-CDR

August had teams with much lower profiles like San Diego, Washington and Florida.

I was there in both months and watched on TV too and didn’t notice much of a difference except with some of the bigger attractions and those extra seats sold? All from stub hub and all by out of towners or fans of the NY Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers.

Said he was happy just to get back on the mound, working on his mechanics. He’s optimistic, felt good, but is realistic as well.

Getting back on the mound Tuesday and he said we’ll all know soon enough – himself included – if he’s good to go for Opening day.

My thoughts about Duda and Murphy as it pertained to Beltran had to do with last season when Beltran did not have to be traded to make room for either one’s bat. Duda was replacing Ike Davis at first and Murphy was playing second so baring those injuries and the trade, that trio could have remained in tact for the full year.

Irrelevant past 2011 for Beltran was not going to remain with the club and I think we are better off long term with Davis and Duda than we are Davis and Beltran. Of course, Lucas’ glove is the subject of much conern.

In RF, Duda in the 2nd half was as productive (and by some measures, more so) than Beltran was. So it is debatable what kind of downgrade that is.

But, what is getting overllooked is that Duda is not replacing Beltran, and Tejada is not replacing reyes. the reason is, they were all playing together at some point (Tejada at 2B, Duda at 1B).

So if you look at the lineup at the end of the year vs. the beginning of this season (current projection), the real changes are:

Ike replaces beltran/whover it was filling out the OF while Duda played first.

Murphy replaces reyes.

So, looked at that way, there really isn’t this big drop off in offense.

also, for whatever reason, the mets scored MORE runs in the 2nd half. And reyes really only had a big 1st half. In the 2nd half, he missed a chunk of time on the DL, then was a shell of earlier in the year for most of the rest of the season.

thru 7/2 (Hammy time), reyes hit .354 with a .927 OPS> A huge outlier career year.
7/19 – end of year, he hit .305 with a .784 OPS. Much more in line with his career (kind of in the middle, other than BA). But, even that was inflated by his hot last week. 7/19 – 9/21, he was at .280 with a .704 OPS (way off career norms sinc e2006).

So basically, outside of the last week, reyes really wasn’t doing much in the 2nd half for 2 months when he was playing. So if the offense was OK in that time period, it should be OK this season.

So what he seems to be saying, which makes sense at this point, is that he is not in rehab, rather he is like any other pitcher getting ready to progress through ST.

But it was still obvious by their play after those trades that something more upsetting than wins and losses was occuring. The young players started making more mental mistakes, began pressing too much, seemed less confident in their ability and eventually, the spark they had for so long was lost. Again, I’m afraid about that carrying over to 2012 with the confidence built upon that 50-37 clip fading away.

When he extended Terry’s contract Sandy said “”Very definitely did not want to interrupt the momentum he has created”. You know I feel tha’ts exactly what he did getting rid of KRod and Beltran. That resulted in going 16-28 after a 50-37 clip.

And I’m afraid that negative momentum is going to carry over into the 2012 season.

“I hope it got across. Again, I don’t want to take anything away from how hard we played all year long. The last few days I just didn’t think we got ourselves ready. … Coming down here and playing in a situation that you’re playing against a team that’s going for the playoffs, I think kind of made a big difference too. The games mean something. They’re important. And they know it. Our guys are certainly aware of what’s going on here. I think that helped a lot, as a matter of fact.”

http://espn.go.com/blog/new-york/mets/post/_/id/34907/wright-likes-tc-but-credit-limit-exists

Before that losing streak began the Mets went 16-22 after reaching a high of 55-51 on July 29, still playing great despite the recent losses of Beltran and KRod beforehand. But that was just for a handfull of games. After their 55th win the team repeated it’s early season start with a dismal 5-17 record. If one includes that losing streak, the record since July 29 was 16-28.

Quite different from what we had been seeing through mid-season as the attached shows.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/750105-meet-the-2011-mets-a-midseason-review-of-the-new-york-mets

So I suspect Terry might have been pissed a long before September 15 rolled around.

Again my point is that Collins quotes in my opinion based on when he said it and what transpired before he said it had more to do with the recent homestand than anything else.

The GM himself said on wfan in an interview with Joe & Evan that it would be fair to say that the trading of Beltran would signal the waving of the white flag. Pelfrey saying it was nothing more than an acknowledgement of the reality of where they are but they still have to show up and play. Collins would not allow for anything less and they again went 18-20 up until that horrid homestand which resulted with Collins calling out his players on what he thought he was seeing.

The result was what he got.

Now look back at Mike Pelfrey’s statement upon getting rid of Beltran, made before Terry then told the club it could not let itself be sidetracked by it:

“I understand that if you want to get something back for him you have to trade him,” Pelfrey told the New York Post before the Mets’ 4-2 win — and prior to Collins’ comments. “In the same sense I would think if we ended up getting rid of him, the front office’s view is that we don’t have a chance, because he gives us our best chance to win. If he’s not here, then they felt we can’t rebound from where we’re at.”

Now granted Pelfrey didn’t help the Met cause at all this past season, but the words he said have to be taken seriously for the reasons going into this season that I have already stated. These guys don’t have short memories.

Heck yea Collins was pissed and concerned that this team may have folded their tents and started looking ahead to 2012 and he was not going to have it and he let it be known. The result? The team came out the next game and won 12-2 and played .500 ball the rest of the way.

These kids “folded” as Terry put it while adding “You come and play the game right. I don’t care what the situation is. I don’t care about anything but playing the game correctly. That’s all I care about.

That’s the momentum we have building going into 2012 – quite different than what we were seeing in late July. Again, the point about re-building isn’t just all about the minor leagues – it’s about those guys on the team now and expected to be there when the others come up.

Granted, the financial situation left the general manager no other choice. But I’d rather read fans saying that made good financial sense instead of saying getting rid of KRod and Beltran made good baseball sense from the perspective of rebuilding. I don’t think getting a Zach Wheeler was a better gamble than letting the kids play out the season with all the support the front office could give them to build up character and a winning attitude.

Being a professinal does not mean having a winning attitude. It means players caring more about their own individual performances than they do the team winning or losing. That does not build up a ball club – as we have painfully learned all too often in the past.