you are right though that Braun should have gone into hiding, and not pushed his luck like this.

my HO of course was that he got caught, and snaked out of the punishment, but he was far from “innocent”

When he ran the A’s, they were frequently one the top payrolls in the league. The payroll here was getting cut. With or without Alderson.Selig sent Alderson here to cut payroll and help fix the finances while developing new talent. Hopefully, by the time the young guns are ready to produce, there Wilpons’ financial issues will be resolved one way or the other and there will be money not only to retain the young guns, but to add to them as well.

Also, high payroll does not automatically translate into success. Mets fans and Cubs fans should be well acquainted with that idea. If the team is not built with a solid foundation, it doesn’t matter how many free agents you buy or for how long.

Long term contracts rarely, if ever work out. And usually, the few that do work out are just for teams in win now mode at the time of signing. If you go look at all the 5+ year deals that were signed between 2000 and 2008, how many actually worked out for more than half the length of the deal?

Fans who come to sites like this are a minority, and fans who read comment sections are a much smaller minority, and as Matt Cerrone has said, the people who actually log in and make comments are an even tinier minority.

You sir, are here, at Metsblog, and at the Ledger, where many, many maladjusted fans with zero sense of perspective or real baseball knowledge visit to vent their lack of self esteem in the form of Met rants.

Seriously—the fans you refer to definitely exist, but I would guess they amount to a truly microscopic fraction of the overall fan base. As we are in New York, this does translate to there being more of them than any other team has.

But still, they really are, as the cliche goes, sound and fury signifying nothing.

Hey, don’t change the subject. We’re talking about Reyes.

“3,000 hits, 600 steals has happened 5 times in MLB history and Reyes is well on that pace.”

No, he isn’t.

The reality is locking into Reyes for 6 years and $120 million would not have been wise for the long or short term.

Larkin was a question among some and finished: .295 .371 .444 .815
2340 hits, 198 HR, 960 RBI, 379 SB, 1329 runs

Reyes would need to double his hits, runs, HR, RBI, and would still not have as impressive of numbers. Obviously Larkin also played until age 40 but because his game was not built on just speed actually had some of his best years in his early to mid-30′s. Could Reyes do that? Sure but he would need to in order to be on a HOF pace IMO.

I really wouldn’t be expecting too many Bonilla, Saberhagan, Coleman, Alomar, Vaughn, Burnitz, Zeile, Alou, Bay, and Schowenweiss types brought in here as this organization has specialized in over the last 20 years.

Of course there is no way of knowing if Reyes would have been open to resigning then either. As much as he kept talking about being excited going through FA for the first time, he might have taken a pass at any offer during that off season as well.

Then he had the thyroid thing but assuming that wasn’t considered a long term threat that would have been the time to discuss a deal and get one done. By August it was too late. Minaya was on his way out and the well was running dry. Pennies had to be pinched and now here we are.

Marlins taking our guys. Unbelievable.

Is it because – even though procedures were followed – there still could have been some slight chance of tampering?
Jeeze, if that was the case, sending them FedEx at all could come into question.