Ceetar

love it. There is literally no downside and Blevins is as decent a LOOGY candidate as any. I might have issues ultimately Collins use of him, but having another body for bullpen depth is always nice, for what's basically cheap.

d'Kong76 wrote: That's some salty pretzel logic there. I dunno, the 'minor OF signing' seems to match up pretty well.

d'Kong76 wrote: Just snap, please. Sandy Alderson isn't an anonymous source. He's the horses mouth and said he's not financially constrained. A horse is a horse of course of course and no one can talk to a horse of course. nothing Sandy says publicly should be taken at face value. It's ALL spin. in fact, all of it is spin. First clue is that of course he's financially constrained, as everybody is. even the Dodgers are making certain decisions with finances in mind.

d'Kong76 wrote: You can cherry pick all want and sip your orange beer out of your royal blue mug but when the Cubs are in the World Series and we're here working on 2017 moves I'm going to have to throw it your face. I should go back and find all the teeth-gnashing over John Mayberry. "World series here we come!"

d'Kong76 wrote: Ceetar wrote: You can rant against them all you want, but it's just boring. nothing is going to change. Facts are not boring, facts are fun! They suck ass and are cheaping us out again and lied about it again. Fact! Depends which anonymous sources you believe of course, but sure. You can pretty much find one of those to fit most narratives.

d'Kong76 wrote: And they're probably (most likely) not done. I doubt anyone is.

Centerfield wrote: Edgy MD wrote: What's to clarify? He has an agenda and he pretends his opinions are facts that he's uncovered when they aren't. I'm embarrassed. It's middle school garbage. And he's winning. For all the wrong reasons. We've been down this road enough. It usually goes bad around here. What specifically do you think he's trying to pass off as fact that is not true? according to him the Mets would be buried under so much debt that creditors would demand they sell the team by 2015 or so when 'loans come due' and the situation only gets better and better for the Wilpons. There is zero. ZERO. chance that the Wilpons sell by anything other than their own volition. Maybe 0.000001% in some unforeseen disaster, but even then I'd bet they're insured and protected and would actually make out. You can rant against them all you want, but it's just boring. nothing is going to change. You can joke about PR disasters all you for when they talk, or when they don't talk, or they say what you don't want, or they avoid saying what you want. But ultimately it doesn't matter. They are the owners of the team. They always will be. The team went to the World Series and are favorites to make the playoffs again, ultimately that's what I watch baseball for. The manager gets credit for the team when it wins. The GM gets credit when seemingly bad signings or trades work out. And the owners ultimately get credit when the franchise continues to win. If the Mets continue to win, even with only a moderately higher payroll and nab a title during this decade? You're going to be reading Wilpon redemption stories. Prepare yourself. There is also ZERO indication that this De Aza signing is going to prevent them from paying Cespedes if his contract falls into a generally acceptable range (which 6/130 is probably not). This stuff is just so tedious, and it's a knee-jerk reaction to a bit signing and if you believe 'unnamed sources' about his role on the team you clearly haven't been paying attention because that's not how it works. If he doesn't hit, he's not going to be playing very much.

Mets – Willets Point wrote: I haven't read this whole thread, but have the Mets made an offer to Dick yet? yeah, he'll be the bench coach.

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: Edgy MD wrote: Is Kirk worth DFA'ing for this guy? Because it's him or Campbell. And waxing Campbell, while certainly preferable, leaves us really lefty-heavy. I like Kirk as much as anyone, maybe more, but he's a hard thing to have to rely on and the Mets already demonstrated once they had the nads to let him go. Kirk _could_ outperform him, but De Aza has 4 years of being about league-averagish with the bat and is probably more reliable. I don't really think the Mets needed another lefty though. 4.5 isn't really much though. Okay in a vacuum but probably not great if they don't do anything else out there. Won't really know what type of use he gets until he actually starts getting used. B.S. statements in December have little to do with how Terry actually ends up using guys in April.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Where do you play Upton, Cee? left and let Conforto get some more seasoning? or push Granderson to center on occasion? I mean, there are 2+ outfield positions. You find room for the guys that mash. If a talented prospect gets blocked, that's the breaks.

Centerfield wrote: Ceetar wrote: I don't understand the teeth gnashing over Heyward. Half his value is run-prevention and it's very clear that run-creation is the Mets need. I wanted Heyward because he would have represented nearly a 150 point improvement in OPS over the incumbent, Juan Lagares. This improvement would have offset the approximately 300 points we lost from Beast-Mode Cespedes to Lagares. No other improvement comes close to that. Well, Zobrist, Upton. Improvement from Conforto and Lagares.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: As for Keith, I think he enjoys his job and I also think he enjoys complaining about his job. I expect he'll be back, but part of the deal might include an obligation to do fewer games. Keith is going to be the next Ralph Kiner i suspect. 30 years from now he'll be showing up for the odd Sunday afternoon game and telling tales about playing with long dead guys like Gary Carter, how he met Musial that time and that very dated 90s comedy show with Jerry Seinfeld.

I don't understand the teeth gnashing over Heyward. Half his value is run-prevention and it's very clear that run-creation is the Mets need.

to be fair, I use all my mashers lefty. [fimg=700:3li1in3o]http://www.mallewtrousseau.com/sites/default/files/MWT%20Presse-Puree.png[/fimg:3li1in3o]

Centerfield wrote: I don't think one can read that and reasonably conclude that the parameters of the deal had already been in place. Beyond the projecting his own opinions of Niese onto the Mets and pretending he was tapping their phones, if the team announced the deal by that evening it seems extremely unlikely that Walker was found, called, sent to a doctor for a physical, and received the results in that time frame. That suggests they'd already vetted him, or they didn't look at them at all. Also nowhere are the Mets embarrassed for not having this exact deal in place. Perhaps they were negotiating for Niese anyway, and hadn't settled on a return. When Zobrist falls through, Pirates see a good match in Walker and suggest it. This is a normal thing that could happen, still don't see what the problem is with how things went down.

Zobrist is better That's why Walker wasn't option 1. Whether or not the official offer was 'on the table' during the negotiations doesn't really mean anything. They had a billion plan Bs, but it's not like the Pirates were just sitting around waiting for the Mets to get or not get Zobrist. The Pirates saw a trade partner open up and stepped up the talks. It's unlikely this would've been done in mere hours if it wasn't already discussed to some extent.

that's all just semantics. To say the Mets "didn't have a plan B" is absurd. Walker was clearly on their whiteboard, which is far and above "discussions at the CPF". It's a list of guys they could potentially acquire to play for the Mets. They missed out on the top guy, went after another. How is that anything other than plan B? Because they didn't specifically rank them before hand? Of course the Pirates called. I bet they called the Nats and anyone else rumored to be in on Zobrist and looking for a 2B in general. You don't just drop the Mets a line cold and have the deal materialize like that. They had to know the Mets were willing to trade for Walker. I like how you pretend that this segment does not exist: A few minutes later, most of the Mets’ front office staff has returned to the suite. A “what now?” vibe settles over them. “Hey,” says Ricciardi, a streetwise former infielder with a thick Massachusetts accent. “Let’s just get some dinner.” You're right. The Mets had a solid Plan B. It read: 1. Look dejectedly at each other. 2. Go eat something. He was on their whiteboard? They were brainstorming ideas? Come on. This is all stuff we do here. Don't make me send you a picture of my whiteboard. No. if we put it on our whiteboard it's because we think they should put it on theirs. if they've done that, it's much farther along. and Martino reading a 'vibe' in the suite is not fact. Their plan B was "Get a different player sometime before April that we think is good." Their were a lot of factors to go into which guy. contract price, asking price in trade, negotiation of no-trade clauses if one exists, to move guys up and down in terms of priority. Maybe Walker was plan C if they demanded more than Niese. I don't get why there's this hangup with the flow chart. Whether or not the Mets knew exactly who they were going to try to acquire next for exactly how much is sorta irrelevant to the picture. It's not like plan B was "don't get a 2B". They were going to play the market and figure it out. It's not like Sandy had never loaded Walker's fangraphs page before the next morning.

that's all just semantics. To say the Mets "didn't have a plan B" is absurd. Walker was clearly on their whiteboard, which is far and above "discussions at the CPF". It's a list of guys they could potentially acquire to play for the Mets. They missed out on the top guy, went after another. How is that anything other than plan B? Because they didn't specifically rank them before hand? Of course the Pirates called. I bet they called the Nats and anyone else rumored to be in on Zobrist and looking for a 2B in general. You don't just drop the Mets a line cold and have the deal materialize like that. They had to know the Mets were willing to trade for Walker.

bmfc1 wrote: Brandon Phillips to WSH. He'll have more opportunities to extend his Citi Field hitting streak. I like this move....for the Mets.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: I don't see how $7 million is "piddling". It's a decent chunk of a $105 million payroll. State of baseball these days. I mean, that's like the 150th highest salary and from what I can tell it's in the bottom half of non-minimum guys. Chase Utley sucks and is getting 7. That's what a 5th starter costs these days.

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Ceetar wrote: eh, it's just money. Have you been paying ANY attention at all? Do you somehow still cling to the notion that the Mets have an unlimited budget? Oh please. Like this piddling amount is going to stop them from doing anything else? It's not. 100% it's not. You can argue they're broke and strapped and won't sign XX but it's not because they blew the money on Colon. If they desperately needed that bit of change they'd have just rolled with Verrett and Montero and whoever was already in the system. You can tell me they should have thrown money at Heyward, but throwing out small amounts for roster depth guys tells me a lot more about a team's mindset and financials. Because there's a big difference between can spend money and won't spend money. So while the Mets are probably still not financially laden with the ability to do whatever they want and are still approaching decisions with a prudent mindset (which isn't necessarily bad either) tossing around 7 million for below average roster depth guys with 'intangibles' is a good thing.

Part of that has to be that 'character' roughly meant a writer's personal opinion about a guy and so much of the Hall talk nowadays happens outside of those subset of writers. Most of which don't interact with the players on a daily basis.

right now he's pretty much a lock for 5th starter.

eh, it's just money. subjectively, I'd have preferred someone better, but that's fine.

MFS62 wrote: The tears-to-cheers story is one of the most memorable moments in a very memorable year. A game in which the lead in the pennant race was increased to five games doesn't even come close, and will be long forgotten while we still remember Wilmer's triumphant moment. Later Don't like the headline though, his tears become our cheers? seems cruel, especially when the media had such a part in the tears. And the 'Cespedes on the way' afterthought annoys me. And what's that an in-lay of? And I think that's probably the third or fourth choice of photos of the moment I would've picked, especially with "Still-A-Met" text.