It boggles my mind at the jubilation I continue to see in comment threads or on Twitter over this myth that the New York Mets are spending again. Strike up the band?
Sorry, I don’t think so. At least not yet.
Save your money and hold off on the party caps and noise makers because this ship of ours is far from the peacefulness of smooth sailing and still navigating through choppy waters.
While I’ve applauded the signings of Curtis Granderson and Bartolo Colon, I also understand that they were merely replacements for the losses of Marlon Byrd and Matt Harvey.
I wasn’t a big fan of the Chris Young signing, as $7.25 million seems like a high price tag for a player who profiles as a part time player. Plus I’d bet anything Cesar Puello could bat batter than .200 and hit more than 12 home runs if he were given a full shot in right field. I would have preferred kicking in another $5 million and getting Stephen Drew instead and I wonder if that $7.25 million in flexibility we lost is why the Mets are hesitating? But I digress…
What does spending mean to you?
If you have a $90 million budget, and you get rid of two players who accounted for $30 million of that budget and replaced them with three players making the same $30 million instead, is that your textbook definition of spending?
Or did you simply reallocate your funds and hopefully did so in a more productive way?
You see, I can’t seem to crack this nut.
I just can’t share in this growing excitement that the Mets are spending again when I look at the current payroll projection and it tells me our payroll will be less than the year before for the third consecutive Opening Day.
I can’t ignore that the Mets keep pushing their outstanding loans further back into a still cloudy Mets future because they apparently don’t have the money to make their debt payments.
I think it’s great that they did reallocate the Bay/Santana contracts, but could you have imagined the uproar if they didn’t? Especially when small market teams are spending that $25-30 million every team received form the new MLB National TV deals… Wonder where the Mets’ $25-30 million is going? Want to venture a guess?
I was directed to a comment Sandy Alderson made that said the Mets are one of the top five spenders in baseball again after this offseason.
Whoa… Wait, what…Really?
How does that explain a bottom fifteen projected MLB payroll and possibly even bottom ten?
I guess spending must have a new definition now. I always thought that when you spent ten bucks you had ten dollars less in your pocket. But maybe I’m just warped that way.
