Blog Roundup: Post Double Header Edition
The Mets got a dose of reality last night as they got swept in a double header by the Wild Card-leading Atlanta Braves. Tonight, they go back to their easy schedule, opening a series against the Chicago Cubs (While the St. Lucie Mets play the Cubs’ A-ball team in the playoffs). In addition, Sunday is the tenth anniversary of the attacks of 9/11, and it is sure to be an emotional day at Citi Field.
Now for a dose of the Blogs:
- Metsmerized pays tribute to Mike Piazza’s post-9/11 moment.
- Amazin’ Avenue looks at how history may have exaggerated baseball’s impact on post 9/11 America.
- Baseball Prospectus says the Mets were involved in a couple of CATegorically historical moments.
- Mets Minor League Blog has a video retrospective of 20 years of B-Mets baseball – with some familiar faces.
- NJ.com Fan Blog is optimistic about the 2012 Mets, even if they don’t find the Holy Grail.
- Mets360 has a report card on Sandy Alderson’s first year. He narrowly avoids getting grounded.
Have a nice weekend, and keep clicking on Mets Today.
About the Author
Paul is a freelance writer, blogger, and broadcast technology professional residing in Denver. A New Jersey native, he is a long-suffering Mets fan, a recently-happy Giants fan, and bewildered Islanders fan. He's also a fair-weather Avalanche and Rockies supporter. In his spare time, he enjoys the three Gs: Golf, Guitars, and Games.
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The column says most of his moves are good or at least partially defensible, the latter low risk ones at that, and the only “clunker” is a who cares bad pick-up of a disposable reliever.
Some here are pretty snide about Alderson, but so far, I really don’t see why. Part of it seems to be that some voices saw him as some sort of god, which I never did, and it isn’t HIS fault if they did.
If you want to be mad, be mad at the owners for limiting his discretion. Not having money to spend is not HIS fault. It is too soon to see how he will do long term and his decisions so far, like many GMs, were mixed.
I know that teams don’t HAVE TO spend money to be successful, and I recognize all the small-market teams that have found success. But they don’t matter, because they are not in New York. This is the city where the very best of everything does business, with no expenses spared. If you can’t afford to keep up with the competition in this city — no matter what your business — then you either move out or sell out to someone who has the resources to make it work.
The Mets have been non-competitive for three years now, and they will continue on that path for at least the next two — and it wouldn’t matter if the GM were Sandy Alderson, Omar Minaya, or Branch Rickey, because everything ultimately starts at the top. So when you see fans bashing Sandy Alderson, it’s not necessarily a direct attack on him, but more likely a jab at the Mets ownership.
A manager or GM is given a bad hand, you have to judge how he played the hand dealt. Sneering at THEM for the bad hand, and this happens in other contexts too btw, is to my mind stupid.
I get it is a type of coping mechanism. But, since bad as they are, Alderson will help determine if the team will be at least watchable and have some chance to be watchable in the future, I still need to judge how he deals the hand dealt. On that level, I give him a B.
Keep in mind that Minaya and Alderson have had equal amounts of autonomy, and that Minaya was subject to the whims of Fred and Jeff Wilpon (and briefly, Tony Bernazard as well).
Izzy’s reply is the sort of thing I mean — who the heck cares about Boyer? I can go down the line, but it would be repetitive. The point being that ALDERSON is to blame because of limited payroll and instead of looking at what he did as a whole, all I see is whining. At least this is better than some who was yelling at me about John Franco.
If the 2010 team returned completely intact, and added only players from within, they would have been about a .500 and out of the playoff race. Alderson didn’t bring in anyone who could truly be termed a difference maker — unless you want to count Isringhausen, who wasn’t really a “find” of Alderson’s but more about Izzy begging his old friend JP Ricciardi for a job and getting a flyer. I suppose you could say Capuano was effective but it’s not like his ability to eat innings made the team remarkably better in the grand scope of things; same with Byrdak, Beato, and Paulino, who all played fine but were basically extra parts whose spots could have been replaced by others without seeing much of a change in the won-loss record. Would the Mets have lost ten more games if instead of Capuano, Beato, and Byrdak, they had in their spots, say, some combination of Misch, Schwinden, Stinson, and/or replacement-level free agent(s), and Mike Nickeas in place of Paulino? I think it’s debatable, and further, if they did lose 10 more games, it’s moot because either way it’s out of the playoffs. In fact, I’d argue it would have been better for the Mets to have a worse record, in order to have a higher spot in next year’s draft.
In any case I’m still waiting to see something significant from the front office — and that may take a few years.