who replaced an oft injured Cliff Floyd. Endy Chavez will get at least 400 at-bats and will be part of a very productive platoon with Shawn Green. These things are all big time improvements.

So give the Mets a break and cut Omar some slack. We have to stay true to the orange and blue. And another thing… it’s still early enough for Omar to pull of a trade for some help. Last year he traded Kris Benson at the end of January for what ended up netting us John Maine and Orlando Hernandez. At the time we all scratched our heads, but where would we have been last season if not for that trade? We have so much to love about this team, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

On another subject both near and dear to my heart, I’ve completely migrated to a new web host for my blog. Unfortunately, during the process I lost all of my archives and previous posts. But what the heck, a new year means a new beginning and I am looking forward to another great season for Mets Merized and for my beloved New York Mets.

This new blog will not be as flashy as my Myspace site, but it will be loaded with much more content and commentary about the Mets, great deals on Mets merchandise, informative Mets links, and best of all, you can now leave comments on any of my individual posts. I still have some work to do before it’s completely finished, but so far, so good. I hope you like it and that you choose to bookmark us or subscribe to my blog.

Thanks and all of you have a Happy New Year and I hope to see you all the other side of midnight.