It took us all winter to recover but when April 07 rolled around, we were ready. Sometimes you learn and become stronger by losing. 86 was an amazin’ year, but lets not forget the fact we lost two close pennant races in 84 and 85. We’d learn, we’d grow, we’d be hungry. So obviously, 2007 would surely be our year. But it was not to be. After the Mets historical collapse, blowing a seven game lead with 17 games left, it was devastating. Choking is for OTHER teams: The Cubs in 69, the entire division in 73, Boston in the 10th inning. But still, we dusted ourselves off and looked forward to next year.

But 2008 brought more heartbreak. For the second straight year, our Mets missed the wild card by one game on the very last day of the season.

That period was undoubtedly the most heartbreaking, gut-wrenching three year span in team history. But man oh man, what I wouldn’t give to be in that situation again. I view those years as a great movie…that just had a bad ending.

The Mets fan base is an interesting bunch. Since our inception, we’ve never expected much. Look, if we wanted to win every year, we’d be Yankee fans. The difference between us and them is simple: Yankee fans feel anything less than the post-season is a failure. On the flip-side, Mets fans are generally content finishing at .500.

We don’t ask for a dynasty. We don’t hunger for 20 straight division titles or however many the Braves won. Cardinal fans have seen their team competing year-in and year-out since the 1930′s. San Francisco waited over fifty years for their first title. Yet, they have always had solid fan support.

But us? We just ask for competitive baseball. Just give us a good team. Not great. Good. Fun to watch. And maybe an actual pennant race thrown in once in awhile for good measure. That’s all we ask. Yet, we can’t even get that from the Wilpons and Alderson.

Those of us who witnessed the Seaver/Koosman days always hold it close to our heart. But think about it. In the 8 years from 69 to 76, we got just 1 championship and 2 pennants. Yet, the sweet cherished memories are recalled fondly. We talk about the 80’s as if we were the Yankees of the 1920’s. However, we only managed one World Series and one division title. The reason these years are so special for us is NOT because we won a string of championships, NOT because we dominated the league year after year. Rather, we were good. Competitive. From 69 through 76 and from 84 through 90, we knew we at least had a shot.

Those feelings of hope are now long gone. 162 games of Mets baseball is no longer fun and enjoyable, but seems more like six months of torture. In the mid 80’s, even if the Mets trailed, you could just FEEL that we’d win. It was not a matter of IF we’d win, but HOW we’d win. Over the last few years, even if the Mets are leading late, we expect the worst. We anticipate the bullpen blowing a lead or someone making an error that opens the floodgates.

Yes, we’d love to be Champions…but we’d be content with just being good and respectable. Me personally? I’d love to go through the pain and heartbreak of 06, 07, and 08 all over again. It sucked at the time. But it was nice to be oh-so-close. Ask yourself: Would you rather see the Mets lose the Wild Caed in game 162 or basically being out of it by Memorial Day.

Sandy Alderson’s first season was 2011. Since that time, our attendance and our wins have gone down while disgust and contempt has gone up. It was just 2007, not really that long ago, where the Mets were considered the powerhouse of the NL East. For once, WE were the team to beat. Yet, since Alderson has taken over, not only have we not been competitive and not only have we fans become an embittered and sour bunch, but we haven’t even played a meaningful game after the All-Star Break.

Last season we surprised some people by staying in the thick of things for the first half. But we then faltered badly. This season has been a monumental failure almost since Opening Day. I mention about the good ol’ days of 06-08. Hell, I can even refer to the good ol’ days of 2012 where, at least for a little while, we had hope. Hope– something that doesn’t exist anymore.

To Sandy, Fred and Jeff—we’re not asking for a dynasty or to dominate the league for 5 straight years. Just a decent product, a team we could support and feel excited about. That’s all. We’d be happy with that. But as we are in the midst of season number three with Alderson, not only does a championship appear nowhere on the horizon, but even respectability seems like an impossible dream.

As I said earlier, 06-08 was like a great movie that just had a bad ending. Now, with the current state of this team, we are just a bad movie. Period. If the 2013 Mets were a movie, I’d walk out of the theater after 20 minutes and ask for a refund.

Edgardo Alfonzo

As a batsman, Fonzie developed in almost textbook fashion before the delighted eyes of fans. Coming up, he had a reputation for a good eye at the plate, some evidence of moderate power, and the ability to make contact. Following his major league debut in 1995, the young Venezuelan worked diligently to refine his game both in the field and at the plate. By 1999, he had blossomed into one of the league’s premier middle infielders, hitting over .300 and slugging over .500 for the first time in his career. His peak game, and likely the peak offensive game by any Met, came in late August of that year as the Mets were heading toward a post-season berth under the guidance of Bobby Valentine.

The team was in Houston for a series against the Astros during their last go-round in the vast dimensions of the Astrodome. The following year, the team would move to the bandbox originally known as Enron Field (or “Ten Run Field” to fans for its propensity to produce high scoring games) and now dubbed Minute Maid Park. In stark contrast to the home run haven the Astros now inhabit, the ‘Dome was a pitcher’s dream and a slugger’s graveyard. Not only was the field characterized by expansive proportions, the roof insured that the very atmosphere itself was endowed with what batters swore was a deadening effect. But it was in this most unlikely of settings that the Mets’ version of the Fonz chose to put on perhaps the greatest display of slugging in team history.

1999 was a bumper year for runs scored by the Mets as they pushed 853 across the plate, good for 5^th in the league and still the club record for a single season. Even 40 year-old leadoff batter Rickey Henderson was having a renaissance year, batting over .300 for the first time since in four campaigns. On the night of August 30 of that year, the team would rack up a run tally that was impressive even by the standards of that era, blasting the Houston squad by a score of 17-1.

The key figure in the onslaught was Edgardo Alfonzo who began his evening by rocketing a solo home run his first time up to give the Mets an early lead. After the Astros were retired in order in the bottom of the first, the New Yorkers erupted for six additional runs in the next inning with Alfonzo contributing a single and a run scored in the process. He then homered in his next two at-bats registering a two-run shot in the fourth and another solo round-tripper in the sixth. After collecting his second single of the game in the eight amidst another rally, he came up for a final time in the ninth. Urged by his teammates to shoot for the elusive 4-homer mark, he banged a shot off the right field wall for a run-scoring double, missing another 4-bagger by a matter of a few feet.

All told, Fonzie had recorded 6 hits in as many at-bats including 3 HR’s and a double. In the process he set Mets club records for hits, runs, and total bases in a game as well as collecting 5 RBI. Naturally, his performance set off the stat freaks at Elias who determined that the only other player to accomplish a comparable feat was none other than Ty Cobb some 74 years prior when he also recorded a 3 homer, 1 double, 2 single game against the St. Louis Browns.

Fonzie and Cobb, Cobb and Fonzie. A rather exclusive club with one member a Met.

You know what’s scarier than an alien invasion? I think the Borg have taken over statistical analysis in Major League Baseball. There is a collectivism in the approach to team statistics that would make a Borg Queen blush. The famous Billy Beane paradigm where they try to build Jason Giambi by incorporating the sum of his parts into several cheaper players, a Frankenstat-Giambi if you will, has resulted in a tendency to look at team offense in the aggregate more so today than at any other time in the history of the game. The extent to which front offices have applied these attempts to build statistical by-products into their offensive attacks would make Mary Shelly proud.

On a more theoretical plain, when looking at an aggregate (the macro-level) you invariably dilute the significance of the exceptional (the micro-level). Would you miss the significance of a Vladimir Guererro in your lineup as a result? I should hope not, but by focusing on collective stats such as OBP (because they run up pitch counts and wear out opposing starters), you may miss the individual contributions of exceptional performers. For instance, if you look at a Mariner’s mediocre at best offensive performance as a whole you might miss the remarkable achievements of Ichiro Suzuki. Does it matter if in the end the team reaches the same statistical milestones? Well, that’s what I’d like to try and answer.

What if you took two teams with comparable statistical outcomes, but one reflected a more balanced performance across all members of the lineup while the other had a few players who performed poorly and a few who were truly exceptional “superstar” types. Which is better? The end result, the aggregate, is more or less equal, in terms of runs scored, OBP, slugging, but the two differ in how they got there.

Lets look at two teams with some comparable aggregate statistics.

With a few exceptions these two teams are fairly similar, in fact they are ranked in succession offensively on fangraphs. Team 2 has a slightly higher OBP and walk rate while team 1 has a slightly higher AVG  and a few more runs. One major difference, however, is payroll. Team 1 has a payroll of $82,203,616 with an average salary of $2,935,843, while team 2 has a payroll of  $55,244,700 with an average salary of $1,973,025. Team 2 ended up with some remarkably comparable aggregate statistics for 27 million less in annual salary.

Some of you may have already guessed at the identity of team 2 by their payroll, they are of course Alderson’s old team the San Diego Padres, and they reflect the kind of on-base presence we’re used to with Alderson’s teams.

Team 1 is a playoff team that packs a whole lot more star power, they are the Cincinnati Reds. They sport a perennial MVP hitter at the center of their lineup not to mention some major power threats. The aggregate effect of their talent is more concentrated in a few truly exceptional players and is less the blanket product of a trickled down organizational principle.

Teams historically have attempted to piece-meal collective benchmarks into their lineups that they could not otherwise afford were these accomplishments a product of individual players.Teams like the Twins, the A’s, and the Braves have spent modestly, drafted wisely, and have developed consistently serviceable major league players, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch. These three teams have made the post season a whopping 33 times since 1975, but for all these appearances they have only 4 World titles between them. Seems like a statistical anomaly when for much of that time they were competing in a 4 team tournament doesn’t it? Good but not good enough in the post season — lacking those exceptional (and expensive) talents that might have pushed them over the top.

The problem is that lots of guys in the minors have a good eye but there aren’t that many Miguel Cabreras. Sure you can draft and develop with an eye on clogging the bases, and this approach might even get you to the playoffs, but once there who would you rather have come up in a tight spot against Matt Cain, Yonder Alonso and his .348 OBP or Joey Votto? Yonder might carry you during the regular season when you’re going up against league average more often than not, but I think you want Votto in there if you’re facing Roy Halladay in a deciding game. Institutionalized directives such as Alderson’s OBP bias and Beane’s desire to spread around dismembered Jason Giambis are all fine and dandy until the poop hits the fan and you end up staring down a Justin Verlander fastball. When the aggregate is equal, exceptional talent is the tiebreaker … the player who can actually hit a Verlander fastball out of the park or who can actually strike out Cabrera.

Exceptional talent must be met with exceptional talent if you want to win the big prize. There is simply no way around that. The Padres played “Alderson-ball” right up there with the Reds, they walked, they got on base, they hit, they even scored a similar number of runs, but in the end they sure didn’t win as many games. Why? While the Padres were able to perform according to many of the tenets of Alderson’s offensive philosophy, they didn’t have the exceptional abilities that the Reds have in other offensive domains, namely slugging and power skill sets that are considerably more expensive to procure. 

What does all this mean for the Mets? Building from the farm is great, being more selective and improving plate discipline system wide is terrific and may win lots of games. During the regular season an aggregate effect spread across a given lineup may wear down lesser opponents more often then not, but if you want to win big you have to augment with free agents possessing those harder to come by skill sets. If we ever wish to reach the promised land again our owners are going to have to open their wallets and spend big on the exceptional, those select few who can put you over the top.

How cool is that Tron graphic from Kelly? I asked her if she would make me a cool graphic to go with my post and in a matter of nano seconds she emails me this. All Mets sites feature great posts to read, but to have artwork like Kelly’s mixed in with all of our rants and raves really adds a different character and flair to MMO. Thanks Kelly.

After many great posts from my fellow bloggers here, I thought it was time to give you my take on the Carlos Beltran trade and what he meant to me as player and person, and close out what has been a phenomenal Carlos Beltran Appreciation week at MMO.

Like Ed and Kelly, Beltran was by far my favorite Mets player on the team. It’s been that way since 2005 when he joined the team. He replaced the void that once belonged to Mike Piazza who had been my favorite current Met until he moved on.

It was easy for me to root for Beltran because as a Met fan, I’ve learned to love rooting for the underdogs. After the rude welcome to the New York Mets by gasbags like Joe Beningo and Mike Lupica, and the ensuing mass-negativity that would follow, I knew Beltran was going to be my guy. With the deck stacked against him from jump street, plus a new big contract, and then the weight of a fanbase starving for another post season on his shoulders, it was easy for me to view Beltran as the underdog and thus began my personal journey between me and Tron.

I still remember the day when Omar Minaya was introduced by Fred Wilpon, and Minaya laid out his vision for bringing the Mets back to the post season. He said it would take five years to get back there, but he obviously didn’t know at the time that he would be the winner of that offseason’s Carlos Beltran sweepstakes. Apologies to Yankees and Astros fans.

Things got off to a shaky start for No. 15. as unrealistic fan expectations, several injuries including a devastating outfield collision with Mike Cameron, and a never-ending bashing in the media, all contributed to a less than stellar 2005 season. During the last game of that season, one look at Beltran’s face and you could see he had just been put through an emotional wringer – he looked like he had aged ten years. The smile on his face was gone. Welcome to the Big Apple, Carlos.

What a difference a year can make… By the time Opening Day in 2006 rolled around, Beltran-Bashing had reached a fever-pitch in New York. Radio and cable-TV sportstalk blasted Beltran daily - calling him out for being soft, for being overrated, and even for being Latino, and fans were buying into it in droves. It was an ugly time for being a Mets fan, especially a Met fan like me who had just got his brand new Carlos Beltran jersey that Christmas. I couldn’t believe he was being treated and portrayed so poorly.

It didn’t take long before some of those haters were jumping back on the Mets bandwagon as after a slow April start (4 HR, 11 RBI), Beltran delivered a huge month in May (10 HR, 26 RBI) and was now in the top five in about a dozen different offensive categories in the NL, and well on his way to an MVP caliber season. Together with Carlos Delgado, they formed a powerful tandem and after one year of rebuilding, the New York Mets were now in the thick of a post season run and were the top team in the NL East. Beltran would hit a franchise best 41 home runs with 116 RBIs, 127 runs, 38 doubles and 18 steals in one of the best all around seasons in Mets history. He would also win his first Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards and finish 4th in the MVP voting that season.

Beltran led the Mets to their first post season since 2000 that year, and for all the grief Mets fans have given him for that called third strike in game seven of the NLCS, the fact of the matter is that Beltran outplayed everyone in that series. The Mets won Game 1 of the NLCS 2-0 as Tom Glavine and Jeff Weaver locked horns in a pitchers duel. All the scoring came courtesy of 2-run blast by Carlos Beltran, who also made a tremendous play in the outfield – doubling off Albert Pujols at first base with a laser to Delgado.

In Game 4, with the Mets down 2-1 in the series, Carlos Beltran powered the Mets to a 12-5 thrashing of the Cardinals to even the series. Beltran was on base all five times going 3-3 with two walks, four runs scored and jolting another 2-run homer, his second in the series.

Then there’s Game 7 – that’s the game the Mets lost 3-1 with the only run from the Mets coming from Carlos Beltran who doubled and scored in the first inning. Despite a record breaking season, and an NLCS in which he posted a 1.054 OPS in 27 at-bats, Beltran was singled out for simply making the last out in a hard fought series. Never mind his 8 runs scored, his 3 home runs, and his being on base 12 times in seven games, blame Beltran.

In the next two seasons, Beltran would go on to rack up 73 doubles and 60 home runs while driving in 224 runs and scoring 209 in 2007-2008. He also stoled 48 bases and earned two more Gold Gloves and a Silver Slugger. But the stigma of that Adam Wainwright curveball was simply too much to overcome for most Mets fans, and sadly his heroics were always met with a subdued calm instead of an exuberant celebration. Sadly, that said more about many Mets fans than it did Carlos Beltran.

In 2009, a misdiagnosed knee injury led to what might have been Beltran’s best season as a Met. When the Mets finally shut Beltran down toward the end of the first half, he was leading the National League with a .338 batting average and a .423 on-base as well as doubles and extra-base hits. Unfortunately, what the Mets diagnosed as simple knee sprain and treated with a cortisone shot, ended up being a serious bone bruise. He would eventually miss more than half the season and although he tried to come back at the end after the Mets treated him with just rest, he would sit out the last remaining games and was prescribed more rest as treatment during the offseason. Bad idea.

The 2010 season couldn’t have started any worse for Carlos Beltran as the Mets organization unfairly attacked him for seeking a second opinion on his knee that had now swollen to twice it’s size and was a constant source of pain. The Mets went ballistic when Beltran proceeded with surgery to repair it even when it was proven that their own medical doctor gave the approval, and that GM Omar Minaya admitting he knew about it and wished his centerfield luck the night before. The Mets would spend the rest of that season portraying Beltran in a bad light at every chance they got. He now not only had a fanbase and a belligerent New York media railing against him, but the Mets owners and front office too, and they used their network SNY to do a daily hatchet job on Beltran all through the end of the season. It didn’t really matter to Beltran, and while it must have hurt him deeply, he never uttered a bad word about his team, the fans or the media, and he continued to pursue every opportunity to help the community here in New York or abroad in his hometown of Puerto Rico with many different charitable events, many of which MMO was honored to cover.

When the 2010 season finally ended, so did the tenures of Omar Minaya and manager Jerry Manuel. Sandy Alderson and Terry Collins were tabbed to replace them. but the biggest story of the offseason wasn’t them, it was Carlos Beltran and his knee and whether or not he would move to right field to help the team. For months this debate fueled sportstalk shows on radio and cable TV until Spring Training arrived and Carlos Beltran would shut all the pundits and talking heads up. Beltran walked into the new managers office and said he would voluntarily play right field much to the shock and ultimate adoration of Terry Collins who lauded him for selfless act.

Of course than the conversation shifted to how many games will Beltran play a week, and how many days can he play until his knee would give out again – just the usual trash journalism. But as has always been the case, Carlos Beltran would once again shut up the always ignorant media and go on to post an MVP caliber season and actually lead the team in games played. Yes, you read that right. Carlos Beltran had become the Mets’ Iron Man.. So lets get rid of him.

The writing was on the wall and Beltran was now a marked man. With every swing of his mighty bat, his value continued to soar, and this under-appreciated Mets all-star was writing his own ticket out of town.

The truth is, Beltran needed to go. Not for all the reasons that have been regurgitated countless times on blogs, radio and TV, but because it really was time for Beltran to shake the dust of this town off of him and go someplace where his talents and his good nature will be more appreciated.

New York took a great player, chewed him up and spit him out, and yet they never dulled his shine. The experience never affected his ability to give back. Even in leaving, he did so with class. He thanked the Wilpons, for what I do not know. He thanked the front office who was bent on getting rid of him from day one. He thanked the manager who I know will sincerely miss his right fielder. And of course he thanked all his teammates who were all saddened and shocked to see him go. His final words?

“The Mets did the right thing. I don’t blame them. They tried to do what they felt was best for the team. I’m happy for them”

Yes, the Mets were being selfish. Not Beltran… He was being what he always was. A class act whose mark was left in the Mets record books, and whose spirit touched everyone that was privileged enough to play with him. You don’t believe me? Just ask the players.

Farewell No. 15.

This concludes our week-long tribute to Carlos Beltran. I want to thank everyone on MMO who contributed, and of course I want to thank all of you for reading and interacting with us.

Under his proposal there would be not one but two wildcards from each league. The teams with the 2 best records that did not win a division would face each other in either a best of three round or simply a ONE game playoff to decide the wild-card, although Selig is leaning towards the best of three format. The rest of the post-season format would then remain the same as it is now.

Opponents of the one game playoff feel that it’s not fair to have a team work so hard to get to the post-season and have it come down to one game.

Personally, I think this is the craziest idea from a commissioner who has many crazy ideas. Baseball is a game of tradition, of history and I am a traditionalist. Leave it alone.

In the NFL, 12 out of 32 teams make the playoffs (37%). In the NBA and NHL, 16 out of 30 teams (53%) make the playoffs. In Baseball, now it’s only 8 out of 30. That’s 26% and that is plenty. If Selig’s proposal is adopted, 1 out of every 3 teams would make the post-season. In the AL, this new format would mean 5 out of 14 teams would advance. Or to put it another way, the American League would play 162 games over 6 months for the sole purpose of eliminating 9 teams.

Unlike Football, Basketball and Hockey the Baseball season is 162 games. I think that is long enough to determine who should advance and who shouldn’t. A post-season berth should be earned, should be won and not handed out like candy.

Over the last several years, based on final standings, 88 wins would get you a 2^nd wildcard. Since 81 wins is 500 should a team get a chance at a World Series by simply being slightly better then mediocre?

Although a move such as this would have to be approved by the players union, Michael Weiner, union head, says the players are open to discussing a longer post-season. On the flip-side, however, the season would remain 162 games and would not revert back to 154 as it was prior to 1961. Clubs would not be willing to lose TV revenue and ticket sales by shortening the season 8 games.

With worsening weather and another round it’s possible the World Series could be played at Thanksgiving! I can hear it now: I’ll have some more white meat, please pass the Cranberry Sauce and come on, that pitch was outside.

We all love baseball. We cant get enough of it. But does the season really need to be 9 months? Will pitchers and catchers be reporting 3 months after the final out of the World Series is made? And would FOX and/or TBS be willing to realign their TV schedule for even another week?

In all fairness to the commissioner, he has made some improvements during his tenure. April 15^th is Jackie Robinson Day, expansion into Phoenix and Tampa Bay, the Expos were set free from Montreal and we now have a stricter steroid policy, albeit a bit too late.

But the negatives of Selig’s time have outweighed the positives. For a guy who cancelled the World Series, for a guy who sat back and did nothing for far too long while players doubled in size and records were not just broken but obliterated, for a guy who had an All Star Game end in a tie and who came out with the ludicrous idea that the winner of the All-Star game gets home field advantage for the World Series, this could be the craziest idea yet.