Crummy Few Days for Mets
And things were going so well. Before Saturday, the Mets were winners of seven of their last nine and had reached .500. Then it all came tumbling down in the worst few days in recent Mets history.
They dropped two to the Yankees, allowing 16 runs in the two games. Then on the off day on Monday, Fred Wilpon decided it would be a good idea to trash his team and its top players.
Could things possibly get worse? Not a problem.
On the field on Tuesday, the Mets dropped a truly terrible game to the Cubs 11-1. Off the field, there was word of a Sports Illustrated article that is set to come out this week in which Wilpon said the Mets are “bleeding cash,” with losses of up to $70 million this season. The really bad news is that SI‘s Tom Verducci writes:
Though the Mets will have about $64 million in salaries coming off the books after this season (from a $142 million total), they will not put much, if any, of that back into the major league payroll.
Now, I don’t know if Wilpon said this or if this is just Verducci’s speculation. If it is true, then Jose Reyes is absolutely a goner and there will be no notable additions to the team next season, which does not bode well for 2012.
I can’t imagine this is true — how will the Mets be able to justify an $80 million (or less) payroll while playing in the largest market in the country and owning their own profitable cable network? I still say the payroll next season will be around $100 million, which means Reyes can theoretically be resigned.
In any case, this has been a rotten few days for the Mets. The good news is, it can’t get any worse.
Right?
first of all, i hope that was sarcasm at the end, because things always have room to get worse for the mets.
i believe in the post or newsday today, it also said that wilpon said he was aiming for a payroll of about 100 mil next year. everything else is true though and very disappointing, i’ve been a mets fan my entire life (not too long but long enough, almost 20 years) and there really haven’t been too many bright spots, but this is perhaps the worst thing i remember happening to the mets except for the 07 collapse. it’s really upsetting because baseball is a major part of my life and the one team i root for every year, no matter how bad, just seems to be going down the toilet. and it makes me wonder how long do i have to suffer before this team finally puts everything back together
Well said, Tom. I imagine every Mets fan feels the same way — we have invested so much in this team with very little return. But we muddle through and stick by the team because that is what real fans do. But things have to start getting better, right? I mean, things can’t get worse, can they (more sarcasm!)?
well i stick by my mets because there really isn’t a good alternative, and like i said, baseball is so important to me, my summer just wouldn’t be the same without the mets, good or bad. It’s just upsetting knowing that the mets have talent, they have money, they seem to have everything they need (minus that one slugger and/or pitcher to put them over the top), but they just can’t click. i was recently going through some older posts from the last couple winters and i noticed you wrote about minaya’s inability to be creative in the trade market. i personally like alderson and think he’s unfairly grouped in the hated front office, but i’d really love to see some creativity that minaya didn’t have used to help make the mets better. i liked the reds trade with arroyo, phillips, and harang that you used to talk about, and you’d think that the mets would work on something similar to that, but then nothing major ever seems to happen