Do Star Studded Acquisitions Lead To Winning Seasons?

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• jdon December 18, 2009 at 11:36 am

  I agree with you. But a couple of star studded starting pitchers can make a heck of a difference. The mets have failed to provided good second tier support to their offensive stars, and those stars have disappointed at key times. I think you have to try to make sure there are no automatic outs in your lineup or on your bench. It does not have to be a rotisserie all-star team. Look at the yanks. The offensive guy most responsible for the WS victory was not a superstar. A better than second tier player who happens to be clutch. Guys like that are so valuable. Jason Werth is another guy I like for that kind of role.
• BTF December 18, 2009 at 11:44 am

  Well said Joe. This why the Mets can never string together back to back post season appearances in franchise history. They have never had a long term vision. One thing the Mets also do is heavily backload their free agent contracts and it always cripples them at the end. Wouldnt the smart thing be to give a 29-30 year old free agent a front loaded contract instead, so that you pay him the most during his productive years instead of his least productive years? Nice post.
  • theonlymaskman December 18, 2009 at 11:31 pm

    Future dollars are worth less than present dollars, so there is a higher cost to front end loaded contracts. The present worth of future dollars is discounted according to the time value of money. Contracts that are back end loaded get paid off with cheaper dollars to the benefit of the employer and detriment of the employee.
    • METS62FAN December 19, 2009 at 12:03 pm

      Mask, good logic normally; but consider if fears re. uncontroled inflation on horizon comes true? In that case today’s $ are much more valuable than tomorrow’s. No?

      More on topic, i do beieve the plan prioritization Jon Heyman recently addressed as Omar’s Plans a,b,c, reflect a more realistic, go for the character over glitz concept. to reiterate:
      Plan A: Molina+Bay
      Plan B: Molina+Lackey
      Plan C: Molina+Holliday
      These may not be our preferred order; but it does seem there WERE plans contrary to many naysaying opinions. Obviously, the only consistant an Obvious #1 priority is Bengie Molina, mostly justified for the perceived stability/improvment he can bring to the 3 enigmas(Pelf,Oliie,Maine). Another, Good move was to take the clout out of Bengie’s hands by ensuring obvious alternatives on the cheap with Blanco & Coste.
      Another argument could be nmade based on prioritizing by signability. I believe Lackey was eliminated from plan A due to 5y demand, Holliday likely the extremely bad combination of $ & Boras.
      Based on all this info. i concur with the priorities set & Mysteries not withstanding, Omar’s in the catbird’s seat on both members of Plan A. Now isn’t that preferrable to speed at more $? Maybe, he’s still has more clout than Gammons thinks?
      • theonlymaskman December 20, 2009 at 9:52 am

        Increasing inflation only heightens the relationship making current $ even more valuable and adding more incentive to the employer to defer ompensation to future years.

        As far as Plans A, B, and C, I will defer judgement until we know the outome of signing Molina and Bay. Of course, I take exception to Molina as the central cog of our offseason strategy. If there is a need to economize, I would do it there. If Plan A is our actual strategy, I would adjust it to Plan A’ which would be Bay only. In my opinion, we can be equally bad with or without Molina, so drop him from the Plan and just see how we do with returning injured players plus Bay. Just my opinion.
        • METS62FAN December 21, 2009 at 8:07 am

          Mask, obviously there’s some truth to the rumors that a substantial percentage of our ‘braintrust’ believes that our 2009 Catcher core led to the mundane underpreformance of the younger pitchers of our rotation & believe the addition of a proven exceptrional handler of younf pitching will improve their performance thus amounting to an upgrade for 4 of 5 games(90%) as such Molina is a proven commodity and deserves to be an integral portion of every solution considered.
  • METS62FAN December 19, 2009 at 11:46 am

    Oh contrare ’99,00!
• William H. December 18, 2009 at 11:54 am

  I’m trying to understand your point. Are you against the Mets siging Bay? I get the part about about a longterm strategy and I agree with you on that, but wouldnt you accomplish that by signing more stars than we had been in the past?
• Russell Zanca December 18, 2009 at 12:14 pm

  Brother Joe,

  First, the answer to your headline is a resounding no, given the evidence from our Amazins for the past three years.

  Second, future planning is important, but the good teams and the teams that make playoffs usually have to have as many non-superstar factors, too. Well, maybe excluding the Skanks.

  For all of us, this is JMan’s last chance to prove he can help make the Mets play good baseball (my fan goal for ’10). For me, he’s got about two months to show the Mets look, act, and execute like a fundamentally sound team. Naturally, if crazy injuries befall us from the start again (Please God, no!), then judgments have to change. When I say JMan, I also mean his coaches.

  I know we want it all in 2010, but I refuse to despair at this point because I really think last season was something of a sick aberration. Every year since ’06 has had some very quirky aspects along with bad management, bad corporate decisions, etc.

  Will 2010 necessarily be different? None of us have any idea, but if I were a wagering man, I would put money on an improved kind of baseball being played in Queens. Seriously.

  The reason is b/c I want to believe dedicated professionals will learn from the worst mistakes of 2010. With minimized injuries, I feel confident we will win 15 more games at least in 2010. All of that will relate to 25 guys working hard together, and every effort made to coach them appropriately.

  For the record, I want Bay, though in no way do I see him as a superstar who pushes us to the next level. He is a piece. What I think hurts teams is lack of consistency at positions. Murphy, Sheffield, Sullivan, Pagan, Reed–that won’t work in LF.
• Mets Are the Bomb December 18, 2009 at 12:24 pm

  The Yankees signed three star-studded player. Did they win the world series this year? Enough said
• Shamik December 18, 2009 at 12:26 pm

  In the end, the key is to get DECENT production out of your home-grown guys and provide depth for any injuries. Your superstars will carry your team, but you need depth to man the fort if any of them go down. This is why EVERY aspect of the game has to be perfect to field a winning team: minor leagues (scouting, player development, medical staff), Major league (health and coaching good mechanics and good habits), front office, building depth. The Mets are dreadful at every single aspect of this, and this is what produces season-ending collapses. It doesnt matter if we’re in first place when everyone is healthy, because we’ve seen that even when heathy they’re not good enough to sustain that first place push over a full season.
• Bob L December 18, 2009 at 7:26 pm

  if the star-studded acquisitions are the ‘right’ acquisitions and these studs elevate the play of others on team and, there’s depth on the bench/pen and in the farm system, then yeah bro/dude/mon, it’ll lead to WINNING seasons. It’s about the PLAN, the strategy, the execution of such….that produces a winner or does not. We shall see.
  That said, i think the Phillies have peaked; their acquisition of Halladay won’t do it by itself; problem is the Braves and Marlins pose threats, and the Mets have to improve by 20 games in 2010 in order to make the playoffs.
  • t agee December 19, 2009 at 7:20 pm

    signing 1 or 2 high priced free agents EVERY year is not a sustainable plan. Signing or trading for 1 or 2 35-45 year stop gaps EVERY year is not a sustainable plan. Putting your organizations resources into the farm system will create competition in the minor leagues. The best come up the rest provide depth and useful trade chips. That augmented with a few free agent signings will allow a team to compete for a championship EVERY year which should be the goal. To keep losing draft choices or throwing them away (wagner trade)will haunt us for years. All we have to do is have one major league ready player and pitcher come up each year. Obviously that player should have spent the last few years playing the position he is brought up to fill and the incumbent allowed to leave via free agency where we will recoup 2 high draft choices. Now this does us no good this year but if we don’t start now we’ll be having the same conversation EVERY year. 25 years of neglecting the farm system cannot be repaired by signing another free agent.
• sarge December 18, 2009 at 10:51 pm

  Great article Joe, I am one that believes that improving the minor league system is just as important as the role players you add to your team. Many a WS or playoff game has been won by support players or a Sep. call up that stuck with team other than maybe pitchers that have dominated so Mets need to have the forward looking vision on as well as 2010.
  Bomb; Yanks had Mo, Jeter, Posada, Bernie, Cano, Petitte, Melky, Hughes,Coke, Jaba, etc that were home grown and were all part of their WS titles as was last year. Yeah their 3 additions helped but w/o the supporting cast A.J., CC and Tex would have made a team respectable.
• theonlymaskman December 18, 2009 at 11:51 pm

  The key is continual improvement. The roster needs to be reviewed continuously by taking advantage of every opportunity to upgrade position by position. The Yanks do this continously and always better their team posture. The Mets settle for discontinuity and attempt to make a sporadic splash acquisition, but compromise themselves by filling vacancies with lesser players to achieve false economy. The result is inconsistency and reduced performance. The Mets perform as a small market team because their spending is unwise. If you disagree, then why do teams with smaller budgets (e.g the Marlins) perform better on the field? Just look at our acquisitions so far: Cora, Coste, Blanco and Igarashi. Truly, can anyone say we upgraded with these signings? You can throw every one of these into the crapper and we won’t miss a thing. The point is to upgrade not fill slots with what’s easily available at 7-11. We got those guys because no one else was interested in competing against us for them. So how competitive will they make us? I think not very competitive.
  • t agee December 19, 2009 at 7:45 pm

    The Yankees proved over and over again that you cannot solve your problems by throwing money at other teams players. Our “core” if you will is 2 players. In addition we have Murphy brought up to play a position he has never played before. Pagan (breakthrough at 29? possible) Pelfrey avg now hasn’t progressed but I think has a chance. Parnell brought up here w/1 pitch in his repetoire. My point is because of need our young players (Martinez too) were brought up too soon and out of place. Now Thole is the next guy who’s gonna be rushed. Do you realize 2 years ago Thole was a first basemen in A ball. Now can you see him catching Rodriguez in the 9th inning of a close game? How about Ollie? what would that be like? We need more high draft choice players in the farm system so guys don’t have to be rushed and less free agents which cost us picks. By the way David Wright and Ike Davis were picks we obtained by losing free agents. On the other hand Kyle Drabck in the Halliday trade was picked by phillie with OUR pick. This future is now business has got to stop it never works.
    • METS62FAN December 20, 2009 at 9:05 am

      T agee, I’d love to agree with everything u say; but from my 47 yrs of nym fan experience, I’ll tell u whatelse doesn’t work: LOSING!
      A 5 yr plan that consists of rebuilding, stockpiling draft picks & standing on the sidelines while our crosstown newighbors sign everything decent with a pulse, while we pass on the Don Baylors to sign the Bob Baylors soesn’t work in NYC. despite all the claims to the contrary. Because one of the most valuable & rare peculiarities of a NY fans’ persionality profile is PATIENCE! This franchise has suffered enough from fan inconsistancy. There’s only one solution, WINNING! Think about it, there are 30 teams vying for 6 slots that represent a modicum of success. those teams that tend to do it rather consistantly, Yankees, Angels, Twins, Cards. of those 4 one does it with vociferous, angey fans by spending the GNP of a moderatly sized nation, annually. The other 3 have rather “understanding” fans that possess the patience to wait yrs for a nutured prospect to blossum properly, that are content to accept the spending hierarchy of MLB ecconomics. That understand the need to sell off your best assets, just as they themselves sell off their prized livestock after years of nusing it through famine,frost & flood.
      Tagee, You’d be all alone if we had won it in ’06, hadn’t stumbled in ’07,’08. Not only would u not be complaining, your evaluation of the PROCESS, don’t change a thing, so called ‘prospects’ are natural ‘suspects’ would be the popular mantra of Flushing. We’ve tried them all and failed at them all.
      In 84 & 85 the franchise was in 2 consecutive second place no Playoffs Positions despite successful 90 & 98 win seasons, respectivly. That was accomplished with only one Big Ticket Free Agent(George Foster) on the roster. the rest were there similarly to PHL & ATL today! Via draft,Farm,Trade, Tryout. Yet despite going a dominating 575-395 from ’84 – ’89, preceeded by a miserable 200-286 record ’80-’83 That’s 4 90+ win seasons, incl 2 100+w seasons, because it resulted in only 1 WS Title the decade of the 80s for our NYM are considerd very disappointing and few recollect the ’84 & ’85 phenomenon of 2 different franchises CHC, STL having “CAREER” SEASONS!
      As I’ ve proven, despite all of our asttempts to deny, history shows the only thing that truly matters is the Jewelry at the end. So few have the necessary patience to wait out the “required” losing needed to win as required when eschewing the QUICK,EASY PATH TO GLORY VIA CHECKBOOK DEVELOPMENT instead of Talent Development.