nymr83

]Every team is "linked" to tons of players, the number likely being proportionate to the number of local newspapers with baseball writers who need to make up simething to write about this time of year. Its fair to be critical of the Wilpons for who do or don't sign but not for how active the rumor mill is.

So the Mets built a stadium the same size as those in much smaller markets, reinforcing the evidence that the Wilpons are not plabning to operate a big market team. The criticism need not be applied league wide. Milwaukee and San Diego don't need a stadium as large as New York needs.

The missing seats from Shea is definitely the #1 issue with Citi and at least in my mind it is not even particularly close with all the other little issues you could complain about. If the Wilpons, or a future owner, ever do decide to invest in a winner, there will be more than fifteen thousand fans missing from all those home games down the stretch.

pass on Gomez, he hasn't been good in 2 or 3 years

Johan is suffering from the ballot glut - he had a Koufax-ian run of dominance, a 5 year peak like almost nobody has achieved. keep him on the ballot!

maybe we should just discuss what we want the team to do anyway?

Keith!

Gil Hodges played with Reese (I think) and was Harrelson's manager, does that count?

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Roy mcmillan if that is right, i could have taken 100 guesses and still been wrong. I have two guesses but I'll say Duke Snider (i think we're doing 1 guess at a time?)

Lance Johnson and some pitcher I dont remember who got traded for Turk Wendell, Brian McCrae, and the worst pitcher in Mets' history (before 2017 Matt Harvey), Mel Rojas

Edgy MD wrote: McEwing indeed played with Ordóñez with the 2001 Mets, but he did not play with José Oquendo. He did, however, come of age on a Cardinal team that boasted a coaching staff that included Oquendo who, in fact, has no tilde over his N. Maybe he's the one who taught McEwing how to be scrappy. We're looking for two guys, a starting pitcher and an outfielder, both of whom played only a year and a half with the team, but in neither case was it an insignificant year and a half. Both stayed healthy, contributed, and left behind some memories. Both ended their Mets tenures as part of the same trade. wow, i was off by 3 years on McEwing's Cardinals tenure!

Well, you do have a roster limit of 25 (40 if he still had options and could be sent down), that is a cost for a guy who hadn't shown a ton and was 28 already

"Super" Joe McEwing is the first guy i think of when I think of short skinny white guys who are described as having heart, hustle, grit, intangibles, and scrapy-ness. He also played with Oquendo and Ordonez, but he couldn't teach them to be scrappy since they both have that weird N with the squiggly line over it in their names.

Yeah, I didn't KNOW that Cuddyer was done, but I sure knew he wasnt worth losing that pick! Dumb CBA rule.

The Francisco and De Aza deals shouldn't be looked at as big negatives. The money on those deals should be trivial to Wilpon, if they didn't work out it doesn't matter. DFA Turner should be #1 because it is pure talent evaluation. Not signing Murphy, who was a free agent, is more than that and he may just not have had monetary approval.

Centerfield wrote: 4. A 90 game winner is lucky to win a division. 90 wins would have won zero divisions in 2017. In the past 10 years, of the 60 division winners, 5 had exactly 90 wins while 6 more had less than 90 wins... i didn't bother checking the records of all the 2nd place teams (because you could make the argument that many of these teams didn't need the 90+ they won) but basically Centerfield is right - 90 wins is fairly bad odds to win your division. The first half of 2015 sure wasn't magical, but I think the "badness" of it is getting a little overblown too. being barely above 500 and staying in the race until reinforcements arrived - and some guys already on the team started playing better - it wasn't all Cespedes - shouldn't be underrated. setting yourself up to make a run is a whole shit load better than being 5 or 6 games under .500 with nowhere to go

I was thinking Frazier for 3B not 2B Interesting that there is almost no consensus in the poll as to what the top need is or who fills it

I'd go Cain over Martinez, Martinez's best position is DH and he isn't even "old" yet. I would be pretty scared to see him age defensively on a National League team - particularly OUR team!

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Conforto is a year and half younger with more years of cheaper team control remaining. he was already the better hitter last year. why would that be at all tough for the Marlins? it would be a terribly dumb decision by the Mets.

Ashie62 wrote: How about Matz and Conforto for Yelich. Any thoughts? if Sandy gave up Conforto for Yelich straight up, I'd lead the way to Citi with the torches and pitchforks

NY fans would not accept the path the Astros took to win that WS. the Wilpons would never be allowed to bottom out like that.

Centerfield wrote: Meanwhile Sandy is on record saying that the Mets would have a "healthy" budget this year. I don't know. I don't think Sandy would put himself out there like that if the budget were falling by $20 million. I mean, we can argue over what is "healthy". I mean, I would consider top 5 to be healthy for a NY team, but I imagine that at the very least you'd have to be in the top half to make a credible argument. I guess we have no idea, but I just don't see the payroll falling that much. Healthy depends on more than just the market. the needs of the team, and what is available, matter - with degrom, syndergaard, conforto (and the team believes in Rosario and Smith) under team control for cheap "healthy" doesnt need to be top 5 for me at all. if the Mets were to go out and add Yu Darvish, Lorenzo Cain, another reliever, and a right-handed complement to Smith i'd consider the offseason a rousing success, and they'd still be nowhere near top 5 but they'd have a 'healthy' budget. 'healthy' to me for a NY team means "the budget isn't a constraint on acquiring the players who are available that meet our needs". right now, i'd say the Mets arent meeting that threshold.

Ceetar wrote: Maybe the Wilpons knew it was coming and told him, but I believe the Madoff lawsuit hit merely a few months after Sandy was hired. I suspect they were going to try to pare down anyway, given the losing records and the bleeding money bits, but I don't think they realized HOW bad it was going to get (add the economy tanking stuff on top of that) well, it depends if Wilpon was another innocent Madoff victim or if he should have known what was coming oe - but we dont really need to re-litigate that issue here i think Sandy has done a good overall job under the circumstances.

Assuming that the Wilpons' know their real estate business (and I'd assume that, they made their money there) why is the Islanders thing at Belmont bad for the Mets? at worst, its neutral for the Mets if the Wilpons plan to keep the profits over at Sterling. At best, its good for the Mets if its profitable and helps the Wilpons pay off debts that they are now allegedly paying off through Mets' money