Hi. Ponder this.
In case you have lousy eyesight like me, it says JOSE REYES BANNER AND FIESTA LATINA.
Sounds fun, right?
Well…if you were the New York Mets and every decision you make goes wrong, when would you schedule JOSE REYES NIGHT?
June? May?
Nope. August 5th. You know, August. After the trade deadline.
The Mets very well may have set themselves up for an All-Star mocking. Come on out and boo the hell out of Fred and cheer for the shortstop on some other team.
…
The best idea I saw yesterday was from Ceetar who suggests that Mets fans sell that game out NOW. You want Reyes here? Send Fred a message with your wallet. Much like I tell the team…MAN UP. Don’t whine to me about giving Fred money…you want Jose..spend $20.
Another good way is to support This Group on Friday June 3.
This is a day to celebrate JOSE REYES and to let the mgt know we will not take it lightly if they do the stupid thing and trade one of our fav homegrown boys! So buy your ticket to this game and wear your finest JOSE tee or jersey and bring a sign or 2 telling how you feel!!!!!! GET YOUR T SHIRTS FROM THE7LINE.COM…..He has special DONT TRADE JOSE SHIRTS!
AND Join us at the top of the 5th inning on the SHEA BRIDGE….we will all start the JOSE CHANT…and hopefully get on TV, and most importantly GET NOTICED BY THE WHOLE TEAM AND THE MGT!
SO Tell your friends to tell their friends to tell their friends…etc Lets make this an epic event….
PS CHEAP TICKETS are always available….no need for a field level ticket to be able to get to the SHEA BRIDGE during the game!
We will be in front of the Rotunda entrance from about 4:30 until 6pm…handing out our invitations….BE THERE TO BE HEARD
And as those folks mentioned…why not wear this shirt from The 7 Line. (Nope I am not getting commission to plug T7L, I just like what he does and think this shirt is cool).
While I’m plugging everyone else…be a friend of the MP on Facebook (I’m jealous of Randy from The Apple and all his millions of friends), follow me on twitter @metspolice (and hang out during the games) and check out Mets Police Tickets for your secondary market ticket needs.
I don’t understand the “Don’t Trade Reyes” campaign. He’s a good player, and when he’s at his best he can be a great player, but he’s had injury problems. He’s playing well in his contract year, and he’s going to ask for more money over a longer term than it would be wise to pay him, given that there’s a high chance he’ll be injured/slumping again over the next few years.
Furthermore, the Mets are several years away from seriously contending, and it’s foolhardy to assume that Reyes will still be productive by the time the team is ready to contend.
The best thing for the long term success of the team would be to trade Reyes, not because Fred Wilpon doesn’t like him, but because the franchise is likely to be able to get a couple of young prospects for him, and those young prospects are infinitely more likely than Reyes to be a part of the next Mets team that has a real shot at a championship.
David Wright is a slightly different story, as he’s been a more consistent contributor to the team. Although I still think that Wright will end up being to the Mets what Mattingly was to the Yankees: A damn good player, loved by fans, who spent his entire career with the team, but never won a damned thing.
The injury thing is overblown, but you’re otherwise correct. At this point, what the Mets could get for Reyes in a trade plus the money they’d spend on re-signing him would put them closer to fixing the team than re-signing him. The reality is that a lot needs to be addressed, you can’t get something for nothing, and Reyes represents both a rare trade chip and potential salary to be spent elsewhere, and as I keep saying, you simply don’t build a team around a leadoff man. Who had more to do with the Mets last World Series appearance, Edgardo Alfonzo and Mike Piazza or Timo Perez and Benny Agbayani?
The problem you have with the fans is a) Reyes is a remarkable, fantastic player any way you slice it, and b) they have quite honestly forgotten what it’s like to win. Watching Reyes and laying claim to the Most Dynamic Leadoff Hitter in The Game (Mets fans have always been obsessed with superlatives: “Greatest Hitting Catcher,” “Best Infield Ever,” etc.) is the lone point of pride at this point. In lieu of contenders, they’ve become completely infatuated with “favorite home grown boys.” Take them away, and the team just…well, sucks.
That feeling of course ignores the fact that the team sucks regardless and on multiple levels. My thought is that it’s long past time to just rip the Band-Aid off and start making some major moves. I’ve actually been singing that chorus for a couple of years now. The response was always, “Oh, no, you can’t do that. The team will tank and attendance will dwindle.” Well, guess what? That’s happened anyway. We could be 2-3 seasons farther along in the process by now if management would have pulled its head out of the sand sooner.
Nothing to do with leading off. Do you know why the Mets made it to the playoffs two years in a row with a basically subpar outfield? Not because they build around Piazza, but because Piazza was an offensive weapon at a position of scarcity. Without him you have league average offense there at best, with no way to improve it.
With Reyes being the best SS in the game this year, and with a history of being awesome and only one injury issue in the last 6 years, it’s a no brainer to have him on the team.
Also, the chances that any package of prospects ever contributes at all is slim. Just ask the Twins about all the crap they got for Santana. That’s the most likely result of the prospects we could get for Reyes.
You just said they had a subpar outfield during that period. If Piazza played, say, LF instead of catcher (a position at which the Mets already had All-Star production in the seasons prior to Piazza’s arrival, BTW), the gain/loss at the respective positions would simply have been reversed. Regardless of his position, Piazza would still be the big threat in the 3 hole, forcing you to pitch to Alfonzo and threatening to knock one to the moon every time up.
Assuming any trade returns won’t ever contribute is a disingenuous cop-out. There’s no way of knowing that. On the other hand, we DO know what the team as currently constituted top-to-bottom has delivered.
The Red Sox flourished without Garciaparra. The Giants won a WS with practically no offense after Bonds moved on. Hitting the “reset” button seems to be working out just fine for the Indians. Better days can be ahead, but only after the franchise addresses its failures and has the guts to turn the page.
That’s simply a grass is always greener argument.
How about it this way? Let’s say the Mets needed to add offense in 2000. There were plenty of outfield options to sign or trade for, but very very few catchers. If Piazza played LF, they would’ve been limited in what they could to do upgrade.
The same way with Reyes. Yes, with everyone healthy the Mets could carry a sub-par SS. But it would require every other position to be that much better. Whereas if you keep Reyes, you can get by with a little bit less from the other positions, which allows you the flexibility to move them around. Beltran on a 1 year contract for instance. doesn’t work? Okay, we’ve got Fernando Martinez, or Kirk Niuwenhuis, or there are 6 dozen decent guys on the market.
If the Mets are going to make smart moves, make smart moves around the best SS in baseball. It only makes the team that much better.
assuming the prospects will suck is a cop-out, but even first round picks are often crap shoots. Reyes is a known quantity: awesome. It’s frankly a gamble to blow it up. Hey, this doesn’t work. Let’s destroy the fanbase and the team and hope our next bunch of decisions work out really well, stay healthy ,and that we can afford to keep them.
There are no guarantees the grass will be greener, but please take an OBJECTIVE look at this team today. It’s the end of May, they have a losing record, their only success has been against bad teams, its pitching is weak, and the bench is atrocious. Attendance is dropping by the week, and the franchise is “bleeding money” according to the guy who pays the bills. The grass upon which the Mets tread now is all but dead.
Back to the Piazza thing, the point you’re missing is that the Mets didn’t NEED an offensive upgrade because the meat of their order could compensate for weaknesses elsewhere (not that there were many, because even that subpar OF hit around .300 for the most part and played their roles well).
If those Mets really felt they needed an offensive upgrade, they could have found a better-hitting SS than Ordonez off some other team’s trash heap. He was like having a 2nd pitcher hit.
Reyes is freaking awesome, but leadoff awesome–getting on base and zipping around them–isn’t the kind of awesome that makes up for things that are lacking elsewhere. It just isn’t. Even Rickey Henderson won his only two World Series rings after being TRADED TO teams that ADDED him as the cherry on top of squads that had ALREADY WON DIVISION TITLES the season before (’89 As, ’93 Blue Jays).
You’re looking at a what is a fluid equation much too linearly. It’s not as simple as “your team can’t possibly get better if you give up the best player available at ‘x’ position.” It totally depends on what you do with the other 8, and in fact the other 24. Building around Reyes–developing a rotation, assembling a consistent bullpen, waiting for Ike and Murph to develop–isn’t going to happen any faster than rebuilding without him. There are just too many things to fix. The latter choice, though, will allow you to address more pieces of the puzzle at one time.
I am ashamed to say I was in the ‘Trade Reyes’ camp, but not now. Carl Crawford money.
You can bring people in to take his place, but as Jason Bay will tell you, that doesn’t always work out.