I know nothing about finances or lawsuits or running a major league team, but as my old boss taught me, “Perception is reality.”
I find myself wondering if the Mets have just virtually moved to a smaller market.
When you have a billion with a B dollars hanging over your head, don’t you run a tight ship for a while?
When you are seeking investors how can you give a shortstop “Carl Crawford money.”. Wouldn’t it be wiser to ride it out with an inexpensive solution, perhaps named Tejada?
Would you spend money on. An Old Timers Day so some fat guy in the uppers can cheer for Tom Seaver? Who would pay for Tom’s airfare?
Are you going out and picking up a big contract to get you over the hump on August 1 or do you just hope for the best?
Say the season is rolling along. You gonna let K-Rod get enough appearances to trigger the contract, or is someone going to whisper to Colactus to lay off the “easy saves” when up by more than a run?
I was ready for 2011 to be a year where I don’t stress and just enjoy the baseball for baseball sake. Now I find myself wondering if I should worry about the next 5 years.
…..
Thanks to Media Goon for keeping it together these past few days.
I’m all about the Steelers today. I was a Jets fan, then when they left me (Shea) i left them. The they tortured us with 10 years of awful (bleep)blocking football on NBC. The redt of the country would get good games and doubleheaders and we’d get Jets-Chargers crap. This pre-Internet and way before scores up in the corner. Then when halftime came stupid channel 4 would give us news instead of the halftime show. All that adds up to hating the Jets and the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Pitt beat the dumb Jets, go Pitt.
I believe you are going to see a small market team in the terms of attendance this year.
If ownership is not going to be spending money to put a good product on the field, how can you expect the fans to spend the hard money they earn.
We are now officially the “Pittsburgh Pirates EAST”! ..At least the Pirate fans have something to hope for when their team is 30 games out by July….its called the Stellers!
One week till “Pitchers and Catchers Report” (Just not our team)!
If you are coming down to Spring Training, please bring some pitching with you!
On the flip side, you can be the Yankees who will be in the playoff hunt but have exactly as many starting pitchers as the Mets and a much larger payroll.
That being said, the owners of the Mets don’t get it. They never have, they never will. Probably for the exact same reasons they have 1B hanging over their heads right now…they just don’t get reality. They live in a different world than the rest of us.
No, the Mets are not a small market team… but it seems like they’re going to be operating out of the same playbook as the Pittsburgh Pirates until the litigation is resolved (and possibly longer if the Wilpons/Sterling manages to hang onto the team.)
If we thought attendance was bad last year, wait til 2012. If the Mets replace Jose Reyes with Ruben Tejada and fail to re-invest the money they were paying Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo (and potentially Francisco Rodriguez), I’m not even going to want to go watch them.
It’s clear that if Reyes walks as a F/A or is traded in July, it is ALL on the Wilpons’. Poor business decisions in their OTHER business is having negative repercussions on the way the “Family” business, aka, the Mets, is run. They made bad (albeit apparently profitable to the Wilpons) investments and now the Mets and their fan base will suffer the consequences. And they just DON’T GET IT! Instead of doing the SMART thing and selling 100% of the franchise to an INTELLIGENT owner, they’re looking to sell “up to” 25% of the team, giving up 0% say in day to day operations of the team! That way the can continue to run the franchise into the ground by running it like the Pirates. Wilpon grew up a Dodger fan so one wonders if he isn’t still a Dodger fan because he sure doesn’t act like a Mets fan.
As for Reyes, even without the $1 billion lawsuit, even without the albatross contracts that are Castillo, Perez, and Rodriguez I wouldn’t see Alderson re-signing a NON moneyball player. I think it’s clear that Alderson would rather have a player with a high OPS. Those of us who are Jose Reyes fans, myself included, had better enjoy his last, and possibly last half, season with the Mets. Alderson’s remarks about a possible extension with Reyes are a smokescreen. Anyone who follows the Mets and has any knowledge of Alderson’s preferences can follow this script to it’s only logical conclussion: Reyes playing elsewhere in 2012 and the Mets left only with a couple of compensation picks in the June 2012 amateur draft (or a couple of worthless minor league prospects from a July 2011 trade). Alderson seems perfectly suited to the Wilpons’ cheapskate operational philosophy. Let’s look forward to a new, and better GM in 2015 after Alderson’s contract expires and/or the Wilpons are ousted from power atop the Mets’ throne(room in the Wilpon’s case!).