Mike's Mets

As tough as winters can be where I live in Connecticut at times, I've often consoled myself that it could be worse. At least the worse that winter has to offer is usually confined to December, January and February.

This year mother nature decided to throw us a curve in the form of a huge October snowstorm, and the resulting ongoing power outages have delayed my intended post-World Series plan to return to blogging about the Mets.

They say the power can remain out here for a week or longer, and right now CL&P, our local electric utility, is unwilling to even commit to estimates as to when power may be restored. So, while I can't say when exactly, I do expect to be posting again as soon as the light come back on.

In the meantime, stay warm and well. Talk to you soon.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 3:41 PM Monday, October 31, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1)

[This post is dedicated to my neighbor Jim -- not just for being a fellow Met fan in a sea of Yankee and Red Sox worshipers, but also for prodding me this week to get off my a** and write something new for this blog.]

I have some thoughts on a variety of Mets issues that I plan to share here in the next few days, but I came across something by Mike Vaccaro in the New York Post yesterday that seems like a good place to start.

Over the past few of years since the Mets 2007 collapse (and subsequent futilities) it seems like these columns on how the Mets have lost their chance to take the city from the Yankees keep popping up. Vaccaro's foray into this genre follows the familiar pattern: the Mets success in the 1980s combined with the Yankees inability to make the playoffs helped turn New York into a "National League Town" for a while, but Yankees success and Mets failures over the past 18 years have turned the city back into what Vaccaro characterizes as a "resounding Yankees town" now.

Moreover, as always seems to be the case in these columns, Vacarro paints a really bleak picture for Mets fans who dream of their team winning back the town from the Yankees:

Bottom line: The Yankees aren't going anywhere, which is far different than cynics who believe the Mets are going nowhere.

Could it happen? Sure it could. But if it does, it will be a far more difficult for the Sandy Alderson Mets than it was for the Frank Cashen Mets. Because soon enough, New York's "National League Town" legacy will have flimsier roots than Lady Gaga.

I always have felt that the primary purpose of writing this sort of column is to feed into the Yankees fan's need to beat his or her chest and feel superior while tweaking the Mets fan's inferiority complex and generally pissing us off. In newspapers these days it's all about attracting fickle readers, and this stuff has proven to work. I used to get annoyed by this, but I really don't any more. My only real problem is to the extent that this silly debate tends to obscure what the reality of the Mets situation really is.

The Yankees have more fans in the New York metropolitan area, and that's not likely to change anytime soon. The Yankees have the spotlight right now, are running their organization fairly intelligently and have tons of revenue to stay at the top. I don't foresee any real chance of a prolonged downturn for them over the next few years. I would tend to agree with Vaccaro there.

The silliness is the idea that being number one in town is the only route for the Mets becoming a successful franchise. The idea of owning the town generates some heat among the fanbases, making it great fodder for talk radio and newspaper columnists. The reality, though, is that the New York area has a huge population and they are not all Yankees fans.

When the Mets have had a good team, they have drawn, even during periods when the Yankees were strong. In 1999 while the Yankees drew just under 3.3 million fans into their ballpark the Mets attracted over 2.7 million into Shea.

In 2000 attendance at Shea rose to 2.8 million while the Yankees fell slightly to just over 3 million. Then, of course the Mets started to suck again. Even so, they drew 2.6 million fans in 2001 and 2.8 million in 2002 before the bottom fell out. They even managed to draw over 2 million in both 2003 and 2004 for teams that lost over 90 games both seasons.

When the Mets became competitive in 2005 the fans came back, over 2.8 million of them. In 2006 the Mets drew over 3.3 million. This was despite the Yankees winning their division both seasons and drawing over 4 million fans. The Mets don't need to "own the town" to succeed. They just need to field a team that's worth watching. There are more than enough baseball fans in this area to support a team that isn't the Yankees.

I wonder what the last 18 years might have been like if the Mets had not been so conscious of competing with the Yankees and concentrated on building a better player development system. How might things be different today if the focus had been on spending money intelligently and winning championships rather than trying to grab the back page of the tabloids?

The Mets problem over the past 18 years isn't the Yankees' success, but rather their own lack of success. If the Mets had been a well-run organization during this time they would have been fine.

Going forward, if the Mets can build a championship squad in Flushing it really doesn't matter if Vaccaro and the rest of the pundits declare New York an American League Town from now until Jesus returns.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 6:23 PM Monday, September 26, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (1)

Despite the reality of rapidly dwindling playoff hopes, key injuries and the trade of Carlos Beltran, many of us Mets fans are still tuning in to watch our team play. The local media has reacted to this in various ways, ranging from ridicule to actual attempts to analyze why we still care.

In his Newsday column from a couple of days ago, Ken Davidoff attempted to analyze whether the 2011 Mets' reputation for grittiness was "Perception or reality".

Davidoff compared the Mets record when they are trailing heading into the seventh and eighth innings this year compared to 2007 (the year of the infamous choke) and 2010. While this Mets team hasn't done quite as well as the '07 bunch -- which did win 88 games, after all -- they are doing better than they did last year. Because of this, Davidoff rated the team's reputation for grittiness as "58% reality, 42% perception".

It was an interesting read and I commend Davidoff for actually writing intelligently on this subject. However, I think he missed the point, at least from my point of view.

Coming back in the late innings of a contest is a beautiful thing, and much preferred to coming back but then losing the damned game. Still, no matter how good you are, any team is going to lose most of the games where they're trailing with an inning or two to go.

What really frustrated me in past seasons, including 2007, was how often the Mets would fall behind by a few runs and fell into a series of bad at bats -- swinging early in the count, chasing bad pitches and swinging for the fences.

This year under Terry Collins and hitting coach Dave Hudgens, there is a better and more coherent approach all times, even when the game isn't going well. Not giving away at bats when you are behind by more than a run or two falls into my definition of grittiness, even when you don't win the game. And it will lead to a couple of wins over the course of a season.

Another thing I like about this team is that they've continued to play well through devastating injuries and the trade of their best player. That to me is more indicative of grittiness than coming back in games, and has a lot to do with why I'm still watching.

Of course, credit has to be also given to the decisions of the front office. They're choosing better replacements for injured players than we've seen over the past few seasons. It's hard to be gritty when your lineup is full of guys who can't hit.

Credit also to Terry Collins, who doesn't make excuses and utilizes his roster better than Jerry Manuel did. I don't whether Collins is personally grittier than his departed predecessor, but his leadership and decision making have contributed to the overall feeling of resilience and grittiness.

All is not perfect however. I'm getting awfully tired of watching Mets teams underperform at their home ballpark. They're six games over .500 on the road, and if they were doing that well at home they'd legitimately be in the wildcard race. Instead, they are seven games under .500 at home. That is a decidedly ungritty number, and we will talk about it next time we post.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 3:03 PM Friday, August 12, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't been able to post for a while, so I'd like to belatedly chime in on the Carlos Beltran trade.

I've always been a fan of Carlos, and I was sorry to see him go last week. Not only will I miss watching him play, but I can't believe (almost) seven years have gone by that quickly.

Most evaluators see the trade of Beltran for high-ceiling pitching prospect Zack Wheeler as a win for Sandy Alderson and company. Some fans are disgruntled by what they see as management waving the white flag on a season where the Mets still lurk on the fringes of the playoff race. They were playing very well until they stumbled over the last 4 games.

There is truth in both perspectives. Wheeler was a nice get, even though he is probably 2-3 years away from any real contribution to the big league club. Given the Mets wouldn't have received any draft pick compensation for Beltran after the season, this was a big deal.

On the other hand, no matter how you might spin it, dealing Carlos was a big offensive downgrade and a blow to their admittedly small chance of living on into October.

I don't think their pitching staff was even remotely good enough to enable them to go on a real hot streak and climb into real contention, but you can never discount the possibility of a playoff run. It would have been a low percentage longshot, but it's happened before. I understand the disappointment, which to some extent I share. They've been a fun team to root for this season, even if they are quite imperfect.

My personal take, though, is that Alderson did the right thing. The Mets system lacks much high ceiling talent, so Sandy has to value an opportunity to acquire some very highly right now. There's no guarantee that Wheeler will pan out, as prospects are always a roll of the dice. Still, I like the high reward that Wheeler's potential represents.

It seems to me that, given the aggressive drafting of high school talent in the amateur draft, Alderson and his lieutenants are playing the long game. This is not an approach that has been prevalent here over the last twenty years, and I'm happy to see it. It's getting more difficult and more expensive to obtain star players on the market. The Mets need to figure out how to develop some of their own.

Having said that, I'm still definitely not in agreement with those who would trade away every asset of value (Wright, Reyes, etc.) in order to stockpile prospects. I'm sorry, but I've spent too many years of my life watching absolutely terrible Mets teams stumble through 90+ loss seasons, and I have no desire to go back there.

If the Mets were a small market team that would probably be their only option in order to eventually build a championship squad, but there is no reason why a large market team couldn't put a watchable team on the field and restock talent at the same time. The Mets might have the most highly paid front office in baseball right now, and all of those high-priced brains should be able to accomplish what Boston was able to do in the past decade without the major league team heading completely in the crapper.

If Alderson sees an opportunity to keep Jose Reyes here past this season on terms that wouldn't kill the Mets' future, then I am in favor of that. I'd like to see Reyes stay a Met, and I trust Alderson to be disciplined enough to not get caught up in any kind of crazy bidding war on Reyes if another team decides to abandon all sanity in an attempt to sign him.

Sure, there will be some I told you so's if the Mets attempt to re-sign Reyes and come up short, but the Red Sox have done pretty well with compensation picks when they are unable to re-sign one of their players.

There are those who are convinced there was a mega-prospect deal out there for two months of Reyes. Maybe they're right, but the Giants would have been one of the strongest potential trade partners for Reyes, too, and that might have cost the Mets a good return for Beltran. We'll never truly know, and I'm not going to obsess over such things.

I know some folks are convinced that the prospects received in potential deals for Reyes and possibly David Wright would be the cornerstones of a Mets championship team down the road. If you feel that way you might want to read this piece on Baseball America's web site. They have a list of all of the prospects received in deadline deals from 2001 - 2010. Check it out, you won't see many impact major leaguers in that list.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of the Mets developing some home-grown stars. They need to be much more aggressive in pursuit of talent. I just don't want to spend the next 3-5 years watching them try to develop players who are unlikely to achieve the level of success that Reyes and Wright already have. I expect a much more nuanced and intelligent plan from that pricey front office brain trust.

My personal preference would be keeping Wright and Reyes as the cornerstones of the Mets for the next several years while continuing to aggressively pursue high-celling talent for the farm system. I don't believe that a decent, watchable club in the short term and a real championship contender in the long term should be mutually exclusive.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 4:59 PM Thursday, August 4, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (4)

I have to confess that I almost never find feature stories written on draft picks worthwhile reads. They're usually formulaic and superficial.

That said, Andy McCullough's long feature on Mets' top pick Brandon Nimmo in The Star-Ledger is very much the exception to the rule. It is very much worth your time.

On a side note, I think McCullough's work is consistently top-notch. I don't have all of the time available I would wish to read about the Mets, so I'm a lot more discriminating on where I spend that time. While there are a couple of beat writers who seem to lean heavily on ginning up fake controversy, McCullough just writes good stuff.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 2:34 PM Sunday, July 17, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was working on another piece for the blog tonifht when I read the news that Frankie Rodriguez was traded to Milwaukee along with cash for "two players to be named".

I was somewhat surprised when I read this. While I knew that K-Rod and his $17.5 million option wouldn't be finishing the season in New York, I figured a deal would happen at or close to the July 31 trade deadline.

The Mets are certainly a notch less competitive going forward with Bobby Parnell and Jason Isringhausen the most likely candidates to take on the closer role.

Parnell has been great in June and July after the rough start, but he's still rough around the edges. Izzy has the pedigree, but it's obvious that he's hanging by a thread physically and has lacked command of his pitches. I'd hate to see his feel-good story ruined by blown saves.

Pedro Beato conceivably could get a look in the ninth inning, too. He's looked good lately like Parnell, but is even rawer as a pitcher. If I had a vote I'd probably like Parnell to get the first shot, but I have to admit I'm not going to be overflowing with confidence when he's trying to nail down a W. K-Rod may have walked the tightrope, but he had a knack for coming through most of the time that I will miss.

No matter who is elevated to the closer role, the bullpen is definitely thinner. Hopefully Taylor Buchholz can make it back at some point. That would definitely help.

It seems unlikely that either of the two players to be named will be anything special. I'd be happy if they got anything of value. The real point was moving K-Rod and his option, and I give Alderson credit for getting it done without drama. It will be interesting to see whether a Beltran deal gets made now or if Alderson waits for the deadline. That would really signal a white flag going up on the season.

On a personal note, apologies for the sporadic posting of late. Things are settling down a little, and I do believe my goal of posting 2-3 times a week in this space this year is realistic.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 1:47 AM Wednesday, July 13, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Joel Sherman had a column in Monday's New York Post citing two unnamed sources that Sandy Alderson is now "leaning strongly toward authorizing a substantial offer after the season to try to retain [Jose] Reyes".

We started the season with most of the local writers, including Sherman, predicting that Reyes would be gone before the trade deadline. Sherman summarizes the prevailing attitude among pundits at that time:

Sandy Alderson was pigeonholed early in his administration as a risk-averse executive who would strongly reject the idea of a mega-contract for any player, but specifically an injury-prone one such as Jose Reyes, who did not have the Mets' general manager's favorite asset: elite on-base percentage.

Alderson warned not to stereotype him, and that decisions would be based on information absorbed during the season.

We should have listened.

I have no idea what Alderson's thoughts were towards Reyes heading into the year, but I always thought they were likely to be more nuanced than the media was willing to acknowledge.

Of course, even if the Mets do make a big effort to keep Reyes there is no guarantee they will be successful. When you let a star player in his prime make it all the way to free agency there's always the chance for some team to come along that is willing to over pay wildly to get him. As smaller market teams are able to keep more of their best players the yearly free agent crop contains fewer real difference makers. The ones who are available can really cash in.

Still, I believe the Mets have a reasonable chance of keeping Reyes. I know there are Mets fans out there who believe that the Mets need to sell off all of their assets and start over. While I agree that the Mets have to dramatically change the way they do business, I just don't buy into anything that radical. A large market team like the Mets should be able to reorganize their priorities without becoming completely unwatchable in the meantime. I'll be back later this afternoon with the second installment of this series where I will offer some thoughts on what a reasonable plan going forward might be.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 2:15 AM Thursday, July 7, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (4)

I was forwarded a link earlier today for Gary Finkler's new sports art blog 7th Inning Sketch. Below is a sample of his work:

I'll be looking forward to seeing more from him. Good luck, Gary!

Authored by Mike's Mets, Posted at 12:07 AM Saturday, June 25, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (0)

Apologies for disappearing for a few days. I've been fighting some sort of summertime flue that's really floored me. I tried three separate times to write a follow-up to my Reyes piece from last week that I finally just scrapped. I just wasn't able to concentrate and it was basically crap.

Anyway, to me the whole Reyes thing boils down to my belief that the Mets have to make some sort of real attempt to keep him, but they don't need to do this at the expense of entering into a foolish contract.

I think something along the lines of five years with a couple of option years based on games played would at least have a chance of bringing back Reyes without exposing the team to extreme risk if the injury bug decides to bite him again. Now there is a chance that some team out there might be willing to go 7 or even 8 guaranteed years, but if that happens then what can you do?

There will be some fans that won't accept a Reyes departure under any circumstances, but I think a decent majority will respect a sincere effort even if it falls short. Still, the Wilpons suffer from a credibility gap with the fan base now, and if they make some silly token effort with Reyes they'll do themselves more harm than good.

I do think you can build a decent offensive club going forward around Reyes, David Wright and Ike Davis (if he ever comes back). Even if the Mets had to go a little lower budget than they would like on the supporting cast for a year or two, I'd still like to see them build around that core.

By the way, I know there are some who ascribe Jose's success this year simply to playing for a new contract, but I don't buy that. Reyes hasn't been healthy nor at the top of his game for the last two seasons, but if we look at the four years from 2005-2008 he was pretty impressive. Average up those seasons and you get:

Reyes is having a great year, but it hasn't come out of nowhere. That kind of offense from a shortstop is valuable.

A lot has been made of the announcement that Reyes doesn't want to negotiate a contract in-season. I don't read much into that. Once the Mets elected not to try to extend Reyes over the winter they lost their chance at any significant discount. I don't blame the Mets for not doing it, but there's no real incentive for Reyes not to find out his full value. I know I would if I was in his place.

Dillon Gee
Gee has been a really pleasant surprise this season, but he finally proved that he isn't going to be perfect.

He'll be an interesting guy to watch as the season wears on. With a kid like him I wonder how he'll react once he goes through a bad stretch. Will he get a little contact shy and start nibbling at corners and falling behind hitters? It's a natural reaction, but he'll need to be a strike thrower to be effective.

Gee doesn't have the margin for error that a pitcher with better stuff enjoys. He seems to have the right sort of demeanor to succeed, but it will bear watching.

The Minaya Legacy
A hot topic of conversation lately seems to be a question of how much credit Omar Minaya should get for the current Mets roster that includes so many of "his guys". I'm not sure why, really. He was the GM from late 2004 through October 2010. Of course many of the current players would have come in under his watch.

I have no great antipathy towards Omar. He certainly wasn't the worst GM this team has had during my years of watching them. For a couple of years he made a lot of smart moves with the major league roster, but then he seemed to get bogged down in believing that the club was always a piece or two away from being a real contender when the holes were in reality much bigger and more numerous.

Omar had some talents, but his failure only emphasizes what a difficult job it is to be General Manager of the Mets. Alderson shows signs of having more vision and discipline than Minaya, which in turn allows those of us who love this team to have some hope. This subject probably merits a more in-depth look at some point in the future.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 4:09 PM Thursday, June 23, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (3)

Note: This is not new content. This article in its entirety has already been published on the Mets Today web site earlier this week. It is reposted here for archive purposes.

While Sandy Alderson had to know the job he was taking on with the Mets would not be easy, I wonder if he understood completely just how difficult it might be.

He must have had some idea of the money problems. Fred Wilpon falling for a Ponzi scheme made the financial picture extremely murky going in. Still, add in a serious recession, poor team performances (with correspondingly disillusioned fans) and stadium debt contributing to a problematic bottom line, and the current Mets finances look downright disastrous.

Meanwhile, fans have been growing more dissatisfied with the Wilpons over the years as the poorly run Mets have become a joke around baseball. The hostility grows further with the perception of fans that the Wilpons' troubled finances will preclude the team from seriously contending to keep the services of free-agent-to-be Jose Reyes.

Heading into the season the media was constantly promoting the idea that Reyes would be traded away by the deadline. The rationale primarily came down to these points:

1. Reyes didn't walk enough to satisfy Alderson's Moneyball sensibilities.
2. Injury concerns would preclude the Mets from offering the 6- or 7-year contract that he will be offered by others, and Sandy doesn't like those long-term deals, anyway.
3. Even if a and b weren't enough to keep them from resigning Reyes, the Wilpon's finances would.

All spring I kept reading one pundit after another telling me that the Mets needed to accept reality and ship Jose Reyes out for the boatload of prospects with which to rebuild. This ignored the tendency in recent years for clubs to resist dealing prime prospects for players knocking on the door of free agency. Mark Teixeira -- a star player in his prime -- only netted the Braves Steve Marek and Casey Kotchman when they shipped him to the Angels in 2008. If Alderson made that sort of a deal with Reyes he would be run out of town.

The conventional wisdom has come around to the likelihood that Reyes will stay in New York through the end of the season. The bigger question now seems to be whether or not the Mets will make a real effort to keep their shortstop beyond this season.

The Post's Joel Sherman, who spent all spring writing that the Mets must trade Reyes, now writes that losing Reyes without making a serious attempt to re-sign him would be a "disaster" for the Mets. The risks involved in signing Reyes to a long-term deal are real, but so is the likelihood that allowing Reyes to walk would solidify the perception that finances were dictating baseball decisions. I think Sherman is on the money here.

It's one thing for a team that plays in small market -- and charges small market prices -- to decide that they just can't afford to keep a popular player. Large market teams just don't have that luxury, unless they're willing to deal with the perception that they're not really trying. Add into this mix the frustration that the vast majority of Mets fans already feel with Fred Wilpon and you could be looking at a real fan revolt at a time when the Mets are desperately trying to convince fans to come back.

Of course, if the Mets go the route of trying to retain Reyes there's no guarantee they'll be able to keep him, particularly if a club out there offers Jose that magic 7-year deal that the Mets supposedly won't consider.

In a column on FoxSports.com, Ken Rosenthal cites a source that the Mets were initially hoping to get Reyes back by offering 3 years, $45 - 50 million, but realize that there is no chance of that happening. Still, at least according to Rosenthal, they're not willing to go 7 years -- making the question whether there is a compromise somewhere in between that will satisfy everyone.

My personal preference is for the Mets to keep Reyes, but not at any price. I don't think it would be prudent to offer a contract like the 7-year, $142 million deal that Carl Crawford signed with Boston. On the other hand, though, I find it hard to believe that Reyes would have to settle for something considerably less as a 28-year-old star player playing a premium defensive position.

Maybe the Mets could get Reyes to accept option years at the end of the contract based on games played that would offer them some sort of protection if Reyes' legs don't hold up. There's nothing like that in Crawford's contract, but he had a better record of durability than Reyes.

To me, the biggest potential danger for the Mets wouldn't be a failure to keep Reyes if another team offered a contract that was really outlandish, but rather the perception that they weren't really serious in their negotiations.

I think back to the Vlad Guerrero fiasco back in 2004 when it seemed the Mets made a weak attempt to negotiate with Guerrero when it became obvious he wasn't going to get a huge deal from anyone. He wound up signing with the Angels for 5 years, $70 million, and the Mets wound up looking like foolish cheapskates with their token offer.

In that case it would have been better if they just declined to negotiate. Frankly, if they're not willing to be a little creative in their dealings with Reyes they should just let him go. It will be a big PR hit, obviously, but a dragged-out process where it's clear that they're not being serious would only do more harm.

In my opinion, the Wilpons really are at a crossroads. Their financial situation is precarious and their popularity with the fans is quite low. Most fans understand that the Mets have to invest their money more wisely than they have over the last couple of decades, but ownership can't afford to be seen as merely pinching pennies at the expense of trying to win.

Winning back Mets fans will be a tough go got the Wilpons, but if they mishandle the Reyes negotiations they might find whatever good will they have left is gone.

That's my opinion -- what do you feel the Mets need to do with Jose Reyes? Please post your thoughts in the comments.

Authored by Mike Steffanos, Posted at 3:29 PM Friday, June 17, 2011 | Permalink | Comments (2)