Sandy Alderson, J.P. Ricciardi, John Ricco and Paul DePodesta were all on hand to host a Hot Stove Talk with Season Ticket holders on Wednesday at Citi Field.

The Mets tweeted many of the responses which I thought was very cool of them and a few of them shed some light on a lot of things on the minds of Mets fans these days.

All General Managers tell their fan bases that they are committed to winning whether it’s in major league baseball, or any of the other professional sports leagues. What I found more interesting was his comment, “We want to have franchise players.” That’s what’s going to set Alderson apart from his predecessors. I believe we may already have two potential franchise players already in the system in Brandon Nimmo and Zack Wheeler, and while the systems has other nice talents in Jeurys Familia and Matt Harvey, none of them have those high ceilings that you have in Nimmo and Wheeler.

J.P. Ricciardi also hit on something that will pave the way to a future Mets dynasty – developing pitching. It’s kind of sad really that since 2005 the only pitchers currently on the team that were drafted by the Mets are Mike Pelfrey, Jon Niese and Dillon Gee who I see as bottom of the rotation pitchers with the exception of Niese who could eventually perform as a steady middle of the rotation starter. Three pitchers in seven years and not even a number two type pitcher to show for seven drafts. Maybe if the prior regime had understood that the key to winning lied in developing pitchers, we may have fared a better fate in 2007-2010. The good news is that all of that is now gone and we are heading in the right direction.

Other items of interest were as follows:

  • Sandy on Wright: We are not actively seeking to trade David…I don’t think that David is going anywhere.
  • Sandy on wall moving in: There will be a different mindset for players, a lot had given up on the idea of hitting it out.
  • John on Johan: He’s feeling great. He’s going to come in ready to pitch and ready to compete.
  • Sandy: “We are going to be fun to watch next year”

Lets Go Mets!