The problem everyone has with the stadium is the Mets have played horrible baseball since they moved to Citfield and everyone wants to blame the stadium for it.

If the Mets were 20-10 this year no one would have ANY issue with the stadium!

I can’t really disagree with too much of what Wilpon said, though I agree making these statements to the media was not wise. The Mets have been a team of underachievers for too long now and maybe calling. Out a few key players will get things rolling. Possibly these comments were made to soften the blow if they are to be traded.

we need a new owner there is passionate and there is stupid the same way he is getting on his player we can get on him as a owner he isnt a superstar owner and he isnt worth anything. time for new ownership that can make the team what he cannot. he has to accept it the same way he wants to accept his players not performing. he has been bad as well if thats the case.

I have ZERO ISSUE with the fact he based some of the architecturals reminicent of Ebbets, (maybe thats because I’m FROM Brooklyn). AT that time all the new GREAT stadiums were attempts to bring back that OLD STADIUM feel with modern era capability and technology.

Well the Polo Grounds was not the kind of Stadium anyone actually loved! It was so bad they got private money to build Shea! So the only other OLD TIME stadium to emulate that made any sense was Ebbets.

Fred made some bad decorating choices and it can be argued that he made some bad choices as far as the bad seating in some areas and park dimensions.

But the fact the stadium reflects Ebbets is not hurting Met Identity. The Met identity problem is due to the fact that in close to 50 years they have been to the WS 4 times and are .500 in it.

There has only ever been ONE TEAM that was ever good enough to compare to any of the recent Yankee teams. The ONLY Met team with ANY destiny. The other WS winner was a “Who is That?” entry in early 69!

This team is too young to have a unique image. The Yankees got their image in the days of Mantle and Dimaggio, George merely said lets be that again and use that image to lure away players!

And you can cover every square inch of Citi with met memorabilia but in the end your going to see a lot of repeated stuff because lets face it there aren’t enough GREAT MEMORIES to fill even the smallest scrapbook. Lots of great moments where they broke our hearts though. But then that would just be the Dodgers all over again wouldn’t it?

The nearly exclusive emphasis on the Dodgers and Robinson was a big mistake by a man who thought small. Robinson is an icon and he has been graciously cited in so many ways by the larger baseball community, but the contributions of so many other players and so many other ethnic groups were largely ignored. Latinos, whites, and blacks were key parts of the patchwork quilt that Freddy should have acknowledged.

Having their own unique image at this point is maybe the least of the Mets problems right now. Getting a winning team to fill the seats seems more important to me.

I wonder if Sandy Alderson knew about this mess. Chances are he didn’t.

Is he Alex Rodriguez? Has he won any Batting Titles? How many times has he been in the 30/30 club? Howard Johnson did that regularly was he a Superstar? Not outside the borders of NY he isn’t!

Is Wright the driving force even on our OWN team the way Pujols is for his? HARDLY!

I like Wright and don’t think he should be going anywhere but I would not start paying him like he is a superstar in this league. He is an ALL STAR not a SUPER star. David Wright may or may not be the top Target FA whenever his contract is up but only if there is not some other REAL superstar to be had. He may be the best 3rd baseman we have ever had (and it would be debated) but is he on the same level as a Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt or Cal Ripken even a Daryl Strawberry?

Those ARE the superstars of the game if you were not born after 1986!

David is a good baseball player. But NO he is no superstar!

Thats not a knock on him but a fact! A fact that if he realized was true on his own and stopped trying to jack every pitch over the fences he doesn’t like and striking out, might actually ACHIEVE superstar status!

We all at some point turned a good line drive hitter with power into a HR hitter…He has never had more than 30 in his entire career and did it ONCE!

Sorry if the truth hurts David but not being a Superstar is not a knock. Saying you will NEVER be one might but no one has said that!
To be a Superstar you ned to carry your team. And ANY team that you might be on regardless of whats around you!

Thats not David Wright!

Onto Reyes…Is reyes worth Crawford Money? Well ask yourself is Crawford? Look at his current numbers? If Crawford is worth what he is getting then maybe YES Reyes is worth that and more. I think what Fred said about reyes has more to do with his opinion of Crawford and less to do with Reyes. It’s outrageous money when you consider how much a guy like Beltran (with his numbers) is getting paid.

5 Year 147 Mil is roughly 30 Mil per year…
Cliff Lee gets around 25 Mil! He’s Cy Young!
Everyone cringed when they saw what Werth and Crawford got. Dumb teams paying Dumb money to get the BEST FA of a bad bunch. They got that money due to supply and demand not their output.

In regards to Beltran…Did he devalue Beltran or did Beltran do that by sitting out the entirety of Spring Training leading EVERYONE including the owner that maybe Beltran was not going to be playing a lot of games for us with those knees.
That was the situation at the time of the interview. Since then beltran has had few if any rest days. Is he 40% less than what he was? Well how many games he lasts will determine that the season is still young. What percentage do you consider lost for his not being able to play CF anymore where a lesser fielder with better bat could be used in RF to increase the offensive threat without having to worry about glove loss. And what about those few balls Beltran simply can not get to anymore? How many SBs does he have compared to pre-knees?
Yes Carlos Beltran is not 100% of the guy we bought based on those playoffs. What percentage is irrelevant truth is he is not what we thought we were getting when we signed him. The percentage of loss is subjective, the fact that he lost something is OBJECTIVE!

The ____ Team statement is the least damning of all…How would YOU describe a 5-13 team?
I mean really!

People have accused the Wilpons of lying and not caring. Well is anything he said there a lie? Did it sound like he didn’t care? If he didn’t care he would have said I love those guys and intend to resign all the guys we can afford.

No the truth is he DOES care! And gets as pissed as we do when they are 5-13!

That said, I do see something in the article that may support the meddling issues that were thrown around.
If you LOVE to talk and argue about baseball, who are you most likely to have those conversations with? Well probably your GM.
And it may have been during those times where Omar backed off of something he wanted to do.
Some will say thats a reason to get rid of Wilpon, But I say thats a reason to get rid of Omar. A good GM will fight for what he knows is right. Bottomline Wilpon may have convinced him out of things he thought were good but thats a problem with Omar not Wilpon.

Just look at what Cashmen did this year when a signing was forced down his throat. He pretty much just came out and said he was overuled and now if it fails he is off the hook.

Not Omar’s personality to do that…But it might just be Sandy’s! I don’t see him kissing any owners butt and if it was requested I would be willing to bet Sandy would quit before complying!

but to add to the theme of this post, keep in mind when he said it. This was the (last) astros game IIRC, the one where they played like the bad news bears and dropped to 5-13. And right at the peak of the “they won’t win 60 games” hysteria.

and at that point, Reyes had not caught fire, and beltran was likely not even 70% of what they signed.

forgetting for a minute who said it, while negative comments about carlos or jose today might seem silly (based on the years they are having), they were not so outlandish in Mid-april!

frankly, part of the problem is that Fred was trying to be honest about the team, but just had a terrible choice of words (more like shooting the bull at a bar than a carefully thought out comment). this would have worked better:

“Jose is a great talent, but has had some injury issues the past couple of years. I am sure that his agent looks at the Crawford contract as a benchmark, but it remains to be seen if jose will be able to approach that”

“Wright is a very, very good player player, and a repeat all star, though he probably is not quite in the superstar catagory reserved for the absolute best, MVP winning players”

“beltran had a huge post season with the Astros, and we felt that he was talented, and young enough, to continue that level of production. But, with his injuries, he isn’t the same player anymore, though he still has the talent to be productive if he stays healthy”

“the team is 5-12, and playing really poorly right now”

to me, if he really wanted (for whatever odd reason) to make these points, saying them like this would not have been at all confrontational.