Speaking with reporters at Citi Field on Thursday, Sandy Alderson said he has room in his budget to acquire an impact player and that he is scouring the market for an outfielder.

“We have the ability to take on money,” he said, “even though none of you will believe me.”

Well Sandy, the reason we don’t believe you is because you speak for a couple of crooked and inept owners who have done nothing but lie to this fanbase for the better part of two decades.

How many times have you yourself been duped by them? We all know you were blindsided by the shock waves of the Madoff scandal. You get paid to cover for the Wilpons, we don’t.

Did you forget when you said you had a $100 million budget in 2013 and 2014 and came away with $85 and $79 million payrolls instead? Guess what, Met fans didn’t forget.

And how often have you told us that you had money to spend at the trade deadline and didn’t. Nobody expected you to bring in a rental but you said that you could make trades for pieces that would “help the team in the long view.” You did nothing… NOTHING…

So there are plenty of reasons for why nobody believes you, the least of which is the fact that you’ve done nothing yet to address the lackluster offense you put together.

For crying out loud, you have John Mayberry and his .170 batting average batting cleanup today against Clayton Kershaw. Are you freaking kidding me? All of Omar Minaya’s pitchers are batting higher than the guys on your bench. What a joke…

Where are all these big bats you were gonna bring in once the young pitching was ready? Gimme a break…

In June you said you had the resources to add one big bat… Wake up, Sandy… next week is August.

It’s common knowledge that you’ve already balked at Ben Zobrist and Justin Upton, and please don’t tell us that it didn’t have anything to do with money, because we both know that it did. It’s always about the money with this team!

Oh and another thing, it’s pretty apparent that you and I have completely different definitions of what adding a big bat to the payroll means.

In your Wilponian world a big bat is a player who makes $3-4 million dollars. However, in the real world a big bat is someone who makes in excess of $10 million or $15 million dollars.

So when you say we probably won’t believe you, it’s with pretty freaking good cause. It’s because you have let us down time and time and time again. How can we ever take you at your word. How can we ever take anything you or your bosses say at face value?

You’ve proven to be quite adept at having a fire sale and selling off major-league assets for prospects. But as far as I’m concerned you’ve done a lousy job adding any major-league talent to this team.

By the way, you’re 0-for-4 with your offseason moves this past Winter. (Cuddyer, Mayberry, Torres, Blevins) Not one of them have panned out, they were all busts.

I’ve got to tell you, I’m worried that you are incapable of bringing in the pieces we need to take this team to the next level. Prove me wrong.

I’ve defended you for 4 1/2 years, but I’m completely done with that. You owe me… I want to see some results and I want to see them now. The time for big talk is at an end,  and the time for action is now.

So enough with all the snark and enough with all the jokes. It’s time to get serious already and do something. And guess what… seeing is believing.

The post Hey Sandy, Are You Freaking Kidding Me??? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

After months of hearing players, coaches and management boasting about how the Mets are heading to the playoffs, complete with team issued t-shirts emblazoned, Take the Damn Thing, team captain David Wright says enough is enough.

“Last time I checked, the team that talks the most doesn’t get any more wins,” Wright said. “Now it’s a matter of getting the work in and starting to practice, going out there and playing good baseball, and that started today.”

Wright tells the Bergen Record that he doesn’t want all this Mets talk to backfire on them.

“It’s one of those things where — I’ve been guilty of this, too — where you get confident in this group of guys and you’re asked a question and you answer it honestly, and we’ve kind of talked a big game this off-season,” Wright said.

“It’s now a matter of shutting up and going out there and playing. We’ve already done a pretty good job of, I think, publically expressing what we expect from ourselves this year, but it’s enough of the talk. Now it’s a matter of going out there and preparing for opening day.”

While I’ve enjoyed hearing the Mets talk confidently about heading to the playoffs, I agree with Wright that it’s time to stop boasting and start focusing on winning ballgames on the field.

Without sounding patronizing, I must admit I’m proud of David Wright for finally saying what most of us have been thinking. This is the mark of a leader.

The post Featured Post: Wright Urges Team To Stop Talking And Start Doing appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Lucas Duda fully understands the lay of the land in Flushing these days, and knows his hold on an everyday job at first base in 2014 is tenuous at best.

While he feels he has done enough to be considered as an every-day player by Sandy Alderson, he understands the decision ultimately lies in the hands of his GM.

“I really don’t have a say in the matter,” Duda told Mike Kerwick of the Bergen Record. “But I feel like I’ve played well. If that’s not good enough, then it’s not good enough.”

Duda has clearly looked more comfortable at first base, and last night Keith Hernandez remarked that his footwork at first base has made great strides. “You should know,” quipped Gary Cohen.

Manager Terry Collins acknowledged Duda’s improvement, but remained non-committal about the 2014 season.

“I don’t know what’s going to take place this winter,” Collins said. “I really have no clue. We know Lucas can play first base. We’ve seen it. We saw it two years ago when he first got here. He was very good over there and swung the bat very well.”

I’m not so sure the Mets will attack first base this offseason unless they swing and miss at adding a bat in the outfield. That’s according to my baseball people. Relax, just kidding. 🙂

The Mets have plethora of first base options to choose from and I’d have no problem implementing some sort of a platoon that includes Josh Satin against left-handers and one of  Daniel Murphy, Lucas Duda and Allan Dykstra against rightys. Ike Davis is as good as gone and will likely be traded to parts unknown.

Adam Rubin of ESPN New York, asked four scouts who they would prefer between Davis and Duda and it was a split-decision.

Scout 1: “Duda. Ike has not shown the ability to make adjustments with his batting stance or overall approach. Duda at first base has improved, and he looks more relaxed.”

Scout 2: “Tough call. I’m not thrilled with either, but would probably take Davis, because of the power potential and defense at first base.”

Scout 3: “Duda. He is better project than Ike.”

Scout 4: “Ike Davis. He has hit 30-plus homers in the major leagues and is much better defensively.”

I’m not doubting Davis still has some upside, I just get the feeling that he won’t realize that potential on the Mets – if he ever does fulfill it.

The post Duda Says He’s Done Enough For Everyday Job, But Does Sandy Share His Opinion? appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

David Wright spoke with reporters and is on his way to Port St. Lucie to begin his rehab, the team announced.

As he’s said before, Wright fully intends on returning this season. “It’s pretty much against everything I believe in to shut it down,” Wright said about shutting it down for the rest of this season.

Wright has been on the disabled list since suffering a strained hamstring earlier this month while running out a single.

Once he gets to Lucie, Wright will start tracking pitches and taking swings, before playing in minor league games next week as a designated hitter.

Terry Collins said there is no set timetable for his return and that Wright’s progress will determine when that happens.

“It’s a process and one thing David realizes is he’s not going to take a chance to have this become chronic, where every year we’ve got to police it.”

“He’s going to do it the right way and, when that time comes, he’ll be back here. Is it going to be seven days, 10 days, 14 days? I have no idea. He’s the only one who can determine that.”

I’m looking forward to Wright’s return and watching a game with some semblance of a major league lineup again. (Joe D. ducks)

Original Post

According to Mike Kerwick of the Bergen Record, David Wright took ground balls on the infield this afternoon at Citi Field, another good sign that he is continuing to improve and make progress.

Wright, who has been on the disabled list with a hamstring strain since August 4th, told reporters that he expects to return at some point before the end of this season. He said he hasn’t had any setbacks and is rehabbing gradually by doing strength exercises for his legs and increasing his flexibility. He’s also been working the upper half of his body by throwing and hitting off a tee to stay in shape.

I’m not suggesting rushing him or playing him at anything less than 100%, but only saying that if he’s healthy why shouldn’t he be back on the field and playing?

It appears that he is nearing a rehab assignment at Port St. Lucie, and that’s great news for sure.

I also have an ulterior motive for wanting to see a healthy Wright return….

I want to see how the Mets handle the Wilmer Flores, Daniel Murphy and Ike Davis situation. (Joe D. rubs his hands together with an evil grin.)

I want to see how this will force the Mets’ hands….

I have a hunch it will give all of us a hint as to who stays and who goes this offseason.

Hurry up and get well, David…

The post Wright Says He’ll Return This Season, Heads To PSL For Rehab Games appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

According to Adam Rubin of ESPN New York, Shaun Marcum is expected to throw two innings of a simulated game before the weekend as he attempts to get ready to comeback from a neck injury and bicep tendinitis.

If all goes well without any setbacks, Marcum could appear in a rehab game with Single-A St. Lucie one day next week. Depending on how that goes, Marcum could then be activated from the disabled list and make his Mets debut in the rotation.

Marcum was acquired to replace R.A. Dickey’s 200 innings in the rotation, however he’s been plagued with assorted injuries and missed most of spring training and started the season on the DL.

Original Post 4/7

If Shaun Marcum’s eight-year Major League Baseball pitching career should end sooner than later, no worries, he could always get work playing Cavity Sam.

His medical record is morphing into the legendary patient profile of Hasbro’s Operation board game. With each passing season new ailments  – and new body parts — pile up and pile on Marcum’s resume. Google Marcum and you can also read about his arm, elbow, shoulder, bicep, calf and, as of last Tuesday, neck. His career has been interrupted by a series of pulls, strains, stiffness, tears, inflammations, impingements and tendinitis.

If you can find Marcum’s medical history via Google, his chronic health issues certainly came as no surprise to the New York Mets, but it is frustrating to a team in desperate need of healthy arms. Johan Santana is gone for the season, and probably forever as far as the Mets are concerned. Frank Francisco is on the disabled list; so is Jenrry Mejia. The Mets have $35.5 million in pitching payroll unable to perform. Jeremy Hefner started Friday against the Miami Marlins, despite suffering a bruised elbow on his pitching arm. Sunday afternoon the Mets will hand the ball to Santana’s replacement, Aaron Laffey, who was bound for Las Vegas just three weeks ago. To make room for him, prospect Jeurys Familia was optioned to Triple-A Las Vegas.

Marcum missed the entire 2009 season after having Tommy John surgery. He spent the most of the May, June and July 2012 on the sideline too. Marcum has been DL’d for a variety of injuries during his career.  Milwaukee Brewers blogger Jim Breen fired a warning shot in May 2011 when he stated:

(1) Marcum utilizes stressful mechanics on the mound, which suggests arm/shoulder injuries are likely in the future.

(2) Marcum relies upon a repertoire that does not profile well for success as he reaches his mid-30s.

The Brewers are consciously limiting the pitch-counts for Marcum … because the organization understands the health risk and are attempting to protect their asset for the entire season. Am I about to offer a three-to-five year contract extension at market value to a pitcher that has all the warning signs of another major injury around the corner? Not a chance. That would be foolish.

Then, on the day the Mets signed Marcum, an MLB executive told the Bergen Record, “He’s a blue-collar gamer, but he’s hard to count on for any length of time.”

Not much has changed since Marcum signed with New York. He’s been fighting injuries since he arrived in Port St. Lucie for Spring Training six weeks ago. On March 20, Marcum flew from Florida to New York for an MRI on his shoulder. Doctors reported the Mets pitcher suffered an “impingement” and was given a cortisone shot for inflammation. The team, and Marcum, shrugged it off. On March 31, the Mets officially placed Marcum on the 15-day disabled list with “bicep tendinitis.” The team reported it was not a new injury. On April 2, Marcum cut short a bullpen session, complaining of neck pain. He returned to New York for another MRI which revealed “inflamed nerves” in his neck. The Mets medical team treated Marcum with “trigger-point injections,” but there is still concern whether or not the treatment will remedy what ails the Mets pitcher.

In hindsight, Marcum’s entire career has been a chronic pain in the neck.

The Mets signed Marcum to a one-year, $4 million deal, a modest payroll investment for a major league middle-of-the-rotation starting pitcher — unless your the New York Mets — whose payroll has been shrinking since Bernie Madoff. The Mets, under the direction of Sandy Alderson, have been cutting payroll, trading veterans and stockpiling young talent for more than three years now. The organization has been extremely conservative in the free agent market so why sign Marcum, a pitcher with chronic health problems? They had nearly four million reasons to not sign Marcum.

It’s not as if there was a shortage of free agent starting pitchers available. Kyle Lohse, Edwin Jackson, Anibal Sanchez, Joe Blanton, Jason Marquis were all available assuming, based on their choice, the Mets were looking for a right-handed, veteran starting pitcher not asking for Zack Grienke money. All are durable and innings eaters. Instead, Alderson waited until the end of January before finally committing to Marcum — and all the baggage that comes with him. It just doesn’t make sense.

The post Marcum To Pitch A Couple Of Simulated Innings Today or Tomorrow appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Bob Klapisch of the Bergen Record is hearing that the Mets are ready to announce Josh Lewin as the replacement for Wayne Hagin in the WFAN radio booth for the 2012 season.

Klapisch says that the former Texas Rangers broadcaster would be signed to a one-year deal.

It was Neil Best of Newsday, who first reported that Lewin had emerged as a leading candidate for the job.

Lewin, 43, has called games locally and nationally for several teams, most recently for the Texas Rangers who elected not to bring him back after a nine year run. He has also done play-by-play for the Orioles, Cubs and Tigers.

The New York native was considered a polarizing figure while with the Rangers where it was said “you’ll either love him or loathe him, but you can’t ignore him.”

I’m looking forward to the change.

The post Mets To Announce Josh Lewin Will Replace Wayne Hagin In Radio Booth appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

He writes that “draft picks have been the lure for this front office” because they are “confident they can rebuild the Mets’ farm system through smart scouting and drafting.”

As I said before, I’m all for that, but still wonder if that by itself is a complete road map to victory. Ultimately it will still take free agents to at least fill in the remaining pieces of a championship caliber team. Since the death of the reserve clause, there has never been a World Series team built solely on the backbone of a farm system. Free agents always have and always will seal the deal for any team’s post season aspirations. That takes money – a resource that is in very short supply these days in Flushing.

The old saying goes, “It takes money to make money”, which is very true especially in a baseball sense. But with the Mets decidedly determined to cut spending and slash payroll by what could be 40%, how can they possibly make money?

To answer that one must first consider the primary source for a team’s revenue – their fans. The more fans you have, the higher your revenue streams – a fact that is undeniable. But how do you maintain and increase the flow of fans to the ballpark? It’s simple and it’s the number one rule in show business and let’s not kid ourselves, baseball is a show business. You have to give the audience a show worth paying for… A product worth watching again and again. Do that and you have a blockbuster hit, fail and you have a big budget flop.

Now on to the draft pick strategy that the front office has undoubtedly embraced. The last time I checked, I was pretty sure these three head honchos now running the Mets, got their street creds in Oakland, where they are currently having a huge fire sale in advance of Black Friday. Here is a franchise drenched in this philosophy of drafting smart and winning, and yet they are a shining example of how prone to failure that can be. Draft picks are a crap-shoot, much like throwing money on a black-jack table in Vegas. You may get lucky once or twice, but the odds are stacked heavily against you – and the house always wins.

There are plenty of other Oakland’s in the league, mostly forced to focus on the farm because of financial restraints, and Lady Luck hasn’t been kind to any of them either. I doubt she will be so kind to the Mets.

Has anyone in the current regime, particularly Paul DePodesta who is charged with overseeing this great undertaking, ever drafted a player as good as Jose Reyes, the one they intend to replace with their draft compensation?

I recently learned that the Brandon Nimmo pick in last June’s draft was more a product of Chad MacDonald than Sandy Alderson and Paul DePodesta combined. “It was his pick all the way”, a person with knowledge of the situation told me. MacDonald has since resigned after less than a year with the Mets and joined the San Diego Padres. Hopefully, Nimmo will prove to be a nice parting gift, but we have about five years before we get that answer.

What am I leading up to here? I’m not really sure. I’m very skeptical of this whole process largely because it only works 10% of the time and relies more on luck than any inherent knowledge of baseball analytics.

The greatest scouts in the game are great because they spotted one or two future stars in their career among hundreds of flops. As I said, some teams are forced into this draft-only philosophy not by choice, but because of low-revenue streams and smaller markets. I guess I never thought that the Mets would ever find themselves in this situation. But here we are.

The post The Downside To Upside and the Downsizing of the Mets appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Bob Klapisch of the Bergen Record on Reyes situation:

Reyes’ handlers are disappointed by the lack of initiative on the Mets’ part, but can they really be surprised? With the team’s mounting debt – including the $25 million loan from Major League Baseball that has yet to be repaid — the 2012 payroll will be reduced from $140 million to $110 million. Alderson indicated that figure could actually dip under $100 million before opening day. If so, that would represent the leanest war chest since 2004.

Without Reyes, “the Mets would be looking at a disaster” according to one talent evaluator, who thinks it would take at least four to five years to develop enough in-house talent to compete in the NL East. It’s a grim future, but the more immediate question is: If the Wilpons were intending to be this passive about Reyes’ free agency, why didn’t they just trade him in July?

My one and only criticism of this front office was not trading Reyes for a huge return in July, especially knowing that their chances of re-signing Reyes were slim to none.

For some reason they put aside their action plan and listened to the “Don’t Trade Reyes” fringe. Now they’ll get a couple of picks that are years away from the majors if they get there at all, instead of a couple of major league ready talents that would have made an immediate impact. I wonder if all the fans behind that movement understand they did more harm than good?

I’m not going to pretend that losing Reyes won’t set this team back several years, it will. But it didn’t have to be this way.

The post Reyes’ Agents Disappointed By Mets Lack Of Initiative appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

According to Bob Klaspich of the Bergen Record, the Mets have talked to the Yankees about K-Rod. 

As expected, the Mets are going to at least see what they can get by putting K-Rod and possibly others out in the market, which is fairly understandable.

The post Mets Making K-Rod Available In Trade Talks appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Were any of you wondering what transpired the other day in Atlanta, when Daniel Murphy tried to steal third base and was out by a mile?

You may remember an enraged (or was it embarrassed) Terry Collins taking Murphy into the back of the dugout as soon as trotted off the field with his head down.

Here is what transpired according to a source that told Bob Klapisch of the Bergen Record.

Daniel Murphy, standing on second base with none out, staring at a three-run deficit, attempted to steal third — a monstrously bad decision that ended in failure.

Terry Collins watched in quiet rage as Murphy was thrown out — waiting while his player collected himself and returned to the dugout — before exploding.

“What the [bleep] are you doing?” Collins shouted, according to a person who’d been made aware of the exchange.

“Mike [Nickeas] was up, [Mike] Pelf[rey] was on deck; I was trying to get something started,” Murphy responded.

“So now you’re the manager? I was going to pinch-hit [for Pelfrey],” Collins shot back. “I’m the manager, not you. Get your head out of your [bleep].”

Wow… He really let him have it, but I bet Daniel Murphy never makes a stupid decision like that again.

Think about all the repeated gaffs and blunders of the last two seasons under Jerry Manuel and imagine how differently things would have been had he demonstrated that same kind of in-your-face and immediate response.

The post One Thing Is Clear; Terry Collins Is No Jerry Manuel appeared first on Metsmerized Online.