When you already have a team that is considered ready to win and an attractive place to play you don’t have to go 7 years to get the top talent. The top talent WANTS to go there. We are now back in the same position we were when we signed Beltran originally.

K-Rod cost 36-54 M plus a #1 draft choice which turned out to be Mike Trout who is rated either #1 or #2 prospect in all of the minors. Now really would you rather have Mike Trout from 2013-2019 + extensions for 15M or K-Rod for 4 years at 54M?

Regarding the aging Sox Papi was a non tender. He did not cost a draft pick and provided solid value for 1.4 M his first year and a TOTAL of 18M for his first FOUR years. That’s what Perez and Castillo cost us.

Lowell was a salary dump included in the Beckett/Muelens deal and helped win a championship in 2007.

Varitek was acquired with Derek Lowe for Healthcliff Slocumm and also did not cost a draft pick and helped win TWO World Series. Retaining your own older players who have produced great results is not really the same thing as retaining guys who you just hope are going to be OK or giving up draft choices for guys who are on or near the downside of their careers.

Regarding the win some lose some comment on expensive free agents, that is not acceptable. You are paying huge money and giving away payroll that could be better used elsewhere and draft choices which cost you down the road, win some lose some in entirely unacceptable in the FA arena. If you rely on the expensive free agent for 10 of your 25 roster spots and your attitude about the expensive free agent is win some lose some your never going to be more than .500 because you simply cannot overcome five huge under performing contracts.

In a strict money vs. production argument the following free agents/trade acquisitions have not produced up to the level neccesary to justify their deals AND cost us big time when they went down injured. Remember we lost a pennant/WC by 1 game and by 2 games in 2007 and 2008.

Pedro, El-Duque, Valentin, Alou, Putz, Perez, Castillo, Schneider, Wagner, Schowenweiss. Santana and Bay are still to be determined, Delgado was worth it offensively, I cannot fault the thinking behind Beltran and he did have 3 great seasons and is as solid a professional as you could ever hope to have on your team and K-Rod, even though he’s way overpaid for his contribution has been effective but the combined effect of most of theses players causing us to go with the cheapest bench possible and draft picks which seriously affect our ability to win later or risk making even worse FA decisions and the games they cost us by not being available due to age/injuries make them a net negative.

Win some lose some is OK with prospects because the cost is so low but performance certainity with expensive high end players is an absolute neccesity.

The jury is still out on K-rod. Besides, paying top dollar for saves is stupid. It is such a volitile stat and closers tend to have a short shelf life. That really is the kind of signing you make when you are a regular playoff contender that needs one last push. The Mets were not in situation. Omar just wanted headlines.

this is why daniels is trying to lose him.

and regarding your red sox comment, they’ve got their share of aging dudes ( papi, lowell until last year, varitek ) too.

i gree that signing FA’s past 31 years old is generally a bad idea, but don’t knock signing guys in their 20′s to long term deals, just because the same team signed ollie and alou.

it’s not the same thing. it just isn’t.

That’s 8 1st supp or 2nd round picks we passed on all for players who would be passed their prime mid contract, sucked got hurt or all three.

Even if only 4 of those picks panned out how would you fell about the Mets if we had Kyle Drabek and Tommy Hunter in the starting rotation, and Mike Stanton in RF and a young prospect competing for 2B. Could of happened but not when your always spending tomorrow on today, getting much less for it and paying millions more.

Not saying Francis that the right guy at the right time isn’t worth it but not for almost every single hole on the team cause it just keeps you dependent on the FA market for many more years.

Boston’s free agent strategy is to get guys who are playing for their next FA contract and they get really good years out of them, then let ‘em go and collect two more highly rated prospects. Bay, Beltre, Wagner, Cabrera, Renteria, Pedro, Lowe, Martinez all left behind a couple of high draft choices and that’s how they wound up with a deep farm system, pedroia, Youk, Ellsbury, Bard, Lowrie, Lester, Paplebon, Kalish, and Buckholtz with plenty more on the way. That’s also how they got A. Gon and Beckett.

Most of the guys we have signed or taken on for their last years leave behind nothing and we usually can’t wait to see them gone.

if texas kicks in his entire salary and asks for nobody in return, there is a remote possibility that a trade like this could get done.

and even if that happened, young doesn’t want it, and the mets don’t want it.

can we have other discussions, please ?

so I understand where you’re coming from, but for the biggest contracts, your logic is flawed.

Do you pay 3 times as much for a used car as a new one?

Do you Pay for the penthouse and live in the super’s apartment?

Do you buy box seats and sit in the bleachers?

Why would you want the last and most expensive years of a players career? There’s already 20 years of evidence that that is far more likely to result in an under .500 season than it would result in 90 wins in a year.

For the last 20 years the Wilpon, under varying GM’s has attempted to play check book baseball and the result is that we have won 90 games 3 times. We have been under .500 11 times.

Get it? Won 90 or more 3 times and finished under .500 ELEVEN TIMES. ALL WITH A TOP 5 PAYROLL. And you want to continue doing the same thing? Wow! and you accuse me of being boring.

Grow a pair Harry, stop being a lemming picking the rotten fruit off the tree while all 29 teams snicker behind your back.

For the record I have not been extolling Alderson’s off season moves. The closest I’ve come is to say that they appear well thought out considering the miserable financial wreckage he’s had to work around due to the Owners situation and the freaks that fleeced Omar. And those moves do not seem like they will be preventing us from obtaining better players so we won’t have to live with freaks like Omar brought over here when better smarter options present themselves sometime perhaps after the new GM has been here more than say 3 months.

Considering all the mutants, retreads, castoff’s, rejects, neanderthall cromagnon cave dwellers and elderly and extremely well compensated but very brittle former All Stars Omar brought over here in a six year period at least we won’t have to live with these guys very long.

I understand that your swami is now doing what he does best, Recruiting elderly gentlemen to a local retirement facility and giving them lot’s of money to stay there and lounge around. I also understand that he has hired a new pool boy to keep him company by the name of Oliver Perez who will be starting full time as soon as his current employer finds the will to let him move on.

Tell me the truth. You would rather have one year of David Weathers rather than six years of Brian McCann OR Jon Lester?

One and a half years of Wagner for 44 M or six years of Kyle Drabek?

Two years of Alou (actually 100 games over two years) for 15 M or six years of Mike Stanton in RF?

Four years of K-Rod at 54 M or six years of Mike Trout in CF?

One year of Chris Carter or six years of Kolbin Vitek #9 ranked prospect (2B) and Anthony Ranaudo #3 ranked prospect (starting pitcher) in the Red Sox minor league system.

One year of Kevin Appier and 2 years of Mo Vaughn or six years of Dan Haren.

If you answered with the expensive free agent I will assume you have a common ancestor with one of our former GM’s.

Yeah, lets keep throwing money at every aging retread who wants to get paid for the good work he did elsewhere before fading off into the sunset.

“No better off with Alderson than Minaya.” Ha ha. Good one. Well for one thing I don’t believe we’ll be devoting one roster spot to a completely useless pitcher and another to a DH we traded two of the top 40 amateur players in the whole country for. I can’t say how it will go at 2B but at least we have a couple of options there that aren’t named Cora, speaking of which I highly doubt we’ll have to DFA the entire bench again like we did last year and I also doubt that we’ll have 14 “hitters” who couldn’t even get OB at a higher percent than TWO starting pitchers did, and this in year SIX of the plan. Wow. I wonder what ideas were being considered for year 7?

Not any better off? Surely you jest.