Bourne is certainly a good outfielder and a pretty good leadoff hitter but at the current asking price….is not going to make the Mets significantly better than the upside of what Capt Kirk is capable of.

It is obvious that Sandy knows we are not quite ready to compete for a playoff run this year but that does not mean that he is “punting” for the 2013 season.

If pigs could fly . . . . But Omar ain’t here no more!!! LOL

Our OF would probably go from one of the worst in baseball to one of the best…

but this would upset all the fans that want to pay more money to see Marlon Byrd play CF this year

>Delgado was an intersting case. His agent was an ass

His agent was a bit too much emotional for my taste…

he went to the press once in january and aired out the wilpons for giving him the deadline…which was absolutely idiotic…

then in spring training, he told a toronto reporter about Bernazard…and of course any story that has the word race in it is going to dwarf a boring story about a owner being cheap or giving a deadline…even if that was the real reason why things didnt go down

had the mets signed delgado, we never hear a peep from his agent…
and after delgado came to the mets…he and bernazard got along famously….when bernazard was canned, delgado expressed his sympathies.

K-Rod was actually the one who didnt like Bernazard.

K-Rod and Bernazard got into a shouting match because Bernazard was berating one of the guys in the pen on the bus. K-Rod for all the negative press, STOOD UP for his teammate…and was willing to give TB the son-in-law treatment…

> and by all reports Bernazard did not come off well during one of their meetings.

Bernazard was an ass…but I hear Bud Selig loved him…somehow Bernazard was credited by with saving baseball from another strike/lockout in 2002.

This is why he got the job in NY…he had no previous working experience with Omar. The guy Omar brought to be his right hand man was Sandy Johnson from Texas. When Omar was hired and they asked about his staff…Omar had a ton to say about Sandy, he had almost nothing to say about Tony.

Tony was also the one who brought in his ex-teammate Jerry Manuel…first as OF instructor…then suspiciously, Jerry replaced Sandy Alomar as bench coach in 2006, bypassing Manny Acta ( 3rd base coach ) which is basically made Jerry next in line to be manager.

Tony was a snake and Jerry was a snake.

The only reason people have Omar and Tony joined at the hip and buddy buddy is because they are both Hispanic.

If these were 2 white guys, it would be plain as day to see how Tony was never Omar’s friend.

You dont get ur first gig from ur friend and then immediately try to get his manager fired.

> I always wonder is the crap the NY tabloids gave him for not standing at attention for God >Bless America while he was a Blue Jay didn’t help queer him to the idea of signing in NY.

Yeah, Florida said they did not mind his protesting. But he also said he would stop protesting if he came to NY. I was VERY disappointed with Delgado after that. Expressing the right to dissent is a critical part of being an American. You cant say we have freedoms and blah blah blah then get all upset when someone actually uses them in a way you dont like.

Actually, after Bay was signed, Omar in early 2010 wanted to add either RH Joel Pineiro or RH Jason Marquis to aid the somewhat thin rotation (having no idea that an in-house gem in RA Dickey was already on the roster to take over for John Maine and / or Oliver Perez). Unfortunately, there was no money left for that. So, while we´d probably have seen more of Matt Harvey and Jeurys Familia than with Alderson, I´m not sure what Omar would have done with his hands tied behind his back. Except for possibly not trading Beltran and Dickey.

But good point about going all in. Sure the Phillies are going to be crap over the next half decade but they gave themselves a few good shots during their ‘window’. That Howard extension was still abysmal though.

But thats the same thing his bosses have subscribed to for years…

they never go all out for those missing pieces

3rd-6th maybe…but not 15 rounds…

Evans dropped b/c he was not a top talent AND he had the scholarship…

those 05-09 teams were mansions built on stilts…the slightest bit of wind would send it crumbling down…

that is the problem with not going ALL-OUT and half-assing it…

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2005/scorecard/01/12/truth.rumors/index.html

After Beltran was signed…Mets CEO Jeff Wilpon warned that for another significant signing to occur, “there probably has to be the removal of money before adding money.”

this is called a HALF-ASS JOB

the met payroll in 2005 was 95 mil

dont sit there and tell me u have to trade Cliff Floyd or Mike Cameron before u can add Carlos Delgado…this was the reason why the Mets never upped their offer and Wilpon gave Delgado’s agent a take it or leave it offer ( but i thought the GM had full autonomy ? ) and proceeded to leave PR, taking Omar with him to the Winter Caravan…

its all in black and white…

this left Omar with a few weeks to sign a 1B, he then picked up Doug M off the scrap heap.

A year later, they move Cameron’s salary for a cheap Xavier Nady, then trade for Delgado…

then instead of offering Piazza arb…ensuring a comp pick, they are afraid that he would accept…
again…HALF-ASSING IT…

the mets are the type of guy that shows up to the club in a lexus but doesnt have enough money for insurance, gas, or parking.

It looks nice and impressive from the outside…but if anything happens, the flaws are quickly exposed

Santana was an overpay, it was an overpay for a reason and he pitched great when he was healthy, but when all is said and done he was a factor in exactly one playoff run (08) and about 40% of his contract will have been lost to the dl. No team other than the Yankees can lose 50 million to the dl and weather it. It was a risky move and didn’t payoff. It’s also indicative of the problem with acquiring players when they start to get expensive. The reason Santana was a necessity was that the team developed one front of the rotation starter in the previous decade, Scott Kazmir, then traded him for garbage, further proving a robust farm system in an absolute necessity.

You say no GM could do anything about the big games lost from 06-08? Bull. The reason things were so close were that there were serious deficiencies that needed to be addressed by the GM that never were. Go look at who started games those years and tell me that adding pitching depth wouldn’t have made a difference. Championship caliber teams don’t depend on repeatedly injured players.

You can say it as many times as you want but Alderson did not purposefully tank the off-seasons. You say he didn’t go out and get the best players available but the concepts of budgets and limited resources available don’t even occur to you. Your bitterness towards Alderson also ignores that all teams at different points take the same path. No team goes all in every off-season. Blindly throwing money away to patch structural deficiencies is a non starter. If Alderson were trying to ‘tank’ why the hell would he put money into the bullpen or starting rotation this year and last? Why even bother to release Bay, just play and the team is sure to lose more games thus getting a better pick.

There’s also a reason the teams fell off partly through the season, it’s call regression to the mean. The teams was projected to be a mid 70 win team and surprise surprise, ended up there. Who would have made a difference last year that could have been traded for, what possible players could have contributed 15 extra wins in half a season and who exactly did you want to give up to get them? You and others may be perfectly okay with the Mets liquidating the future for a feel good winter or to postpone a late July swoon to mid august, but I’m not and I’m damn glad we have a GM who isn’t either.

Three years bridges the gap to Nimmo and lets Den Dekker remain in triple A this year while most likely being a defensive upgrade off the bench next year or the year after. I could also see Den Dekker playing some right field this year if he hits in triple A, which further solidifies the defense aside from Murphy and Duda.

I think signing Bourn could make the Mets as a whole one of the better defensive teams in baseball, there would esentially be 2 weak points out there in Duda (who could be better in Left Field) he did show an arm out there in left last year, and Murphy who will hopefully be average at second.They can supplement Duda and Murphy as well with leads in the late innings for better defensive players. So yeah it that sense it could make the Mets extremely better defensively, and with that young pitching and Marcum being a fly ball pitcher, the signing could turn out to be better than we think.

Carlos Beltran wasn’t a waste of money, the Johan trade was a fantastic coupe and just because he got injured doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good move.

he signed David Wright & Jose Reyes to very team friendly contracts with some saying Reyes could have gotten even more.

You forget about those things because of one reason. They lost BIG games from 2006-2008 and NO GM can do anything about that at the time. To look back at those significant moments that cost the Mets big ballgames now and blame the FO is pure Second Guessing and an excuse. It was the BALLPLAYERS fault, not the GMs.

And no doubt Alderson purposely did not get better ballplayers to help this club the last 2 off seasons and got the cheapest filler instead. Because in my opinion he felt the team he inherited would NEVER compete so in essence yes he tanked both offseasons in order to get higher draft picks instead of using whatever resources he was given more wisely and more competitively in order to field a team that can compete as best he can.

he did not do that, the team both offseasons fell off at the all star break and neither you, me, or anybody else don’t know what would have happened if the man actually tried to win. Instead many good ballplayers were signed at good prices by other teams who wanted to win. Other teams were even to move bad contracts for other players. Not Alderson, all he did was cut players and people here act as if it were Moses parting the Red Sea.

So how do you know that Sandy Alderson’s disposition and beliefs haven’t COST the Mets better moves? There’s more evidence of that than he’s a hard bargainer.

Seriously? This bullcrap again?

The fact that anyone thinks the front office has tanked the last two years is absolute lunacy. No one alive could have taken control of a team without any impact players in the upper minors, cut 50 million in payroll, and produce a winner.

You talk about the last two years but conveniently ignore the previous two where teams with much higher salaries won 2 less games than the ones you think are being purposefully tanked. 60+ million in extra spending for 2 less wins. The mediocrity of the past 4 years is directly attributable to poor drafting, player development, and being saddled with budget crippling free agent overpays.

You would have like to see what Minaya would with a low budget? Go look at his Expo tenure. The amount of future wins he gave away to get Colon is astounding. You’re pinning away for non existent glory days. Minaya was a mediocre GM who had some skills but his flaws were exposed when he couldn’t patch his mistakes with big money free agent signings.
Now I have no idea whether Alderson’s tenure will be considered a success. I like his process, I like the way he negotiates, I like the way he isn’t willing to overpay when more efficient options are available, and I like that he values the farm system and views it as a long term feeder to the major league club but I need more data to determine if it’s the right way to do things rather than just the one I ‘like’. I do know that 8 years after Minaya took over as GM is long enough to pass judgement on him. I do know that a good GM needs to be proactive in the offseason and not only tackle one problem each time, I do know that a good GM needs to build depth for the inevitable injuries and that having guys like Jose Lima and Brian Lawrence start games is a failure to build that depth. And I most certainly know that even large market teams have salary limits and that spending wisely is always the right thing to do and that you shouldn’t just target a guy and then do whatever it takes to sign them because it will ultimately end up being a waste of money a make it harder to win in the future.