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• Kelly H July 16, 2011 at 10:18 am

  “I’m the key to this. The aliens, they want me ’cause of my site.”
  • Mr North Jersey July 16, 2011 at 11:25 am

    So your like the “AllSpark”.
    • Kelly H July 16, 2011 at 12:28 pm

      Smart one you are MrNJ!
  • Joe D July 16, 2011 at 11:44 am

    You call yourself the key? Mend your evil ways Starscream, your deception has become transparent to all of us.
    • Kelly H July 16, 2011 at 12:23 pm

      you bettah recognize!
• t agee July 16, 2011 at 11:10 am

  Now all we need is baseball talk around here instead of all the juvenile and childish insults when ever someone disagrees with the herd.

  After all continuing to go about things in the same way that has gotten us exactly one World Series game won in 25 years shouldn’t be a topic of suggestion, it should be a no brainer.

  That’s often times a problem here as well.
  • Devin July 16, 2011 at 11:22 am

    You should try disagreeing with the herd on a couple of other very popular Mets sites (I’m sure you know they are) or even on the MLB Mets Forum. This place is heaven compared to them. But at least here it’s not the same old regurgitated stuff, so ignore the occasional nuisances.
  • Vinny B July 16, 2011 at 11:43 am

    When you stay stuff like this, I have no idea what your talking about. What is the “herd”? The people who disagree with your daily rants against the team? I guess it isn’t juvenile at all to compare the pervious GM to monkey – That’s a very mature discussion.

    Nobody wants to the same thing when Omar was here…..everyone knows he made mistakes, but he’s not the villain you make him out to be. His teams were killed with injuries, and not just the old players, the younger players too.

    Our team should be foucused on spending smarter, right that’s a no brainer…..but to 2nd guess every move, and every day attack the guy for everything wrong with the franchise, and compare him and people who don’t want to KILL the guy, to a monkey, is juvenile and childish.
    • t agee July 16, 2011 at 12:36 pm

      My description of monkeyball has never been placed on just one GM. It’s been placed on ALL of the GM’s since the Wilpon became a full 50% partner with the exception of Joe Mcilvaine.

      That would include Harazin, Phillips, Duquette, Minaya and the main practioners of monkeyball, the Wilpon’s.

      I have also stated that Minaya had the least to work with (next to Mcilvaine) when he arrived here and left the farm and Team in better shape than any of them (other than Mcilvaine) when he left.

      I really have to question whether the herd over here really are Met Fans at all when every single move that doesn’t risk compromising the future is met with derision and insults instead of any kind of thought regarding balance between winning this year and winning every year.

      No one can deny that all the moves we have made over the last 25 years are all about this year and never the future and yet the results that we have realized ON THE FIELD during that time period have been significantly less than even the Cleveland Indians even with mortgaging the future year after year.

      There are plenty of people on this website actively rooting against the new administration because they simply don’t want them to be successful. Period.

      They want to continue the failed policies of the last 25 years, every year, even though those shortsighted policies are in fact the very reason a Team like the Pittsburgh Pirates have won more NL Eastern Division Titles in the last quarter century than we have despite not even playing in the NL East for almost two decades and their defense of this flawed philosophy is to childishly hurl ridiculous name callings at anyone that does want to see this team start on a path to compete for a Division Title every single year, instead of once or twice a decade.
      • Vinny B July 16, 2011 at 1:37 pm

        Don’t you think your going a little overboard with this? I mean, yesterday morning you were talking to yourself for about an hour calling past GM’s, and people who defened them, “monkeys”. Every day it’s the same thing, “the past 25 years of failure”, even when the Mets had BIG wins against the Tigers and Rangers, you still keep beating a dead horse.

        It isn’t true that Omar only cared about “this year”. He left us a lot of talented young players here. Like Davis, Niese, Tejada, Gee, Murphy, Parnell, and Thole, and I’m excited watching those guys play for the Mets for years to come. I think we have a bright future.
        • t agee July 16, 2011 at 2:42 pm

          Well that’s really a big part of my point Vinny. Omar was able to provide us with some top shelf talent and some other guys who can at least do something here in the Majors, but how much BETTER could he have done if he had spent more money in the draft and on IFA’s, spent more time developing the prospects before bringing them up here and hadn’t been hindered by those self serving slotting guidelines?

          In my opinion he could have done a LOT better. WE could be sitting on the farm that Texas, Cinn or KC have right now while actually having been at least as competitive (overall) as we have been since 2005.

          The allocation of resources and prospects have seriously undermined our ability to compete going forward. Now perhaps we get a little help with the PTBNL from Milwaukee or whoever we get if Beltran gets traded but we still have no catcher, RFer or even a league average LFer and quite possibly no 2nd basemen and might even lose our best player mostly due to so many free agent signings that gave us much worse than league average performance at 5-10 times the average cost. Sure catcher gets addressed every year at the Major League level but that just means that all our young pitchers pitch to a different catcher up here every year and that’s just one small example.

          This year there were three 16 year old amateur catchers rated in the top 25 of available IFA’s. Thank God we signed one of them but we could have signed all three for what half a season of Luis Castillo cost. Catchers are always great trade chips and prospects in general bust quite frequently but when it comes to the allocation of resources, the chance of getting a great or even good catcher (or 2-3) 6-10 years down the road, for a bare minimum 6 years, at an average salary of 2M per year, gives you so much better a chance of winning consistently, year after year than signing yet another past their prime free agent to an expensive four year deal cause you signed, drafted or developed mediocre talent (at best) 5-10 years beforehand.

          We have repeatedly tried to fix the symptoms of poor drafts, poor development, poor thought process in regard to slotting guidelines and a lack of doing whatever it takes in Latin America (where there are no slotting guidelines) by throwing money at players who are for the most part past their prime, under perform and are frequently injured and then leave nothing behind going forward when they retire, get dumped for salary relief or get DFA’d.

          This is nothing less than a dog chasing it’s tail and until we as fans can accept that an Anderson Hernandez, Marco Scutero, Justin Turner or a Brad Emaus is a worthwhile attempt at filling a position for a year or two (even if it doesn’t work out) in order to reallocate those funds so that someday we can have an in their prime Utley, Phillips, Pedroia or Cano AND a Ruiz, McCann, Ramos or Avilla behind the plate rather than just reaching out for whatever looks good on paper every off season in order to jump start ticket sales we’re just going to continue chasing our tail like we’ve been doing for a quarter of a century now.

          Almost all the best players we have had in the last two decades came from somewhere else. Alfonzo, Reyes and Wright are the exceptions, not the rule.

          Don’t you ever wonder why we always have to go out and import every top talented player and sign him to a deal that restricts us from spending elsewhere?

          Haven’t you noticed how many guys we get very little out of, can’t trade and then have to DFA?

          Yeah we got some guys who look pretty good in the minors but we all know not all of them will make it and other teams have many more than we do and many of them have prospects rated much higher than we do. Even our closest prospects have serious question marks about being able to play the position their currently in and if they can’t then whether their bats will play at easier positions.

          Our farm isn’t ranked 20th-25th because we have lots of Familla’s, Harvey’s, Mejia’s and Flores’. It got ranked that way because we don’t have enough of them.
          • Bayonne Mets Fan July 16, 2011 at 6:40 pm

            I’ll answer this rant with one word – JERK
            • jessep July 16, 2011 at 7:06 pm

              Bayonne: I’m glad to see you’re not learning from your mistakes.

              Agee types up a fine argument here and your responses are

              “I’ll answer this rant with one word – JERK”
              “All this clown does”
              “This guy is the ultimate second guessing, self-hating, do-life-over-jerk that you can imagine.”
              “you know who this IDIOT agee reminds me of in a way?”

              Do you need to be reminded of this webpage?
              http://metsmerizedonline.com/comment-guidelines

              Here I’ll break it down for you

              “Any comment that insults another commenter or author, will have their comment permanently deleted. Comments are for discussing the topics at hand, and are not a sounding board to vent your dislike of another individual on this site.”

              “What I won’t tolerate is personal attacks or comments intended only to antagonize.”

              Maybe if you tried to actually bring a legitimate and sensible point of view to the table you wouldn’t have to resort to childish techniques such as name calling whenever there is somebody smarter than you in the room.
          • Bayonne Mets Fan July 16, 2011 at 6:46 pm

            All this clown does is ignore every heartbreaking loss the Met have had in their history and say well if we did everything different from 1962 those classic, heartbreaking losses would have never happened.

            In essence – if we drafted differently than Terry Pendleton doesn’t hit that big HR off Roger McDowell, Beltran doesn’t look at called strike 3, Mike Scocisia doesn’t hit that HR off Doc Gooden, we don’t collapse ON THE FIELD in 2008 and 2008 and just blow off the injuries of 2009 – present.

            This guy is the ultimate second guessing, self-hating, do-life-over-jerk that you can imagine.
          • Bayonne Mets Fan July 16, 2011 at 7:01 pm

            you know who this IDIOT agee reminds me of in a way? And I hate to say it because I loved Jesse Ventura as a wrestler but when he goes into his political rants about 9/11 being an inside job I completely ignore it. I was a Jesse “The Body” fan growing up and he was an outstanding worker as a wrestler and always drew a lot of heat. But when it comes to his political beliefs i just ignore it because that’s not the Jesse I grew up loving as a wrestler.

            That’s what I think of when i read this idiot agee’s rants. Only his rants are these very creative well thought out ‘second guesses” about what the Mets “SHOULD have or “COULD have done.
            • Kelly H July 16, 2011 at 7:21 pm

              Honestly man, we’ve had enough of you calling our fans and readers degrading and demeaning names. Everyone has the right to their opinion whether you agree with it or not. You can disagree with people without calling them a jerk or an idiot.

              You’ve had plenty of warning and we cannot allow you to run any more of our visitors away.

              This is your final warning, be courteous or be banned.
              • Des July 16, 2011 at 9:22 pm

                I’ll set up a lottery on when the big day is. It’s inevitable. Some people completely lack introspection, so any prognosis is just calls for a replay of the past.

                I’ve enjoyed ‘t agee’ for some time. It’s a shame some others don’t see the insight he has.
                • Kelly Horn July 16, 2011 at 9:34 pm

                  Dont worry ’bout it anymore. Lets Go Mets! Get Mets Merized!
            • t agee July 16, 2011 at 7:25 pm

              A fan of the WWF. What a surprise, what a surprise.

              Really, Jesse “the body” Ventura. Oh boy, that explains a lot.

              So much for intelligent baseball commentary.
          • Vinny B July 16, 2011 at 9:39 pm

            You should realize that it’s still a little to early to judge Omar’s drafts. We are just STARTING to see some of the guys he drafted play and have success at the major league level. Like Niese and Murphy who had great games today.

            It sometimes takes a LONG time for guys to develop. That’s something everyone forgets. Everyone wants these guys to have INSTANT success, but that’s usually never the case.

            He HAD to sign free agents to fill spots because it was the only way the Mets could have been competitive. He couldn’t have developed players quicky enough for us to be good in 06, 07 and 08. getting help outside of the orginazation was the only way for us to have success during that time beacuse it takes MANY years to build a team through the farm, not two or three.

            Now we are finally seeing the guys he drafted come up and help the team. If the franchise looked like this when he took over he wouldn’t have had to sign free agents to be competitive.
            • Mr North Jersey July 16, 2011 at 9:59 pm

              “The plan is to build a championship team based on pitching and defense, with youth, speed and athleticism, while re-emphasizing our scouting and player-development efforts. As for timing, we have a dual focus: on an immediate impact in 2005, but also on a sustained period of success.”

              “Our solid core of young players – Beltran (27 years old), José Reyes (21), David Wright (22) and Kazuo Matsui (29), among others – provides a base for long-term success. These players embody the elements of our strategy for success. Within the next five to six years, we plan to add similar impact players from our minor league system, while our core players are still within their prime years. ”

              - Omar Minaya 1/30/2005

              http://realdirtymets.com/2010/09/23/where-did-minaya-go-wrong/

              By the time the kids like Niese and Davis started to come up it was too late. Failing to act in 2008 at the trade deadline may have been the point of no return. It was all downhill after that.
              • jessep July 16, 2011 at 10:01 pm

                Blame Kaz!
                • t agee July 16, 2011 at 10:35 pm

                  See I believe Minaya could have won the division in 2006 without spending the draft picks and container vessels full of cash.

                  He could have spent that money on drafting the HIGHEST ceiling high school players and making HUGE inroads in Latin America WHILE making trades and picking guys up like Valentin, El-Duque, ect.

                  No one expected that We would be in the playoffs in 2006. What we expected was that Minaya was going to put a young team together that would compete for a solid decade. Not a one and done. Gradual progress every year, a solid development plan and a few shrew forward thinking trades. Buy low, sell high. His pendulum was tilted WAY too much towards this year and not anywhere near enough toward future years.
            • t agee July 16, 2011 at 10:20 pm

              But it was shortsighted for him to actually give up early round draft picks and deplete the farm before the team was really ready to compete. It wasn’t his fault Phillips left him so little to work with. It can almost never be turned around in a year or two and even those few times that it is, inevitably leads to a crash.

              2006 was a mirage anyway. Good year to go for it but who would have known that beforehand? You might have had an idea with Atlanta at the tail end of a decade and a half of dominance and Florida giving away (to us) two of their starting position players but how could you really know? For sure? As a plan?

              No team in our division even got over .500 for good until August 20th. Only one team even finished over .500 in the NL East other than ourselves. We WERE good, but no where near as good as it appeared on the surface. Was this a team to keep throwing prospects, draft picks and boatloads of cash into to keep going?

              Anyone could see the opportunity that Santana provided but a few of the guys we gave up for Putz are doing pretty well right now while we’re reduced to scaveging over landfills every off season. A 40 year old LFer for a #1 pick we voluntarilly handed over? Another #1 for a closer with a rotation including Maine, Perez, Livan and Redding? Castillo with two offseason knee surgeries for four years? a #2 for Jason Bay? Jacobs? GMJ? Murphy in LF? Schowenweiss? Mota? C’mon.

              Minaya should have put the money into the draft picks and those guys would be either real close or good trade chips by now.

              Same with Phillips. 13 of his 17 first, 2nd 3rd or supplemental round picks were complete busts. Two have had mediocre careers to date and of the two who have provided real production one was traded before he even came up here.

              Continually deluding yourself and rushing the process because your or your predoccesor failed to do a good job to lay a continuing path toward success is what has led us to a third death spiral of the Wilpon error.

              You can’t make up for a poor job done in the previous 5-10 years by making a big splashy backpage signing every off season.

              All that does is lead to 50% losing seasons, half of which include at least 90+ losses.

              What the hell good is that?
              • Vinny B July 16, 2011 at 10:28 pm

                But his guys are coming up NOW and are doing very well. Like Niese, Davis, Murphy, Parnell, Tejada, Gee, and Thole.

                That’s what you keep forgetting. We have young guys coming up and helping the team win.

                Maybe were never “highly ranked” or whatever, but a lot of those guys are going to be succesful major league players, and will make us a competitive team in the near future.
                • t agee July 16, 2011 at 10:43 pm

                  I’m not forgetting those guys at all Vinny. I think overall Omar did a pretty good job considering the constraints he was working under but how much having four guys and a few question marks is a lot less than what most of our competitors have brought up over the last four years and they have guys in AAA and AA as well.

                  Four or five guys in four years is never going to lead to a championship. You need to get 5 superstars, 5 solid regulars and five more role players.

                  With 750 million dollars spent over 6 years you would reasonably think that wouldn’t be unobtainable.
                  • t agee July 16, 2011 at 11:02 pm

                    What is the better value? Moises Alou for a year or two or drafting a guy like Mike Stanton and waiting 4 years or so. Alright we had no one in the farm to play LF but Omar knew that. He was here when Phillips was raping the farm and drafting like ****. He was the Sr. Asst. General Manager. Then he was a GM in a the same division. He knew intimately what terrible shape the farm was left in after Phillips and Duquette were canned. How did he address that? Health Bell for Ben Johnson? What kind of help is that?

                    Everyone wants to win this year, next year and the year after but the work that leads to that winning has to be done 5-10 years ahead of time or you have no shot unless all your Division rivals spend the whole (or almost whole) season under .500.

                    That’s not something you can count on happening two years or more in a row.
                  • Vinny B July 17, 2011 at 12:09 am

                    Even if we didn’t sign alou, we wouldn’t have drafted stanton anyway, Stanton was picked in the 2nd round, not the 1st.

                    The player the Giants got from the Mets hasn’t done anything. and niether did the next five guys taken after that. So we really didn’t lose anything by giving up the pick.

                    Don’t forget that we had a very good lineup in 2006, and we were going to add a very good bat in Alou. I guess he thought Alou would have put us over the top, and give us a WS. It was a risk with him because of his age and the pick, but he felt that it was worth the risk because his bat would have put us over the top.

                    It wasn’t an AWFUL move. It was a RISKY move, that didn’t work out.
                  • Vinny B July 17, 2011 at 12:23 am

                    agee, you really can’t judge Omar’s drafts with the Mets yet because they are either JUST starting their major league careers, or in the minor leagues.

                    And I think if you compare those guys I mentioned with what other teams drafted and brought up the last four years, they would be better than most. It’s not the BEST, but it’s good.
                  • t agee July 17, 2011 at 12:56 pm

                    Vinny Mike Stanton was a player that we COULD have taken with the pick that we VOLUNTARILLY handed over to SF.

                    If we had kept the pick Stanton (and Andrew Brackman NYY, Julio Bourbon TX, Travis D’Anaurd C, Phil included in the Halliday deal, Brett Cecil Tor, Jordan Zimmerman Was, Tommy Hunter TX, Corey Luebeke SD, Freddie Freeman Atl, Zack Cozart Cinn, Austin Romine C NYY) were all on the board when the Giants made their selection with our #1 draft choice.

                    Now if you want to call it a risky move to spend a #1 draft choice on a 40 year old LFer because you think we’re real close I can understand your point of view. I’m of the belief that if you objectively looked at the situation (rotation, new bullpen, age, bench, the NL East all having a serious downturn in 2006 and the NL in general having a real poor year and ZERO depth in AAA) then the risky short term move wouldn’t make great sense but even if you decided it did. I can live with that. Possibly Minaya decided to strike while we were good and everyone else sucked. Not a bad thought process. Not one that I agree with but still understandable but here’s the thing…..

                    You know for a flat out fact the farm is completely barren and to spend a #1 pick on a guy who’s only going to play another year or two is a risky go for it all move so why wouldn’t you wait until AFTER the Giants had to decide whether to offer Alou arbitration?

                    That way you more likely than not get Alou AND KEEP your #1 pick and the chance to draft one of the afore mentioned players.

                    There was absolutely no reason to sign Alou (admittedly a risky go for it all move) BEFORE the Giants had to offer arb.

                    Minaya and Alou only had to wait ONE WEEK! and almost certainly we KEEP the pick. That would have taken all the risk out of the move (except the risk of injury)

                    It would have nicely balanced the conflicting agenda all GM’s feel between competing today and building for tomorrow.

                    When you look at starting pitchers we could have taken with that pick Jordan Zimmerman, Tommy Hunter and Brett Cecil would be great to have.

                    Both Travis D’Anaurd and Austin Romine are going to have five times the career Josh Thole is going to.

                    Corey Lubueke or Brackman as potential starters or for the pen, Cozart as your back up MI competition for Havens/Tejada.

                    Stanton or Bourbon instead of paying 66 M to Bay and giving up another #2 pick?

                    I understand the arguement for signing Alou but please give me the reason why it made sense to sign him a week before the Giants had to offer him arbitration because with signing Zito that year I say there is very very little chance that SF offers Alou arb so by waiting ONE WEEK we could have had Alou and the chance the draft one of these guys TOO.

                    We could also have looked beyond the plan A type free agents that year and signed Jayson Werth and gotten much more production at one tenth of the cost for a much younger and defensively sounder RH hitting OFer and then turned him into 2 high draft picks as well but that’s another story.

                    While there are plenty of good players that don’t make the All Star team the facts are that 47 out of this years 70 All Stars (66%) came from the 1st, 2nd, supplementary round or were IFA’s. 35 draftees in the first 2 rounds and 12 international free agents.

                    If your giving away your first and 2nd round picks every year and not making a full comittment in Latin America you are leaving the best talent to be taken by your competitors.
• Donal July 16, 2011 at 11:31 am

  I only recognize 1 Transformers theme

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKpByV5764&feature=BFa&list=PLA9CCB633C68AE6FA&index=2
  • Joe D July 16, 2011 at 11:40 am

    One of us will not survive this battle today. Megatron, I will not rejoice in destroying you my brother.

    You desacrate our home with a nefarious tune sung by Dirk Diggler in “Boogie Nights”. Such disdain cannot be tolerated.
  • Mr North Jersey July 16, 2011 at 12:02 pm

    What no love for the Go-Bots?
    • Mr North Jersey July 16, 2011 at 12:08 pm

      http://www.collegehumor.com/video/3336858/transformers-go-hollywood
• Justin Silberman July 16, 2011 at 11:37 am

  It’s an honor and true pleasure being able to write for MMO. MMO is about to do ever bigger things!
• Annie Savoy July 16, 2011 at 11:50 am

  Don’t get hurt out there playing with weapons. I’d miss you all.
• Brandon Butler July 16, 2011 at 4:35 pm

  Way to mess up my twitter handle Joe LOL. not caps on either b’s. Its just….

  @butlerbMMO

  Still, it deserves a LMAO
• Des July 16, 2011 at 9:29 pm

  Joe,
  I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about but I’ve enjoyed MMO for a few years and I hope to for several more. I’m a baseball and baseball’s business fan and I trust MMO will continue to provide information and fans views in these areas.
  Best to all,
  Des