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CRG and Fred Wilpon Don’t Affect Me

I saw this post over at Mets Police about the CRG situation and how fans will root for this team this year.

 

It’s interesting how people sometimes forget that peoples positions, viewpoints, or situations change.  The idea that the Mets hiring CRG could mean they might file for bankruptcy and one day have to sell is not mutually exclusive from the Mets statement that they didn’t hire CRG to file for bankruptcy.
The same was true of the original Mets statement that the Madoff situation would not affect the Mets.  It’s easy to look back now and accuse them of lying, but the situation probably spiraled beyond what they expected, including the contining poor economy to the reach of the Picard lawsuit.  You could say perhaps it was just short-sighted and that they should’ve known it was going to affect the team, but I’m not so sure that’s the case either. If the Mets had not gone into a downward spiral themselves and instead had won games, stayed healthy, and been competitive there is a chance they would’ve remained profitable.
If you want to read into every statement and play conspiracy theory that’s fine.  Chances are there are stuff Fred Wilpon is glossing over and stuff he’s flat out ignoring.  He could even be lying about certain things.  We’re not obligated to know everything about the behind the scenes investments or have access to all financial statements of the team we root for or the owners of that team.  No one’s doubting that the current financial situation around the Mets is bad, cost us Jose Reyes, and looks dire. Still, hiring CRG was actually a positive move.  It’s not a “Hey look at the embarrassment this team is” move, it’s one aimed at getting the team righted.
CRG was _not_ hired by Sterling or the Wilpons, and the negative revenue situation does not go away with a new owner.  In the same breath people are criticizing the Mets for spending wildly to get themselves into this mess, and criticizing the Wilpons for being too broke to spend wildly to try to get the team out of this mess.  Some question who would want to be a minority investor in this team, but isn’t it also a valid question to ask who would want to buy a team that they’d have to put tens of millions of dollars into each year?  Remember they lost 70 million last year.  You can see value in the future of this team as both a minority or majority owner if you look.
You’re welcome to not spend money on the team if you want. The Wilpons won’t see a dime anyway, no matter what you spend, since the team is losing money. Winning solves the Mets problems, losing exacerbates it.  Nothing you do will change that.  If you can give up the enjoyment derived from going to see a game, that’s fine.  Just remember you’re also withdrawing your support from Ike Davis.  David Wright will notice when he hits a walk-off grand slam and there are only 12 people cheering.  Do you think he’ll remember that when he becomes a free agent at the end of one of the next two seasons? Did Jose Reyes notice how empty it was in front of his supposedly loving fans in September while he was chasing Mets history?
Some people phrase it as “Choose the Mets, not the Wilpons”. To me that means enjoying Mets baseball whenever I can get it and not worrying about who the owner is.  I derive no joy from who owns the Mets, or who runs the Mets.  All I keep thinking is that if the Wilpons selling is so important to you, you’d almost have to be disappointed if the Mets went on a miracle run and went to the World Series, because the resultant cash flow could cement them as owners.  So I’ll stick to hoping for that miracle run and let the financial stuff shake out where it may.

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Some Optimism For Jason Bay

There hasn’t been a lot of positives with Jason Bay, but barring something weird, he’ll be here next year.  So are there any signs that he can have a season that we can even remotely describe as good?  Before you jump all over me, I know I’m grasping at straws here.  On the other hand, Jason Bay sneezes harder than he hit the ball the last two years, and you’d figure he could have a better year almost by accident.

 

Health would be a good start. He’s missed some time each of the two years, keeping him from getting a steady rhythm that often helps baseball players. He finished 2011 hot, but he also finished it injured.

 

He hit one home run in April and one in May.
He hit two home runs in June and two home runs in July.
He hit three home runs in August and three in September.

 

That’s a steady progression.  It’s not a sign for 40 home runs, but three a month would at least give him 18. (Which is how many he has for the Mets now)

 

He had a hit in each of the last 15 games he started except two, a Tim Hudson 10K game and a clunker against the Nationals. That’s a .954 OPS in September.  It was nice to see him avoid some of those prolonged 0-20 slumps he so frequently got himself into.  However he did have a 2 for 45 slump in August just before getting hot.

 

His OPS jumped from a .656 in the first half to a .758 in the second half.

 

He was clearly hitting the ball with authority in September; In addition to his three home runs, he had seven doubles.  75 AB is hardly a representative sample, but we were beginning to doubt he was capable of being good even that long.

 

Even a modest 10% improvement from Bay would put him close to a .800 OPS with around 20 home runs.  That’s still well below his career averages.  2011 was the bottom of the barrel for Bay, but his career trajectory doesn’t read as a straight down arrow, so there’s hope and even optimism that he’ll have a better year next year.

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Quick thoughts on Mets and CRG

Here’s the inital report from Eno Sarris at Amazin’ Avenue about the Mets hiring CRG, the turnaround consultants that handled the Texas Rangers’ sale.

 

Dan Lewis has some interesting remarks about it in his twitter feed last night as well. (Mostly directed at Adam Rubin)

 

Probably too soon to really tell what it means with any certainty, especially for an outsider, but it’s probably a win-win for fans.    I don’t really care who owns the Mets as long as they can spend money and build the team as needed.   if CRG leads the Wilpons towards a sale that’s fine.  (As long as we don’t end up with someone worse owning the team, which is always a possibility)  If they fix the cash flow problems via a chapter 11 or whatever it is they do?  That’s fine too.  Whatever gets the team out of the red the fastest.

 

Okay, that’s enough murky financial mumbo jumbo to last me at least until they announce the minority owners sale thing.  Back to watching the Islanders and Giants.

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2012: Can It Get Worse?

The 2012 Mets team is so devoid of any expectation that it’s almost a lock that we’ll be pleasantly surprised.

 

The way things have gone, it’s easy to forget that the Mets actually have a lot of talent on the roster.

 

With Ike Davis, David Wright and Daniel Murphy leading the way, the Mets offense should do pretty well.  Lucas Duda looks like a real good player.  Josh Thole and Ruben Tejada haven’t lit anything on fire, but they’re both still pretty young and have some value.

 

The Mets redid the bullpen with some talented and reliable arms.  They’ve got some guys returning that did a good job, and should be much improved there.

 

The starting pitching is obviously where one sees the biggest holes, but it’s probably not quite that dire.  Mike Pelfrey and Dillon Gee will probably never be stars, but they both have shown they can be inning eaters or pitch that occasional gem.  Jon Niese has dealt with some injuries, but he’s a high strikeout guy still learning and growing.  R.A. Dickey is a very good pitcher and has proved he’s no one-hit wonder.   The big question mark is obviously Johan Santana and if he’ll experience any setbacks or injuries during the year.

 

There’s more talent on this team than people seem to be talking about right now.   Some of it may it may be suspect, and some may end up injured, but it’s unlikely it all will and it’s also possible some of the younger players take unforeseen strides forward.  They may not win 95 games, but they’re not the 60-70 wins, lock for last place team that they’re being portrayed as.   Sometimes you have to push aside some of the doom and gloom and take a closer look.

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What About Howie….and Kevin?

What about Kevin Burkhardt as Wayne Hagin’s replacement?  Assuming he’s even interested in switching back to radio.  I’m not sure if switching from SNY to WFAN is considered a step up, even getting to call the games.

 

He’s familiar with calling Mets games, as he does a couple of games on SNY in Spring Training.  He’s doing Dallas Cowboys games on the radio this season, so he’s familiar with the medium and the need to describe the action.  I’ve thought he’s done a good job in the spring, although I haven’t heard him on the radio.

 

Presumably SNY had to give him permission for the Cowboys job, given that it overlapped a couple of Mets games.  Could it be that they were giving him a trial, on someone else’s dime, to see how he’d do on radio?  He’s been around for a while and he knows the team and it’s history.  He’s actually been here longer than everyone in the dugout sans David Wright.

 

I’m just theorizing here; I don’t even know if he’s being considered or wants the job.  Still, I think you could do a lot worse and Mets fans would certainly take to him better than Wayne Hagin.  Of course, Toby Hyde would be a good choice as well.

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The Difference Between Prudence and Pessimism

Sandy Alderson was quoted recently as viewing Johan Santana as a question mark for the rotation to start the season.  This comment was a statement on being prudent and building depth, not a dire prediction about Santana’s health.  Still, it was misrepresented and reported as a medical update instead of simply an extension of previous comments of Alderson’s suggesting it’s a good idea to have lots of depth in the rotation.   Johan Santana has not had a setback, and is on exactly the same path he has been since early October; Opening Day.  He’s begun offseason conditioning, but it’s way too early to start throwing a baseball.  Certainly there’s a possibility when he starts throwing that his shoulder will struggle to respond the way a pitcher’s needs to, but that’s merely a possibility, not a prediction.

Expecting Santana’s body to respond like Mark Prior’s, or Chien Ming Wang’s, is probably as silly as me expecting my body to respond like David Wright’s when I go to the gym. It’s even possible Santana and his doctors could use Wang and Prior’s experience as guidelines to improve on the rehabilitation process.  Santana is a different person, and everyone’s body responds differently.  There is a thought out there that because of copy number variation in the human genome, and other in depth biological stuff outside my paygrade, that there is some difference in the way different racial populations across the globe adapted over the last 200,000 years or so.  Basically expecting Santana’s body to heal and strengthen like Mark Prior’s may be like expecting your Ford Fusion to break down at the same odometer reading your neighbor’s Focus broke down at.

They estimated Tommy John’s odds of recovery from his procedure at 1%, but nowadays 83% or so of the operations go as planned.  Practice makes perfect, so to speak.  A lot of that has to do with the regiment and rehab schedules and learning what’s the best way to get the elbow or shoulder into game shape again.  This isn’t to say that that Santana is a lock to make even 25 starts next season, or that he’ll be successful if he does so.   It simply means that Sandy Alderson is aware of the severity of the surgery Santana had and knows the importance of pitching depth.  That’s it.

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Don’t Tell Me How to Feel, How to React

Coincidentially Dec 5th is the day the 21st amendment was ratified, re-legalizing the consumption of alcohol.

 

Don’t tell me the Seaver trade was worse.  We shouldn’t be arguing which Mets disappointment was worse instead of debating batting titles and MVPs.  I feel how I feel, and you feel how you feel.  This is the single worse day I’ve experienced as a Mets fan.

 

Don’t tell me about the contract, or that you know how it’s going to turn out.  No one knows that, and there aren’t probability charts for injuries.  Everyone is different.   Can you really go from hoping that ball finds the gap so Reyes gets a triple, to hoping he pulls a hamstring or isn’t worth it in a couple of years?  Would you really have been upset of the Mets ‘overpaid’, which is something that only happens in retrospect, to keep a player like Jose Reyes on the team?  Does anyone seriously root for a long-term fiscally responsible plan when they go to baseball games?  I don’t.  I just wanted to see Jose Reyes and my Mets.   Add in that Carlos Beltran is also gone, and Johan Santana may never be the same, and it’s hard to swallow.

 

Also, don’t tell me I’m “Less of a fan” for being less interested in the Mets without Reyes.  There is no rulebook to fandom.  The truth is most of you are also less interested in the Mets, just unwilling to admit it.  Less people will go to games, less people will buy jerseys.  The team being likely worse only further plays into that.  Jose Reyes was one small part of the big picture, but without his portion I find myself noticing the other pictures, other places to spend my money, in the building.  I’ll never not be a Mets fan, nor will I ever stop rooting for them, but that doesn’t mean I’ll devote the same level of energy and commitment that I have in the past.

 

To sum it up in a way that to me seems to represent baseball pretty well:  I’m less excited about the Mets and less confident they’ll be successful in the near future than I was following Beltran striking out against the Cardinals to end the ’06 season.

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1987 New York Mets Signed Team Baseball

Here are some pictures of a baseball I came into possession of.  When you find a signed baseball from the 1980s, you pretty much always expect it to be the ’86 World Series team, especially when the first two names that jump out at you are Rafael Santana and Wally Backman.

But then I saw Kevin McReynolds who didn’t arrive until 1987.  Santana departed after the 1987 season, so that was the only year they played together and therefore the only year the ball can be from.  So there it is, a New York Mets team signed baseball from 1987.

And yes, this baseball was apparently purchased at Sea World.

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2011 Mets Statistics You Probably Haven’t Heard

Dillon Gee led all National League rookies with 13 wins.  Vance Worley was 2nd with 11.

 

Lucas Duda had the highest OBP and SLG among qualifying rookies. (.370 and .482)

 

Justin Turner was second, 30 to 32, in doubles for NL rookies.

 

Both Jose Reyes and Angel Pagan were in the top ten for hardest to double up.  Jose Reyes was the hardest man to strike out in the National League. (14.3 AB between strikeouts.  That’s like twice a week)

 

Jason Bay was tied, with 2, for the most Grand Slams in the NL.

 

The Mets were second, .264, in AVG in the NL, and second in OBP, .335.

 

They left 59 more players on base, 1257, than the Marlins who had the second most at 1198.  Mets opponents left 1230 on base.

 

7 of David Wright‘s 14 home runs were go-ahead home runs.

 

The Mets were 9-4 on Saturdays at home, 2-11 on Saturdays on the road.

 

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Realignment: Home Field, Tie-Breakers, More Interleague, Bench

The news this week is that the Astros sale is final and they’ve agreed to move to the AL West for 2013.  This means the schedule will consist of 30 interleague games, all season long, as well as the 72 against your own division, and another 60 against the rest of your league.    I happen to like it, besides the keeping the DH thing that gives the AL an unfair advantage.  A 2nd wild card berth will also be added with a one-game sudden death playoff for the true Wild Card spot.

 

These changes were made to even up the leagues as well as put the emphasis on winning the division.   Winning the division guarantees you’ll make the Division Series, although doesn’t give you any additional benefit _in_ any of the series besides home field over the Wild Card.  I’d actually like to see that eliminated now, and just go with best record.   If a 94 win wild card team already has to dispatch with a lesser team in a sudden death match, let them have the home field after that if they’re playing an 88 win division winner.

 

For those of you that still think the balanced schedule is important, this new format would include that for the divisional race, although not the wild card race.  Each division would play the same set of interleague teams.   What I’d be curious about is the tie-breakers.  Previously if two teams were tied for the division and wild card, but both would make the playoffs, the team with the better record is awarded the division.   While I think there is merit to keeping the same format, emphasizing that you need to beat the teams in your division to actually win it, I could see where it’s a tough pill to swallow to technically have the best record in the division and have to play a sudden death game.

 

This format has the potential to create a lot of heartbreak.  Especially the first couple of years as teams leading in the Wild Card are used to coasting and preparing for the playoffs.  To then potentially go home one day after the season ends is going to feel much like we felt as Mets fans in 2007 and 2008, or Reds fans felt in 1999.  I suspect the winning team will treat the game as pretty much an extension of the regular season, not getting overly excited about winning that ‘first round’ game.

 

Many will dislike the extra interleague, but I’ve got no more desire to see another series against the Dodgers than the Angels.  Roster construction in the National League may take on a different form.  With interleague play scattered throughout the season, and more of it, NL teams may feel the need to carry more of a DH type player on the bench.   None of this is official yet of course, but it looks like it’s pretty close to accurate and finalized.  It’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out, but I think it could be fun.