So this post presents an idea for an on-going feature during the 2012 season: The 2014 Mets’ power rankings, a list of the most important players to the 2014 Mets. Not that we’re giving up on 2012 already, but . . . well, you know. The Mets certainly appear to be rebuilding biding their time this season. So let’s concentrate on the future by keeping track of the present. Thus, the 2014 power rankings, a weekly or every-other-weekly feature where we track the rising and falling stock of the 2014 Mets in the 2012 season.

For a player to be eligible for the 2014 Mets power rankings, he must be:

• In the Mets’ organization
• Under team control through at least 2014
• . . . and that’s it

These rules mean that both major and minor league players are eligible for the rankings. For example: Ike Davis and Ruben Tejada are eligible, as are Jeurys Familia and Matt Harvey; David Wright is not eligible, as his contract expires after 2013.

Which actually brings up the next point: These rankings are the 2014 power rankings, and not the 2012 or 2013 power rankings, because 2014 is when the Mets should solely be a team of Sandy Alderson’s design. As of today, they have no players under contract for 2014, and the team’s only payroll commitments are $8.5 million dollars in buyouts for Johan Santana and Jason Bay. That makes 2014 the target date in which we’re interested. If a player is on the 2014 Mets, it’s because Alderson wants him there.

Now, I have an idea for how the preliminary rankings should look, but I’m going to throw the vote out to the crowd first. There’s a poll at the bottom of this post, with the names of the 28 players. I’ve put the names in alphabetical order in an attempt to avoid swaying anyone’s votes, then added my own comments about the players in an attempt to sway your votes. But let’s see what y’all think: Read through, or don’t read through, and then vote for the five players you think will the most important for the 2014 Mets at the bottom. And please remember that pitchers get hurt: (more…)

Today is January 17, a full month before the Mets’ pitchers and catchers are to report for Spring Training. It’s still far too early for a season preview, and too soon for a spring training preview – but is it too early for a pre preseason preview view? Probably. But the Mets’ 40-man roster looks set, and barring a trade and a few inevitable minor league signing, the Mets are ready to go for Spring Training. One can even see the beginnings of the Opening Day roster. Here is a very early look at the 2012 Mets: (more…)

So this post began life awhile ago — I wanted to evaluate Terry Collins’ first season as manager of the Mets in a more objective manner, and I decided I wanted to do so by comparing Collins with other managers of the Mets.

Anyway, fast forward to now, and I still can’t make much of a case either way about whether Terry Collins managed the Mets well or not. I don’t know enough about managers and what goes on behind the scenes. So that totally failed. But I did learn a whole bunch of things about the tendencies of all the Mets’ managers, so I’ll share those nuggets here. Who bunted a lot, who didn’t, who used pinch hitters, who didn’t, all those sorts of things — and we’ll check out where Terry Collins falls in each category. Here’s what I’ve learned about the Mets’ managers: (more…)

Gee, I love baseball. I can’t wait for a thoroughly non-depressing day reading about the New York Mets. Let’s see what you’ve got, internet!

Intuition — which is often fallible — strongly suggests it isn’t just to tinker with bookkeeping, or to draw a couple of lines differently on the org chart. The nature of the Mets’ situation and the kind of business companies like CRG do both make you suspect something more is going on.

It also doesn’t help that, to be blunt, the last few years have trained me to automatically discount anything the Mets say about their own business affairs.

But the nature of that something more that might or might not be going on? You got me. And this is where I start to worry about how the world we live in has changed, and might be making us all a bit nuts.

- Jason Fry, “Stuck in the Why and Now”
Faith and Fear in Flushing

Oh. Well, uh . . . yeah, I don’t know why we wouldn’t trust what the Mets say anymore. But the real point here: There’s a downside to the instant media cycle, and sometimes we have too much information about the Mets. Or, rather, too many random pieces of information. Good stuff from FAFIF.

All the bankruptcy stuff strikes me like this: It’s like we’re slowly receiving random puzzle pieces from an extremely large jigsaw puzzle. Each time we find a new puzzle piece, we all look it over, debate what’s depicted on the piece and argue where it fits. Some people say, “Ye, I know what the puzzle looks like now,” and some other people say, “No, clearly the final puzzle looks like this, you stupid hobgoblins.” But in the end, we only have seven or eight pieces from a 500 piece puzzle, no box, and no real idea what we’re actually looking at. We’ve got enough stray pieces to know that the puzzle is, say, a beach scene and not a “Where’s Waldo” puzzle, but not enough pieces to know the fine details and how it all fits together. No one knows but the guys with the picture on the box, and they’re not telling. They’re also potentially selling off parts of the puzzle. There: The Metaphor is sufficiently mixed.

Now for some more hopeful, nonymous news . . . oh wait, no, wait . . .

Look at what happened to Mookie Wilson: He just got fired. Mookie went to the wall for the organization, but they still canned him. Look at Ken Oberkfell. Guy puts in twelve years with the organization; next thing you know, he’s been fired. No explanation. Those are the little things that tell you what direction a team is going in. People around the game hear about this stuff. They talk about it: “What’s happening to the Mets?” It depresses the hell out of me because I don’t think it’s going to improve until 2014 at the earliest. It’s going to be hard to ask the fans to sit through two brutal seasons, even though there’s some talent coming through the system.

- Anonymous Met, “The Met Who Blames Everything on the Wilpons”
New York Magazine

I find it surprisingly fun to guess the author by reading this piece aloud in the voices of current and former Mets. (Also, like everything, it’s fun to sing it in a Blonde-on-Blonde-era Bob Dylan voice.) I have my suspicions about the identity of the author: It reads like an “As Told To” kind of piece, and I believe the vocabulary provides enough hints.

Or maybe not. This may be trying to solve puzzle without enough puzzle pieces again. Man. Is it 2014 yet?

Of course, the owners of the Mets, who have spent the last four months trying to line up 10 or so minority partners, have some long-term upsides to sell: the $20 million would buy 4 percent of a New York City sports franchise that, history instructs, is likely to rise in value over time.

- Richard Sandomir, “$20 Million Can Buy Quality Time with Mr. Met”
New York Times

So if a 4% ownership interest in the team is worth $20 million . . . *Furiously Does Math* . . . that puts the current value of the New York Mets at $500 million dollars. (Math may be wrong here. I have no idea if 100% ownership interest equals 100% value of the team. Why do we write about money and law in convoluted terms?) The Houston Astros — who play in Houston and are the Astros — were just sold for $680 million dollars, although the Astros’ sale included “related entities,” where this valuation of the Mets does not include their “related entities,” such as SNY. But $500 million dollars is far less than people and magazines have been estimating for some time.

I also recommend checking out the Times’ copy of the term sheet for becoming a partial owner of the Mets. I’m generally not interested in the finances of baseball, but I am interested in unintentional comedy, and this definitely falls into the latter. The term sheet reads like a brochure for an incredibly expensive and totally lame fan club. I thought the Times article was a parody at first glance — “Owners workout day” — but these are the actual perks of forking over $20 million dollars to a baseball team. Partial owners not only get sweet business cards that say “owner,” they also get Paul DePodesta’s cell phone number and “discounts on all MLB-licensed merchandise.”

The Mets made a series of roster moves Monday. They declined to offer major league contracts to catcher Ronny Paulino and outfielder Mike Baxter, and offered contracts to outfielder Andres Torres and pitchers Mike Pelfrey, Manny Acosta, and Ramon Ramirez. The Mets also claimed pitcher Jeremy Herner off waivers, and signed pitcher Garrett Olson and catcher Lucas May to minor league deals. The addition of Herner, along with the presumed additions of relievers Jon Rauch and Frank Francisco, will again fill the Mets’ 40-man roster; further free agent signings will require the Mets first to drop another player from their roster.

The Mets’ present 40-man roster is now loaded with marginal guys just-good enough to hang on to, if not quite good enough to field a competitive team with yet. Sandy Alderson should make an appearance on hoarders. Here is a run-down on how yesterday’s moves changed the Mets’ roster, and what moves they still need to make this offseason: (more…)

The Mets acquired an outfielder and three relievers, and traded their incumbent center fielder, over a two hour span last night in a transparent attempt to crash Twitter. First, the Mets signed righthanded setup man Jon Rauch to a one-year, $3.5 million dollar deal. Then they acquired righthanded middle reliever Ramon Ramirez and outfielder Andres Torres from the San Francisco Giants for Angel Pagan. Minutes later, they signed righthanded closer Frank Francisco to a two-year, $12 million dollar deal.

The Mets took on about $9.5 million in net salary for next season in the three moves — that is, just the salaries of Rauch and Francisco — as their trade with the Giants is a wash in 2012 salaries. Ramirez will likely make $2 million dollars in arbitration and can be a free agent after the 2012 season, while Torres will likely make $3 million in arbitration and is a free agent after the 2013 season — $5 million in total. Pagan will likely make $5 million through arbitration and is a free agent after the 2012 season. Essentially, the Mets swapped center fielders with the Giants, gained a year of team control at center field, and acquired a sneaky-good reliever along the way. Adding in Rauch and Francisco’s deals, and assuming arbitration for Mike Pelfrey, the Mets now have a 2012 payroll of $90 million dollars.

The Mets are a better team today than they were yesterday. But not much better. Click Here to Read More