Because that isn’t what happens in the MLB! How many deals like that are made a year? 3 or 4?
Out of 30 teams???!??!?!??!??!?!

Those deals do not happen as often as you think they do or could.

They would rather package their excess and go get a ML player that puts them into contention now!

I wasn’t saying to build from within on the assumption that you could obtain other prospects, I was just saying that at some point you realize you have 2 decent third basemen in the minors and David Wright already here why not look around and see who doesn’t have a decent third basemen in their system and take a look at what they do have that might be blocked. Exchanging a 3B for a 2B while their both in A+ might work for everyone.

Trading off the 25 mid season for a well regarded prospect is the best way to firm up future teams rosters and I’m not talking about salary dumps. I’m talking real prospects. 2006, 2007 and 2008 we weren’t in a position to do that but how about 2004, 2005, 2009 and 2010?

That’s how Atlanta GOT Smoltz. That’s how we got Sid, Darling and Hojo. Not trading Wagner for a DH or a Francouer, Matsui style salary dump. Eat the salary and get someone we’re not going to waive.

Atlanta may have fallen on hard times with their first 2 losing seasons of the last 20 years but their right back now, with plenty of young pitchers they obtained while they were still going to the post season every year and two other top shelf position players who will be around for quite a while.

No 25 year spells between developing an All Star RFer for them. They even got a pitcher from the World Baseball Classic off the Australian team.

Atlanta is always looking in every possible place for players. Their scouting dept picks guys up off waivers, independent leagues, they have a pipeline from the Caribbean and they select and develop loads of players in all rounds of the draft. From the extremely few in the first round all the way to Brian Giles in the 53rd round.

Their results speak for themselves since Cox, Schulheiss and Wren took over.

They will make your trade that fits provided Niese or davis is included. Then it’s a bad deal!

making a deal is only worth it if it is a good deal.
There is no reason for some other GM to make it just because it works for you and him. and it sure isn’t 30 teams to choose from.
Teams like the Pirates value their youth more than any other team. They want more than they give!

You can’t blame our GM for not allowing himself to get raped or for not making a move that wasn’t fair!
And you can’t blame him for not making a deal the other side didn’t want to make!

You CAN NOT build from within on the assumption you will get some other team’s prospects.
In fact the only ones who actually give away prospects are the ones who are already winning or close, and don’t need those prospects so they trade them away in bulk to get some big salary guy.
Thats what Boston did anyway! Yankees did it quite a bit, Phillies just did that two years running!

The braves once the pitching went they were done!

Not every solution should be addressed by the free agent market.

Teams can find prospects beyond the 3rd round that become very good ML players. Happens all the time. Even with us on occasion. Niese, Thole, Parnell. Those guys came from the 2005 draft. If we had done as well in 2004, 2006 and 2007 we might have our 2B by now. Maybe a RFer. Might not have had to purchase a 3rd LFer from the FA market in the last 8 years. Might not have lost 2 post seasons by 3 games either and might have picked up another Niese, Thole, Parnell (or better) with the two #2 or one #1 picks we forfeited.

It’s doesn’t have to be an either or proposition.

And the SOME REASON is….

Metsmerized
Mets Police
NY Post
NY Daily News
WFAN
ESPN
Etc……etc…….

Why is Jason Bay here? Why isn’t Duda or some other kid playing there instead?
Did you ever think it was because every frigging person who is not charged with running the team coaxed and DEMANDED they go get some high priced power bat or they would be irrelevant THIS year with absoloutly no clue or care what would be best for 2011 and 2012? OR the youth they never cover unless we bring them up?

Works great provided the other team’s plan fits with yours and is willing to make the trade. But finding guys on other teams is easy. Getting them to trade for a fair price is hard.

Remember your not trading with some computer GM. And just about every team has a glut of OFers. So why do they need one of ours and give up a 2B or pitcher?

You say perhaps a match could be found but usually what stops the deal is the insistence on getting more than just a match!

Boston is really a bad example here. They make more trades of their GOOD players than they do for the minors. Or let those players go to get draft picks that get them what they need.

And still they may be competitive but they are hardly a dominant team.

As for the team having top heavy salary guys well if we didn’t we still wouldn’t have a competitive team. Maybe if we traded Beltran in the last two years we might have done what Boston has but then again how much do you get for a CF with Knee issues.

Would trading Wright really solve our 2B problem or would it just cause a NEW problem at 3B?
Would Murphy do as much?
Can you get anything for Murphy when teams know you have no place to play him?

This is the year where the Youth Plan was going to transition.
Beltran and Reyes are both at the end and this offseason would be the time to decide to let that gbo and bring up youth or keep them and trade that youth for something else.

So you can’t say we failed to do what you propose it’s just that we did not wait long enough to let it happen the way it was planned and injuries forced us to rush the plan which is why the plan looks as bad as it does right now.

I still don’t see how you believe it is so easy to just draft and develop players.
Because we already discussed how long it took the Yankees, Braves and Phillies to do that.
Boston rebuilt after years and years of never winning a WS.

And it wasn’t until they spent some money and made some trades for guys like Pedro that they were actually successful at winning something!

They made trades for much of it but they also gave away stupid amounts of youth to get it!

If your even attempting to project what future years rosters might look like ahead of time you can easily see where you have a surplus and a need.

If your actively scouting other teams minor league affiliates you can identify guys AHEAD of time and look for a match. What might they need vs. what will we need two or three years from now.

For example we have had a couple of interesting prospects at 3B that were blocked by David Wright. Shawn Bowman, Daniel Murphy and Zach Lutz. Bowman we lost in the rule 5 draft to Toronto, He’s now in the Braves system. Murph’s been a vagabond and Lutz is on the 40 so he’s safe from rule 5 poachers and backs up a key position from AAA with some upside. Knowing that Matsui may not be the answer and Valentine and Easily wouldn’t be here forever perhaps a match could have been found.

A few years ago, facing the imminent loss of Lindstrom to rule 5 and wanting to clear a spot on the 40 Omar traded him and Henry Owens to FLA for Jason Vargas who didn’t need to be on the 40 yet due to only being in pro ball for 2 years. Vargas pitched well for Seattle (he was in the Putz deal) last year.

Theo Epstein traded Chris Carter to us in 2009 knowing he would have to remove him from the 40 to make room to protect a more well rounded prospect from the rule 5 draft and would probably lose him for nothing. The two prospects that he was able to draft from “losing” Wagner wouldn’t have to be protected for 4 years.

This is the part of Omar’s run as Met GM that is so mystifying to me. Everyone rightly credits Omar’s talent evaluation as his strongest suit. He would have been the first GM since Mcilvaine that would have been able to spot potential solutions from other organizations and combined with common sense about logjams, blocks, ect COULD HAVE provided the solutions ahead of time that wouldn’t have left us dependent on the free agent market and led to us forfeiting so many draft choices. We also wouldn’t have had to live with so many long term contracts, paid so much in payroll and having younger players been so vulnerable to injury.

If our payroll was less top heavy we could have afforded decent back ups rather than other teams rejects or our own under developed prospects.

Nobody’s going to be right all the time when your dealing in prospects but the same can be said for high priced free agents as well.

No one was in a better position than Omar to know just how poor the minor league system was. He knew it would take a year or so to gain traction in the IFA and draft. He also knew that whoever he did sign or draft wouldn’t be able to contribute for 4-5 years. You can’t quibble too much with giving up a 2nd and 3rd round pick for Pedro and Beltran, the trade for Delgado and even the Wagner signing is defensible but come 2007 we should have had a guy (or two) that Omar found and kept the #1 pick, had an in house starter to back up El-Duque, Pedro, Glavine, Wagner, Valentin, and Delgado. After all that’s a lot of age right there and with next to nothing in AA or AAA this lack of depth cost us way more than 3 games over 2007 and 2008.

Managing your 40 and projecting future rosters ahead of time would have easily prevented some of the worst mistakes in free agency and in seasons where we lost by one or two games been the difference between making the post season or not.

Since you can’t predict injury you can not plan for it. You can expect them to happen but unless you have drafted an entire team worth (IMPOSSIBLE in just 6 years) there is no way to be prepared for every circumstance!

They have players for all of those positions in the minors. But no one wanted to give them the time to develop and bring them up!

Did Omar go after Bay because he had no OFs to play? Hardly he has plenty of OFs to bring up. He went after him because every paper and almost every blogger complained and said we need to go after a big name to be respectable and WIN NOW and if he hadn’t he would have been fired mid season instead of at the end!

WE CAUSED THE ABANDONMENT of Omars plan!
His only mistake was listening to us both because it didn’t work and he got fired anyway!

Now look at all the youth I mentioned. How can you say he didn’t develop players?
He DID! He just didn’t do it fast enough to please everyone and I say neither the Phillies or Braves and yes even the yankees have done it any quicker. They just did it 20 years ago (10 for the Phillies) and haven’t really done it since!

it might be a little rough at first, but guys adapt. Been happening in MLB for generations.

I have been complaining for years about the Mets not grooming and planning for their prospects and putting them in the best possible position. Murphy in LF was singularly absurd. Trading away Chavez and his outstanding glove and upbeat positive nature and then bringing in a future HOFer looking for his 500th just to spook him. Really brilliant. Duda and Evans play 1B the last few years so we put them in the OF. Mejia’s a starter, we put ‘em in the pen, Reyes – Matsui, Alfonzo, Jeffries it never ends. Next up Wilmer. Spin the wheel where he winds up nobody knows.

I don’t think it really hurt Tejada though it seems like he had played there quite a bit and his hitting issues were more a case of getting his hands knocked off the bat and not yet having learned to lay off the quasi high strike. love his eye and nice short swing and his unflappable nature though.

That’s another big reason why I hope he fields decently enough to win the 2B job. If he’s guaranteed where he’s playing every day, he has less to worry about and can focus more on hitting.

Tag “Tejada didn’t look like he had any problems transitioning over to 2B last year so I don’t think he’ll have too much difficulty playing either position. To me that’s a sign of true talent.”

Didn’t look like it but what if the focus he used on transitioning is the reason he was not hitting?

Wasn’t facing ML Pitching for the first time challening enough that he had to add playing a position he never played before to the mix?

Remember these are HUMAN BEINGS not some statistical or Robotic automaton.
The most successful part of developing talent is knowing when your putting too much for a human to handle on a person. Of course some players rise to that occassion but that says more about their internal makeup (which has nothing to do with numbers or stats) than it says about proper development or skills and talent.

Who you trading Wright to?

It’s one thing to have a kid ready.
Its another to be READY for his READY!

No place to play then the kid being ready really doesn’t matter!

It could be said Murphy is ready to play 3B is he going to?
Thats what we developed him to be!

He already went through AA and AAA, came up last year because of an emergency. Now we may find out that he’s ready much faster than anyone anticipated.

That just may happen. He also may be part of the answer for the future too. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe Reese Havens is the future star, maybe he’s not. We will see.

Tejada may hit, win the job, and help us win this year.

He may be ready NOW. That’s not unusual, it happens all the time.

Please, now no more history of Mets drafts and what it take to progress through the minors. Tejada went through all that and he may be ready NOW.

“Guessing and hopeing hasn’t been very productive for us for a very long time”

Relax, we’re having fun debating who will win the 2B job, that’s what the subject is here.

Having lots of young talent at the same positions doesn’t concern me in the least. I would love that situation. If by some chance we signed Reyes and both Tejada and Havens came through that would be the best of all worlds. A young vet and 2 rookies sharing 3 positions. Depth, options for the manager, rest and a lack of complacency. Perfect situation. Time to get to work finding 2 more talented MIers so that means about 25 guys from the draft of IFA market to fight it out.