Mack Ade – AM Report – 9-24-13 – The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, Jeffrey Loria

This was supposed to be such an easy time of the year to be a Mets fan.

The team would just keep losing and Sandy Alderson would not only get his guaranteed draft pick, but he and the Wilpons would have no excuse to pass on any of the big time free agents. They’ve been telling us for months now that the money woes are over and that the Mets are going to dive into the Hot Stove League with a big ole belly flop.

Now, we have shortstops that are fourth on the depth chart  winning games that are supposed to so south. A sweep in September? Are you fucking kidding me? The team was, what, ranked seventh for next year’s draft pick and cruising and now it’s any guess how this is going to finish out.

The only hope this team has in 2014 is to sign one of the top outfield free agents and it simply isn’t going to happen unless:

                1 – The player wants to play for the Mets

                2 – The agent for the player wants his player to play for the Mets

                3 – Both Matt Harvey and Zack Wheeler project to be in the 2014 rotation

                4 – The team that seeks the player has projected depth in the talent pool throughout their system.

Free agents are older ballplayers that usually have not won a World Series before. In many cases, this becomes the last chance for them to sign a lucrative contract than can financially place the player and his family in a comfortable position; however, the value of the contract isn’t the only deciding factor here.

Baseball players play for pride and the chance to win a World Series. We’re about to once again witness the wonderful thing called October baseball and all the money in the world can still leave a bitter taste in the mouth of a retired baseball player that never got the chance to play in a World Series, no less win one.

The money will be there if you’re a star. Imagine you’re Shin-Soo Choo. You know you’re going to sign a big-ass contract in the off-season. So what’s going to make the difference here? Well, I know… how about we sign with a team that has an owner that decimates the team every two or three years and trades everybody away? No… that’s not going to work.

I got it… let’s pick the team that’s dead last in their league and also has the lowest team payroll, meaning they’re never going to compete with their counterparts in their division.

Or… I know a team that just simply sucks and has a horrible rotation that is incapable of keeping the opposing run total down to a competitive level. I’ll sign with them, right?

Catch my drift?

Look, in the case of Choo, the Mets have something going in their favor here. He wants to play baseball in a city where there is a sizable Korean-American population and the two largest cities for that would be Los Angeles and New York. Neither LA-based team project like they are looking to add additional outfield payroll like this, so the Mets are early favorite, but this simply isn’t going to happen unless the Mets get a guaranteed pick in the 2014 draft.

Don’t debate why Sandy Alderson won’t give up the 1^st round 2014 pick. He won’t do it.

You don’t get this pick, you don’t get a top free agent and then you can kiss another year away in this process we have been calling ‘Met rebuilding’.

Me? I’m a minor league weenie and the first 20 names chosen in this draft are all going to be top shelf players, so it really doesn’t matter as much to me who players in the 2014 outfield as it does to many of you out there. I've lived through two Mets World Series victories and, though I'd like to experience another, I'm fine with two... in 51 years...

But all of you better start rooting real hard for this team to lose if you want 2014 to turn into something you’d be proud to follow, read, and write about. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up with six guys platooning three positions, no decent free agents because their agents told them that the World Series isn’t going through Flushing for quite a while.

We’ll be quickly back to an SP-based team that current has their top two pitchers shut down for a torn labrum (Harvey) and tightness in his pitching arm (Wheeler).

Yeah… I’d sign with these guys like yesterday.

 

Marlins  owner Jeffrey Loria’s doing it again, but this time it’s the front office. On the way out are team president David Samson, president of baseball operations Larry Beinfest and GM Michael Hill. It’s supposed to go down by the end of this week, or, at the latest, the day after the season ends. There has to be a way for baseball to step in here and force this guy to lose control of his investment. Everyone must realize that nobody is going to sign a long term deal with this guy. He guarantees nothing and trades everyone. You can forget the free agent market. This is destined to be a pre-ARB team with a $45mil top payroll in a city that supports soccer. This is absolutely pathetic.