NOTE: this is a guest post by Mike Steffanos of Mike’s Mets

While Sandy Alderson had to know the job he was taking on with the Mets would not be easy, I wonder if he understood completely just how difficult it might be.

He must have had some idea of the money problems. Fred Wilpon falling for a Ponzi scheme made the financial picture extremely murky going in. Still, add in a serious recession, poor team performances (with correspondingly disillusioned fans) and stadium debt contributing to a problematic bottom line, and the current Mets finances look downright disastrous.

Meanwhile, fans have been growing more dissatisfied with the Wilpons over the years as the poorly run Mets have become a joke around baseball. The hostility grows further with the perception of fans that the Wilpons’ troubled finances will preclude the team from seriously contending to keep the services of free-agent-to-be Jose Reyes.

Heading into the season the media was constantly promoting the idea that Reyes would be traded away by the deadline. The rationale primarily came down to these points: Continue reading →

The quote of the day, from Pirates pitcher Kevin Correia, on manager Clint Hurdle’s ejection from Sunday’s game:

“When a manager gets thrown out, sometimes it will fire you up a little bit,” Correia said. “But I don’t think that it did much today.”

Ouch.

Hurdle was booted in the bottom of the seventh while arguing the Angel Pagan catch/trap of Lyle Overbay’s long fly to the centerfield fence. At the time, the score was 1-0 Mets — it was still a tight ballgame, and at the time, that play was huge.

Maybe if Hurdle was a little more fiery and threw some stuff around the field, his Pirate players might have woken up and scored a few runs, rather than give up six in the final two frames. Or, maybe not.