Omar in the past seems to make a pitch read the other side and move on if he thinks it will drag on.

That is what I think happened here.

So Castillo returns. I am ok with that.

I still think we should get Paulie back. I was watching SNY and they seem to agree.

I think Gotay is gone in a trade..

What I said is that they treat SNY as a separate business and will not add payroll based upon revenues from SNY.

As for the lux tax, they have had plenty of chances to get a guy that would have put them over that level. Just a week ago they could have made a bid on Arod. They could have figured out a way to put him on 1b if they wanted to get him.

Someone also said that finding talent is a crapshoot. The Mets must have never had the dice in their hands, b/c for 46 yrs we have never had an MVP, only 1 cy young winner, and I think only a couple ROY and only 2 WS winners. Even by chance you would think in 46 yrs the Mets would have more than that to show.

I’d like to believe that the Braves and Yanks and now the sox did it through some good evaluation and not just by chance.

We are the second team in the City and we act like the second team.

And by the way the cheapskate Marlins have 2 WS flags in a decade, two more than we have in the last 2 decades.

Perhaps you are right about the reasons we do not go after the talent we need.

I hope you are wrong.

I hope that it was a considered decision last year where the breaks didn’t go our way and now that the fans are upset and the organization does not seem to be able to offer major leaague talent that is ready now they will change gears and trade the 2 birds in the bush for one in the hand.

Dave

I hope that made sense, because it seems like I rambled a bit.

The supposed experts, however, believe pelfrey is only a reliever; not a front of rotation guy, while Mulvey is projected to be a #3-4 SP. That is not a good sign for Omar. of course the expers believe F Martinez is going to be great and he is an Omar guy too. Time will tell if Omar can pick young talent.

And since this FO/owners don’t want to spend giant sums of money they eed to develop some from w/in.

Here is an example of where you wonder if Omar can pick the right guys. Pelfrey was his pick and from I’ve seen he needs more seasoning to command his off speed stuff and someone needs to get it into his head that he needs to not be afraid to throw strikes. Hard to say if he will overcome these issues.

If we get a #1 type pitcher ( or even one that is close ) what that does besides solidifying the rotation generating stability and the sense/hope that if you lose a couple of games that we will win this one ( most recently Pedro was that guy before he got hurt ); it also gives the pen a rest. As we saw last year the pen got tired. I forget the numbers but at one time in the early part of the season our pen was top 3 in the league or majors in terms of era, effectiveness. My take on that is that besides players playing well and all they were fresh. It also helped that Smith was on fire.

In the second half many of our starters fell off a cliff. El Duque had his usual stint on the DL, Maine – after an MVP start – had major issues , could not win games, could not last 5 etc. Ollie also had his issues for a month or so ( I know I had both on my fantasy squad and took a mjor hit in many catg – wins/innings/K/era ). Not to beat the dead horse but at the end of the day our own Tommy G was the most consistant throughout the whole season. Yes he had issues leading up to 300, but you have to expect that. Once the proverbial monkey was off his back he went back to his usual effective self.

My point is in this long winded reply is that if we get a real stud pitcher it solves 2 things:

1) Solidifies rotation creating stability/wins/etc.
2) Saves the pen – They actually get a rest during the season.

If you get one guy like that and Maine and Ollie repeat last year what you get is at least for a month or so you have 60% of the games where your pen pitches 1 or 2 innings. That means when you may need them in the dog days of summer or in the stretch run they ain’t dead.

And you don’t even have to change ( which we may not do much of because of the contracts ).

Dave

The money issue I have w/the wilpons is that they keep the parts of the baseball operation separate from one another and won’t spend profits from say SNY on the team payroll. it would be interesting to know if other sources of money hat will be coming in like the 20MM for naming rights (CitiField) or the 30MM for MLB.com are considered “baseball operations”.

Only money from the true baseball operation (tickets, concessions, parking) goes to the team. This is different from the yanks who use money from YES to bolster the team payroll. At least this is how it has been reported.

Plus, it has also been reported that the wilpons won’t go over the lux tax threshold b/c selig hates that teams (yanks, sox) spend so much (hence the tax in the first place) and they don’t want to ruffle the commisioner.

Of course it is their money and their business and they chose how to run it. As a fan it is frustrating to know that there could be more spent on the team if they wanted to do it.

And when you are spending more than any other team in the NL, you don’t have much of a leg to stand on to make complaints.

That is why everytime someone ssys sign Liily or a Silva I get concerned it might happen and if it does and the guy stinks, we will be stuck watching him for several yrs b/c the wilpons don’t ever eat salary. The ex for far this yr is Castillo.

But on the other hand they won’t, in general, go after the top talent b/c it costs too much. It’s not a recipe that lends itself to long term consistent winning unless you develop w/in. That is where Omar concerns me the most-can he develop talent w/in-the jury is still out.

Re: Gints

The coaches job is on the line.

They have a new defensive coordinator who brought in a new scheme. They replaced the old cb’s with one who was drafted this year. A no name RB has helped them win and the incumbant who replaced Tiki is doing well.

The QB seems to be playing better so far.

But mostly I think it is the defensive scheme and the coordinator.

I don’t think it translates to baseball well.

Willie came in a few years ago and emphasized defense and fundamentals. Hustle all that stuff he did as a player.

The team as a whole plays sound baseball. Some players have issues, but the team in the spring works on the details and seems prepared.

The issue as I see it with the Mets is our pitching is weak. We do not have the horses. Strategy can’t help here. They worked a plan and in the last month the horses died of exhaustion.

That is why I want a good pitcher who can go 7+ every 5th day. Hopefully Maine will be more consistant this year and not get tired again. He only pitched 1/2 a season last year.

Ollie has his annual issues with focus and control and staying within himself. If Pedro can come back this year and pitch a whole season even only going 6+ that would help, but we need a #1 this off season.

Pelfrey/Humber/Mulvey won’t help with that this year. The only thing they can do is put pressure on the pen. We do that already with all of our starting pitching.

Dave

Assuming you are correct Scoop, then the question is do the owners want to field the best team possible or not. It seems they want to field the bargain basement team, in which case we as fans should return Shea to its half empty state. When the turnstiles don’t click the Wilpons want the best unril….And if they don’t want the best the GM should leave otherwise I have to blame him…..
More importantly the GMen are in pretty good shape for the playoffs. They tried last year to show the Mets how to choke and the Mets perfected the art. Hopefully the GMEN won’t try it again. Anybody gonna be in Giant Stadium Sunday? But notice the Giants made some changes. New strategies on O and D. Using all the defensive ends at the same time, to try to hide their hideous bullpen, I mean secondary, dealing with their strengths, much more varied passing set ups. Anybody notice that from the Mets yet. We’ll see if they follow the Giants again or not.

slop, is the govt afiard to spend your money? If you have kids are the afraid to spend your money? Omar is not afraid to spend the wilpons money. He doesn’t own the team. He makes recommedations and the wilpons say yes or no.