Yup, when KRod was sent packing I felt more than just there goes the season. It was going to have ripple effects throughout on the pitching staff, hitters and maturation of our kids. Beltran was really the final straw.

Too bad you weren’t on chat as the bullpen blew it again today. I openly stated the responsibility for the situation clearly rested on Sandy’s shoulders which, of course, opened up the flood gates. Fortunately, everyone was on their best behavior so it was simply a matter of a heated and passionate debate – no name calling.

It was the usual back and forth between us. The reasons for Sandy’s defense were: who else was he going to get; what did not having KRod have to do with this now; all teams have shaky pens; Sandy has not had enough time to do things; that Omar was a worse general manager who cost the Mets a lot more money than Sandy has.

My reply was that Sandy is considered the grandfather of computer analysis and money ball and was supposed to have a keen insight into identifying undervalued talent and that so far most all the player moves made under his regime have not helped but hindered the team. I was asked if I read the book “money ball” and simply pointed out that there is no Bible outlining the principles to adhere to and that the methodology was plastered all over the web and that Sandy was emphasizing his immediate goal was to reduce the payroll because the large sum of money committed to just a few ballplayers was hindering how that money could be used and it could be better spent being spread among more people. Only one on the other side of the fence met me half way by agreeing Sandy’s moves MIGHT have been made more due to financial rather than baseball player considerations. That’s all the middle ground I think we need ask for.

Omar and Sandy have to be judged on their own merits. For whatever reasons one wants to say about how bad Omar was, the same principles have to apply to the job Sandy has done in his place. I also brought up the fact that the Wilpons hired both of them – suggesting we value the wisdom of both hirings based upon those on top.

Again, these disagreements were kept civil and not made personal.

Then in Sandy’s defense, and that even with the financial restraints, So I was questioned if I had read the book and understood money ball to which I replied that book was not a Bible and the principles behind money ball was splattered all over the web.

The bottom line is that w

But if you look at the Beltran deal on it’s own it’s only the problem it is BECAUSE of the previous deal for K-Rod that did more to kill the remaining season performance than Beltran did!

Even if we kept Beltran chances are that we still blow all those games the Pen blew post K-Rod!
Maybe there would have been more opportunities for that Pen to blow games if Beltran remained and maybe he adds enough to win a few games in cases where the Pen wasn’t the key factor in the game!

What I’m getting at is the CAUSE of the problems and both trades is the mistake og “Giving Up” not the actual trades themselves individually.
As single deals you can make a case for both, but as a group it is what illustrates the initial mistake!

Many associate the Beltran trade with when we gave up!
But ask yourself, “How many teams who think they may still have a shot trade their frontline Closer?”
And considering what just happened today I can’t wait to hear the excuses made for Sandy’s Good Day being good!

Truth is these guys don’t know good players if they bit them in the butt!
Which makes you wonder just how good is Wheeler really if they thought he was worth surrendering a season for!
We already seen what they thought a great and consistent closer was worth in trade!

Even if we were 50 games out of it in July the bottomline remains here.
What has left is 10 times better than what we have got back or brought in!
And that speaks driectly to evaluation of what a player is capable of!

Wheeler hasn’t failed yet but he also hasn’t succeeded!
The only reason why people still cling to that deal being good is because it hasn’t had time to show the failure yet!

Unlike the GREAT DAY Sandy had when he focused on IMPROVING the pen!
If this is what he thinks is improvement I hoipe he starts trying to make the pen the worst in baseball we might run away with the NL east if he did!

Meant “not making rash statements”, not “NOW making rash statements”.

All I can add with confidence is that very little of the many moves made by Sandy or those underneath him have helped the club at all.

By wearing your lawyer hat you’re also showing that you’re looking at both sides of the equation and now just making rash statements. One has to understand the opposing view point in order to both appreciate it and to make a valid argument against it (gather you took Law 101 with me, right? .

As you caught on, I was indeed asking “what if” but I was addressing it in terms of those arguments made about us moving ahead and being better off without KRod and Beltran in the long term scheme of things. Like you, I was questioning the philosophy behind those deals if it wasn’t a matter of financial desperation (which I have reservations about). I was presenting my thoughts in terms of the Mets simply keeping KRod (bonus and all) and re-signing Beltran for two years like St. Louis (of course, if he was willing to stay in New York and didn’t want out of here).

I understand your point – had we retained KRod but went ahead with the Beltran trade, our pitching scenario would have been different and Parnell would have benefited the most as an individual. Even moreso, with KRod gone, it put pressure on both, the entire pitching staff in pressing more to not give up runs instead of sticking to their game, and the hitters in pressing harder to drive in runs themselves instead of retaining the confidence that they didn’t have to place that pressure all on top of themselves and knew their teammates could pick up for each other. So your are right that giving up Beltran was the lesser of two evils because it was the loss of KRod that really applied pressure to both. We averaged the same amount of runs with Beltran as we did without him but needed more because with KRod, our bullpen was blowing games in the late innings.

So that blew our chances for 2011 – or at least took the opportunity away from the players to show the front office it was not justified to have such a lack of confidence in themselves as a unit.

But I think had we been able to retain both, Pagan could have been traded to help bolster a pitching staff still anchored by an ace closer. We could not do such because trading Pagan put a hole in our outfield that the front office believed was not yet ready to be filled by the kids for another two years. So, I think sending both players off has hurt us whereas retaining both would have tremendously helped us in the moves the front office could make – without giving up on our future.

And as we have seen, the roster spots have been filled mostly with players north of the age of thirty. If we had Beltran (with Kirk and others waiting in the wings) who knows – we could have sent Pagan packing to the pitching rich Giants for Wheeler this past winter. Under that scenario, we MIGHT have been able to have the best of all worlds – KRod, Beltran and Wheeler after all.

The possibilities are endless and this is all mere speculation of course. But I think we could have had much more stronger had either the financial circumstances – or the baseball mindset not caused it – or the because we could have traded Pagan for more pitching rather than for a center field replacement and with KRod as closer, could have shored up our middle relief beyond just the Rauch and Francisco signings cause Parnell could be eased into the set-up role and Pagan used as trade bait for some more middle inning insurance.

We just saw the bullpen moves made this winter again cost a starter another wasted good effort. We’ve been seeing it all season long. Again, could we have done better?

Forget the Beltran trade for now. It isn’t a bad deal on it’s own it maybe wasn’t the best return but it is not a mistake itself merely a symptom of the mistake made by Giving Up on last year.

It wasn’t the Beltran trade on it’s own that put a Damper on what might have happened it is just a result of the ACTUAL mistake…Giving up on a team playing great baseball.
It didn’t cause the mistake it was caused by the mistake.

So lets take the Wheeler bit out of the discussion.

Focus on the K-Rod deal if you want to take about what might have happened.
Bobby Parnell was doing quite well before K-Rod was traded.
First Half 2-1 2.92 ERA 23 G 24H 10R 8 ER 9 BB 1IBB 30K 1.338 WHIP (noted to make Donal Happy!)
Second half (Post K-Rod) 2-5 4.15ERA 37G 36H 19R 16ER 18BB 3IBB 34K 1.558 WHIP

So if you want to talk about possible WHAT IF scenarios focus on this:
What would our record be if K-Rod remained the closer and Parnell maintained his pre-trade numbers as the 8th inning setup man.
What would the record have been then? What would our playoff chances have been?

Don’t let them change the subject as they always try to by saying they saved 17.5 Mil this year because they didn’t really save a thing on this year. K-Rod’s only goal/choice (to remain a closer) was to waive the option either with us or with a team he got traded to in order to get someone to continue to play him where he wanted to play without worry of the option getting in their way!
He even fired his Agent because he played games with Sandy and didn’t do what K-Rod requested which was to get the Option out of the way so no matter what happened there was no reason to NOT use him as a closer!

As for what I think was key effect was it caused Parnell to panic as the closer for which he was not ready for and he had K-Rod who was a very similar pitcher to him to help mentor him and once he was gone he had no one but Isringhausen to turn to who is a good veteran but has no recent experience with blowing hitters away with his power arm the way K-Rod did!

With a full year as the setup man to K-Rod perhaps Parnell doesn’t implode from the pressure, gains the confidence he needs and maybe we don’t need to spend all we spent on Francisco, as resigning K-Rod or someone to take the 8th inning role (because we did not lose faith in Parnell) which would make the Rauch deal fine, the Francisco deal unneccesary and the Ramirez deal nothing more than a bench augmentation by getting two players for one!

WE also might have gotten compensation for K-Rod if he signed elsewhere because he would have the saves that might have brought him up to Type A status instead of his eventual Type B!

Of course for an extra 2 Mil we could have maybe resigned K-Rod as well if having those saves did not increase his value as well!

If you look at it from that perspective we still have Wheeler, Parnell doesn’t get demoted in the FO’s mind and we would have a very different focus in the offseason maybe enough of a change to go after a starter to fall back on or to replace Gee, as a fall back option if Santana didn’t do what he is doing or to make up for the loss of Pelfrey!

We will never know what direction the team would be heading had the financial situation been different. But if things were different, we could ask.

Would KRod and Beltran still be with us? Perhaps (depending upon Carlos still wanting to stay in New York for reasons other than financial). If we still had Carlos could we have concentrated on obtained better pitching help for Pagan since we did not need another outfielder to replace him? Certainly. Would we be a better team with KRod the closer instead of Francisco and Beltran in center instead of Torres (even with Beltran being slower a foot, taking into account Torres injuries and being only one year younger than Beltran)? Based on both their track records through last year when both came back strong and how they are performing so far, the answer is quite obvious.

But we must also ask if these moves would have been good for the team in the long term. What if we didn’t have Zach Wheeler? The answer depends upon what one thinks of the kids on the team now and down on the farm. Would being committed to KRod and Beltran thus derail our “rebuilding” efforts by not allowing he kids to come up and begin playing? No more than the two years already committed to Torres and Francisco.

So again, if finances were what they should be for a big market team, still giving us the financial advantage to do things smaller market teams cannot, would we have made the decisions we did last season and over the winter? Could we have not still made our future the number one priority while still fielding even a better team with the kids we have today and those two veterans remaining with us? I think so. Why not?

Francisco remindes me of Benitez. His body language speaks of rage and collapse. He seems too moody to be relied on. Much of the Buffalo relief talent is in thier 30′s. Crafty veterans who may not fool major league hitters. Surely they would be better than Acosta.

Mejia may be the forgotten man. He too is rehabing with Young. I would like to see both men to be give a shot at starting.

Dickey is my choice for closer. The man is a Jedi. A warrior. He could probably pitch three innning saves three times a week. He is often lights out twice through the batting order. By the sixth inning the hitters catch up to him. Dickey would be awesome in the role. Just think how much better the bulpen would be if we didn’t need to use four relievers every night.

Next year Harvey and Famila arrive. So help is on the way.

Beltran, don’t forget the extended period where he was injured, and that the knee is supposed to be chronic. certainly he is having a great start, but it remains to be seen how well the knees can hold up to the use. I really like the guy, and hope he can stay upright (as long of course as it doesn’t hurt the mets!), and was surprised he did not go to the AL. But at the same time, it would not surprise me if he broke down.

Still, the deal for the Cards was reasonable, since it was only 2 years. And he might have still been in play for the Mets if they did not have Bay clogging up the works!

Also….a blown saves doesn’t mean a loss every time and a scorers generosity often does come into play. An under stated statistic is the “hold” factor.

When all is said and done…if the team continues to be scrappy and hit in the clutch there will be plenty of saves for Frank Francisco.

Thanks so much for providing a detailed list of ALL the Met transactions made during the Alderson regime and my not having to go into one of my typical 800 word replies to the comment ” this move might be the first mistake Alderson has made as Mets GM”.

Of all those moves, is the best we can come up with is perhaps Byrdak? Or with his replacement of nearly half the roster for 2011, all we were were able to come up with was a 77-85 record, while it was mostly those who were already in the organization prior to 2011 – not those near dozen signings – responsible for us going 51-38 before finishing up at 22-34 to end the season (in Sandy’s defense, there were those injuries to Niese and Murphy but the team was stumbling at 5-17 after reaching that season peak a few days after Beltran was gone).

As far as KRod is concerned, he had four bad performances out of seventeen this season. And the last I looked, Carlos Betran was leading the league in home runs and was second in runs batted in while batting .307. Yes, being committing to both for another one or two years would have thrown a real monkey wrench into our rebuilding program. How old is Torres? How old is Francisco? Aren’t they secured with two years?

If it’s simply that the Mets don’t have the money to spend, it isn’t Alderson’s fault. If they actually did, then these moves don’t speak well of computer analysis, money ball, Sandy’s own baseball smarts or the ones Sandy depends upon for those moves.

Now, on to the article….

Sigh. Second guessing at it’s finest. Look, EVERYONE knew what they were dealing with when acquiring Francisco (Alderson, FO, fans, etc.). Francisco is NOT closer material. I liked the signing, but not him being closer. He’s a middle reliever at best. If anyone should’ve been the closer, it was the guy who signed with the Mets the same day Francisco was signed. The guy who, outside of a few bad outings, has been decent for the Mets out of the pen. That’s Jon Rauch. Rauch at least would/could be suitable enough to be a closer until Parnell is capable of taking over.

I know what you’re thinking. “What about Edgin?” The guy with an ERA near 10 right now in Buffalo? No. Leave the man alone. Best thing to do now in this situation is to switch roles with Rauch & Francisco to preserve some wins OR keep a close eye on Fernando Cabrera or even Jack Edgbert and send down Francisco to AAA (if possible). We have multiple pen options in Buffalo.

You keep running to hide behind the Minor Leaguers!

Please note the equivilent signings that Sandy made that compare on a par to:
Jeter
Rivera
Colon (Gave you an easy one to compare because I feel nice!)
Garcia
Chavez
Andruw Jones
Maybe even Pettite soon enough….

Your list didn’t prove anything except that MLB GM’s signed players to minor league deals all the time. They aren’t wasted contracts, you have to field a team in the minors… you use minor league deals in hopes you catch lightning in a bottle but also make your minor leagues better.

11-10: Receive Scott Allen in trade
11-19: Signed Neal Cotts – Released 2-16
11-27: Signed Brian Anderson – Released 5-27
11-27: Signed Andy Sisco – Released 2-18 then signed again 2-19, released 5-27
12-2: Signed Buddy Carlyle – Released 8-18
12-7: Extended Jeter and Mariano
12-15: Signed Mark Prior (FA 11/2),
Russell Martin,
Gustavo Molina (FA 10-3) then signed 12-13,
Doug Bernier – Granted FA 11-2, Signed again 1-5
12-19: Signed Luis Vizcaino
1-3: Signed Pedro Feliciano
1-5: Selected Brian Schlitter off waivers – Lost him on waivers on 2-15
1-18: Signed Rafael Soriano
1-20: Signed Warner Madrigal
1-26: Signed Bartolo Colon – Granted FA 10/30
2-2: Received Justin Maxwell in a trade
2-3: Signed Freddy Garcia – Granted FA 10/30
2-4: Signed Eric Chavez – Granted FA 10/30 – Re-Signed 2-21
2-8: Signed Ronnie Belliard – Released 3-28
2-9: Signed Luis Ayala – Granted FA 10/30
2-14: Signed Andruw Jones – Granted FA 10/30 – Re-Signed 12-31
2-16: Signed Fernando Hernandez – Released 7-4
3-25: Signed Kevin Millwood – Granted FA 5/1
3-25: Traded Mitre and got Chris Dickerson
4-9: Signed Carlos Silva, Released 7-2
5-1: Signed Brad Halsey – Granted FA 11-2
5-6: Selected Jess Todd off waivers, lost him 5-16
5-17: Signed Randy Flores – Released Aug 2
5-25: Selected Kanekoa Texeira off waivers – Released 7-6, Signed again 7-19 – Granted FA 11-2
6-8: Selected Jeff Marquez off waivers – Granted FA 11-2
6-13: Signed Cory Wade
6-13: Signed Greg Smith – Released 8-15
6-15: Signed Brian Gordon
6-23: Signed Mike Lamb – Granted FA 11-2
6-23: Signed Terry Tiffee – Released 8-22
6-29: Signed Logan Kensing – Granted FA 11/2
7-14: Signed JC Romero – Released Aug 8
7-21: Signed Marcus Thames
8-13: Signed Scott Proctor – Granted FA 10-11
8-16: Signed Raul Valdes off waivers – Granted FA 10-11
8-19: Signed aaron Laffey off waivers – Lost to waivers 10-11
11-6: Signed FA Mike O’Oconner
11-23: Signed Jayson Nix
12-28: Signed Hideki Okajima – Released 2-17
1-4: Signed Cole Garner
1-4: Signed Dewayne Wise
1-23: Traded Jesus Montero, Hector Noesi for Jose Campos, Michael Pineda
1-26: Signed Hiroki Kuroda
1-30: Signed Manny Delcarment
2-8: Signed Bill Hall
2-8: Signed Russell Branyan
2-18: Signed Clay Rapada
2-19: Traded Burnett for Diego Moreno and Exicardo Cayones
2-21: Signed Raul Ibanez
2-22: Signed David Aardsma
3-16: Signed Pettitte
3-28: Signed Craig Tatum off waivers
3-28: Signed Jack Cust
3-29: Signed Steve Pearce
4-1: Signed Jason Bulger

I think they might prefer doing it themselves though because I won’t do the entire MLB and might just pick the teams and examples I like which is what the Sandy folks do all the time!