Reese Kaplan - Maybe We've Got It All Wrong?

I’ve beaten my head against the wall until I’m no longer sure I can write a coherent sentence but the only thing I can conclude is that the Wilpons and Sandy Alderson have decided their best bet for prolonged success is to finish in last place in order to get the highest draft picks possible.  How else can you explain:

• You extended the contract of Terry Collins after his team got worse each year instead of better

• You rushed ahead of the, ahem, crowd to get to sign Chris Young for what it cost to sign Nelson Cruz

• You had to choose between two left handed first basemen.  They chose neither and created a circus atmosphere

• After proclaiming OBP was of utmost importance, you signed a pair of potentially 200 strikeout-per-year whiff specialists in Chris Young and Curtis Granderson

• You signed another collection of retreads and has beens for your bullpen including putting people into roles they’ve never before experienced (John Lannan and Daisuke Matsuzaka come to mind)

• You promote a .340 hitting Eric Campbell from AAA to play all around the diamond and he’s lucky to get into a game a week, stuck behind the below replacement level efforts of the Youngs, Abreu and Nieuwenhuis

• You’re last in nearly every offensive category yet you insist on playing Ruben Tejada who has hit .219 over his last 162 games over Wilmer Flores who has hit .321/28/143 over the same period in AAA

• You go with six outfielders and no backup shortstop in order to keep Bobby Abreu, Chris Young and Kirk Nieuwenhuis on a major league roster

• When the trade deadline arrived you could be either buyers or sellers.  You chose to be neither

• You see a major turn-around from Matt den Dekker who is on fire in Las Vegas, hitting .324 with a .395 OBP and striking out in just 19% of his ABs, so when you finally come to your senses and kick Abreu to the curb, you promote Nieuwenhuis who for his 434 AB major league career has struck out 35% of the time while hitting a paltry .237 with an OBP of just .306

(The saddest part of that last one is that .237 is actually better than 50% of Terry Collins’ preferred starting lineup!)

Well, if the plan is to aim for the bottom to build for the future, then you’re succeeding at it big time.  You just averaged 4 hits per game over a 4 game span.  Making Kirk Nieuwenhuis part of the offensive attack should reinforce that downhill trend nicely.