With a managerial choice forthcoming and a roster badly in need of upgrades, David Stearns's first Mets offseason is ready to kick off.
The World Series is now over. The 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks managed to get to the Fall Classic by beating three teams that were much better than they were: the Brewers, Dodgers, and Phillies. Then, Arizona was lucky enough to draw the Texas Rangers in the World Series. While Texas had done well in the Playoffs — sweeping the Rays and the Orioles before eking out an ALCS win in 7 over the Astros — they were a flawed team with some injury issues. But the Snakes went down with barely a whimper, still claiming that they had "shocked the world" by getting to the Series.
While I can't answer for the rest of the world, I know I wasn't particularly shocked. The nature of a tournament is that inferior teams can easily triumph over much better teams in a short series. Even a 7-game series is hardly a true test of superiority, but the best-of-3 and best-of-5 in the first two rounds are even less so. MLB would be better served by shortening the season and going to all best-of-7 series. Longer series in those first two rounds would give the best teams a more substantial chance of coming out on top. It certainly wouldn't eliminate upsets, however. There is no way it would happen, anyway. Teams wouldn't be willing to sacrifice the revenue from a few more home games to make this possible, and MLB certainly wouldn't want to play deeper into November.
This doesn't take anything away from what the Rangers and Diamondbacks accomplished. They both made it to the Playoffs, then played well and defeated their opponents. Their fans are rightfully proud of their club's achievements, especially Rangers supporters. But it is something to keep in mind for the future.
We all hope the Mets can finally become sustainable winners under David Stearns. But even if the club can make the Playoffs almost every year, they will come up short of a World Series win in most of those efforts. History teaches us that many in the media and a good number of Mets fans will look at every time they don't win it all as some sort of a moral failure. The truth is that it's just really hard to make it to and then win a World Series. True dynasties with multiple wins in a short period of time are incredibly rare.
6 comments:
I'd like to see something solved this week... manager, a free agent starter... new Director of Scouting.
Something.
1968 two teams in playoffs, one WS round, win or lose. Now….it’s a steeplechase.
Baseball would die in August,September if they didn’t have 12 playoff teams.
To achieve the vision of sustainable winners under Steve Cohen and David Stearns, the Mets need to establish some stability in the front office. It has been, as mentioned here, a revolving door. While one should always expect some attrition due to career choices or underperformance, the one thing that has not been addressed is ethics.
To a guy like Cohen, ethics matters - otherwise the SEC would have impeded his success. The Mets have had a history of ethically questionable people in leadership positions, whether it was Mickey Callaway, Jared Porter, or even the recent Billy Eppler resignation related to questionable use of the IL.
So why is there not a Chief Ethics Officer listed among the hundreds of front office employees? There are several employees in the legal counsel field, but none of them are charged with maintaining an ethical environment? This doesn't just happen by chance - it comes from hiring good people and creating a constant environment of training and reminders of the consequences of taking a short cut.
I have to believe that if Stearns makes ethics a priority, that would go a long way towards tightening up the culture
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