After Tuesday night’s 11-1 loss to the Cubs, Mets GM Sandy Alderson spoke with reporters and mostly discussed the comments made by Fred Wilpon in interviews with both Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker this week.
“I think everyone was surprised by the comments. But there’s nobody who is more passionate about the Mets, has more empathy for the players, than Fred. I think that we all get caught up in the emotion from time to time and perhaps say some things that on reflection probably were not well chosen. But I know he’s reached out to the players involved and has talked to most, if not all of them, at this point. It’s time for us to move on.”
When he was asked to respond directly about the quotes in SI regarding the possibility that the 2012 payroll fall below $100 million dollars, he deflected and wouldn’t respond saying that he hasn’t read the article.
When asked to forget the article and simply respond to if he would be comfortable operating with a payroll of $100 million dollars or less next season, without hesitation he said, “no”.
The most interesting question came when he was asked about the quote that Jose Reyes would not get a a Crawford sized deal.
“I wouldn’t read too much into the article that hasn’t already been read into the article. I don’t think anything is pre-judged. There’s no way for us to predict what will or will not happen with respect to Jose or anybody else. So let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Actually, we didn’t really learn anything from Alderson other than the fact he is clearly frustrated with the situation, and is not looking forward to having payroll slashed to $100MM or less.
You really have to feel for Alderson, Terry Collins and the players for having to deal with all the endless prodding by reporters today who were only looking for someone to slip up and give them some salacious comments to go to press with. Fortunately, that didn’t happen.
For those of you who thought the comments would have little effect on the team, think again. If you watched the game, you saw a team that looked like they had the life sucked out of them.
Before the game, Collins addressed the team and was quoted as saying, “Don’t get (bleeping) distracted. We’ve got to (bleeping) focus on winning (bleeping) games.”
After the game a somber Collins said, “Maybe it’s out of our system now,” Manager Terry Collins said. “This is very uncommon and uncharacteristic of the way we played and the way we’re going to play.”
I hope you’re right Terry.
