Blogging Mets

Like most Mets fans, I was thrilled when the Mets signed Jason Bay prior to the 2010 season; the Mets needed a power-hitting left fielder and he seemingly fit the bill. The contract didn’t seem bad at all — at four years and $66 million, it was half the contract Matt Holliday signed with the Cardinals, and Holliday wasn’t twice as good as Bay, right?

Well, it hasn’t worked out very well, to state the obvious. He somehow suffered a season-ending concussion in late July 2010 when his head hardly hit the outfield wall at Dodger Stadium. Before that, he had only hit six homers. He missed the first month of 2011 and never seemed to get on track. He did, however, double his home run total to a less than impressive 12.

Now it is 2012, and Bay could be the key to the entire Mets season. If Bay hits like he did the past two years, that leaves a massive hole in the middle of the lineup. In a lineup that already includes relatively weak hitters in Andres Torres, Josh Thole and Ruben Tejada, the Mets cannot survive with Bay being added to that list.

The conventional wisdom is that Citi Field’s massive dimensions got into his head and effected his swing, both at home and on the road. Now the thinking is that the new smaller dimensions will allow Bay (and the rest of the hitters, frankly) to relax and not assume that they have to absolutely crush a ball to get it over the wall.

I can remember at least a half a dozen balls Bay smoked off of that high wall in left that went for doubles rather than home runs. That has got to be demoralizing.

It will obviously be interesting to watch and see if Bay has a bounce-back year because of the new dimensions. It will also be interesting to hear what he has to say if that is the case because back in his introductory news conference, he didn’t seem concerned about Citi Field:

“For those of you who don’t know, and I’m sure most of you do, Pittsburgh is very spacious as well, and you play half your games on the road. I’m not really concerned. It’s something that’s there, but you go out and I’m confident in the type of player I am. Ballpark or not, I’m still going to do what I do. So that had zero factor in anything in my decision.”

In an article on the Mets official website Tuesday, beat writer Anthony DiComo espouses on the new Mets bullpen. DiComo points out the unfortunate similarities between Sandy Alderson’s spending spree this off-season and Omar Minaya’s prior to the 2009 campaign.

At that time Minaya went out and got Francisco Rodriguez, J.J. Putz and Sean Green, of whom DiComo writes “seemed like a hidden gem.” If there was anything hidden it was talent! In any case, we all know how that turned out — not well.

The hope is that it works out better for Alderson. It can’t be any worse than last year when the Mets bullpen ranked 28th in all of baseball with a 4.33 ERA and blowing more than a third of its save opportunities. But did Alderson spend wisely?

There were a lot of relievers available this off-season. He signed closer Frank Francisco (on right of photo) to a reasonable two-year, $12 million deal. Ramon Ramirez came over in the excellent Angel Pagan trade and will make $2.65 million — slightly high but not terrible.

It is the Jon Rauch (above, left, who shared the bullpen with Francisco in Toronto  as well) signing that I question. He will get paid $3.5 million in 2012 — a big number for a guy who pitched to a 4.85 ERA in 2011 and had his season end early with knee surgery.

It appears Alderson didn’t time this market correctly and jumped the gun. Ryan Madson ended up with only a one-year, $8.5 million contract with the Reds, and Brad Lidge settled for just $1 million from the Nationals. I would much rather have these two much stronger pitchers (despite their Phillies pedigrees) than Francisco and Rauch for the exact same money.

At the time of Alderson’s moves, I questioned spending so much of the limited money the Mets had available on the bullpen and ignoring the rest of the team. Alderson has since said he expects the Mets to get better internally — Johan Santana (hopefully) coming back, strides by Jonathon Niese, Dillon Gee and Lucas Duda, and full, healthy seasons from David Wright, Ike Davis and Jason Bay.

That is a dangerous game to play. What if the strides are not made and the health does not return? Then the Mets are in the same boat as last season, except they’ll have a stronger bullpen to mop-up all of those ugly losses.

So did Ryan Braun beat the system or did the system work? Mets players are split.

“Ryan Braun is out there saying this shows he is innocent. Does that mean O.J. Simpson is innocent, too?” one Met, conveniently hiding behind a cloak of anonymity, told the Daily News.

David Wright, though, had no problem speaking on the record when he said, “You’re glad that the process worked. That’s why we have that process in place.”

Braun certainly seemed convincing at his news conference on Friday (left) when he said steroids had never entered his body. Then again, Rafael Palmeiro seemed convincing when he adamantly told Congress he had never taken steroids.

In this case, I think Braun should be believed. To me the smoking gun is the test result itself. It reportedly showed a testosterone level of 20-1.  A 4-1 result triggers a positive test, and Braun said his result was the three times the highest level ever previously recorded. That alone should tell you something went wrong somewhere.

One source familiar with the case said it best when he told the News, “It was more than just (the urine collector) not giving it to FedEx promptly. Isn’t it odd that of 40,000 tests, the one that goes missing for two days has a higher ratio than any test ever?”

The one thing I didn’t think was appropriate was Braun suggesting that the collector, identified by The Associated Press as Dino Laurenzi, Jr., intentionally did something to the sample.

“There were a lot of things that we learned about the collector, about the collection process, about the way that the entire thing worked that made us very concerned and very suspicious about what could have actually happened,” Braun said at his news conference.

Braun should have revealed what “we learned” rather than just making veiled comments when this guy’s only “crime” might have been the honest mishandling of a urine sample.

Perhaps that knowledge could have answered the one question that remains a mystery — how did the synthetic testosterone get into his sample? Because make no mistake, it was in there. There was absolutely no evidence of tampering (the sample was triple-sealed), and Braun never claimed tampering, anyway. He never said there was some kind of error at the lab. He only challenged the 44-hour delay in getting the sample to FedEx.

So is Braun as guilty as O.J. or is he the victim of a system that in his words is “fatally flawed?’ We’ll probably never know.

I am already tired of people labeling 2012 a “transitional” year for the Mets. The Daily News used the term this past weekend, writing:

The Mets are in a transitional year…

The Wall Street Journal followed a few days later with:

…during what can politely be called a transitional era for the Mets.

The problem is that this should not be treated as a transitional year for the Mets. Last year certainly was; the bloated payroll made it virtually impossible for Sandy Alderson to make any moves to improve the club. He said he was waiting for payroll flexibility. Well, he certainly got the payroll flexibility this year with $50 million in bad salaries coming off the books, yet he was unwilling or unable to spend any of it.

Calling this a transitional year implies that Alderson and the crew should get a pass if things go wrong;  they are “transitioning,” after all. It’s similar to the two-year pass we all gave the Knicks after Donnie Walsh took over. He said he needed the two seasons to clear salary and make a run at the big free agents. Just like Alderson last season, we gave Walsh the pass. Then when he had the coveted payroll flexibility, he failed to land LeBron James. He did sign Amare Stoudemire and trade for Carmelo Anthony, but even if he didn’t, the free pass was over. His time had come.

I feel it’s the same way with Alderson. He had his one year pass and he got his payroll flexibility. It’s not our fault that he did not use it to improve the team.

I’m not saying the Mets have to make the playoffs or Alderson should be fired. I’m just saying that he deserves the scrutiny for the team’s play on the field this season.

His free pass is over.

I wrote earlier this month that I think the Mets have an honesty problem; either the front office flat-out lies to us or just does not tell us exactly what is going on. Sandy Alderson has been giving misleading statements since he got here. He made a comment on Monday that while it was not a lie or misleading, was a perfect example of the dishonest double-talk coming out of management.

Mets Blog reports that speaking on the MLB Network on Monday, Alderson said, “The payroll this year is lower. The effective payroll will be about the same as it was last year, in terms of the players we actually have on the field.”

What he meant by that is after taking away the salaries of Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo, Francisco Rodriguez and Carlos Beltran (which of course the Mets still paid), the payroll in the second half of 2011 is similar to the payroll this season.

At least Alderson admitted the payroll is lower this season, but by talking about the “effective payroll” he is trying to gloss over the fact that the payroll is $50 million less — a record MLB reduction. He is in essence saying, “The payroll is the same as last season.”

That is just a lie. The Mets are operating like a small market team that keeps its revenue sharing and does not put it back into the team. The Mets took that $50 million savings and put it in the Wilpons pocket. This “effective payroll” thing is just a bunch of garbage.

But of course no one will call it what is is.  Just another example of the Mets not being honest with their fans.

When we were kids we couldn’t wait for our birthdays — we were going to get the best gifts ever! Well, how many of us even remember any of our childhood gifts, let alone still have them? Well, I still have two baseball-related birthday gifts that really weren’t even gifts at all; one was a coincidence, and the second was a coincidence so unlikely that it convinces me to this day that there is some kind of higher power at work in our universe.

But I begin with the non-spiritual one. Like millions of other children, I used to write to baseball teams and players asking them for some kind of memorabilia. They often sent pictures (I wonder if teams still do that today). Of course I wrote to my idol Hank Aaron. I liked him because I had read the young-adult book “Hammerin’ Hank of the Braves” (a book I recently picked up again at a flea market), and I was struck at how, despite his accomplishments, I didn’t think he got the credit he was due. He was still chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record at the time, and everyone was saying, “He’s not as good as the Babe. He’ll never be as good as Willie Mays.” This struck a chord in my underdog mentality (I am the youngest in my family, and of course, I am a Mets fan!), so he became my favorite.

On my 10th birthday I got an envelope in the mail. It contained a signed picture of Aaron, addressed personally to me:

I was excited. I wrote on the back “Got it on my birthday 1973″ in my childish elementary school script. A few years later when I started collecting memorabilia I decided that my inscription might hurt its value, so I tried to erase it. I didn’t do a good job; it can still be faintly seen.

(But I did destroy any value of a Roberto Clemente card. In the early 1970s Topps came out with a line of over-sized cards on thicker cardboard. Next to Clemente’s date of birth I wrote “Died 12/31/72.” My brother, the card’s co-owner, still won’t let me forget it. Yet he forgets that he was the one who wrecked the big Aaron card my trying to copy his signature on it. So there.).

In any case, I felt like I got a birthday present from the great Hank Aaron himself, and I’ve kept it ever since. Is the signature real, or did some clubhouse kid sign it? Does it really matter?

Now onto the biblical gift. I assume I wasn’t the only kid who looked at the back of every baseball card to check the players’ birthdays in the hopes that at least one of them shared mine. Well, at least one did; exactly one, actually — Clyde Wright. Wright was a relatively obscure player who pitched mostly for the Angels in a 10-year career from 1966-1975. He had a couple of good seasons, including winning 22 games in 1970. Yankees fans probably hate him because he is the father of Jaret Wright, a high-priced failure from a few years back. I would never have known of Clyde Wright had it not been for our shared birthday, but I did know of him, even at an early age.

So one year on my birthday (it might have been the year before the Aaron gift, perhaps the year after, but probably not the same year) I was walking to school with my friends (back in the day when it was safe to walk to school without parental involvement) when I saw something on the ground, glistening in the early morning winter sun. As I got closer I saw that it was a baseball coin.

In 1971 Topps came out with a line of baseball coins, each a little bit bigger than a JFK half-dollar. There were 153 in all.

I bent down to pick it up. I looked at the player. Of course it was Clyde Wright.

I found a baseball coin on a random street in Brooklyn, on my birthday, of the one player who shared a birthday with me. That is too big to be a coincidence. That coin was left there for me to find. I believe that to this day. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion on matters such as this, and call it what you want, but I think it shows that something bigger than all of us is at work here.

This year for my birthday I might get a Tom Seaver autographed baseball if my girlfriend picked up on my very obvious hints. It would be a great gift that I will always keep, but I just don’t think anything can top my Hank Aaron picture and my miracle Clyde Wright coin.

I wanted to get the wording of this poll correct. I don’t think many fans actually want the Mets to trade David Wright, so asking if you want the Mets to trade him would yield no useful information. So let’s put the question this way — would trading David Wright truly be the best thing for the team, whether you like Wright or not? Would it help the Mets rebuilding effort to get rid of Wright’s salary, or do you think he should be part of that effort?

Johan Santana threw a bullpen session in Port St. Lucie on Friday (below), getting a head start on his fellow pitchers and catchers who are set to report to spring training on Monday. Santana emerged from his 25-pitch outing “feeling good.” And that’s great because Santana is the key to the Mets future — in more ways than one.

Obviously if Santana can be the Santana of old, or even a reasonable facsimile, the starting rotation will be that much stronger, giving the Mets a chance to compete. Without him the Mets are aceless (remember the great “Mike Pelfrey is an ace” experiment in 2011? That ended when John Buck’s grand slam sailed over the wall on Opening Day in Florida).

If Santana can solidify the rotation — the weakest link on the team in my opinion — the Mets could actually contend if everything else falls into place. So in that sense the Mets future is in his left arm.

However let’s say Santana does come back healthy and everything else does not fall into place and the Mets are out of contention by the trading deadline. You don’t think at least one team which thinks it is one pitcher away from the World Series would take a chance on a healthy Santana? Perhaps that team would also be willing to pick up most, if not all of Santana’s contract, which would be around $10 million for the remainder of 2012, $25.5 for 2013 and then a $5.5 million buyout for 2014. You get a proven Santana for the stretch run, the playoffs and a full 2013 for around $40 million. If you win a World Series or two because of it, that’s not too bad at all, and it’s not a long commitment.

Likely the Mets would have to pick up some of it, but if they can clear most of that salary from the books, they can go out and get two or three quality players as well as keep David Wright. A rebuilding team cannot afford a $25 million ace, whether he is healthy or not. So once again the Mets future, this time the team’s financial future, is in Santana’s left arm.

The double-whammy would be if Santana cannot come back healthy. Then the Mets are saddled with the contract and getting no production out of it.

That is definitely an unfortunate possibility. It’s been repeated ad nauseum that Chien-Ming Wang is the latest pitcher to attempt a comeback from this particular shoulder surgery to the anterior capsule, and it took him two years to make it back to the majors. Santana’s surgery was in September 2010, so he is hoping to top Wang’s timetable.

So if Santana makes if back by Opening Day — still a big if — no one knows what to expect. It is safe to say he won’t have the same stuff he had before, but I think he can still be effective. Santana is a smart man who knows how to pitch, not just throw. As Mets fans we have seen this twice recently, with Al Leiter and Pedro Martinez. Both of them had diminished stuff but they were still able to go out there and even if they struggled a bit, they were able to battle because they knew what they were doing out there.

It could be really fun to watch Santana this season. It is difficult to say that watching someone struggle is fun, but it will be interesting to see how Santana will be able to get himself out of trouble by using his pitching smarts. Just from a baseball standpoint it could be fascinating.

In any case, the Mets future — both on the field and financially — is literally on Santana’s shoulders. That is a tough burden for anyone, especially someone whose shoulder may not be up for the challenge.

Former Mets catching great and 1986 World Series hero Gary Carter has died. He was just 57 years old. ESPNNewYork.com reports his daughter made the announcement on the family’s website on Thursday:

I am deeply saddened to tell you all that my precious dad went to be with Jesus today at 4:10 pm. This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to write in my entire life but I wanted you all to know. He is in heaven and has reunited with his mom and dad. I believe with all my heart that dad had a STANDING OVATION as he walked through the gates of heaven to be with Jesus.

Carter was diagnosed with brain tumors last May. Initial treatment seemed positive, but then last month more tumors were found and his treatment was stopped.

In a statement Mets ownership said:

“On behalf of everyone at the Mets, we extend our deepest and heartfelt condolences to Gary’s family — his wife Sandy, daughters Christy and Kimmy and son D.J.  His nickname ‘The Kid’ captured how Gary approached life.  He did everything with enthusiasm and with gusto on and off the field.  His smile was infectious. He guided our young pitching staff to the World Series title in 1986 and he devoted an equal amount of time and energy raising awareness for a multitude of charities and community causes.  He was a Hall of Famer in everything he did.”

Carter was only a Met for five seasons, but he was the final piece of the puzzle that put the team over the top. He made an impression during his very first game in 1985, hitting a game-winning home run in the tenth inning on Opening Day.

He also deserves credit for starting the amazing comeback in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. With the bases empty and two outs in the tenth, Carter singled. We all know what happened next. Carter said he didn’t want to be the one to make the final out. Good thing he didn’t!

Despite his relatively brief career in Flushing, Carter certainly thought of himself as a Met. When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2003, he wanted to wear a Mets hat on his plaque. However the Hall forced him into an Expos hat — he did play 12 years in Montreal, after all. Carter later managed in the Mets minor league system and for a time was considered a possible Mets manager of the future.

Sadly though, that will never happen.

I think one of the things bothering Mets fans these days is the lack of, to put it nicely, candor coming from management. To put it more bluntly, they are flat out lying to us.

This lying is nothing new. Omar Minaya was a compulsive liar, but he lied about little things. The big lies came after the Madoff scandal. How often and for how many years did the Wilpons say it would not effect the operations of the ballclub? Of course they knew it would from the moment their account statement read $0 instead of $500 million. Unless you are uber-wealthy, losing $500 million and the guaranteed 15% yearly cash flow from that money will effect the way you operate. The Wilpons are rich men, but not that rich.

Now we are getting dishonesty from Sandy Alderson. Again, we are used to a GM lying, but it was easy to pick out Minaya’s exaggerated statements. Alderson is tougher.

See, they can’t even look us in the eye!

Where is that $120 million payroll you promised? Then $110 million to $120 million? Then around $100 million? The payroll now sits closer to $90 million. Perhaps Alderson made the misleading statements based on changing information from the Wilpons, but barring that possible revelation, this is on him.

And what about Jose Reyes — did the Mets have any intention of resigning him? Alderson claims he wanted to, yet he never even made him an offer. That doesn’t sound like a team that wants to retain a player. If Alderson just came out and said, “You know what, he is just too expensive for us right now, so we’re not going to sign him,” Mets fans would still be angry but we would appreciate the honesty. Instead we are left with statements that have no basis in fact.

Are the Mets rebuilding, or what? Will they shed all big contracts and live with a low payroll for the foreseeable future while the prospects advance and the Wilpons get their finances in order? Who knows? No one is telling us. I think we could support a rebuilding process (as long as David Wright is still there for us to cheer) if we know that is what is happening. But leaving fans in the dark just creates more resentment. That is something the Mets do not need from their already disillusioned fan base.

Obviously the Mets fear that if they tell fans they are going into full rebuilding mode they won’t come to games until the project is complete. They are dead wrong. While the fair-weather fans will stay home, the die-hards will not. We love and support this team, but it is very difficult to support anything if the people in charge are not being honest about what they are doing. We just want to know what is going on. That is not too much to ask.