“But not with the Kids these days….”

I agree with you 100 percent but my friend, that does make me feel even older than I already am.

It’s all about the fastball as long as you have a fastball your destined for greatness right up until the kid is ready to be promoted and then all of a sudden his breaking ball and secondary pitches become important excuses for why they were wrong….

Me personally a guy who gets outs and keeps the score down is a GREAT pitcher!
I don’t care if his main pitch is a dipsey Doodle it’s not the pitch you throw its the results of that and how effective it was that counts….

But not with the Kids these days….

The BEST and SUREST way to have a good MLB team is to keep your best players not sell them off in the name of getting a good MiL system that you apparently could NOT DRAFT into being good and the best you could do was trade to make it better!

If you keep your best players you are GUARANTEED to win eventually.

But if you trade away your best players just to get kids to fill a farm your drafts could not fill, all you will ever be is a Developmental squad for the rest of the MLB!

Omar is pointed out having relied on “veterans who were more susceptable to injury”.

This is where I think the double standard comes into play, perhaps not intentionally, but nevertheless is there. Sandy inherited a pitching staff that was 6th out of 16 teams in the league in ERA. What did he do to it? He acquired “veterans who were more susceptible to injury” to re-build that staff like Young, Capuano, Carasco, Boyer, and Bucholz which helped contribute to us going from 6th to 13th the following season.

He then replaces a going on 30 Pagan with a 34 year old center fielder who hit .219 and was twice placed on the disabled list the year before. And after having one of the worst bullpens in the majors, the steps we take to improve it also includes candidates signed to minor league contracts who are also closer to 40 than they are 30.

So, if one is going to point out something about Omar, why is Sandy any less guilty of acquiring “veterans who were more susceptable to injury” as well? Is it because they are cost-effective? I thought the reason why one signs players was to win.

“38-year-old trick pitcher”

Is that how one now describes a Cy Young Award pitcher? Was that the way one thought of him when waiting for the balloting to be announced? Or when going for his 20th in an otherwise completely meaningless game that drew more than 20,000? Is that how he would be have been looked upon if Sandy wasn’t shopping him around and signed him to a two-year extension?

Or would he be considered the veteran ace of a young starting rotation and our best pitcher?

Agree with the trade or not – but don’t discredit him now that he is no longer wearing the orange and blue.

the wilpons dont believe in paying double for 1 position….

not like the yankees, who brought in Youkliss at 12 mil when they are paying A-Rod 30 mil…

not like the red sox who brought in Adrian Beltre at 10 mil when they were paying Mike Lowell 13 mil…

the phils brought in Jim Thome when they were already paying Ryan Howard 20 mil…

the mets rarely if ever do that…

77 Wins and 74 Wins is better than 79 Wins….

You guys keep having to add a season where the team sufferred injuries to ALL of it’s key players and yet STILL won 70 only 4 losses more than Sandy’s FULL STRENGTH ROSTER last year!

You guys will do anything to make him sound like he is doing a better job!

Last two years were WORSE than a year that got the last GM FIRED!

But you will keep twisting stats anyway you can to get him to sound like a success!

Won’t you Mr Credibility?

What price? Short term, the Mets have been better the last two years under Alderson than they were the previous two years under Minaya. And if you think the long-term prognosis isn’t positive, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on around here.

“I have said all along that IMO Sandy was brought in with the mission to rebuild the organization from the top to bottom. Call it an organizational philosophy if you want, but it does fit with what you describe as his strengths. Oh, and of course, job one of this which was stabilizing the finances to keep the team afloat.”

- Yes, that is what a lot of have been saying. He was not promoted to General Manager in Oakland based on any baseball skill. As noted by Eisenhardt in that article I posted yesterday from the Daily News:

“The question I’m always asked is, ‘Why didn’t you hire a baseball guy to do that rather than a lawyer?’” I didn’t think of Sandy as a lawyer. I thought of Sandy as a really smart guy who knows how to analyze decisions and make decisions and who had had the experience of being in the Marine Corps and (serving) in Vietnam, which is a real character-building experience. Those were the skills I was looking for because I wasn’t looking for just somebody making baseball judgments.”.

And there is a mistake giving one such executive authority beyond business matters in an industry one knows little about. Baseball is something one can learn about and appreciate by study and analysis as a fan but that is much different when taking over a team as a professional. The good executives know how to recognize their limitations but the bad ones don’t.

So that is why some of us would dispute “I don’t think he ever claimed to be some genius talent guy/wheeler dealer” for his actions do demonstrate an “intention of setting up a FO to be a “gunslinger” operation”.

That is the problem with many fans who look at Sandy in the terms of a baseball person instead of a business executive in the corporation known as a baseball team. You are right “There are experienced assistants in place to handle player evaluation and the grunt work. Plus of course, quantitative analysis.” but that is exactly why many of us also think that – as far as a competitive level is concerned – the Mets have fallen on worse time because a business executive has also been given the authority to run the club as he sees fit – and something he is not qualified to do, even though he thinks he is.

And up to this point, he has done the job he was hired to do – save the corporation from being sold. But look at the price the team – and it’s fans – have had to pay for that privilege in both the short and long-term prognosis.

Now where else has that plan been implemented….I wonder….

Unfortunatly that farm system you think he built there turned into a big pile of nothing!
And they have lost ever since!

Is anyone giving credit to Fred & Jeff Wilpon for drafting Matt Harvey in 2010 or David Wright in 2001 ??? And the GMs the Wilpons hired before Alderson probably had to face more meddling from their CEO than Kevin Towers had in SD.

Again, you can look at the Oakland A´s and the job Alderson did as GM there. Be it good or bad and draw your conclusions for his Mets tenure. But using his time with SD as reference seems quite a bit off. Heck, what was his track record with MLB from 1997 to 2005 and in 2010 ?