There's only one thing to do: focus on the fight to get better, and not dwell over the misery of the past few weeks. As Blutarski said, "Did we quit when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"
That said, there are going to be some large questions that confront the Wilpons and (assuming they keep him) Omar. In no particular order those questions are:
1) Is Jose Reyes part of this team's core, or put another way, can Jose Reyes be a part of a championship core?
Jose has been baffling me and frustrating me since arriving in Flushing. Obviously a player of great talents and gifts, he simply has not been able to put it together and maximize those talents. On the upside, he's got a quick bat, some power, blinding speed, a great arm, good range at short, and all the tools needed to be one of the best SS in MLB.
On the downside, he's immature, unfocused, free-swinging, has poor strike zone recognition, poor pitch recognition, classless (constantly yapping and showing up his opponents), selfish (refusing to accept a lower HR total when that's what would help the team), tremendously unclutch this year (hitting .187 over his last 32 games, and horrible RISP-2O), and he sulks and quits giving effort when things aren't going his way.
You'd like to trade Reyes for a player with similar talent who's not such a head case. Problem is, Phils aren't dealing Rollins.
Point being, you're not going to find a SS of equal talents. So the real question is, can Jose become the type of player that can be a champion, which is not necessarily the same thing as a great player? Can the right manager help him become so? Or maybe the right balance in the clubhouse (maybe a new veteran leadership presence) could get him there? Or is Jose just Jose, kind of like Manny being Manny--just a permanent enigma (although in Jose's case, without the head petting)?
Jose's future, in my mind, is the #1 question for ownership to address, because Jose's trade value at this point in his career is so high that a decision to trade him could lead to a blue chip franchise player coming back--this decision must be made before other needs can be assessed.
2) Can this team move forward under Willie?
The question is not "does Willie deserve to keep his job," even though that's what most fans will be asking. The Wilpons are just finishing, or maybe just finished, paying Art Howe. They just locked Randolph up to a 3 year extension last winter. They don't want to pay another manager to go fishing.
If ownership thinks the team can win under Willie, they'll keep him, even if there's a "better option" out there. Of course, whether the team can follow Willie without being forever reminded of this collapse is an open question at this point. It is so hard to know what goes on behind closed doors, and hard to know if Randolph is still respected by the players. Or whether any blown lead or 3 game losing streak will cause deja vu to settle in over a Randolph-lead clubhouse.
If Willie stays, the next question becomes if he is willing to confront players, and change the culture of this team. It's been a very laissez-faire culture all year long. That might work when you have a team full of veteran professionals, but not when you've got kids like Reyes and Milledge running around making spectacles of themselves.
3) Can this team be championship threat next year?
Look, we know there are FA holes that Mets will have open next year b/c of players who were opening day starters in '07 whose contracts are up: LF (Alou), RF (Green), 2B (Valentin), C (LoDuca). Castillo and Castro's contracts are also up. With the possible combination of retaining some of these players and the rest of the FA market out there, can the Mets realistically win the title next year? That will go a long way towards determining who is retained and what kids get the opportunity. They're not starting the season with Milledge in LF, Gomez in RF, and Gotay at 2B if they think they have a shot to get to the Series.
Of course, if the pitching just isn't available, why not give the kids a shot? The fans love to see home grown talent, the ownsership loves to pay the smaller contract, and the GM loves to have budget flexibility to go after players at other positions when needs come up.
4) Is Delgado finished?
Delgado has 2 years left on a rich contract. If we use a linear model to predict next year's performance, Delgado will hit .039 in 2008. OK, maybe not, but the fall off has been pretty dramatic. I was worried before '07 started that when the end comes for Carlos, it will come quickly. Delgado might have some value left if only for the power numbers he put up this year (still decent in absolute terms, just terrible relative to his career). Does management want to dump him now and not pay him another 8 figure sum in '08 to go .232/22/83, at which point he will also have no value and another season of an 8-figure salary due him. There are no inspiring FA's to be had at 1B (Sean Casey seems the best of the lot, with his .290-something average and single digits homers). Then again, could Wright be moved to 1B or 2B to accomodate a new 3B (ARod? Cabrera?) and eliminate his throwing issues, all in one fell swoop?
5) Is Santana available in a trade?
The answer to this question changes everything.
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11 comments:
After the Mets sign A-Rod and Eckstein, trade Reyes and Humber for Cabrera, and re-sign Alou and Castro, they'd be left with the following lineup:
Eckstein SS
Wright 2B
Cabrera 1B
Rodriguez 3B
Beltran CF
Alou LF
Milledge RF
Castro C
It's righty-heavy but hey, you can't have everything.
In reality, I'm ambivalent about Cabrera, but as DC said the other day, boy can he rake.
Rotation of:
Santana
Pedro
Maine
Perez
Pelfrey
Oh, and I forgot, trade Delgado, Mulvey, F-Mart, Carp, and Gomez for Santana.
Hey if you're going the "win now" route, might as well go whole-hog.
In assessing needs for next year, although the pitching is clearly #1, let's not forget offense. If we had won just ONE of our last 8 games against Phils, it would be us going to playoffs this week, not them. In those 8 games we scored: 3, 2, 2, 2, 10, 2, 3, and 6 runs. This is an average of LESS than 4 runs per game, against a team 4.73 ERA (13th in NL out of 16. THIRTEENTH.) How do you put up so many games of 2 and 3 runs against one of the worst pitching teams in all of baseball? This comes down to players and approach, and put simply I've been complaining all season that their approach was killing them. This needs to change next year.
I think Fredo's point about Reyes is a good one. You have to categorize him as one of three options: (a) he can become a player that b/c of him you will win a WS, (b) you can win a WS despite his presence, or (c) he detracts from the team so much (with immature attitude and complete batting meltdowns during every season) that you cannot win a WS with him. The Manny comparison is interesting, b/c he's also a player that would drive me crazy if he were on Mets. He's so good at hitting, one of the best hitters of all time, yet his lackadaisical attitude on defense, as well as his perennial season-ending "injuries" that cause him to miss 10-20 games, really hurt the team.
I think one thing is for sure: if the Mets haven't learned their lesson from the last two seasons that old players are injury-prone and likely to be undependable, then we don't deserve to win anything with this management. I think veteran presence is critical to help develop young talent, and provide some perspective during the season (although the exact thing that veteran talent was supposed to prevent - a late season meltdown - is precisely what occurred). But, Mets are too reliant on older players without any legit backups. Unfortunately unlike many other teams around the league, our AAA players seem to take a LONG time to develop at major league level. We don't have a Joba or Buchholz or Ellsbury or Pedroia or Cano or Hanley Ramirez or Prince fielder who just seem to come up and play well. Perhaps that's b/c of who we're drafting, or perhaps it's b/c of the way our AAA managers are developing talent, as well as Mets MLB management style. I don't know, but in either case it's really limiting our options if we need backups to cover veteran injuries.
From Reyes: “It was a good year for me, there’s no doubt,” said Reyes...
This comment is wrong on two massive levels. First, anytime a team collapses the way the Mets did, it was not a good year for anyone on the team.
More importantly, if Jose thinks a .280 avg with a .354 OBP and a HORRIFIC, world-class late season disappearance is a good year for someone who is supposed to be the best leadoff hitter in NL or MLB, he's even more misguided than I thought. Perhaps all the "Jose jose jose" chants got to his head along the way, I don't know. But someone on this team needs to make it clear to him that this was NOT a good year for him in any way, and must change next year.
That comment exemplifies everything wrong with this kid's attitude, and to a lesser extent, the whole team. Wallace Matthews column in Newsday today is a must read and makes this very point about the need for the Mets to change their attitude. In his mind, the problem goes to the very top of the organization: it started when ownership had the hubris to make the team's motto "This is your season." Like the Mets deserved the NL. It was their turn.
Well, the Mets responded to adversity like they were owed the pennant, with no fight at all, like it would all be served up to them.
Then there's the smile crew, or on-the-field-secret-dance crew, the apparently medicated Delgado, Reyes, and followers, who are always happy. Whistling while they work. Another K with RISP? I'll just grin and bear it. A little smile for the camera. Hey, I'm just playing here-- this ain't a job or anything.
But it's not just the smile crew. In Matthews' column, he quotes Wright as saying the team just needs a little tinkering, no major changes. His statement belies the belief that the Mets are still the best team in the NL East, they just played bad down the stretch. It's unexplainable. Unlucky. But not a reflection on how good the team is.
As Matthews points out, that attitude is hubris, not reality. The numbers don't lie. By the stats, this was a middling offense and a middling pitching staff, the kind of team, he says, "that you would expect to be on the playoff bubble." Matthews is arguing that this team is not less than the sum of it's parts, it is exactly the sum of its parts. He thinks the Mets basically played as well as the fans should have expected.
We'll see if Wilpon, Minaya and Randolph are willing to see the major problems with this team: a key cog is in decline and collapse (Delgado), a 24-year old kid has become an anti-leader and is being followed by his teammates in behavior that is hurting the team, the pitching staff needs at least one, if not two new front-line arms, and the manager needs to be more aggressive in challenging players.
This last point on Willie is important too, because Willie knows what needs to happen. You listen to him talk, and you know he's old school. You see the look on his face when Reyes fails to run out a ground ball or Milledge stands on second on a pop fly with two outs, and he looks like he wants to wretch. You see from the understanded way he carries himself as a manager (and carried himself as a player) that he is all class and wouldn't engage in the on-the-field classless nonsense that his players are engaging in. But it's no longer enough for him to shake his head disapprovingly. He's going to have set new parameters and treat these kids like the kids they are, and not the veteran leader type squad he was helping Joe coach in the Bronx, where he could expect the players to police their own.
I didn't read Matthews' column but from the sound of it I couldn't agree more: with the exception of the offense, this team didn't underperform my expectations. They performed TO my expectations. Anyone who thought this was a legitimate pitching staff has their head buried deeper in the sand than Omar. The staff was clearly smoke and mirrors all season, and the house of cards fell apart in the end. Ollie is wild and unpredictable - shocking. We've been pointing this out all year. Glavine is only as good as the ump's strike zone. Duque is old and will be injured - this was an easy call we all knew and made before the first pitch of the season was even thrown. And I knew exactly what we were getting with this bullpen.
It's time for Omar and Co. to face reality - they assembled a team with a lot of holes and question marks. The phillies and braves didn't just sit around in the offseason and regular season - they made moves to make themselves younger and better. How about the Mets? Older and slower.
Willie was too over-reliant on veterans, too unwilling to discipline attitudes he knew to be wrong (good call Fredo), and Omar was to unwilling to admit the team had glaring weaknesses. Most of all, the players were too arrogant to believe that they actually needed to expend some effort and play in order to win. They seemed to assume half the time that the W should be penned into their standings just for showing up. Wright and Willie's post-game comments gnawed at me to no end all season, showing either hubris or lack of reality. Well, as a certain movie title once proclaimed, for the 2007 Mets Reality Bites.
Some more quotes that show the problem:
"It feels almost surreal," Carlos Delgado said, "We were too good to finish like this."
Apparently not, Carlos.
Then there's this one from earlier in the week, a quote that was reported by Kieth and Ron during the game, and repeated on the air by Mike & the Dog today, but I haven't yet seen it in print:
"We're so good sometimes we just get bored."
Are you serious?
Francesa just said the Ron & Kieth were so on target in the last few weeks that they have clearly cemented their status as "the best broadcast booth in America. I think you can say that now."
I don't listen to enough booths to compare, but I certainly find the Cohen/Darling/Hernandez to be the most interestng booth I've ever gotten to listen to as a Mets fan.
Still miss Murph for play-by-play, though.
The Delgado quote in full, reported by Mark Hale in the NY Post on Wedendsday:
"I think at times we get a little careless. We've got so much talent, I think sometimes we get bored."
You won 5 of your last 17!!!! With the season hanging in the balance!!!!
Carlos, among the illustrious pitchers who beat your team coming down the stretch were these:
Shearn, Moylan, Geary, Albaladejo, Colome, Tankersly, Chico, Bergmann, and Hanrahan, Kim and Kensing.
Look at that list---so good you get bored???!!! C'mon!!!
HT: Francesa.
This team played lazy, unmotivated and disinterested baseball all season. They clearly had an attitude that winning each game was unimportant. After all, how could it matter - they were the Mets, the team who were automatically guaranteed the NL east, right?
I don't think trading reyes is out of the question, especially for a #1 pitcher. Pick up A-rod, move him back to SS.
Next, as much as I think Willie is responsible for setting the tone and he was too hands off, I also don't see obvious great managers around the league I'd rather have. My guess is he stays, but perhaps Wilpon cracks down on how the team is run and forces a certain attitude and respect to be present.
Ultimately I hope Omar realizes that this is not simply a "band-aid" solution and thinking we were just one win away; therefore, thinking that only small changes are required. The problem is much more deep rooted than that, and also expect the braves to improve themselves in offseason.
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