Who Are the New York Mets?
As I’m writing this, the Mets are currently beating the snot out of the St. Louis Cardinals 11-0 in the top of the 8th inning. Of course, I’d like to tell you that the Mets do this on a regular basis. I’d even like to tell you that the Mets do this once a week, or once every two weeks. The fact is, they don’t. In fact, I don’t even know what it is that the Mets do on a regular basis. Are they a team that lacks offense but has superior pitching like the San Francisco Giants? Do they have a prolific offense with no pitching like the Philadelphia Phillies? Are they balanced like the Boston Red Sox? The truth is that the Mets have no identity.
The 1969 Mets were known as the Miracle Mets. The Mets in the 1980s lived like rock stars. They were feared both on and off the field. These Mets? Their legacy will be synonomous with underachieving and mediocrity. Thats their legacy – to be the Mediocre Mets.
As a Mets fan, I don’t know what to expect when I turn on the game. There are days when everything is going well. For instance, tonight’s game just ended in blowout fashion behind another great start for Fernando Nieve. Why shouldn’t I believe its going to happen again, especially since Johan Santana is starting? Because the Mets are the model of inconsistency. And it starts at the top. The very top of the organization.
I can’t say that the Mets ownership is anything like, say, John Sterling of the LA Clippers. But how can an owner of a team not try as hard as he/she can to put the best product on the field? Going into the offseason, they knew that the team needed a power hitting left fielder, a good second baseman, and at least one reliable starting pitcher. And Adam Dunn, Orlando Hudson, and Randy Wolf/Derek Lowe were all out there. I’ll be the first to admit that neither Randy Wolf nor Derek Lowe really intrigued me as a fan, but I’d rather pay them for however amount of time they wanted than to overpay for Oliver Perez.
(Quick side note: Oliver Perez was making about $6 million last year, and in the offseason, the Mets were the only team to offer Perez a contract. Why did Omar Minaya offer Perez $12 million a year? Just something to think about.)
Fred and Jeff Wilpon were adamant keeping the payroll around $140 million but they picked up Delgado’s $12 million option and gave $12 million a year to Perez. Why not pay the $4 million it would have cost to buy out Delgado, and go after Mark Teixiera? With the $12 million they would have saved by not paying Perez and the $8 million they would have saved by not paying Delgado, they could have outbid for Tex. But hey, hindsight is 20/20.
The 2009 Mets could go down as a great team that was plagued by injuries. Its not much of an excuse but its true. In only three months, the Mets have lost three of their best position players and a good young pitcher to injury. Yet they still remain only 1.5 games behind the Phillies for the division lead. Logically, you could say that once everyone comes back from their injuries, the division is theirs to lose. You could say that but you’d be wrong. I’m not convinced that the Mets can win the division at full strength. They lack the intensity and the fortitude it takes to reclaim what is, essentially, theirs. And even though I’m a fan, I’ll continue to feel that way until the Mets make it through a September without collapsing.
And this is a good year for the Mets to shed this stigma because the NL East is horrible. The Nationals are making a bid to beat out the 1962 Mets as the worst team in baseball history, the Marlins are underachieving despite being right on schedule for another World Series title, the Braves haven’t put together that great team yet, and the Phillies’ lack of pitching is coming back to hurt them. The division is up for grabs. And if the Mets manage to win the division, this Mets fan has to wonder… how much of it was the Mets being good, and how much of it was everyone else being bad? The worst part is that among all the questions we’ll have about the Mets, we’ll still have to ask ourselves who these New York Mets are.
