Actually, Fonzie has not responded to my post from a few days back when he again accused me all that and more. I responded by asking him to explain why he is the only one to accuse me of submitting quotes that were not true, facts that were made up and referring to links that were non-existant. Even those who disagree with me have never questioned the validity of the backup I use – just the conclusions I come to based on that information.

Certainly, if what Fonzie claims I do is true, I would think that others would see so too and call me out on it like he does. But nobody else has. Again, nobody has used as an argument that what I have presented as evidence to make my case as BS – they’ve simply disagreed with the way I interpreted things from it.

Like the point about Sandy never being approached by any other ball club to be it’s general manager. I was accused of making up stories about that and as proof, Fonzie attached one newspaper article that said he was approached by other clubs; the article included no quote from sources named or un-named within those organizations, not even quotes from Sandy himself. Just a statement which I suggested was just used by the writer to build up the story even more. In all the interviews I’ve come across with Sandy, he has never once mentioned being approached by any other club other than San Diego, and that was to be it’s CEO – not general manager. Neither had I found information from other clubs that they had interviewed him for the GM position, And I’ve also pointed out information on candidates being interviewed for the same position by other teams is routinely available for public consumption.

Nobody else accused me of trying to manipulate details or ignoring other sources to create a false impression – at most, there was conjecture about talks never being reported. But based on the information available, there is nothing to back that up.

I did mention to Fonzie I admired him for sticking to his guns with his criticism of me but since nobody else has questioned my integrity he was indeed “The Lone Ranger” in terms of this accusation.

Fonzie, still awaiting your answer as to why you are alone on this subject.

You know like that truth we were under .500 and then his second attempt to shave off a win to extricate himself from the first lie.

Besides JDD getting credit for pointing out Alderson did everything in his power to insure that the Mets didn’t continue their playoff push the last third of the season, don’t I get some sort of extra credit for pointing out that he was planning this months before the season even began?

In July when the Mets were making their push, I am sure Sandy was uttering the words of the villian in the early movie thrillers after the hero rescues the lady tied to the tracks “curses, foiled again!”

Sandy made sure the team would not make the playoffs because if it had he would be forced to think about resigning and paying Beltran, K-Rod and Reyes which is something he had no intentions of doing.

From the day he got here he knew he was not interested in keeping any of them.

And I don’t think he had planned on keeping Wright either but the blowback from the Reyes disaster forced Wilpon to say NO MAS!

You keep saying “ON A PACE” but that PACE includes the 5-13 start thatskews the actually baseball quality they were playing at the time.

In May, June and July they were on a PACE and WinPct of .519, .593 and .519.

To go 38-20 and get 91 wins all they needed to do was retain a .526 Win Pct. which is just two or three wins MORE than what they did in May and July.

So sorry charlie you were wrong on just about EVERY account!

It is speculation on all sides about what the Mets would have done, however, the odds are that had been modest moves made to re-inforce their stock and the injuries did not set in (again, nobody could predict those) it is certainly reasonable to believe they would have played more than .500 ball the rest of the year than to have floundered.

The 5-14 start hurt badly, but so did the moves Sandy made before that. Takahashi was a good reliever for the Mets in 2010 and continued doing so in 2011 for another team. Though nobody could anticiapte Feliciano’s career ending (till now) injury, he too had been solid in the pen. So we lose two dependable relievers and we get Carasco, Boyer, Bucholz and Beato in their place. And Sandy put his faith in Brad Emus at second the start of the season instead of, if not Murphy, the rookie Justin Turner or even his shortstop of the future – Tejada.

How much of these new players – plus the loss of the others, contribute to that slow start? If we won just three more games and started off at 8-11 instead of 5-14, we would have been 58-48 by the end of July – ten games over and 3-1/2 games back in the wild card. And the fact that we then went 50-37 despite those players – and despite getting more help instead – certainly gives validity to the claim that they were no more than just – at best – a .500 team.

But since we are talking about the 2011 squad and Sandy Alderson’s maneuvering that made up the roster, you are right – a legitimate argument can certainly be made that (baring injuries) they were not even a .500 team. But that is because of the moves made by the general manager before and during the season – it had nothing to do with the players Sandy inherited. So even though they played at a .575 clip for more than half the season after that miserable start, you and right – the Mets were not even a .500 club. But who is to blame for that?

We finished sixth in runs scored despite Beltran being shipped off. So it wasn’t that we couldn’t score enough. It was that Sandy got bargain basement players to re-do the bullpen leading up to KRod (who had 23 saves and blew just five with 3 blown saves and two losses till the time he was traded) and we now know what Sandy feels about what one gets in return signing those type of players.

Bay and Beltran were the only two regulars over 30 so it’s not that we had an aging club that needed to be broken up, either (though we had to rid ourselves of Bay for obvious reasons, anyway)

and why not?

Bottom line is…Sandy had ALL OF JULY to ADD on to the team, and never did so…no additions to the bullpen…or the rotation…or catcher…or anywhere…

Sandy made sure we wouldnt go 38-20

And they were actually OVER .500 at the time Beltran was traded….

54 Wins 51 Losses….

So so much for the Fact Baron and his knowledge…

Better luck next time….

Duda was moved to RF after the trade. Until then he was the backup 1B.

They brought up Evans to backup 1B and to leave him in the game they PH Murph for Turner and played him at 2B.

Then he got hurt.

If he had PH for Evans he might not have gotten injured at all.

In a warped sort of way you CAN blame the reyes injury for starting that bizzare change of events.

Let’s not forget that we lost both Murphy and Niese to injury and without that happening, perhaps even more than 15 wins – for imagine how Wright would have been pitched to if he had Murphy before him and Beltran behind him. Nobody can say Sandy saw the injuries coming through a psychic experience and thus made the deals in anticipation of a lost season regardless.

And with KRod as the closer, the rest of the pitching staff wouldn’t have pressed trying so much to prevent one extra run coming in which resulted in two or more. Same thing for the hitters – they wouldn’t try driving in all the base runners themselves if they knew they had both batting support behind them and that their pitching staff wasn’t apt to even make a deficit more out of reach.

Trickle-up effect.

It only took 90 or 91 wins to make the playoffs that year.

We had 77 without them so with them we could have easily got the 13 wins needed.

And if we had been buyers instead of sellers that year maybe even MORE wins.

Who made it the FOCUS of all he did in the offseason?

WHO is RESPONSIBLE for that PEN?

The decent pen of 2010 had 12 walkoff losses, 6 by walkoff HR that’s just on the road. 5 of those walkoff losses the last pitch was thrown by Pedro Feliciano. That’s not even counting games they lost at home.

The last time the Mets had a good pen was 2006 pre Sanchez cab ride

But still, I was addressing the 1982 only with breaking up a competitive team as one of many factors that would not have had fans yelling and screaming at Cashen in the same manner as today if we had the internet and other innovations of communication that we had today.

You are right to bring up how he did destroy a competitive team later on, but not in the context of it appearing as if you were correcting something I had said. I agree with you regarding the moves made after clinching the 2006 world championship.

Of course, that’s the whole point.

These moves weren’t made from the perspective of putting together a good, competitive team for a few years but rather a short-sighted sense of what was financially in the best interests for the Wilpons to retain ownership.

Know they needed to cut costs (as they still do) but I wonder if they could have cut that $30 million in other areas or that the cash flow was so bad that they simply needed to have the money immediately to pay their bills and could not count on possible revenue coming in from increased attendance or otherwise that could mean being forced to sell the club (Metsie, I know you have reservations about the tightness of the cash flow but the fact is they did need two loans just to pay their monthly operating expenses).

But the bottom line is that the team is now operating like the Pittsburgh Mets – either by circumsnates beyond the owner’s control, or by design – or probably more a combination of both.