Met Apathy

Met apathy continues. Less people are writing about this team and their affiliates. The affiliates bore us every night with non-prospect like results. Even NYFS is suffering. Their usual 100+ per night entries on the Mets minor league thread had only one yesterday. Even their longtime leader, Nitelight, had stood down.


How apathetic? Well, I started this post four days ago.


There could be a number of reasons.


1. There simply is too much online about this team. The Mets blog world is out of control. Everybody with a keyboard has become a Mets expert.


2. The team is boring. It’s playing well above its head with marginal players, fighting off the inevitable crash that will occur just before the all-star break.


3. No one could care about the team’s financial problems. Fans have their own problem.


4. The two upper levels of affiliates are drained. Most of the players that have showed the ability to play somewhere in the majors are already in Queens.


5. The draft left a numbing effect on the fans. Mets fans are not used to drafting prep stars that might not sign until after the summer, if ever.


I try to come up with 1000 original words every day for my site. It’s tough this year. I concentrate on the minors, which has no exclusivity in the blog world. Once there was Toby and I. Now, there is 100s of sites that feature a minor league expert. Toby Hyde told me two years ago he knows nothing about the draft; now he does draft reports. Adam Rubin told me three years ago he knows nothing about the minors: now he tweets minors results every night.


Of course, I have no exclusivity in this world. I wish there was enough revenue online to create some consolidation in this area. I would love to be the exclusive Mets minor league guy for a site, but someone would have to pay me a monthly stipend. I came as close as I could get to joining the SNY family, but it didn’t work out. I created a paid subscription site which was an ego-deflating experience.


I have always tried to take a positive “look who’s on the way up” attitude to the kids on the farm and I’ve concentrated this past year on the future rotation. There is no bat solutions for the next two years and the final pieces of the ”killer rotation” (Matt Harvey, Jenrry Mejia, Jeurys Familia) would be the 13th pick in the 2011 draft and a Reyes trade to San Francisco.


I think we’re going into the Dark Ages segment of the Met world. The current team will not make the playoff, the ownership will try to operate the next couple of years with an under $100mil payroll, and whatever players are secured with possible in-season trades for Jose Reyes, Francisco Rodriguez, or Carlos Beltran, will be inferior in talent and will only fit the current “not ready for prime time players” that are being showcased this past weekend in Pittsburgh.


I may be wrong, but:


Does anyone out there actually believe that Ruben Tejada, Pedro Beato, and Lucas Duda is a better alternative to Reyes, K-Rod, and Beltran?


And please, tell me again why it was a bad idea to draft either LHP Jed Bradley or RHP Matt Barnes.