I feel compelled to pen something before the end of this year, although it is a year that we would all like to forget as Mets fans. We have had almost nothing to brag about during the off-season as fans of the Metropolitans except that we have returning players that may help us before the All Star break and that is not even a guarantee, i.e. Johan Santana. We did sign Ronny Paulino, no disrespect meant to Mr. Paulino.
When you look at the money spent on this team, they have guaranteed contracts of $121.67 million for the 2011 season so far and in comparison, our rivals to the south of us in Philadelphia have $138.178 million in committed money and have a stud lineup and pitching staff. What went wrong?
Spending money in a haphazard way has done nothing to make our team better; we signed Jason Bay for a ballpark that requires speed and pitching. We signed Luis Castillo, who on a good Sunday afternoon in August is playing on one leg, and I don’t even want to mention Ollie Perez.
Maybe it is time to trade some of the “cornerstones”. I frankly would trade Wright and re-sign Reyes to a long term deal, you can always get a hard hitting third baseman, but a game changer like Reyes, in Citifield? Who’s better?
Just take a look at this link and you will see that we signed guys who are simply disjointed pieces and that there was probably no plan. The plan may have had something to do with appeasing a fan base, because the Yankees always appear to spend big.
In business when you have problems like this, you fire the CEO and start over, that is what is going on in Flushing and we have to give Sandy Alderson some time and we are all looking forward to the 2012 season. Oh, I will watch the games this upcoming season, I always do, maybe some of the youngsters will help us through the season with hope for the future, but at this point it is all about the money and there is no more to spend.
I don’t know if the plight of the Mets has anything to do with Bernie Madoff, but it is sad that we as Mets fans support our team and the owners have decided to support an incompetent front office too long without a plan. It would appear that the owners current plan is to turn the team over to another steward, who I hope knows what he is doing. We do have an All Star team in the front office for sure and we have spent more money on front office personnel than we have on our rotation and bullpen.
I look forward to the future; let’s hope that the front office has some great New Year’s resolutions, because the future is so bright you have to wear shades. Remember when someone tells you it’s not about the money, it’s always about the money.
Let’s Go Mets.
Written and contributed by Dennis Savitsky.
