Mets general manager Sandy Alderson appeared this evening on the Mike Lupica show on ESPN Radio. One of the better interviews I’ve hear from Sandy recently.

Acquiring Staring Pitching

“Starting pitching hasn’t been a focus for us yet. It’s not to say it’s not important,” Alderson said. “We’ve just been looking at other things. So, for example, the Capuano market didn’t even materialize until January or so of last year. But we’ll have to make some decisions in that area over the next handful of days.”

Market For Closers & Relievers

“If you look at the market, you’ve got arguably two or three higher-end guys (Madson, K-Rod and Francisco Cordero perhaps). You’ve got a couple just below that. And then there are some other pitchers who probably are not closer caliber. With the top-end guys, there are a couple of things: One, I think there’s a demand for more than one year. And, secondly, there’s also an unwillingness right now to drop down below what had been their expectations over the last month, probably since (Jonathan) Papelbon signed. … The problem with a top-end guy is a number of different things have to happen. It all kind of has to fall into place. And the question is whether you want to wait that long.”

Trading Top Prospects To Help Major League Roster

“We’re not going to compromise the top end of our player-development system,” Alderson said. “If you want to look at the top four or five prospects in our system, they’re not going anywhere. Beyond that, we’ll talk about it. But I’d be surprised if we take many of our prospects and turn them into very experienced major league players. I don’t think that’s where we are right now.”

“I think that fans understand we have a general direction we’re taking. I think most fans, understanding that general direction, would be shocked if we traded one of those three, four, five guys. So I don’t think I’m disclosing anything that wasn’t otherwise understood by people. ”

Moving Toward 2012

“Are we one player away? I think we need more than one player to assure ourselves of success in 2012. The fact is no team, apparently, is one player away. It didn’t work for some teams last year that thought they were that close,” Alderson said with a smirk, potentially talking about the San Francisco Giants and Carlos Beltran.

“We continue to work at it,” Alderson said. “We’re talking to free agents, talking to clubs, meeting again with certain free agents and clubs. So we continue to work toward it. I can’t predict we’ll do any one thing or more than one thing or nothing at all. It’s hard to predict at this point.”

I love the comment about teams who thought they were one player away and I have no doubt that was a right hook aimed at the Giants who traded their top pitching prospect for Beltran. Wheeler is now happily the Mets top pitching prospect and Beltran is now an ex-Giant. Just listening to this man talk about his vision is exciting to me. Fifty years and this franchise has never had more than a three year run has a solid contender and here we have someone who understands that and is working toward changing that. The culture of checkbook general managing is at an end. The era of trading 4-5 prospects for an aging player is no more. Let the good times roll.  🙂