And I guess you are under the assumption the Mets can trade for Adam Jones, unless you thing Cleon still has something left in the tank!

I kind of like your pen though. and you have the concept right (that a year of actual health will lead to a team that can actually compete).

Oh, Ratliff? not a chance. And I would bet it is likelier that F Mart is splitting time in the OF than Kirk is (at least at the beginning).

At least you seem to have bought into my idea that Bay has to be in a platoon. Hit fine vs. LHP, and made Castillo look like a silver slugger vs. RHP.

I know your going to disagree which is fine. No ones opinion is more relevant than anyone else’s, monkeyballers and fantasy baseball afficianados included.

Other teams get great play from guys they draft in the first, 2nd and third rounds. I list players that would have been there had we kept our picks because those guys are there for you alot longer and play a lot better than the guys you gave up the pick for. For instance back in 2002 the argument was made that David Weathers was worth giving up next years 2nd round pick and Roger Cedeno was worth giving up the 3rd round pick. 6 months later Joey Votto, Brian McCann, Jon Lester, Broxton, and Jesse Crain got selected in the 2nd round and Curtiss Granderson in the 3rd. That is not an anomoly. This same exact situation has occurred around here every year.

No guarantee we would have taken the right guy but without the pick we have zero chance of getting the right guy for later on and frequently we gave the chance up in order to get a guy that made no difference anyway. A guy who could close for us for years, play CF for 8 years, catcher for 8 years, fill a spot in the rotation for years or guys who could be packaged for a Halliday or a Lee is a hell of a lot better than another salary dump which is what Weathers and Cedeno became and they are hardly the only examples of that.

You can never be sure which prospects will make it up here and turn out great but you can never be sure which free agents are going to bust either.

Half of them do. At some point someone decides they just can’t live without the guy and the money and years get crazy. Add a bunch of these guys to a team and you take the fight right out of them. One reason the 2011 Mets had a lot of fight in them was because so many of them weren’t guaranteed anything beyond starting the next game. When you have a bunch of guys like that your team is better. When the older guys on schlorship outnumber everyone else the teams resolve goes down.

Take CJ Wilson. Upside of a solid #2 for 5 years. Going to get paid like a #1 because of supply and demand and will want an extra year or two, no trade, no arb at 36, ect ect. from us because we’re just not a real attractive team to come to right now.

None of this years free agents are really worthwhile for us with the possible exception of Mark Burhele on a 3 year deal if he’s not a type A. If he is his upside just isn’t worth what the upside of the 9th pick in the 2nd round and his downside is no better than the prospect that busts either. For all you or anyone else can know he could be Ed Whitson the 2nd.

1B, 3B and DH aren’t positions of need for us so those guys are out. Beltran didn’t even want to come here in the first place and after the way he was booed his first year and the organization went out of their way to try and embarrass him numerous times would only come here as a last resort. CC? Dream on. Darvish? Very intriguing, but very expensive and Japanese pitchers are dicey. Dominating a AAA lineup with line drive/GB type hitters is a different matter entirely as is the baseball itself. In Japan they use a smaller ball. More spin. If Darvish is a good move then Chapman (who faced many Major League hitters in the WBC, and used a regular baseball) would have been a much superior solution. 6/30 M the same year we signed Bay, which is also the same year we were counting on Maine and Perez to each fill out a spot in the rotation AND we would have kept our draft choice AND saved 36 M.

If we had at any point in the last 15 years put something aside for later as part of our year to year strategy instead of going for broke every year we wouldn’t be in the position of having to fill 13 spots on the roster every season.

I would have waited 3 years back in 2002 or 2005 to do things the right way and I’m still willing to wait rather than continuing to prove year after year that monkeyball doesn’t work. We already know that, let’s try something else for a change.

I have no qualms with his desire for a homegrown team.
Just don’t want to sit around not doing something to make the MLB aquad better while we are waiting that 10-12 years he needs to home grow it!

I mean Homegrown corn is fresher tastier, sweeter and probably a damn site better for you than store bought…
But if you want to have corn for dinner in April, May and June your going to have to BUY it or wait an entire year before your crop is ready to harvest!

In the case of corn it is a matter of months!
In the case of building a team it is a matter of decades!

Because unless you pick PERFECTLY at best you get 2 players per draft and at that rate it will take you 12=13 years to find 25 players and in 12 years you will need to replace the first 6 you found by that time!

Say we do it your way with Draft picks…

When should we all come back expecting to see them win….HOW MANY YEARS from now?

Ruben is OK, but if we had a team of Ruben’s, out high side would have us battling for fourth place in the East. Our low side would have us looking at more AAAA players.

I clearly and respectfully disagreed with Tommy2cat and gave my reasons why. Nowhere in my response did I name call, or attack his views. I merely disagreed.

This is how discussions in the real world happen. You should give it a try.

The price of going for it every single year and not looking at the team in 5 year increments. Never sacrificing someone off the Major League roster to get a couple of good minor leaguers. Never ordering off the type B menu and keeping your #1 or #2 pick. Never even glancing at the non tender list for a hold me over guy until the RIGHT guy comes along.

Face it this team has given away six first round picks, four 2nd round picks and three third round picks and failed to take back four #1′s handed to them on a silver platter in the last 14 years. That’s SEVENTEEN TOP SHELF PROSPECTS. The bill for this has been coming due every year but we just kept delaying it and kept trying to throw money at the roster with whichever past their prime former All Star was available.

Even when we kept the picks we chose the cheapest players instead of the best ones. Why?

It’s just an absurd manner in which to run a baseball team and reeks of desperation and immaturity or a card shuffling con game. Wet the idiots appetite in January by bringing in a big name attraction and watch the inevitable crash in July or August. usually the absolute worst teams that we have are the ones with the highest salary. Those are the teams that have lost 90 or more games the most often. Immediately after the season ends everyone is dumped and we have to start all over.

We have to get to the point where we’re just tinkering with up grading no more than five positions every year on the 40 man roster, not looking around for “who can we get for 4 spots in the pen, 2 starting pitchers, 3 guys on the bench and two position players as well as 3 arms in AAA just in case.

Some trades from the Major league roster for top shelf minor leaguers at areas of need. Letting some guys go free agent and selecting the top talent available in the draft. More work done in international free agency including going for the highest talent, not the 4th or 5th best rated catcher but the first AND second best rated ones.

Then some trades from the minors for a targeted veteran or two to pull it all together along with a free agent or salary dump ace when we have a good young team up here and another one already acquired and being developed in rookie and A ball on the way.

Duda or Davis and Murphy and a pitching spec for Adam Jones. Lets just say in your scenario Wright gets dealt, which then means you don’t tell Murphy right? So now what?

But even if it was Duda/Davis+Murphy+Pitching Spec

Do you honestly believe that no team in MLB could match that?

The Orioles acquired Chris Davis in the Uehara deal and granted I think Ike is better than Davis, but Davis is 25 and realistically Davis is an upgrade but is he a vital upgrade?

If you go Duda then you have to figure out CF. You have Markakis and Reimold… so you’d have to bank if you’re Baltimore that Duda can DH and Xavier Avery can step into CF.

Then you’d need a virtual guarantee at SP to send back. The Orioles have had guys like Matusz, Britton, Arrieta, Tillman who all had a lot of hype and have yet to prove they are worth it. So they aren’t just going to grab some far-from-bigs pitching prospect. So I’m afraid it’d take a guy like Gee at minimum.

At the end of the day though, I don’t see the benefit to Baltimore in trading their 25 year old CF. He’s estimated based on arbitration to be a free agent after 2014, so its not like they are in a rush and frankly there’s no reason yet for Joes to avoid signing a long term deal with Baltimore because he hasn’t proven enough to garner much attention on an open market.