Mack’s Morning Report – 7-31-15 – Thursday's Game, Sandy Alderson, Carlos Gomez, Twitter, Mayo

Good morning.


There's been a lot of games this season that e have walked away with pain in our gut knowing we were inches away from a victory, but none may hurt more or have more importance than the complete collapse yesterday afternoon against the Padres.

The loss, plus the 1-0 Nats win against Miami, puts the Mets three games behind going into the three critical game series that begins tonight against Washington. Even more importantly is the fact that the Mets are four games behind in the loss column.

What has happened to Jeurys Familia? 

And if Jon Niese hit for himself in the bottom of the sixth inning, why was he taken out anyway in the seventh with only 87 pitches thrown?

I would guess, at best, the Mets to win two of the next three games against the Nats this weekend and close the gap to two games, three down in the loss column.

I just can't believe they let a 7-1 lead slip away in this game.

General Manager Sandy Alderson has taken on a fair amount of heat regarding his draft picks since taking on the responsibility in 2011 of returning the New York Mets to the playoffs.

Fans are quick to point out the lack of picks that have made the parent team so far. Michael Conforto joined Logan Verrett (2011), Danny Muno (2011), Jack Leathersich (2011), and Kevin Plawecki (2012) as the only draft picks that have made it to Queens.

However, let’s not forget that draft picks John Gant (21^st pick – 2011), Casey Meisner (3^rd – 2013) and Rob Whalen (12^th – 2012) have brought Lance Johnson, Tyler Clippard, and Juan Uribe to the team this month and changed the 25-man into a squad that more resembles a playoff team.

Frankly, in my opinion, this is pretty good for five drafts.     

MLB 

I’m sure most of you are very happy with you first heard about the Carlos Gomez trade plus how easy it seems to have been to improve this team in the past week, but I walked away with this with a certain sense of being pissed that the Wilpons and Alderson & Company did nothing for five years.

On the surface it looks like the Mets stole Gomez for a pitcher recovering from TJS and an infielder without a position, but the real reason this deal supposedly got done was the fact that the Mets were willing to take on the remaining monies on Gomez’ contract. The same goes for Lance Johnson, Tyler Clippard, and Juan Uribe. This has always been a business and, as usual, money talks. In our case, as Mets fans, we simply had forgotten how this works since the Omar Minaya days.

But then, the Mets proves that yes Shirley, you still can fuck up a wet dream.

You’re going to hear about twenty different versions on why this deal didn’t go down but here’s the real reason:

Two teams agreed to trade three players (Wheeler, Flores, Gomez) pending the approval of each player’s physicals.

One of these players had played a portion of this season injured (Gomez) while another has been out the entire season recovering from survey (Wheeler).

We all assumed that any questions on a physical would be on Wheeler, but it turns out that it was Alderson questioning Milwaukee and Gomez’ agent, Scott Boras, on the condition of Gomez’ hip.

Sandy also… then… said they wanted Milwaukee to kick in some money on this deal. This was done after this deal was supposedly done.

Milwaukee got pissed about Alderson's aftereffect request for money and told him to suck an egg.

Eventually, Alderson didn’t get what he wanted or wasn’t happy with the results of what he had learned about Gomez’ hip and he pulled the deal.

Everything that happened Wednesday night… if it happened back in the day… would have been fine. The two General Managers would have kept their mouths shut and talked only to their VPs and doctors. Nothing would have been announced until all the “T’s” were crossed.

But that doesn’t happen in today’s Twitter world where ex-newspaper reporters are paid to beat other ex-newspaper reporters on info scoops. Accuracy takes a step back in this social media world and we’re left with a crowd at CitiField knowing more about this team than the manager and the shortstop playing with tears in his eyes and keep looking at the scoreboard to look for any announcement that he was traded.

It sure looked like the Mets handled this very badly, but it guys like Joel Sherman that blew it here.

And please don’t blame Terry Collins, who gets enough heat here from me and others on Mack’s Mets. No one from the front office told him about any trade while the game was being played so there was no reason to pull Flo out of the game.

 It looked rough, but that’s the business of baseball. 

Jonathan Mayo updated his Top 100 prospect list on Friday. The Mets on the list, and their rank, are:

            #18 - P          Steven Matz

            #19 – LF        Michael Conforto

            #84 – OF       Brandon Nimmo

            #96 – SS        Amed Rosario

Mack – I think this is the first time Rosario has made a Mayo list. It’s great to read his name here.