Lefty Specialist

Swarzak simply not impressing.

Maybe they can leave Jose Reyes there when they go?

We're kind of in 'throw it against the wall and see what sticks' mode right now.

16-year-olds are an incredible crap shoot. We may not know for 5 or 6 years if these guys are going to pan out.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Do you really believe that's what Ricco, Ricciardi, and Minaya amount to? I dont. But I also don't think that Jeff Wilpon isn't putting and won't continue to put his very heavy and clumsy hands on the scale. Moe, Larry and Curly may have been harsh, but a troika with no clear delineation of who's in charge is an invitation for Jeff and his clumsy hands.

Centerfield wrote: I balked at the idea of trading deGrom and Syndergaard. I still think I am against it, especially since I have no confidence in the Mets ability to get value for these guys, but I honestly have no idea how in the world to fix this team. That's the thing. I don't trust these guys to get the building blocks needed to rebuild this team. I'd be more open to trading them if I had confidence that there was a plan and a process to implement it. Instead you've got Moe, Larry and Curly competing for Fred's and Jeff's affection.

The Nori Aoki signing was an indictment of how bad the farm system was. You had a team going nowhere in September, and you sign a guy for a couple of weeks just to have a body in the outfield because you had NOBODY worth calling up. Boy, there's a lot of flotsam and jetsam on that list.

DeGrom Scratched With Family Issue, Oswalt Starting Friday DeGrom is starting tomorrow, so i don't know what the 1-day family emergency could be.

At the time, we were ecstatic (I know I was). So it is what it is. If we signed, say, Manny Machado to a similar contract and he broke down later, we'd be having the same conversation.

I don't think Mickey's the main problem with this team, but he IS one of the problems. I think he's been a little overmatched. He ditched the baseball lifer, old-school guy and went with the new-age guy, and the results are depressingly familiar. He probably should have gotten some experience managing in the minors first because some of his mistakes are of the first-timer kind, like the lineup screwup.

What nut-crushing disappointment awaits us?

Any trade that would bring back something of value would require the Wilpons eating salary. That's not happening, so there won't be value coming back, if they can be moved at all.

Best of luck to Sandy, but this will be a chaotic front office now.

Special 2-hour 'America's Got Talent' on NBC tonight. Insert your own joke here.

Yup. Nothing changes without the owners changing. And the owners aren't changing.

Welcome to Depression Gulch. The Cespedes thing is mysterious. He's just vanished. But he's so tightly muscled, that pulls and strains are going to be part of his MO for the rest of his career, it seems. The trades were for a bunch of middle relievers, and while maybe the jury is out on some, there's just not a very high ceiling for that kind of player. The Wilpon aversion to eating salary probably cut the return we could get on some valuable pieces last year. Nimmo crowds the plate so HBP's are going to happen. It works for him overall, so I'm not going to criticize it. An unpolished Rosario is an organizational failure, which gets laid at the feet of Sandy Alderson. Dom Smith is another example. I'm worried that Alonso will be another unpolished player at the major league level soon. These guys seem not to focus on the fundies in the minors. Players playing out of position? That's a grand Mets tradition. Like Mike Piazza at first, Jose Reyes at second, Todd Hundley in left, and on and on. It also gives you a Wilmer Flores, who never really focused on a position in the minors and seems unable to get played consistently at one in the majors.

Hate to say it, but I've pretty much stopped watching.

Ya gotta believe that this is not rock bottom. That'll occur when they slip behind the Marlins (who are more or less trying to lose as an organization) into last place. So it's not rock-bottom, but rock-bottom can be seen from here.

A team that's 20-43 since an 11-1 start, and currently on a 6-game losing streak. Yeah, that's a laughingstock. This team could easily lose 100 games at the rate they're going. In fact sustaining that .317 win percentage in the last 63 games over the next 87 games would give them 103 losses. And you have to assume they'll trade some players at the deadline. People said it wasn't fair to evaluate last year's 70-92 team because they were missing so many traded players in the last two months. Same thing will happen this year. Sorry, had the grumpy oatmeal for breakfast this morning.

Zvon wrote: [tweet]https://twitter.com/MikeFrancesa/status/1010934868493160448[/tweet] Boy, I hate agreeing with Francesa.

deGrom is so low-key and un-flashy. He just gets the job done. It's a shame to see him pitch so well and have it wasted most times. On a decent team he'd have 10 wins by now.

Bartolo Colon won his 244th game last night and became the winningest Dominican-born pitcher ever. He just keeps rolling (or jiggling) along. Good for him.

Wander just a little further phonetically and you could be on Death Race 2000! o6LahtrxVhg

I think Nimmo's a better CF. Move Conforto to RF if he keeps hitting. If he goes into a funk again send him to Vegas. Bruce can get some time between RF and first, but I think what he really needs is a trip to the DL. And my feeling is that Cespedes is nowhere near returning. The constant here is that Nimmo must play virtually every day. The more he plays the better he gets.