batmagadanleadoff

Megdal offers an interesting take on why the Mets didn't trade Reyes before the trading deadline. Because surely the Mets couldn't have realistically thought that they'd be able to resign Reyes at 5/80. Reyes is gone, and now Wilpon's Mets are smaller than the Florida Marlins By Howard Megdal 11:20 am Dec. 5, 2011 If you had any doubts about just how feeble the Mets' financial condition is at the moment, just look at what happened this weekend: Jose Reyes, their franchise player and the finest shortstop in Mets history, was bought up by the Florida Marlins, an organization that is currently under investigation by the S.E.C. As hard as it may be to believe of any team that plays in a market as big as New York, the Mets are no longer in the Marlins' league when it comes to being able to afford players like Reyes. Their ownership group, led by Fred Wilpon, is too busy just trying to hang on the team, as it grapples with the after-effects of its deep financial involvement with Bernie Madoff. The fact that Reyes left this way�rather than, say, after having been made an insanely lucrative offer he couldn't refuse from the Yankees or the Red Sox�is particularly sad. The Marlins and Reyes reportedly agreed to a six-year, $106 million contract with Reyes late Sunday evening, taking the 28-year-old shortstop from the only team he's known he was 16. The contract the Marlins agreed to with Reyes, however the Mets try to spin it, is quite reasonable. The Marlins had originally offered six years, $90 million for Reyes, back in mid-November. The Mets claimed their failure to make an offer during the period of time, post-World Series, when they still held exclusive negotiating rights with Reyes, was due to an unwillingness to bid against themselves. But once Florida bid, the Mets never made a formal offer either. Instead, they let it be known they'd be willing to go as high as five years, $80 million (which is, if you're keeping score at home, is fewer years and less money). And when the Marlins increased their initial offer to get the deal done, the Mets responded by declaring themselves out of the running. We are not likely to hear much about Reyes now from the Wilpons, Fred and his C.O.O. son, Jeff. Once again, it will fall to the overqualified, underfunded general manager Sandy Alderson to explain the latest disappointment. "Well, you have to draw a line somewhere,� a sober and at times visibly irritated Alderson told reporters late Sunday night. �And based on our experience�not just with Jose, but with multi-year contracts generally�and not just with our multi-year contracts, but all multi-year contracts generally, we decided that there were some conceptual limitations to where we would go. "One of the reasons we held back for so long was to see where the market might take Jose. One of the reasons we had more communication recently than before was because there was at least some indication that perhaps the market hadn't gone where some people had anticipated. If these current reports are true, the market may have accelerated considerably beyond where it may have been a week ago, or four days ago." But Alderson, a respected veteran, is entirely too intelligent to have thought, at any point, that he had a reasonable chance of retaining Jose Reyes if the Mets' maximum offer was five years, $80 million. Injuries had limited Jose Reyes to 126 games in 2011 and 133 games in 2010. But shortstops with the skills of Jose Reyes simply aren't rarely available as free agents in their prime years. According to Fangraphs, Reyes has already had four seasons worth $22.5 million or more to the Mets; his 2011 checked in at $27.8 million in value. The last free-agent shortstop as valuable as Reyes to hit the open market played in 129 and 148 games in the two seasons prior to hitting free agency. It was Alex Rodriguez, in 2000, who then signed for ten years and $252 million. Carl Crawford, whose offensive abilities are similar to Reyes' and who plays at a less important position, left field, signed a contract last year for a year longer that what Reyes just got, making around $3 million more in salary per year. Derek Jeter signed a contract to play shortstop across town last year for the same annual value as Reyes' deal, even though he was nine years older, and hadn't put together a season equal to Reyes' 2011 since 1999. In other words, if Alderson had really valued Reyes at 5 years and $80 million, but no higher, there could only have been two reasons he didn't trade him in July: Either he believed the value he'd receive in return wasn't greater than the pair of compensatory draft picks the Mets will receive now that Reyes has signed elsewhere; or ownership had instructed him not to trade Reyes, hoping instead to extract whatever value it could from the tickets the team would sell by holding onto Reyes for a few months more. The former is awfully unlikely; shortstops hitting .341, as Jose Reyes was at the the trading deadline, are valuable commodities. What seems obvious now, if it wasn't at the time, is that the Mets' decisions about Reyes were all about short-term money. Even as he expressed impatience with the recurring Madoff-Mets storyline, Alderson seem to admit as much. "Bernie Madoff and his specter are always referenced in these situations," he said. "I don't really think Madoff has that much to do with it. But when a team loses $70 million irrespective of Bernie Madoff or anyone else, that's probably a bigger factor in our approach to this season and the next couple than anything else." Naturally, though, the collapse of Bernie Madoff is what compelled the Mets' owners to cut spending, leading to losing on the field, leading to depressed ticket sales, leading to the loss of $70 million. Alderson went ahead and let everyone know while he was at it�with his throwaway phrase, �the next couple��that he doesn't expect Wilpon's Mets to emerge from austerity mode anytime soon. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2011/12/4479616/reyes-gone-and-now-wilpons-mets-are-smaller-florida-marlins

December 5, 2011, 10:48 am Keeping Score: Bad Day for Mets, Good Day for Kranepool By KEN BELSON As the Mets get dressed up for their 50th anniversary season, it is worth noting that they have never had a standout position player who stuck around long enough to produce big career statistics for the team. The departure of shortstop Jose Reyes, who is set to join the Miami Marlins as a free agent, continues this trend. The best everyday players in Mets history � Keith Hernandez and Mike Piazza � each arrived in Queens from somewhere else, had five solid seasons before starting to fade, and ended up finishing their careers in another city. John Olerud hit a robust .315 as a Met but spent just three years in Flushing. Cleon Jones was a homegrown talent who came close to winning the batting title in 1969 but never neared that promise again. Darryl Strawberry was pegged as the next Ted Williams, but he never really lived up to his billing, was gone after eight seasons, and then had a championship encore as a Yankee. This shortcoming, the inability to produce an impressive player who stuck around for his entire career and left a heavy statistical imprint, is all the more glaring because the Mets share the city with the Yankees, who can point to Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, who got his 3,000th hit last summer, and others. The Mets, in contrast, have Ed Kranepool, whose total of 1,418 hits with the Mets over 18 seasons, some of them part time, is still the team record, meager as it may be. Reyes, 28, will stay stuck in second with 1,300 career hits as a Met. He would, of course, have swamped Kranepool�s total if he had stayed with the team for the rest of his career, but the Marlins will pay him a lot more than the Mets were willing or able to. Then there is David Wright, who is right behind Reyes, in third place, with 1,248 career hits. Also 28, he is also poised to soar past Kranepool (and Reyes), provided he is not traded this winter, or next June or July. But he just might. It is true that the Yankees� history is much longer than the Mets�, and that they have had many more years to cultivate players who stuck around forever, or close to it, and put up memorable career numbers. But even when all the seasons before 1962 are tossed aside, the Mets still fare poorly. The Elias Sports Bureau looked at all current 20 major league teams that existed in 1962, the Mets� first season, and tracked each of those clubs from that point through this season. Within that five-decade time frame, it determined which position players had put up the best career numbers for those 20 teams, limiting the categories to hits, home runs and runs batted in. Anything a player did before 1962 was tossed aside; anything he did from 1962 and beyond was in play. The hundreds of home runs that Willie Mays hit for the Giants before 1962 were not part of the calculations; the hundreds he hit after the start of the 1962 season were. The same with Hank Aaron. Using this formula, Elias said, the Mets are dead last in all three categories. Take home runs. Barry Bonds hit 586 of them in a Giants uniform during that period, while Mike Schmidt socked 548 round-trippers for the Phillies. Strawberry, the Mets� career leader, hit a more modest 252. (The Yankees� leader for the 1962-2011 period is Bernie Williams, with 287. The Yankee� career leader, of course, is Babe Ruth, with 659 from 1920 to 1934.) Strawberry also holds the Mets� team record for runs batted in, with 733. But that is fewer than half the number compiled by Boston�s Carl Yastrzemski, who has the most runs batted in from 1962 to 2011, with 1,764. Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles is second at 1,695. The disparity in hits is the most startling. Kranepool�s 1,418 is a million miles from the 3,358 Pete Rose piled up while he played for the Cincinnati Reds from 1963 to 1978, and then 1984 to 1986. In fact, five players in all � Rose, Jeter, Ripken, Yaztrzemski and Craig Biggio of the Houston Astros � had more than 3,000 hits for one team from 1962 to 2011. Meanwhile, the Mets do not get to 3,000 hits even when you add Kranepool and Reyes together. Of course, some of this statistical paucity will become a moot point if Wright, at least, sticks around in Flushing. Having been called up by the Mets in 2004, he has become the team�s career leader in doubles, with 281, and with 725 career R.B.I. is just eight short of Strawberry�s mark. He also has 183 career home runs, and needs 70 more to surpass Strawberry in that category. Wright was the model of offensive consistency until Citi Field opened in 2009. Its oversize dimensions threw him off stride and contributed to his erratic performance at the plate in the last three seasons. With the fences at Citi Field coming in, there is a decent chance that Wright will revert back to who he used to be and, if he does, and remains a Met until he retires, he could finish his career with over 2,500 hits and 400 home runs, the kind of career numbers that would add some heft to Mets history. But he is signed only through next season, with a club option for 2013. He may be here for another decade; he could be gone next month or next summer, if the Mets get a good enough offer. And if he goes elsewhere, as Reyes now has, then Kranepool � Mr. 1,418 � will rule the record book for a long time to come. http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/05/bad-day-for-mets-good-day-for-ed-kranepool/

This might turn out to be a good thing for the Mets. You never know. I mean, with hindsight, letting Strawberry leave after the '90 season turned out OK. So there's that.

seawolf17 wrote: metsguyinmichigan wrote: So much for the Mets getting a chance to match or beat the offer. They had all effing year. Screw the Wilpons. Megdal's piece is dead on. The Wilpons have no intention of spending that kind of scratch on any player; they're in it to survive. All of a sudden, the truth isn't a defense anymore; now Megdal gets criticized for criticizing the Wilpons even when he's dead right.

6 years/$106M, 6 years/$102M depends on the source.

metsguyinmichigan wrote: So much for the Mets getting a chance to match or beat the offer. You think the Mets didn't have a chance? They were never, ever, in it to begin with. The Daily News is reporting that the Reyes-Fish deal is official. http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/mets/2011/12/jose-reyes-leaves-ny-mets-agrees-to-deal-with-miami-marlins

The Press: Is it important for the Mets to retain Jose Reyes? Fred Wilpon: What kind of a question is that? (then walks away) The Victimization of Straight-Shooting Mets G.M. Sandy Alderson By Howard Megdal 10:46 am Dec. 2, 2011 Pity Sandy Alderson, general manager of the New York Mets. Hired in October 2010, he entered a personnel minefield laid for him by his predecessor, Omar Minaya, which combined useless players and overpaid ones with booby-trap contracts. That much, Alderson knew. Then he found out that as a result of Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme, the Mets ownership group was running out of money, and fast. The team's payroll for players, which was $146 million in 2011, would have to come way down, likely to less than $100 million in 2012. Alderson confirmed Thursday what has long been obvious to anyone paying close attention to the Mets, which is that the new austerity isn't a function of any new "Moneyball"-type philosophy of quality-through-thrift. The payroll is being reduced because the owners said it had to be. In fact, it is Fred Wilpon, the Mets' C.E.O. and president, who has been responsible for Alderson's embarrassing, repeated need to revise his 2012 payroll estimates�$130-150 million in February, $120 million in late May, $110-120 million in early September, and currently, under $100 million. �Nice to know someone's keeping track of what I say,� Alderson replied dryly to a question about the estimates during a telephone conference call with bloggers on Thursday night. While both Fred and Jeff Wilpon have found creative ways to avoid speaking to the press about the very financial problems they trumpeted earlier this year, Sandy Alderson has remained out front, dutifully answering questions and speaking as forthrightly as he possibly can, given his position. He spent a half-hour on a conference call with the beat reporters on Thursday afternoon, providing answers ahead of Major League Baseball's winter meetings, scheduled to begin next Monday in Dallas. That's par for the course. What isn't typical is the 90 minutes he spent patiently answering questions from season-ticket holders Wednesday night at Citi Field, and nor is the hour he spent with Mets bloggers Thursday evening on a conference call as well. On that call, Alderson cited �intervening events� as the cause of the dramatic in-season drop in expected payroll, even though he'd mentioned earlier in the call that revenues and expenditures generally stay pretty static in-season. He presumably wasn't just referring to the financial problems frequently attached to a drop in attendance or to the lawsuit filed against Fred Wilpon and his partners by the trustee for the Madoff victims, but also to the fact that the Mets' problems are the result of loans taken out to cover disappeared Madoff assets. Their debt problem is accute: The on-again, off-again sale to minority owners�first to hedge-funder David Einhorn, more recently to a group of smaller investors, neither one yet consummated�was for money earmarked for short-term debts and to pay down a small portion of the $430 million the Wilpon group owes against the team. "Well, there�s such a thing as called intervening events," Alderson said on the call. "When Fred Wilpon pushes back, presumably that has some impact. Let me just get to the bottom line here: I think we�ll be around a hundred million bucks, but we could be a little below that as we start that season, as I like to be starting a season, so that there is some money in reserve to do the things you like to do during the season, whether that�s at the major league level or with respect to things at the minor league level." Presumably these intervening events took Alderson by surprise. He would have had nothing to gain by saying in February that he expected 2012 payroll to run between $130 and $150 million if he knew it wasn't going to be the case. He has a reputation, built over decades, for candor and honesty. And anyway, he would have been setting expectations impossibly, stupidly high by suggesting he'd have more money to play with than he actually had. So Alderson has been trapped, not just by the ownership team's financial problems but their unwillingness to acknowledge publicly or, apparently, privately, that those problems are going to hobble the team's ambitions. No matter how intently Alderson wishes to be accessible, if the answer to questions is unanswerable without badmouthing ownership, and Fred Wilpon won't talk, Alderson is left to dissemble about things that are hard to defend. Take the free-agency of Jose Reyes, the Mets' star shortstop who is now a free agent. Sandy Alderson can't say, Our owners aren't likely to pay Jose Reyes huge money�they need to save every dollar they can right now just to survive. So instead, Alderson has to justify the team's losing posture as it half-heartedly seeks to keep Reyes in New York. Essentially, the team has said that it won't bid on Reyes until other teams have bid for him, and that they also won't get into a bidding war once those others teams join the fray. So Fred Wilpon hasn't provided Alderson with any cover at all. What the Mets owners are doing is going through the motions�mumbling about hypothetical bids for Reyes rather than making real ones�so they won't be accused by fans of simply letting a key player leave New York because of cash-flow issues. (The Mets' hypothetical bid, incidentally, is already less than what Reyes has reportedly been offered, for real, elsewhere.) When asked by reporters at the owners meeting last month if retaining Reyes, an enormously popular figure and the team's best player, was important, Wilpon replied, �What kind of question is that?� and walked away. It is hard to imagine that didn't eat at Alderson, who has continued to say publicly that the Mets really do want to keep Reyes, while in the next breath having to talk about the payroll considerations that make keeping Reyes unlikely. All his owner had to do was say: We sure hope so, but we need to see how things play out. The great shame here is that Sandy Alderson is precisely the general manager the Mets have needed for the twenty years since Frank Cashen retired in 1991. And as recently as December 10, 2008, the Wilpon ownership group could have provided Alderson with more than enough cash to turn the New York Mets into a National League powerhouse. But a day later, Bernie Madoff was arrested, and now it looks like Sandy Alderson will be as wasted on the Mets as Jose Reyes was. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2011/12/4408000/victimization-straight-shooting-mets-gm-sandy-alderson

Other first time HOF eligible Mets who, like Ron Hodges, were excluded from the 1990 ballot: Pete Falcone Mike Vail Craig Swan Jerry Martin First time HOF eligible Mets who did appear on the 1990 ballot: Tug McGraw - 6 votes, 1.4% of the vote; one and done John Stearns - no votes Ken Singleton - no votes Amos Otis - no votes Mike Torrez - one vote; one and done

G-Fafif wrote: On the 2009 ballot (the one that included Rickey Henderson) there was no mention of ... Rick Reed ... a two-time Met All-Star ... a mainstay on two postseason clubs who pitched well in each postseason. I'm certain that Reed's inclusion on the 2009 ballot would have prompted some of the most ignorant and mean-spirited comments about Reed and his HOF eligibility.

Former NY Mets Nolan Ryan, Bud Harrelson and Ed Kranepool lobby for Gil Hodges for the Hall of Fame Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/mets-nolan-ryan-bud-harrelson-ed-kranepool-lobby-gil-hodges-hall-fame-article-1.986322#ixzz1fWq6mopW

MLB needs a voting ballot to determine who gets on the HOF ballot.

Epsiode 1 is now on the web at VH1's site: http://www.vh1.com/video/baseball-wives/full-episodes/episode-1/1675047/playlist.jhtml

So who watched? Or who watched but won't admit it?

What should be done if, say, Bagwell gets in on this ballot, and then it later becomes known that he was a steroid user? Just askin'. I'd vote for him if I had a vote. And Raines, Larkin, Trammell and Martinez the DH.

G-Fafif wrote: Phillies' moves bring to mind the composition of the 1981 Blue Jays' staff. Not one, not two, but SIX recently washed out Mets! Given how convinced I was that every last one of them was going to be great when they were Mets, it's hard to believe the Jays' composite record in that strike-sundered season was a mere 37-69. You won't believe this but today, I thought about Roy Lee Jackson.

Well, they're still paying $25m for Santana, so they'd like to get some semblance of their money's worth. I agree with Sage. BTW, the Mets starting rotation is their big black hole. It's a last place rotation: questionmarks, ceilings that aren't high enough, mediocrity and RA Dickey.

I stopped reading as soon as I came across this line: It�s also worth mentioning that Rollins hasn�t been a good postseason player

Split numbers are back.

I no longer approve of this scheme. I initially did, mainly because of the scheme's orderliness. But I hafta admit that I didn't look at it close enough to notice that the scheme requires each team to play 30 IL games. I don't know what the overall attendance figures (and ad revenues -- don't forget advertising) are for IL games, but hunching it, I'd hafta guess that the figures must be quite good. I guess this because these moves are driven by money first. And money second. And after that, some more money. Anything the league or Selig says that's different is total bs.

Brook Villone

Will the show feature any political or cultural pontification? I'm highly interested in her views on matters of national and international import. What's the point? Like you wouldn't be distracted by her fun bags? The new Baseball Wives are: Anna Benson (wife of retired Arizona Diamondbacks� Pitcher Kris Benson), Tanya Grace (ex-wife of retired Chicago Cubs� First Baseman Mark Grace), Chantel Kendall (ex-wife of Kansas City Royals� Jason Kendall), Brook Villone (wife of Ron Villone) and Jordana Lenz (linked to no particular athlete in particular). Don't know who's who other than Anna in the middle. Anna, 35, goes on to describe the clASSy manner in which she met her husband. According to Anna, she met Kris in 1998 while dancing at Atlanta club Mardi Gras. When it comes to her classy costars, Anna explains there will definitely be some fireworks as she admits she is already feuding with one of them. �It definitely will come out, which one I like the least,� she teases. �We can just name her �skank.� Actually, �skank possum!� � http://www.realitytea.com/2011/11/17/baseball-wives-anna-benson-were-classier-than-basketball-wives/

She'll be laughing all the way to the bank with her fun bags and money bags.

TransMonk wrote: What an attention whore. The joke's on us. She'll make eight figures from this if she makes a penny. Not that money's everything. Just sayin'.

Poor Kris.

New Reality Star Anna Benson Says The Mets Were "Scared Of My Big Fun Bags" By Dom Cosentino Nov 17, 2011 12:55 PM Anna Benson, the buxom brunette who has long had the distinction of being more famous than her husband, a former journeyman Major League pitcher named Kris, is going to star in VH1's new reality series, "Baseball Wives," according to the New York Post. The Post couldn't resist asking Mrs. Benson her take on why her husband was traded from the Mets to the Orioles after 2005. The trade followed Kris's lone full year in New York, when he posted a WHIP of 1.262 and a WAR of 1.0, while earning $5.3 million. "They were scared of my big fun bags," she insists. "They were afraid they were too big, and they were going to obstruct the view of the fans seeing the game. Plus they were intimidated by them themselves. So they had to trade him, I guess." "I don't know why you would trade a stud pitcher. I don't know why it became about me. But it kind of makes me feel good that they were intimidated by me." Also, Mrs. Benson wants to make one thing clear about "Baseball Wives." "We are not like the �Basketball Wives,' " Benson, a former stripper, tells The Post. "We are classy." http://deadspin.com/5860535/new-reality-star-anna-benson-says-the-mets-were-scared-of-my-big-fun-bags