"Pedro Was A Bust" Catching On

I blogged about it all year and caught lots of grief from my name-calling, but it looks like Pedro-bashing is catching on. People are starting to realize that Pedro did nothing after June 6, 2006 – something I first mentioned in this post and about 100 other times since….but enough about me, I’m just a fat dopey blogger. How about the take of a respected journalist:

Here’s an excerpt from Bob Klapisch on Espn.com

Mets didn’t get their money’s worth with Pedro

Fern Cuza might be talking a good game for his client, but the Mets aren’t about to forget how quickly their investment in Pedro dried up, especially this past September. He went 0-3 while the Mets were being caught and passed by the Phillies, ending the season with a 5-6 record, the first sub.-500 campaign in a full season of his career, and a 5.61 ERA.

Plucking away Martinez was an enormous public-relations coup, but today the Mets’ hierarchy admits Pedro fell short of their expectations. “We thought we’d get three [good] years from him,” one senior official said. “Turns out we got 2Â½.”

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Mark Goldman/Icon SMI

After going 15-8 in his first season with the Mets, Pedro Martinez went just 17-15 over the past three.

Even that’s a generous assessment, considering Martinez spent long stretches on the disabled list in each of his past three seasons with the Mets. Pedro was terrific in 2005, winning 15 games, striking out 208 and posting a league-leading 0.95 WHIP. His dominance rolled over into early 2006, when he was 5-1 through May, allowing just 39 hits in 71 innings. But then came the first of two stints on the DL that season, and the old Pedro never returned.

The entire piece is a good read.

Meanwhile there are always Pedro Apologists like this guy. (below)

Pedro Martinez joined the Mets for the 2005 season and the team gained 12 wins from the previous year. They gained 14 more wins in 2006. This obviously was not just a result of Pedro Martinez, especially since he was limited to just 23 starts and no postseason appearances in â€˜06, but the Pedro signing helped lure other free agents to a team that won 71 games in 2004. Soon after Martinez signed Carlos Beltran came aboard. Granted, his agent Scott Boras attempted to whore Beltran to the Yankees for a lesser contract just before he signed with the Mets. But the Mets may not have spent the money on Beltran if Pedro had not begun their process of reloading.

But most importantly, and what always comes up in our podcast discussions about the Mets, all that Pedro cost them was money and as a big market team that should mean nothing to them. If the last two and half years of his four year contract was wasted money, then the team in the biggest sports market in the world can smile and say, â€œYeah, weâ€™re able to do that. We paid Moises Alou to spend more time on the disabled list than he did in the dugout. So what?â€

More Pedro Bashing Tomorrow!