MFYs and their stinking good GMs.

[Guest metsguyinmichigan]

That's a horrible article. He gives a lot of love to a lot of people who have never won anything.

I'm not saying Omar doesn't deserve some criticism. But No. 26? Below the Nationals??? He's landed some big free agents, and his teams have won a lot of games. Everyone has bumps in the road. Marchmant's been a Mets cheap-shot machine lately.

[Ceetar]

I traded nine to eleven prospects this offseason,

How fucking smart can he be when he can't remember exactly how many prospects he traded in the last four months? Isn't it the GM's job to keep track of such things?

Later

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

That's a horrible article. He gives a lot of love to a lot of people who have never won anything.

I'm not saying Omar doesn't deserve some criticism. But No. 26? Below the Nationals??? He's landed some big free agents, and his teams have won a lot of games. Everyone has bumps in the road. Marchmant's been a Mets cheap-shot machine lately.[/quote:2z8j214t]

I get where you're coming from, MGiM. But whether a GM's "won anything" is hardly the be-all/end-all of general-manager performance. Rizzo hasn't presided over a half-decade-long PR and operational shitshow that seems to actively lie to both fans and the press, and he has had a fairly prudent offseason (although, to be fair, so has Omar... by his standards, anyway) during which he has seemed to have a decent sense of player valuation (which Omar has generally not displayed).

Omar's a good baseball guy-- he still seems to have a good-to-great eye for projectable talent-- and seems a more-than-decent human being. Regardless of what the team does this year, it's difficult to argue that he's been a good manager, or even an average one.

[Fman99]

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[Guest Edgy DC]

If you mean "manager" as runnng shitty press conferences and not getting on top of a renegade lieutenant and not givng people more reason to be confident in the medical staff, I agree.

As far as evaluation of players and what to invest in them, I think he's had some successes and some failures and is comparable to a lot of guys judged ahead of him.

And while I'm completely prepared for an underwhelming season, I absolutely love the restraint he's shown this offseason.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

If you mean "manager" as runnng shitty press conferences and not getting on top of a renegade lieutenant and not givng people more reason to be confident in the medical staff, I agree.[/quote:5i9arb2b]

For the most part, yep.

As far as evaluation of players and what to invest in them' date=' I think he's had some successes and some failures and is comparable to a lot of guys judged ahead of him.[/quote:5i9arb2b']

I would counter that while some of his moves seem to have "worked out" in an eventual cost-benefit analysis (the Santana trade-- kindasorta-- being the biggest one of them), that isn't necessarily indicative of a proper understanding of value. Or perhaps he's just proved extremely eager to overpay for players he's identified as desirable, time and again.

And while I'm completely prepared for an underwhelming season' date=' I absolutely love the restraint he's shown this offseason.[/quote:5i9arb2b']

Same here. But that's at least half due to the fact that the prospect of Omar making aggressive moves in trade has recently proved somewhat to very worrisome.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I would counter that while some of his moves seem to have "worked out" in an eventual cost-benefit analysis (the Santana trade-- kindasorta-- being the biggest one of them), that isn't necessarily indicative of a proper understanding of value.[/quote:lbbg22lc]
Neither is it necessarily indicative of a failure to understand.

I'm certainly not arguing that he --- or anyone else who would make the Scott Schoeneweis deal --- is brilliant, but I don't want to get caught in false dichotomies of smart/stupid, when some deals reveal one, some the other, and most reveal some degree of luck. I'm simply not convinced that any of the other 29 GMs would have weathered (or avoided) the catastrophic avalanche of 2009 injuries any better.

I'm fully aware of that better men (women also) are out there, but damned if I know who, and I'm not going to be seduced by change for change's sake. The common wisdom that reveals Omar to be an idiot has been quietly revealed to look wrong often enough (the bloodletting over the trades that both brought and dealt Ryan Church, for instance) for me not to trust the common wisdom.

As for his PR blunders, I think they suck, but they get inflated --- the Randolph firing, most of the health issues --- more often than not.

I advocate, I pray, I hold my breath, and I root. But rooting for him to be replaced? "By whom?" I think.

I root for Mets to prosper, not to be replaced. That'll happen soon enough. It always does.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Fair points, all.

There's a reason I'm not so entrenched a member of the Omar-Must-Go team as you might think me... I worry at least as much about the people who'd be in charge of picking the next guy as I do about O.