Putz

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Let's not lose sight of the fact that the front office's mistake wasn't how they handled Putz' injury, necessarily, but that they made that trade in the first place.

Putz by the way is welcome to bite my ass.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Hi, I'm taking a break from my great apologetic thesis to say, if you want to hang 'em for miscommunication with Beltran, then hang 'em high, but I'm filing this under "Disgruntled Former Employee Sucking up to His New Employers."

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Let's pretend for the sake of argument that Putz had been lying* to make nice with the new boss/get back at an old boss that he felt embarrassed him. A vast range of people-- including some very reasonable, not terribly reactionary people-- found this "lie" plausible on its face, despite the fact that it hinted at a decision-making process that seemed to run counter to basic business protocol-- due dilligence-- never mind baseball trades in which your organization is taking on large amounts of salary obligations (the Mets took on about $9 million in such obligations, include Putz's buyout).

If you think the biggest contributors to that impression have been biased members of the local New York media or overzealous fans or vengeful ex-employees, then you're nuckin' futs.

*He did not do so; the Mets put out a press release confirming the basic facts that Putz asserted.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'm not sure what I'm being accused of, but I'm not fucking nuts.

I realize we're in what Bill Simmons calls "The Tyson Zone" --- that anything stated, suggested, implied, or insinuated about the Mets is plausible, but that which is plausible isn't necessarily true, so I search on.

*No they didn't. They confirmed some of his assertions, not all. And I'm not saying the fact that the Mets didn't confirm them makes them untrue, so I'm not nuts in this regard either.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

I realize we're in what Bill Simmons calls "The Tyson Zone" --- that anything stated, suggested, implied, or insinuated about the Mets is plausible, but that which is plausible isn't necessarily true, so I search on.

Not exactly a first for owners, I suppose... but if the 'Pons aren't there yet, they're edging perilously close for such apparently boring dudes (as compared to, say, Steinbrenner, Schott or Head Clipper/Awful Human Being Don Sterling).

THAT would be a fun Hall of Fame.

[Centerfield]

That was kind of the point of my post. It's plausible that JJ is lying and that it's just sour grapes. And I'd be much more inclined to think so if it were the only incident. But throw in that it mirrors what Beltran is saying, and what Delgado said last year. Tony B, the Reyes doctors, it's all a big giant mess. You'd have to think that there was some truth to it based on how much shit is floating around (and how consistent the message is behind the shit).

And to the point that they admitted they did not do a physical before going forward with the trade...why not? So what if you have medical records, or that he pitched with it that year. Does it hurt to go take a look at it yourself? Maybe it got worse. Maybe the records are unclear. It's mind-boggling that you pick up a guy with a bone spur in his elbow and think "No need to look at it. I'm sure it's fine."

[Guest themetfairy]

It goes back to the acquisition of Victor Zambrano without an independent medical evaluation. Granted, it was a different GM at the time, but not a different owner.

Trusting the other teams' medical evaluations of potential players seems foolhardy.

[Valadius]

In my mind, Jeff Wilpon = Jim Dolan. That's all I need to say.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Allen Barra is neither a Met hater nor a hack. From the Village Voice:

Jockbeat Mets Doctors Doing a Heckuva Job, Apparently By Allen Barra, Tuesday, Feb. 2 2010 @ 2:10PM ?As if we didn't know by now, something is wrong -- drastically wrong -- with the Mets front office and the way they're handling their players. All the fuss over Carlos Beltrán's surgery and management's indignation over not being informed might have been written off as a failure to communicate. But the current travesty involving reliever J.J. Putz can't be swept under the tarp. According to John Harper in today's Daily News, Putz says, "It was a mess from the beginning ... I never really had a physical with the Mets, I had the bone spur [elbow], and it never got checked out by any other doctors until I got to spring training, and the spring training physical is kind of a formality...It [the bone spur] was bugging me through April, and in May I got an injection. It just got to the point where I couldn't pitch.'" Here's the capper: Putz now regrets allowing the Mets brass to talk him into pitching with a bone spur, which eventually required surgery anyway. "[i learned] that it's my career, and when you know something doesn't feel right, and they want to take little sidesteps to do something and just wait and wait and wait, you've got to get it taken care of instead of trying to prolong the inevitable." Putz learned what Carlos Beltran already knew and what every professional athlete should know: it's always "my career" and it's always the athlete's responsibility to consult a personal physician and not allow the team to influence that decision. Awareness of this fact dates at least as far back as 1995 when Red Sox player Marty Barrett won a $1.7 million malpractice suit against Red Sox team physician (and part owner) Arthur Pappas. Pappas misdiagnosed Barrett's knee injury and gave him the wrong surgery which, Barrett successfully contended, brought his career to a premature end. Pappas's dual roles as team physician and owner, Barrett's lawyers argued, constituted a conflict of interest. In point of fact, though, Pappas's role as part owner of the franchise had nothing to do with it: What Barrett should have understood (and his agent should have told him) from the outset is that in any and all situations a team physician is likely to make a medical decision that is most beneficial to the team -- and that usually means getting the player back in the lineup as quickly as possible rather than looking at the long-term picture. And in the era of free agency, the player might not be around long enough to make it worth the team's while to consider the long-term picture. Note to the Players Association: Until the Beltran and Putz situations came up, it's been years since the question of conflict-of-interest surgery has been an issue. Maybe the players need to be reeducated on what constitutes their own best interests.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/02/mets.php

[Guest Edgy DC]

Fucking Putz pops off again. He loves the professionalism of his new team, rips the chronic and pervasive dysfunction of his old team, and says their reasons for losing go way beyond injuries. Blah, blah, blah. Enough with this guy.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Fucking Putz pops off again. He loves the professionalism of his new team, rips the chronic and pervasive dysfunction of his old team, and says their reasons for losing go way beyond injuries. Blah, blah, blah. Enough with this guy.

[metirish]

Fucking Putz pops off again. He loves the professionalism of his new team, rips the chronic and pervasive dysfunction of his old team, and says their reasons for losing go way beyond injuries. Blah, blah, blah. Enough with this guy.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I haven't been following links because I have work to do and I don't want to go down any rabbit holes and get lost, but I watched the interview last night and I was surprised at how little was there. A bunch of leading question and awkward phrasings between Putz and Chet Jockwarmer, where they were seeming to say the opposite of what they meant to say.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Plenty of open questions remain.

• Is not doing a physical as a matter of policy after a trade typical for most teams or just the Mets?
  
• Were the examinations the Mets cite as perfunctory as Putz seems to claim?
  
• Does it matter? (The Mets knew he had bone spurs, we knew it, and he knew it.)
  
• What's he talking about with the "blown out" elbow? --- some sort of allusion to a misdiagnosis he claims he got when they did examine his elbow, but he's not clear at all on the timeline. The reports don't mention this and I think this should be the bigger angle, but I think his story is just too hard to extract from the interview and somebody needs to call him for confirmation.

I think their real failure is that they traded for damaged goods, knew it, and didn't treat him that way. That last appearance they scouted for Seattle came after two days off and was only his eighth appearance in September.

[Guest Edgy DC]

J.J. plus a little perspective.

J.J. Putz: �No Hard Feelings� for The Mets By TYLER KEPNER GLENDALE, Ariz. � There was a sight here on Monday that Mets fans had hoped to see often last season: J.J. Putz pitching a scoreless inning. He did it for his new team, the Chicago White Sox, who signed him for $3 million in December. Putz was one of many injury casualties for the 2009 Mets, undergoing elbow surgery to remove bone spurs on June 9 and missing the rest of the season. He finished 1-4 with a 5.22 earned run average in 29 games, a bitterly disappointing line for the Mets, who traded seven players to acquire him in a three-team deal with Cleveland and Seattle. �I have no hard feelings with the Mets,� Putz said Monday. �If anything, it was just frustrating, and I felt disappointed I wasn�t able to contribute the way I wanted to.� Putz said it was �like a bomb went off� with the Mets last season, and used words like �weird� and �bizarre� to describe the team�s constant stream of injuries. He talked about the experience in a January interview with Comcast SportsNet, noting that the Mets did not give him a physical before the trade. A physical is not standard procedure for making trades, but Putz said that when he talked to Comcast, he did not know that. He had just heard that a former teammate, Brandon Morrow, had undergone a physical before his trade to Toronto. Since Putz had never been traded before going to the Mets, he thought a pre-trade physical was routine. In any case, Putz seems happy now. He lives in Peoria, Ariz., just up the road from Glendale, and is part of a set-up relief tandem with Matt Thornton, his former Seattle teammate and a fellow Michigan native. Thornton and Putz worked out with the trainer Brett Fischer all winter, eating a strict diet of prepared meals that has helped Putz lose 25 pounds. He said he gained weight at the end of last season, when he was not pitching, and he now weighs between 248 and 251 pounds. He said he weighed 260 when he pitched for the Mariners.

[ashie62]

Indian burial ground

Oh hell..he was hurt when the Mets gottem

history

[Valadius]

Why do all of Ashie's posts read like some kind of haiku?

[ashie62]

Why do all of Ashie's posts read like some kind of haiku?[/quote:11j3c2tv]

Valaduis, I am slow witted middle aged man...Being a diehard Kinks fan probably doesn't help