And I could never figure out how those hub caps could be described as cigar shaped.

Didn’t you catch Sandy’s announcement today? Here it is:

“Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown… the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened on that fateful day. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. My friend, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent.”

With apologies to Criswell.

The problems you claim about the starting rotation should have been addressed in the offseason not AFTER you lose THREE of your starters!

We knew going into the season that there was a high probability that we would lose a starter at some point during the season. Especially when your supposed ACE was coming off a surgery that no one up till then had come back from in any effective way!
What was the backup plan to that?
Chris Young who was pretty much in the same boat as that ACE only with a year less rehab time than Santana!

If Santana was the only one we lost then Young would have been fine as our only backup plan but we lost Pelfrey before that Backup was even ready to pitch forcing us to go with the Schwindens, Hefners and Batistas who at best were plan B and performed more like a Plan 9 from outer space!

None of those guys could go more than 4 or 5 innings which exposed the bad choices made for our Bullpen help!

Once Young got up to take Pelfrey’s place the cubboard was bare. Once Gee went down we were back to Plan 9 from outer space and then throw Santana getting injured on top of that and you have our current “ED WOOD” production we are seeing during this losing streak!

This resulted in forcing Sandy’s hand into bringing up a kid (Harvey) who had deemed “NOT READY” a week before after one start that was worse than his audition start was!

And even with Harvey your still relying on those guys who have not gotten the job done to fill in forcing us to rush back Santana when he was clearly not ready to face MLB pitching after a weekend of pitching to A ball batters.

This is the snowball effect at play, Sandy was un-prepared for any injury to his starting rotation and once that injury ball started rolling he was snowed over with no plan to deal with it!

Add to it the fact that he chose poorly when trying to fix the pen and you have the making of a bad B Movie quality baseball team!

Which is what you SHOULD expect when you fix things with B Movie Talent simply because it’s affordable!

Sandy could have added Carlos Quentin and Huston Street while cutting Ramirez and Bay and there it would have kept the team in the playoff race. Certainly we would not be 6 games under right now and barely staying out of last place, but we would not be making the playoffs and would still be out of the race by September.

I don’t see how any trade would have changed the fact that our rotation went from great to bad in 3 weeks and that Wright was fading, which was the sole reason we were doing so well in the first place.

My point exactly.

Santana was just a temporary loss – not a season loss like Gee. As it is, for the long run our rotation is still Dickey/Santana/Neise/Young and Wheeler. But Young was the key to indicate that Sandy had no intention of doing anything above using a bargain basement priced player. Sandy’s plan for shoring up the earlier loss of Pelfrey was Young – who has pitched how many innings over how many past seasons with how many surgeries on his arm ? What more does one need to know?

On July 7 we were tied for the second wild card spot, and a half game out of the first one. Even with the subsequent loss of Gee, people were not considering it a major blow because it was felt by Wally Backman and others that Harvey was ready (Sandy being the voice against it). Strengthening our bullpen and adding some hitting would have compensated for less dependency on the starting pitching putting up such great numbers.

We also saw that in July there were starters other clubs got for cash and low level minor league prospects. In fact, many clubs, including the Dodgers, Pirates, made major deals in which they gave up little talent. This included starting pitching, relief pitching and position players. Others gave up some highly regarded prospects but look at who they got in return – and not just as rental.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1280059-mlb-trades-2012-winners-and-losers-from-trade-deadline

Oleo, this team could have been better and that avalanche of losses could have been avoided. How many games did we begin we losing simply due to the front office doing nothing to shore up our weak spots? How much did it that indifference cause other players to begin pressing more to compensate for that? How long was it before it became obvious no help was on the way that it just simply became demoralized instead of believing it could bounce back?

The season was not lost upon the injury of Dillon Gee nor was it lost due to Santana slipping. As other clubs did, we could have strengthened our weak spots to compensate for less reliability on the starting rotation. We didn’t.

Sandy on July 21st he was still on the fence and was waiting for the team to fail or not before he would commit!
Well the trade deadline was only 10 days away at that point!
Even if he decided he was going to be a buyer anything worth buying would be well on the way to being traded by the time he decided to go get it!

Sandy did not WANT to buy!
He wanted us to compete well enough to lure fans to the stands but not enough that he wqas forced to abandon his slow snails pace plan to just draft and not spend (including not spending in the late draft) and hope by 2015-16 he had scored enough lottery tickets to turn the team around!

In so far as why…it is pretty much due to his arrogance, his unabashed love for the Yankees and his hatred of the Mets. Accepted!

In terms of the content of his latest Met bashing. Lots of “chum” to feed the frenzied fans who can’t accept the obvious facts that we are not as good as we played the first half. It was thrilling to see the team in 2nd place but it was just a matter of time for one or more of the other NL East teams to step forward and become a playoff team.

Francessa’s bashing of Sandy A is so wrong. Sandy never felt that the team was close enough to pull of another one of our “wishing and praying” quick fix trades that would end
up being wasted in terms of a dream of making the playoffs. We’ve been though that before!

The best kind of GM is one who can honestly observe his own players and admit
(although not out loud) that they are not ready yet to be serious contenders. That same GM weighs the risks of a Jose Reyes resigning against the reward and trusts his instincts by not yielding to those frenzied fans.

We needed bullpen help last year and he went out and made some moves. When all is said and done Francisco and Rauch will have helped despite some bad appearances. Wins and saves will be tougher now because the team is not scoring runs. The new kid Edgin seems like he has a future. The bottom line is that right now we have one stopper in Dickey, a decent # 2-3 guy in Niese, and not much else in terms of starting pitching.

A suggestion here….IGNORE THE RANTS A ND RAVES OF FRANCESSA AND ALL THE FRENZIED FANS WHO THINK THEY KNOW BETTER THAN THE BOSS.

WHEN DOUBLEDAY/ STERLING BOUGHT THE TEAM IN THE EARLY 80′S THE FIRST THING THEY DID WAS HIRE FRANK CASHEN….

WHEN THE WILPON’S FIGURED OUT THAT THEY NEEDED HELP TO RESURRECT THE TEAM BECAUSE OF FINANCIAL PROBLEMS AS WELL AS ORGANIZATIONAL MISTAKES THEY WERE SMART ENOUGH TO HIRE A GUY WHO WOULD NOT PANIC AND INSTEAD METHODICALLY CHANGE THE WAY THINGS WOULD BE DONE….

GET USED TO HIM….HE’S GONNA BE HERE FOR AS LONG AS HE WANTS!

The Mets went from having one of the best rotations in baseball to having a mediocre one at best within a week. Given how starting pitching pretty much dictates how your team performs, the Mets were screwed.

There is no question the Mets would not have tanked as fast had Sandy made a move anyway, but once the rotation turned for the worse, the season was over and no trade could be made to rectify that…

I think Sandy made a mistake by not trading for a reliever in early July, but the injuries to the rotation and the decline of Dickey and Wright would have prevented us from making the playoffs anyway…

“It’s not a question of what we need to see on the field to make us buyers, it’s what we see on the field that causes us not to be buyers. The presumption here is that we’re buyers, and it has been. Realistically, the next seven, eight, 10 games become important for us.”

This contradicts the message he gave when in the broadcast booth prior to the all-star game break saying we were buyers and already looking into various acquisition possibilities:

http://www.bloggingmets.com/11559/sandy-alderson-appears-on-mets-broadcast/

Just like last season, Sandy once more needed to see what happened over the course of the following week or so to determine what direction he should take. Again this year, what the team had accomplished – despite having the worst bullpen in the majors and Davis and Duda mired in slumps – didn’t count.

Hence, despite certain ulterior motives, the Francesa comment does have real merit to it. While being facetious, he was right in saying “this Mets team picked the perfect time to collapse because they were never spending anyway. Buyers. Yeah, they were buyers alright. Yeah they were buyers alright. They waited this trade deadline out and the Mets gave them exactly what they desperately wanted – a well executed collapse in the days leading up to the deadline.”

Though the season might not have been salvageable, had even one or two moves been made based on the negotiations Sandy said he was conducting it would have meant the front office was at least somewhat sincere in trying to win this thing and in telling us the financial situation was on more stable ground. Francesa would have less basis for his criticism.

Instead, they were only giving us another round of lip service. Now, lip service for the fans is one thing. But what about those players from last year who remember the front office dismantling the club while they felt they had a valid shot and now find themselves again getting no support by the GM? Wouldn’t that cause any team to become demoralized rather quickly – for as I said before, we know this team is better than the way it has been playing the last four weeks.

Remember my concern about the long-term negative impact sacrificing 2011could have on team morale and confidence and that even obtaining a Zach Wheeler could easily create more damage than good? That showing the young kids support would go a long way to building up character, morale and winning experience. Why are the young kids giving up? Why in the back of my head is the thought that David Wright is actually hoping for a trade that he could agree with this winter just to get out of here? Why do I suspect free agents who have a choice of clubs with money being basically equal would avoid signing with us?

It is because this is what happens when one actually makes moves that hinders winning instead of supporting it. Things start to crumble all around because it creates a domino effect.

I’m wondering if Bud Selig is having second thoughts putting friendship in front of “the best interests of the game” as he so often calls things?

It is impossible to judge Sandy until we see how his rebuilding plan works. I know many expect to be in the playoffs every year, but it’s not going to happen until the Mets create a foundation and given the state of the farm system when Sandy took over, it’s a pretty long way away.

2014 has always been goal and we can only hope that our young guys turn into good players because despite the fact that the team is “homegrown” a lot of the young guys we’ve seen Spin, Duda, Kirk, Thole, Davis have been part of the problem.

Luckily between the low minors and a pretty good 2010 draft, Omar left Sandy something useful and with a really promising 2011 draft, hopefully guys like Tejada, Harvey, Edgin, Wheeler, Flores continue to progress and Davis, Duda, Kirk, Spin can turn it around…

Judging from the responses of late, it seems more are starting to see what you, I and others had been professing for quite a while.

Know I’m late on the uptake but what is meant by “THIS”?