We are talking about selling off the option not what happened AFTER it was sold off!

The points you just made makes MY point even more because your suggesting if we HAD managed to buy off the option that we could have gotten K-Rod to be our closer at dirt cheap prices!

And not have to pay that 17Mil you guys keep thinking is savings when all it was was money not spent!

“WE COULD HAVE DONE WHAT THEY DID!” (referencing the Brewers)

“Because he wanted to be a closer and would have been happy to lose the option and go into FA as a closer with a closer’s numbers to sell than to be sent someplace where he would never close and go into FA with no numbers to sell!”

- We couldn’t have done what they did because he actually had to accept arbitration from them because nobody made KRod an offer to be a closer.

- Please for your own sake stop pretending that MLB GM’s aren’t smart enough to understand what happened with KRod in 2011. There isn’t a baseball GM in the world that would look at KRod and say “I can’t see if this guy is a good closer because he spent 31 games as a setup man.”

Stop acting like teams who needed a closer couldn’t easily look at the 440 games since 2005 that he has been a closer.

So a team like KC signed Broxton who appeared in 14 games in 2011 to a $4m deal to close, but KRod who was healthy in 2011 couldn’t get a closer deal because teams he didn’t have “closer’s numbers to sell”?

Also, Stop pretending that KRod getting arrested in his team’s clubhouse and getting injured because of it isn’t flagged on his “resume.” Or that his most recent arrest is not an issue for teams either if he’s found to be guilty.

If KRod wanted just to be a closer this year, guess what he could have done? He could have used the best agent in baseball to lower his financial demand to get himself a 1 year deal with teams that signed older more questionable closers and given himself the chance to prove himself.

So 1 of 2 things happened

Either A) KRod was too greedy or B) they DID lower their demands and still nobody wanted him as their closer.

That’s reality. If he got an offer to close from anybody, he would have taken it if that was what was important to him.

Yeah and Santa actually lives in the North Pole…

If he held all the cards then why did the thing he wanted the LEAST happen to him?
He got traded to a team that was never going to let him be their closer?

We were the ones who held the cards there…Because he wanted to be a closer and would have been happy to lose the option and go into FA as a closer with a closer’s numbers to sell than to be sent someplace where he would never close and go into FA with no numbers to sell!

You state that “we spent all that money” and got nothing is not accurate. From a pure business standpoint, 2007 and 2008 were great successes, the Mets contended to the last day of the season and the Mets set an attendance record in 2008 drawing over 4 million fans.

The first year in Citifield in 2009 they had paid attendance of 3.1 million and averaged 39,000. You would think that those tickets were more expensive that in 2008 so on ticket sales the revenue was probably comparable.

In 2010, they were again competitive in the first half and collapsed in the second half. Attendance drops and we get the unverifiable claim that they lost $70 million. But then the specter of Madoff rears its head.

So in comes Sandy who did a great job of lowering expectations and out go Beltran, Reyes and K-Rod. I don’t have a huge problem with any of that. What I have a problem with is that a decision is made to tell fans that the payroll will be $110 million and then have a payroll that is $20 million less. I’m not looking for Pujols or Josh Hamilton, but it’s maddening that the Mets can’t even resign Scott Hairston or Chris Capuano to two year deals. It’s maddening that “we are going to rebuild the farm system” but then not spend even up to slot. For what? So that the Wilpons can cling to a team they can no longer afford?

It does not take great business or baseball acumen to slash payroll by $50 million and hope for the best. That is what Sandy Alderson did and there is no semblance of any “plan” here. I agree that he gets 4-5 years and the real year to judge him is 2014. But to claim that this front office has been any kind of upgrade to date is nuts.

I believe what R.A. Dickey said that a team can both re-build and stay competitive at the same time.

With Beltran, he made public his desire to end his career as a Met. Of course, whether he would have or not we don’t know but we do know Sandy had no intention of even trying to re-sign him.

And one pitcher does not a re-building make. The team showed it’s true color about the future by signing the second fewest draft picks in the majors – including the number 75 pick in the country because they would not offer slot money. Remember when Tom Seaver came up in 1967? The Mets lost 101 games that season despite his rookie of the year performance. The following year, even with the emergence of that great young pitching staff, the Mets won just 73 games. 1969 was something else.

But over the next seven years, even with our own hall of fame pitcher winning the Cy Young award two more times, only once did the Mets win more than 83 games (1976 when they were 86-76) and twice finished below .500.

So I don’t think sacrificing the last two years for one great prospect helps in building for the future at all – not when the opportunity to get additional raw talent is sacrificed along with it. And as we know, Beltran was gone no matter what but it wasn’t necessarily because he was going to walk – it must be remembered that Sandy said if he couldn’t get good prospects in return, he would have then focused on monetary considerations. That’s an indication of salary dumping, not re-building.

As far as the KRod contract, ridiculous as it was, with the Mets as a competitor the Wilpons would have made far more in revenue than what they paid to him.

so yeah, the mets couild have done the same thing, it just would have cost about 25mill more.

K Rod? 100% about having to get rid of his salary.

I may be way too cynical but I have to wonder if the Wilpon’s financial problems with the Mets played a part in Selig taking back his retirement announcement for like the 3rd year in a row now. I could be wrong…maybe he just wants to work until he drops. I know when he first said he was retiring his wife said she’d believe it when she sees it.

If it was Selig’s goal to keep a healthy franchise (which is different than a competitive one) operating in New York, then he failed miserably. Empty seats, bad press, stars shipped off, star players remaining having doubts about the front office’s commitment to winning and the entire country aware of the team being in deep financial trouble…. he should have stepped out of the way and let the Wilpons either sink or swim on their own.

By trying to prevent the Mets from floundering he actually caused it to happen.

Sandy was quoted over and over about wanting a top five pick…. like middle of the road prospects never hit it big in the majors?

Being competitive certainly did not seem to be Sandy’s concern in 2011 when he sent off our top hitter and closer. Those of course were cost-cutting moves that would not have been made with an ownership that was not in personal financial trouble – a trouble that was not brought on by lack of fan support. They were not moves made to improve the team.

So with Hairston it might have been a case where they wanted to stop the fan base from deserting them more as far as paying customers was concerned – but they had long before lost the trust of most fans and thus had already created that hole they could only dig themselves deeper into.

I still believe the Beltran and especially KRod deals had to be done.

You got a point on that. Those of us who saw it from the beginning are more annoyed not at the ownership or Sandy himself than with those who still believe he was brought in as a baseball visionary.

I still think of the team we could have had – an outfield of Beltran, Pagan with the weak link being Duda/Bay. an infield of Wright, Reyes, Murphy and Davis – solid, a weakness behind the plate with Thole then complimented by a bench with Hairston and Tejada along with the others. That would have given us more power, speed at the top of the lineup and protection for Wright. If we had acquired a a decent starter/long relief man he could have moved into the rotation along with Dickey, Niese and eventually Harvey when Santana and Gee went down. Chris Young did a credible job but we needed more than just him. Had we kept KRod, Takahashi (OK, he did falter in August) and used Francisco for middle relief – a position he was more effective in – plus added one or two relievers that could hold steady for the entire season we would have had a better bullpen.

I would have loved to have seen that team – the one dismantled by Sandy Alderson – could have done the entire season.

For the record, Sandy was willing to re-sign both Feliciano and Takahashi for one year contracts when each wanted two. Yet he did sign Carasco and Francisco to two year contracts.

KRod had a solid season last year and if one looks at his game log for 2012 there are two or possibly three stretches of two or three games where he was completely inept which mares an otherwise decent season of relief performances he did have.