he’s gritty !

unlike that lazy castillo guy that played through leg injuries after having knee surgery in the off-season !!!

I don’t think that our comments are all that different.

Do I think that Sandy doesn’t want to win or that Fred doesn’t want to win? No.

What I think, as you pointed out, is that the team finances were so interwoven with the guaranteed interest that Madoff offered (the 10 – 14%), along with the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars invested with Madoff plus the new stadium costs etc. that under normal circumstances Fred would have been forced to sell.

It is my belief that Bud offered Sandy to Fred as a small market-type GM to come in and cut the payroll. This was done so the Wilpon family could keep the Mets. That, and only that, was his top priority.

Setting up the club for the future is a result of gutting the team. If you are going to sell the foundation of the house you need to rebuild. Almost all the other teams would have renovated but the Mets decided that a new, cheaper house was in order.

You can take any team, gut it, trade the major players and have a competitive team in three or four years. The problem with that is twofold. We are in the number one baseball market in the world and deserve better. And, no fan wants to wait around for four years because the owner of the team made some bad investments.

Now, despite what the Mets are going through I am not suddenly going to root for the Yankees. I’ve been a Mets fan pretty much since they started and have been through these dark periods before.

Hopefully we will be enjoying a competitive team in a couple of years. But in the meantime I want to be able to complain about what’s going on now.

I guess some optimism never hurt anyone.

I’m getting to be a cranky Mets fan in my old age.

-Clare

-Clare

-Clare

Realistically, I can see the Mets winning between 75-78 games this year. But I’m still optimistic that maybe we can catch lightning in a bottle so to speak..

LGM!

Meanwhile, the Braves should also be good. However, their rotation isn’t really any more proven than the Mets rotation. Are Kris Medlen, Mike Minor and Julio Teheran make 30+ starts each ? Will Tim Hudson hold up as he approaches his 38th birthday ? Their offense should be fine and has youth on its side – though as usual – the Uptons are penciled in as studs – while only having performed like that occasionally. And they’re replacing two players – Prado & Bourn – who performed very well in 2012, for a combined 10+ WAR. With likely progress from Heyward & Freeman, I do see the Braves as a 90-win team. But if a SP or two gets injured, they could be in trouble with their rotation depth erased by several trades.

The Phillies have an aging roster without any sort of depth. Unless the stars align, can’t see them winning more than 85 games max.

The Mets are the true ” Wild Card” in all of this. They have more depth than at any point in recent time, especially pitching wise. A lot of players are youngish and partly unproven. Anything between 70 and 85 wins seems very possible.

This meme never really made sense. The financial problem was so complex and multi-faceted, having not only to do with the Madoff losses, but also existing debt due to loans and the new stadium, plus the big payroll. Sandy had neither the expertise nor the responsibility to fix anything other than the payroll, and that was the easiest thing to do. You simply let existing bad contracts lapse, like they have done the last two years. I think he was brought in to run things more cost-effectively, but also to implement a new strategy based on the farm system and building from within, and one also geared to more long-term success. Of course he wanted to win right away, but only within the parameters of the new strategy.

I really don’t buy into this idea that Sandy has no desire or responsibility to win.

I read this moments ago…”As they are expected to finish fourth in their division, the Mets are perhaps looking passed this season entirely.” It was in an article about holding Zach Wheeler down in AAA and it got me thinking.

Fred got himself into serious financial trouble and dragged the Mets organization down with him. Bud Selig – in an effort to get Fred to hold on to ownership – placed Sandy as GM with the sole purpose of fixing Fred’s financial dilemma. He gutted the team (and in the process, yes, he picked up some prospects which you will do when trading a thirty home run guy and a Cy Young winner).

What I was thinking after reading that line was – well if the fans have to suffer through another meaningless season than why should they spend hard earned money to support the team who are already looking past this season?

I mean – it was Fred’s problem. It became the team’s problem and it is now our problem.

Now I hear both Fred and Sandy saying that they’ll get better players if the attendance goes up. To that I say – get a competitive team then worry about the fans coming back…not before!

Of course, Bobby Bonilla it the second highest paid outfielder so ….