Centerfield

The original point is whether making our kids Mets fans was the right thing to do. We subject them to losing and ridicule. Is it worth it? Overcoming adversity and teaching against entitlement are good life lessons. And I can definitely get behind that. But with the Mets, it’s clouded once you realize that the adversity they have to overcome is self-inflicted by fraudulent behavior. So I think the emotional connection comes from whether you can separate the Mets (the team? The laundry? The history?) from their owners. An argument was made that our owners were better than the owners across town. That argument was shot down. Our owners are much worse. It’s not even close. I guess that qualifies as “lionizing”. And now the familiar argument comes up that if we want our owners to act like the Yankee owners, we secretly want to be Yankee fans. No dumbass. We want our organization to have good, smart owners who are committed to winning and don’t engage in fraud.

41Forever wrote: Centerfield wrote: Lefty Specialist wrote: The Mets half-ass it. They can't commit to a full teardown like Philly or Houston or Atlanta have done because they're in New York. I full teardown would have required 4-5 years of losing, and losing badly. They can't do that in New York. They don't have the money or roster-building skill to create a sustainable winner, so you get the Half-ass. Where you hope that David Wright will come back or the 5 guys who were supposed to be good actually pitch good at the same time, which never, ever happened. Where you pick an Adrian Gonzalez or a Jose Reyes off the scrap heap. Where an Eric Campbell or Ty Kelly get far more playing time than they ever deserved on a major league team. Problem with the Half-ass is that occasionally things go right, like in 2015. You then think that justifies continuing on the way you have because maybe this year we'll catch lightning in a bottle again. That usually engenders lots of blah seasons with a team going nowhere. I think we are getting caught up in some minutia here. This is the point and this is the inescapable reality of being a Mets fan since 2009. Until 2015, one could argue that the approach was one of rebuilding. (Even if they never committed to it the way the Astros did.) What's become evident the last few years is that the team will ever return to its pre-Madoff spending days. I think you guys get too hung up on payroll. Astros last year were 18th, and are 11th this year. Tigers have been a top-5 payroll team since 2012. We went to the World Series with the 21st highest payroll. The Mets have been to the playoffs twice in the last three seasons. Last year's injuries were a fluke. We were in first place this season until about a week ago. The division is wide open. This is a good season to be Mets fan. This post is so stupid and lazy. People here take the time to think through their ideas before posting. When you write something this lazy you're going to piss people off. You talk about the Wilpons being tone deaf? Holy crap. No one here ever said you need a high payroll to win. No one here ever said that high payrolls guarantee winning. So stop citing to facts that refute theories that are not offered. If you read this thread, you'd see that the Astros approach was raised several times as an effective way to win. Blow it up. Lose, rebuild, then go for it. It is specifically cited as an effective method for small market teams. The downside is that you get peaks and valleys. Years of awful baseball followed by a brief period of contention, but if done right, you at least get a small window of greatness. Like Houston or Kansas City. The other way is to go big market. Develop talent and bolster it with high priced talent. If done correctly, it can lead to long periods of sustained success. Like the Yankees, or Red Sox, or Dodgers, or Cubs etc. If you do either method poorly, you will lose, regardless of your payroll. But hey, look, another post for you to gloss over. Let's start the stopwatch on the next "But payroll doesn't guarantee winning" post.

I am too young to know Grant. I’ve read terrible things. If I had to choose between the Wilpons and Steinbrenners I’d choose Steinbrenners any day. George was disgraceful sure. But at the least he never wavered in his commitment to win. That’s the number one trait an owner should have. And now that he’s gone the organization is top notch. Smart people at the helm. Well funded. No scandals. Give me that any day.

Both your points are correct. The reasons the Wilpons are special, is that few owners actually hurt the on-field product through their despicable actions. I rooted for the Indians even when that ex-showgirl wanted to move them to Miami. Precedent has been set.

All offdays suck. But the worst offdays are bitter afternoon losses, followed by an offday, followed by a night game. I'm not sure the math, but I feel like 486 hours will have passed between Met games.

So in the end, what it comes down to is the ability to separate the Mets from the Wilpons. The Mets organization is owned by the Wilpons, and for the foreseeable future, they always will be. So how do you separate them out? You can't root for the Wilpons. They are crooks and despicable people. So how does one root for their organization. But if you separate the Mets and the Wilpons, and view the Wilpons as just another obstacle for this noble team to overcome, I guess one can still justify rooting for the Mets. I mean, in that case, we really are rooting for laundry.

Lefty Specialist wrote: The Mets half-ass it. They can't commit to a full teardown like Philly or Houston or Atlanta have done because they're in New York. I full teardown would have required 4-5 years of losing, and losing badly. They can't do that in New York. They don't have the money or roster-building skill to create a sustainable winner, so you get the Half-ass. Where you hope that David Wright will come back or the 5 guys who were supposed to be good actually pitch good at the same time, which never, ever happened. Where you pick an Adrian Gonzalez or a Jose Reyes off the scrap heap. Where an Eric Campbell or Ty Kelly get far more playing time than they ever deserved on a major league team. Problem with the Half-ass is that occasionally things go right, like in 2015. You then think that justifies continuing on the way you have because maybe this year we'll catch lightning in a bottle again. That usually engenders lots of blah seasons with a team going nowhere. I think we are getting caught up in some minutia here. This is the point and this is the inescapable reality of being a Mets fan since 2009. Until 2015, one could argue that the approach was one of rebuilding. (Even if they never committed to it the way the Astros did.) What's become evident the last few years is that the team will ever return to its pre-Madoff spending days.

Frayed Knot wrote: Also, the "one of the worst offenses in all of baseball" thing is exaggerated by the fact that we're tied for second fewest games played so far this season (and the Saturday rain plus upcoming Monday/Thursday off days this week ain't gonna help). Four different teams have played as many of five more at this point while only the two Chicagos have played as few (37) and only Minnesota (36) less, all of which I assume is due to multiple April snow-outs in the upper midwest. Anyway, the point being, that if instead of looking just at runs scored (where they're 28th) they creep up to 20th when you consider RS/G - still solidly below average but also ahead of 10 different squads rather than dredging the bottom ahead of only the ChiSox and Miami. 20th in runs per game. 23rd in BA 20th in OBP. 28th in slugging 27th in team OPS. 24th in Stolen Bases 25th in HR's. Can you win with a terrible offense? Sure. If your team has amazing pitching. But if your pitching is league average and your offense is well below average, you sir, are looking at a losing season.

The thought of trading away deGrom or Syndergaard or Conforto is painful right? But yeah, I think you have to commit to one or another. Either go big and spend money and be like the Red Sox/Yankees/Dodgers, or embrace the small market mentality and go the nuclear route. Like Mr. Miyagi famously said: "Daniel-san, must talk. Walk on road. Walk right side, safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, get squish, just like grape. Here baseball payroll, same thing. Either spend money, yes, or spend money, no. You do spend money 'guess so', squish just like grape." I don't know that we're at that point yet. But I agree, once we realize we're not good enough, we should commit to rebuilding. Are we at that point?

We are six weeks into the season, and we're pretty bad. A game over .500, but we have a negative run differential. The offense is non-existent. One of the worst in all of baseball. The pitching has been inconsistent, good at times, bad at times, resulting in an ERA right around league average. If things continue like this, we'll soon fall out of the race and likely end up with a losing record. We've had a few injuries here and there (Plawecki, Swarzak, deGrom missing a start), but for the most part we've been relatively healthy. Even Conforto came back earlier than expected. The optimists said coming into the season that as long as the Mets stayed healthy, they would contend. It doesn't look like that is the case. I mean, I'm sure they'll play better than they've played during this stretch, but I don't see where we are going to see enough improvement to compete long-term. Offensively, Conforto, we hope, will pick things up. At .686 he's well below his career OPS of .827. So you figure that will help us out. Jay Bruce will uptick closer to his career average we hope, but he's had off years where he hovers in the low .700's before. Cabrera is actually over-performing and is likely to regress. Frazier, Gonzalez, Rosario, our catchers, I think what you see is what you're going to get. Dom Smith? Call up Alonso? Make a trade for Realmuto? Maybe if Cecchini were healthy he could fake it at SS. As for pitching, I don't see help coming from anywhere in the organization. I guess you could try moving Gsellman or Lugo back into the rotation, but then our bullpen would suck. I don't know. How do we fix this?

I would start Guillorme and Lagares. Let Cespedes heal that quad. We are just asking him to blow it out. 1. Nimmo LF 2. Guillorme SS 3. Cabrera 3B 4. Flores 3B 5. Conforto RF 6. Lagares CF 7. Bruce 1B 8. Desoraco C

I’d be all in favor of giving Guillorme a shot.

Without a doubt. Kershaw too. 2019 is going to kick ass.

I still think Matt Harvey will be productive one day. He needs to buy in and learn to pitch with what he has, which is still good enough. It pisses me off that he did well in his first start, and I know that it can certainly be said that the Mets gave up on him too early. But from what I’ve read about him, it sounds like it was just never going to happen for him here. Good riddance dickhead. I hope you find yourself, catch on someplace, then have a 17.68 ERA against the Mets for the rest of your career.

Only 2 teams in MLB have scored fewer runs than the Mets this year. There are several teams that are actively tanking, seven teams are on pace to lose 100 games. Five of those teams are scoring more runs than the Mets. This is what happens when you fail to upgrade a bad offense during the winter. JD Martinez is the guy we needed. Instead, he went to Boston after sitting available all winter. He’s crushing it, of course. .337 AVG, 9 HR. .988 OPS. The Red Sox are in first place and playing .700 baseball.

Edgy MD wrote: Broke and miserly though they may be, their team has a payroll 58% higher than the Phils. The Phils are rebuilding. During their peak they had one of the top payrolls in baseball.

This team just cannot score.

I know. I'm excited about that. Hopefully we see three days of Nimmo and he goes 14 for 18.

I think I'm 1-1.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: All I know about cocaine is what I see on TV and in the movies and judging from that, it would seem that it has a nearly instant effect. I don't know if I believe this. I basically assumed that anyone who amassed that amount of data on the Mets has a pretty active cocaine habit. Come clean.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Benjamin Grimm wrote: Your son makes his own decisions. As you said, there are other Mets fan parents whose kids have decided to root for the Yankees. Yours didn't. Maybe he's rightfully put off by the smug attitude of their fans and decided he doesn't want to be one of them. For most things yes. But I don't know that I ever gave him the chance on this one. I really and truly believe that kids shares interests with their parents if they're by nature inclined to do so. Certainly that's true by the time they're 13 years old. Would he have been a Mets fan if you weren't? Maybe not. But he certainly had a choice. This is ShortCenter when he was zero. And Mookie. This isn't too much pressure to root for the Mets?

G-Fafif wrote: CF, sounds like you're raising a real mensch. You wouldn't have it in you to parent a frontrunning jerk. He's really the sweetest kid around. Hell of a lot nicer than me. He's at the age where baseball still means the world to him, but he won't be there for long. The Mets could have won back to back championships when I was in college, but it wouldn't have meant nearly as much to me as that '86 team. I don't know. I just feel like I did him a real disservice. His entire childhood has been three months of 2015, one decent year in 2016, and the rest of it hearing how the Mets suck. When I was growing up, I got to see a Mets team that was competitive for 7 straight years. 6 times they won 90 games. 2 times, they won 100. A World Championship. '85 Gooden. He's never going to see anything like that.

I know it's not about the RINGZ. Neither the Mets nor Yankees have any titles in the last 5 years. But the Mets have had losing seasons in 3 of those last 5 years. The Yankees last losing season was 1995.

Vic Sage wrote: This team needs an injection. Yes. This is very true. Hey Siri, where's the closest BALCO?

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Your son makes his own decisions. As you said, there are other Mets fan parents whose kids have decided to root for the Yankees. Yours didn't. Maybe he's rightfully put off by the smug attitude of their fans and decided he doesn't want to be one of them. For most things yes. But I don't know that I ever gave him the chance on this one. Most of the Met parent fans whose kids root for other teams are not nearly as active as me. SC was dressed in Mets clothes as a baby, he got a teddy bear named Mookie. We watch or listen to at least a 100 games per year and go to Citi at least 3-4 times each season. My brother is a big fan and they text each other about it. I don't know if he ever had a real choice here. I am seriously considering sitting him down and telling him that everything I told him about the nobility of rooting for this team was wrong. He should root for whoever he wants. I mean, I'm guessing it's way too late now. But I feel like I should at least say something. ceetar wrote: Just make sure you he's not being a jerk about in in August when the Yankees are 3 games out of a wild card and the Mets just crushed the Nationals to take a 4 game lead in the division, what goes around comes around. I would love for this to be true. And this is what I told him during his entire childhood. Wait until next year. Wait until the rebuild is done. But let's face it. This is never going to happen. Not on any sustained level. The process is wrong. Unless there is a wholesale change in philosophy, there will never, ever be a 5 year stretch where the Mets outperform the Yankees.