It is not unusual for teams re-sign players on the last year of their contract prior to declaring free agency. Didn’t the Mets do that with their third baseman and shortstop a few years back?

So in the case of Jose Reyes, Sandy stating he wanted to wait to see what other teams would offer before he would sit down with Jose’s agent was only for public consumption — as a business person with an analytical mind he can project what the possible market condition for a certain player can be down the road with confidence. He is no dope in these matters.

I believe Sandy Alderson already has an educated figure in his mind to anticipate how much David Wright could potentially demand as a free agent. And so does David’s agent. However, I don’t know if it is either in the team’s interest or even if it is necessary to begin negotiations now instead of the the winter. But in the least, Sandy could let David’s agent know when the Mets would be interested in beginning those formal talks – which is at least a first step in letting David know the Mets are actually interested in him.

Not opening up negotiations with Jose’s agent at all was the way the Mets let it be known they were not interested in re-signing him and if we are eventually told the Mets want to see what offers his agent might get first before making their own offer, take it as a sure sign the Mets are not be interested in retaining his services.

Of course it’s a gamble – just like all our own investments are as well.

Really Des it’s just not making any sense to say making a bid was bidding against ourselves and then trying to say there was no market because The Marlins were the only ones bidding!

Reyes is making 106 Mil…Now it’s fine to say we wouldn’t want to pay that much and outbid them but it’s dumb to think not bidding before they could bid was going to save us from what they bid or that it was going to save us money by not making one!

In either case the Marlins made the offer they made and while making the first offer may not have saved US money it might have cost the Marlins some more money than they paid which can only help the NEXT time we both want a player in free agency.

Regarding Peter Greenberg, it’s common practice to encourage taking an offer, even though better deals might be in the offing. Greenberg had to be worried that despite his brinksmanship he could have been sued later by Reyes for not providing competent advice. These lawyer/agent/player relationships are complicated and Greenberg certainly didn’t want to lose Reyes and his fees/commissions. But there was never talk from the Reyes camp of a WIN-WIN deal with the Mets. It was some minor brinksmanship which failed. I think it’s likely that Greenberg and Reyes, each for their own set of reasons, panicked when Sandy didn’t bite right away. Just my opinion, but so far Wright’s team has been much cleverer.

How can you say there was no market because he didn’t get Crawford money?

He had plenty of Market it’s just that the Marlins came out strong and at a price other teams didn’t want to beat.
They were willing to pay the price, and the years!

We weren’t even willing to bid before that!

If we had the Marlins maybe can’t make that offer at all!

Now, let’s remember that speculations of what could have been is the stuff of the vanquished. The Mets were in a tight spot because of the law suit (regardless of what they are now saying to affect normalcy) and Jose is a better player than negotiator. Greenberg is a charlatan who also isn’t very smart.

You sir are a member of the Wright haters club you and your three friends.

You watch game simply to watch him make a mistake and harp on it for years, yet turn a blind eye to those that you like.

Worst imaginable fan ever, and you make these funny claims to have coached the game. So when you were coaching, did you have an irrational hate for one of the better players on your team, just because?

ZERO there was NO market, No Competition, NO PRICE AT ALL!

And if you make an offer for 5/90 or whatever it was you wanted to sign Reyes for there was a chance he would say “Thats Enough I’ll Stay!”

Once you let the Market get involved and they bid 100Mil did your Bid have any chance of succeeding?

So you saved nothing by making no offer the only one who SAVED money was the Marlins!
They only had to beat a bid of ZERO. They offerred a 100 because that what Reyes said he wanted.
And tyhe truth is the whole argument for not making an offer was because people thought 10 lousy Mil was enough to make the deal a bad one!

It was just dumb, you make you bid and THEN if he doesn’t take it and another offer comes you decide the n if you want to up your bid.
But waiting until someone else bid saved you ZERO dollars! All you gained was a disadvantage by giving up your chance to make a bid with NO competition!

Recommendation to Reyes:
1) Fire Peter Greenberg who is incompetent. He gave Reyes bad advice to negotiate through the media. Stupid idea unless you’re Albert Pujols.
2) Don’t try to outfox a guy (Alderson) who has already done it more than you’ll ever do it in your life.
3) Does it mean anything to you that no other team made a bid?

The reasons not to sign him were mainly health-related…giving a guy like that 6 years and big money is risky. For all the talk about Wright’s off years in recent history (not that it wasn’t warranted…it did seem like he was declining)…Reyes wasn’t all that great before getting hurt in ’09 and was pretty bad in ’10 (worse than Wright’s “bad years”)…so there was some concern about consistency as well. And mainly with the whole Madoff thing the Mets finances were very much up in the air at the time.

As far as when to sign Wright. There is still time…I think the earlier the better in terms of saving money. And things are going well for the Mets right now…the mood around the team is good…so maybe Wright would be more willing to sign now than if the Mets start to slip a bit. So there is no need to rush into anything, but there are advantages to trying to do it sooner than later.

If we had made an initial Bid BEFORE the Marlins did you might have gotten Reyes then.
We didn’t and waited until someone else bid and priced us out of getting Reyes altogether!

This Idea of Bidding against yourself is just plain dumb!
You can’t bid against yourself unless you make a SECOND bid!
If we had made the first bid then someone paid more you didn’t bid against yourself you bid against the second bidder!

Only if you make a bid and then Bid again without another bid can it be called bidding against yourself!

It wouldn’t be the first time the Yankees went into a rebuilding phase using formet Met players to keep fan interest.

Jeter isn’t getting any younger here! They will need a replacement for him right around the time Reyes’ big bucks kick in.

I think he’ll wind up back in NY but unfortunately not in Queens.