Mack Ade - My 2012 Wish To You

I don’t do resolutions.

You’ll get plenty of them from many of the other Mets sites.

Instead, I want to thank a few and wish you a few more.

First of all, I want to thank the writers here at Mack’s Mets. They all stand out, but I wouldn’t have been able to keep this site going without the weekly commitment by David Groveman, Frank Gray, Charles Thompson, Michael Scannell, and Michael Friere.

I wish to you, the readers of this site, the wisdom of patience and understanding. I don’t know what other sites you read, or what frequency you visit here, but we’ve done our best here to make you understand both the immediate and distant future of this team.

I don’t think you will be happy with the end result of the 2012 season, but I also think you will have a sense of excitement about what’s just around the corner. What I do know is that you have a better sense of the minor league players in this system.

When I started this, Matt Cerrone was just taking over MetsBlog and there was no Toby Hyde. Mike’s Mets were the new kid on the block and the three original owners of NYFS were suing the shit out of each other.

I dedicated my efforts from day one on the Mets minor leagues. My first post was about a player named Tiki Redman. I had 32 hits that week. 31 were probably from his mother.

I took the site down four times, costing me any chance of keeping up with guys like Matt and Joe D. Still, a few of you (thanks, Hobie) stayed with me from the start and lived with the hiccups.

In my world the current Mets have never had more talent.

In your world, your team stopped making the playoffs when Carlos Beltran left the bat on his shoulder (nobody would have been able to hit that pitch anyway…). You root for the Mets. I write about the Mets minor leagues.

In my world, there never was a more useless ballpark than Tidewater.  The first three year of Savannah was from hunger. St. Lucie didn’t make the playoffs in eight of the ten seasons from 2000-2010. Binghamton has only made the playoffs once since 2000. And I don’t even want to talk about the Mets AAA teams.

But, things have changed. It started with Omar Minaya targeting some of the best 16-year olds available in Latin America. That has been followed by Sandy Alderson’s aggressive approach to the draft.

All of a sudden, the top ten Mets prospects actually look like ten guys that have a future in this game.

I had a big smile on my face tonight when I saw that John Sickles had both Akeel Morris and Domingo Tapia on his updated top Mets prospect list. I know in my heart that Mack’s Mets, not only introduced these players to writers like John, but readers like you have passed our comments down the internet pipeline.

My wish for you is simple.

Stay with us for 2012. We will continue to take you down the road to a better time as a Mets fan. Many of the writers here will keep you abreast of what’s going on in Queens, while others will talk draft prospects and fantasy leagues.

Me? Well, nothing changes here. I’m going to target 20 players I feel could have a direct effect on the 2014 team that takes the field on opening day in Flushing. I’m sure all of them won’t be there, but I guarantee you’ll know why any of them got there, when they get there.

I love baseball. It’s one of the few sports (cricket) where the defense control the ball.

The British Empire invented baseball, Bill James taught you Sabermetrics, and Mack’s Mets educated you on the future of this team.

I wish you, and yours, the happiest of 2012.