Wheeler was 6th Overall…
Harvey 7th overall.

d’Arnaud was picked 37th, When was Snydergard taken?
These are not Strawberrys or Goodens…

Yet these are the guys we call TOP PROSPECTS….

You have to actually go out of your way and be an idiot to screw up a top10 Pick.
Cashen blew 3 of his 5 and Got only Gooden and Strawberry to show for it.

As for Darling he should have known he gave away a lot to get him….
Did we get as good back for an above average fielder as we did from a Cy Young Pitcher?

I can’t say we did….What we got was a guy we could have drafted ourselves at some point but didn’t think enough of him to want him then…
And great he’s better than Thole but then again YOUR probably an improvement over Thole and you wouldn’t cost us a Cy Young Pitcher….

Bottomline is even if d’Arnaud and Wheeler are our next Gooden and Strawberry the issue still remains…
Who is our Mookie, Who is our Dykstra, Who is our Backman, Who will we trade and who will be dumb enough to give us our Hernandez and Carter?

We are so far behind the Cashen curve if people think thats what we are shooting for that Sandy won’t live to see it.

Truth is Sandy will need 8 years because he has spent the first three doing what Grant did in one and only THEN will he be able to draft and trade enough to get all that Cashen did in the 5 years he did it in.

Sandy at best has two years before he wears out his welcome….

If we are lucky then maybe his replacement comes the say way Grants did, Someone else buys the team and brings in thier own guy!

Start the rebuild clock 5 years from THAT point not when Sandy took over.

I’m sure you will agree that Cashen didn’t know he had a Gooden, a Strawberry, a Darling, etc. until they actually became Gooden, Strawberry, Darling, etc. The point we’ve both been making about prospects still being a hope. The same that held true for Cashen holds true for whoever is calling the shots for the Mets today.

That’s why we each have our favorite prospects but many still have to understand not to call Wheeler a Wheeler and d’Arnaurd a d’Arnaud until they actually become a Wheeler and a d’Araurd.

What Cashen did, as we point out, was to also obtain players during his rebuilding process and even in 1982 we had dreams of Foster/Kingman/Valentine/Wilson/Brooks/Stearns and Staub plus others providing us just enough scoring power to overcome our pitching deficiencies to create some noise that summer – maybe not a champion as much as a good team only to get better.

Well isn’t that my point?

Cashen had all of them by now, and got a Hernandez that is not likely to happen again as you so eloquently put it….

Cashen had 12 First rounders and 5 Top 10 picks to get all his kids….

So anyone who thinks this is going according to the same schedule as what Cashen did is fooling themselves…

2015 sould have 90 wins if that were true….
At this rate we won’t get to 90 Wins until 2017 the latest and that if we become the worst team in the league this year and start collecting top 5 First rounders and somewhere along the way find a stupid GM to give away a Hernandez…

Otherwise it isn’t going to happen at all and Sandy isn’t going to be here past 2014 if they don’t win between now and then…..

Frank Cashen was able to fill a rotation with Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Walt Terrell, Rick Aguilera and Sid Fernandez and then go onto add pieces like Bruce Berenyi, Bob Ojeda, David Cone and Frank Viola- all while dealing from the strength of the farm system. He was then able to flip the serviceable Terrell into Howard Johnson-

The Mets were able to trade the likes of Rick Ownbey, Bill Latham, Kevin Tapani, Wes Gardner, Calvin Schiraldi, and Floyd Youmans for big pieces- these were surplus parts in Frank Cashen and Lou Gorman’s minor league system.

I don’t love the job Sandy Alderson is doing, but what would most of this crowd would not understand the tactic of not signing another team’s free agents- After Frank Cashen went all in on Dave Winfield after the 1980 season and he signed with the Yankees, the Mets didn’t sign another major league free agent (other than Mike Cubbage) until Vincent Coleman after the 1990 season.

Good Luck with that!

Seaver was a shadow of himself in 1983 and went 9-14

“”3-4 pieces of marginal improvement is the difference between a 79 win team and a 89 win team”

I have to agree that is often the case, though not always. But in terms of the team Sandy inherited in 2010, so many point out that it was indeed only a 79 win team (though it is left out that was due in part to injuries) so could he have also not found that marginal improvement in some outside players to make up for those ten wins?

Sandy got rid of Takahashi and Feliciano in the bullpen but did not replace them with ones that could have yielded marginal improvement over them. He released Maine (a good move) but replaced him with one who had been injured for four years (Young) which due to that injury many of us thought would also not be a marginal improvement over Maine.

Omar should not be left off the hook on this for he didn’t do well improving us at first base, center field and at catcher during his last season either. I think that reflects either that the money wasn’t there or wasn’t being allowed to be spent on acquiring those bit more costly improvements.

He got lucky that it all came together for him a year later when he lost Seaver and Doc Gooden emerged.

Sorry JDD but I don’t really buy that….
It takes a major positional improvement to get that big a jump. A power RH Hitting OFer could….Marginal would only turn around maybe 3 or 4 games at best.

The issue seemingly lost on these folks is that if you get 3 Marginal players (not scrap heap scubs as we seem to target) combined you might get 7-9 more wins making the Impact guy you get give you much more and put you in the playoffs….

So while I have no issues with us getting Ross he was never going to put us into the 80 Win Category….Maybe an Upton if he could do in Citifield what he does in Chase field could….
But then again maybe a Lucas Duda hitting the way he is capable of and adding 30 HRs could too….

Then the Ross signing isn’t a waste nor is it not enough because it allows you to fill one OF position that letsyou focus on finding a good defensive CF to help Duda and his slow feet troll the OF so getting those runs don’t cost you runs in the field.

If you insist winning drives attendance and deny that having stars drives it then you never get the attendance back until you go off budget in a big way the way we did in 2005 to get them back.

And despite your idea that the Yankees did it with thier 4 or 5 kids the truth is those kids do nothing if the Yankees had scrubs around them instead of
Joe Girardi
Mariano Duncan
Wade Boggs
Paul O’Neil
Tim Raines
Darryl Strawberry
Kenny Rodgers
Dwight Gooden
Jimmy Key
David Cone

Kids without Vet leadership and experience never succeeds….

Thats right and they made it before they lost or played a single game!
Many people bought season tickets that year to lock in the best seats in hopes that without injury they would pick up where they left off in 2008 and maybe win something.

Unfortunatly the Injuries did happen and ruined the season but the attendance stayed high because those tickets were already sold and it’s far more a waste to not go see a game you have tickets for than it is to stay home and not use them at all…..

no cody ross / ludwick will be mistaken for pujols/hamilton…but adding one of them, plus a michael bourn, plus trading Duda and a prospect for a better OF would exponentially help out this club

If Sandy wins 70 next year he is gone!
And I don’t see his Strawberry, Gooden, and Hernandez coming anytime soon…
At best you got a Darling and maybe a Fernandez in Harvey and Wheeler….

Cashen was taking a lot of heat in the press until he traded for Hernandez…That 90 Win season in year 4 saved him.

Sandy has already started taking heat, Mostly for not doing much of anything, Cashen at least made moves every year. He made the Mazzillie trade halfway through his second season. Was picking top 5 in the draft giving greater hope to fans who would wait to see them….

I don’t know anyone waiting with baited breath to see Nimmo or Checcinni….

So his clock is quickly running out of time…
He has AT BEST till the end of next year to get to 85+ wins or he will be sent packing…
Cause there is one thing the Wilpons have ALWAYS been consistent with…
When the Press asks for heads to roll and constantly harp about how bad the team is, the Wilpons give them a head to placate them for another 4 years that the Wait and See crowd can come up with excuses for until the press gets on them again.

In 2011 we agree Sandy did not have had the financial means to build up on what we had on the major league level but that didn’t in turn mean having to dismantle a team in mid season that was playing so well, either. Who could have simply kept the team intact and show the team he had faith in in it – the point R.A. was making about the players believing in themselves.

After that awful start they were playing .575 ball for more than half the season despite the burden of so many inexpensive players that were indeed producing only fifty percent. That’s why I suggested we might have been doomed that prior winter for that lack of depth in the pitching department put together by Sandy – for whatever reason – was going to catch up on us.

I also think Sandy seriously damaged team morale the past two years with his attitude – telling the media he needed more time to see what this team was made of when they were playing so hard and well in 2011 which carried through to this past season when the team felt it was kicked in the stomach. Though that is not going to have any effect on the young players being brought up, who knows how much that will be on the mind of the players who went through it if they make a surprise run this year and look to the front office for support once again?

Sure, rebuilding also is a financially motivated decision. You have to weigh your options and decide whether what you have is good enough to win – short- & longterm in your financial environment.

There was NO alternative to rebuilding in this case due to finances. Somewhat similar to Steinbrenner being suspended in the early 90s when the Yankees were forced to stop their inefficient high spending ways of the late 1980s.

Minaya was fired after six seasons because he had spent over 250 million $ combined in 2009 and 2010 on a team expected to contend that finished below .500 in back-to-back seasons and already had commitments of 130+ million locked up for 2011 – without a better outlook, considering the staff ace had just undergone shoulder surgery.

And since while you´re comparing 2010 and 2011 (and 2012), you are aware that our 20+ million per year nominal ace, Johan Santana provided 365.2 strong innings in 2009 & 2010 overall with an ERA around 3.00, going 24-18 in the process – and then a combined 117.0 IP for 2011 and 2012 COMBINED with a 6-9 record.

You just made the point about Sandy’s decisions based on finances, not baseball, by saying “Basically the plan is to have revenue and payroll relate to each other”. That, however, from a business standpoint is not sound thinking for long-term profitability. Doesn’t that imply that if attendance goes down, one then does not make the financial investment (in players) to bring it back up?

Though you are right in saying “If your team wins 78 games with a 140 million $ payroll, eventually you lose money. So you either need rich owners or cut costs.” remember to add that in 2009 and 2010 one did make money with a NY franchise on a $135 million payroll fielding losing teams.

So what caused the Mets to cut the payroll so drastically in such a short time instead of re-investing in it since they were not losing money? MLB teams can sustain a few seasons with losses at the gate unless they are really in bad financial shape. Being that the team is in New York, it was making money and the owners were also rich it is not a matter of a temporary set back in revenue as it a more serious set-back in debt and lost capital from non-attendance sources of investment.

Hey, happy new year to you and yours, always.