Especially when your known to blow 3 1st round selections in one draft!

I mean even the damn law of averages says you get at least ONE good player!
And you don’t need to be a genius, especially when you have the top pick of EVERYONE in that draft!

Spin what you think the risk and longevity of a free agent but the bottomline SOMETHING is FAR FAR MORE than NOTHING!

SO McIlvane wasted and practically GAVE AWAY 3 1st round picks in his very first Draft!

Omar took 5 years to do that feat!
And he managed to get us to the playoffs in one year where McIlvane didn’t sniff them in 3!

Often times you can’t get rid of a type A at any price and that prevents you from getting better now AND later.

Bay, Perez, Castillo, Appier, Weathers, Cedeno and it’s not just us. Dunn, Figgins, Werth, Silva, Crawford, Pavano, Lowe, Zito, GMJ, Lackey, Soriano.

Your much better off identifying the guy you want and trading 2 or 3 prospects for him and keeping your best picks. That way your not limited to just those who’s contracts are up, you can talk to every team about all of their players. The bigger the pool, the bigger the prize.

Why not address the reason you have so many soft spots in your organization and work to fix that, rather than constantly just treating the symptom? And risk making yourself worse not just in the future but in the present as well?

Monkeyball has been given an extended enough period of time to work around here and quite frankly if it weren’t for a Division rival having two mega fire sales we wouldn’t have any postseasons to show for it.

Time to get real.

Simple don’t blow those picks on dogs!

Please tell me how spending a 1st round pick on a waste who is NEVER going to help you is any better than giving it up for a player who is going to help you make the playoffs right away?

Wasting on a scrub is MORE of a waste than giving it up for a Type A anyday!

Look to me like he had THREE shots in the first round and BUSTED on all!

At least Omar got year of Alou and Wagner for his picks, More years for K-Rod!

Yet you tout McIlvane and chastise Omar!

Shame Shame!

Mcilvaine took a lot of big boom/big risk guys. The kind that bust more often but can carry a team for years when they hit. The kind of guy who we go after and pay a fortune to after their on their last legs and can no longer get it done or if they can it’s just for a year or so.

Phillips busted on 14 out of 17 1st, 2nd and 3rd round picks taking the safer surer shot and one of his “hits” was just a semi decent cross over reliever who had only two decent years.

Those drafts are the one’s that necessitated Omar trading for and resigning Castillo, trading for Schneider and Church, Putz, going free agent twice for a closer, signing Alou and Bay and having to import an entire bench here every year.

No Just Squandered them!

Jay Payton Terrance Long and Paul Wilson?
You the GREATS of Met History?

I mean he had three picks in the fist round including the top overall and couldn’t get even ONE good player?

He must be as smart as a Pakled or something!

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Pakled for those non geeks!

Oh and lets not forget Ryan Jaroncyk and Rob Stratton!

I mean with picks like that it would have been better if he gave them away for a free agent!

He had bad contracts and guys with bad pr to move in Saberhagan, Bonilla and Coleman and made trades in which he gave up next to nothing to put out a credible effort. Gilkey, Lance Johnson, Rick Reed, John Olerud, guys that played well here and didn’t cost draft picks. He brought in other high end talent into the system like Everett, Ochoa, Alex Escobar, Endy Chavez, AJ Burnett, Terrence Long and Jay Payton and drafted guys the Wilpon’s didn’t give him the budget to sign even though the payroll under him was miniscule. Guys like David De Jesus, Garret Atkins, Jeremy Guthrie, Adam Rowand and provided the pieces for the Leiter and Piazza deals (or left those in place) as well as holding onto Alfonzo and Ordonez.

He also, as Scouting Director with the Mets drafted HS or JC kids like Rafeal Palmeiro, John Olerud, Scott Erickson, John Wetland, Matt Williams and Roger Clemens. What’s not to like in a GM that can identify that kind of talent while it’s in HS?

He had Generation K disintegrate and the players strike take parts of two seasons and inherited a 59-103 team and got it to 55-58 his first year and produced an 88 win team without borrowing anything from the future in just three years. Yeah he had some busts in the draft. He went after the elephant, hit a few and missed on a bunch but all you need to do is hit on 8 over a 4 year period and you can fill in around them with average quality and win consistently. Ten Aaron Heilman’s will never carry a team like one Todd Helton or Derrick Lee (players he drafted while with San Diego)

His drafts in the early 80′s are what made the mid 80 Mets. He drafted Gooden, Aguilera, McDowell, Dykstra, Myers, Mitchell, Elster, Magadan and some or all of the pieces to get Carter, Knight, Hernandez and Ojeda and was involved in the decision making of those trades.

Can’t see what’s not to like about his tenure here. Dykstra/Samuel, Mookie/Muscleman Inexplicable but he wasn’t the GM he was just a part of the process.

Burnitz trade? Dallas Green hated Burnitz, not sure why but he got 3 starting pitchers of above average ability. Byrd, Dipoto, Mileki. Didn’t work out but it was still a credible effort IMO.

Kent/Baerga deal? Terrible trade. In defense of the trade all I can say is Kent is one of those extremely rare players who’s slugging percentage went up and stayed up for 8 years beginning with his 30th birthday. Baerga is one of those rare players who’s slugging percentage went down and stayed down coinciding with his 26th birthday. Strange but bad trade. One of the 10 worst in franchise history.

Overall I feel Mcilvaine would have obtained top flight talent if left alone to bring it here and if the owners had spent the money to sign the HS kids he drafted we wouldn’t have had so many crashes and disappointing seasons. We wouldn’t be scrambling around to “fill 8 holes” every off season. We’d have plenty of attractive prospects to talk about and could consequently talk to any team about any player and find the right guy, the right fit. Not just explain away yet another disastrous free agent signing with “well who else were we going to get to play _____?”

Not trying to puff up his resume, just trying to correct some inaccuracies and point out how a different philosophy would have provided much better results than Monkeyball has.

And I’m not sure where I read it, but sometime during this year after he was hurt, somebody posted an article from a few years back, when Wright missed a game with back spasms and even back then he was regularly seeing a chiropractor. So its certainly possible there was some kind of existing issue previously. Though if it was that bad and thought to be having an impact on his performance, you would think they would have gotten him checked out sooner.

Thats called a 33 on the TEST!
A FAILING grade when judging intelligence!

and you would think that it would really cause problems in the field, especially at 3B.

When you look back on the how the Phillies were built you have to look at who did the heavy lifting. Rollins (11th pick 2nd round) A pick that we have traditionally given away because “this is a good year to sign a free agent because our 1st rounder is protected.”)

Among guys we’ve give up a 2nd rounder for since Rollins was drafted (1996) are Cedeno, Weathers, Pedro, Floyd, Cameron and Bay. All of the guys we gave up a 2nd round pick combined don’t equal what Jimmy Rollins did for the Phillies. All of these guys we gave up our 2nd round pick for either got hurt, were turned into salary dumps, played poorly or some combination of all these things.

Obviously not every 2nd round pick hits either but by giving away the pick every other year you are precluding the possibility of getting a guy who will play real good and for a long period of time. Floyd played well when he wasn’t hurt. Pedro I would’ve signed but he only gave us one and a half years. Weathers and Cedeno salary dumps. Cameron became Nady who became Hernandez and Perez. Hernandez became Eddie Kunz and Scott Moviel, Kunz became Alan Dykstra.

Good job with Hernandez cashing him in for two high picks but bad job going for ASAP bullpen help with the better of the two instead of the top talent guy who could be here for years and years. Moviel a big HS kid was a good idea but 2nd rounders bust and that’s why you need more of them, not less. All the rest of these #2 picks became guys that left behind nothing or nothing useful and that’s a huge reason why the best pitcher to make his debut with the Mets in the last 25 years is Bobby Jones and why we still don’t have even an average major league catcher in any level of our system and have to import needs at so many other areas like the pen, bench and even try to fit guys into positions they haven’t been groomed for.

The Phillies with that one 2nd rounder that hit took care of SS for 15 years and most of it was top of the line play. Not HOF but quite a bit better than average. The combined time of all 6 #2 picks we’ve spent on FA’s (while they were on the field for us) is somewhere around 15 years and the play overall pretty spotty when you combine what we got out of all of them.

That’s just one guy the Phillies got and the way things worked out with that pick but is undeniably a part of their recent success.

You posted this crap! I’m just calling you out on it!
The guys who destroyed this team are the two guys you defend here!

I have to wonder if you ARE McIlvane trying desperatly to clean up his bad NY Image!

My point has always been that if you just concentrate on obtaining the very best high ceiling talent from all sources of the amateur ranks especially those players available in the first three rounds of the draft and IFA’s in the Caribbean, Central and South America, put in a couple of strategies in which to obtain a few extra picks here and there and not give any away until you are completely solid everywhere else both in main guys as well as your bench AND your AAA depth everything else will fall into place.

If you have to constantly give away your 1st and 2nd rounders just in order to get your starters, go with scrubs as backups and have no AAA depth, your simply not in a position to give away those #1 and #2 picks. All your doing is building out the kitchen before the framings finished.

My point has also been that outstanding talent can be picked up with big boom/big bust guys (like Howard) drafted after the 3rd round and that we should be going overslot to try to get as many of these types as possible in the later rounds because all you really need is 8 or so top high end talents on your team, in their prime all at once. Add in 8 other very capable starters the same age and a mix of guys you’ve traded prospects for, non tenders/rule 5/waiver wire and a free agent or two and your good for 5 years.

Keep it going simply by replenishing the high ceiling amateurs coming into the system by continuing to go overslot, grabbing extra picks here and there and signing the best international amateurs to fund future needs or provide pieces to trade.

Giving away your best draft choices every year doesn’t result in cohesive team play, frequently doesn’t even result in good play and inhibits your ability to win later by not infusing the farm system with top talent to bring up in 5 years. It hurts the teams chances now and later.

But they didn’t KNOW Howard was a good pick!
They thought Floyd was MUCH MUCH BETTER!

Is that a smart thing to think?
Or does it only look smart because you KNOW the answer due to HINDSIGHT?

Does buying three lottery tickets where only one pays off make you SMART or LUCKY?

As smart as you THINK they were for taking howard they were TWICE AS DUMB to think the two guys they picked before him was BETTER than him!