Thanks for that post. I have always been one to defend our bullpen, but I’m out of excuses.

Longing for the days of Darren Oliver and Chad Bradford…

The Mets went with a gamble in left with Alou it backfired.

Rightfield blew up in their face with two completely unanticipated concussions.

Payton’s performance not with standing he was a Mets system guy, a highly regarded player coming out of college and a big time prospect prior to getting injured, he battled back and did not pan out but he was not some retread like Spencer of Garcia in their early 30s trying to hang on.

You call me nitpicky, well be right instead of vaguely obtuse.

As far as Manny, you don’t know where he would have signed and what draft picks you’d get for him. What if he signs with…say…Baltimore. And let’s say they draft 13th. Guess what? You’re down to a sandwich pick. Besides, replacing Fmart and Niese with even 2 first round picks is damn near impossible. So I wouldn’t say that it was as easy as that. If you’re already talking about trading those 2 guys then why get Boston involved in the first place? Trade them to Pittsburgh for Bay and Marte straight up. That’s a trade that could have happened that Omar didn’t pull a trigger on. So we’ll see on Saturday if Niese was worth it. And let’s see if they bring FMart up in September. They might not do it so that he doesn’t get exposed and his value stays high in case we want to trade him in the offseason. I guess it depends on where we are with the roster (church) and in the standings.

But thereal (or should I say t~h~e~r~e~a~l LOL) is right. Joe Janish just wrote a very brief summary of this blog’s message boards over the past week…

You are right about Agbayani, he played well in a somewhat limited role, but who cares how highly regarded Payton was? He never had an OPS above .775 with the Mets. Excuse me that I included him with Shane Spencer and Karim Garcia (who was an enormously regarded prospect at one time, himself). The point wasn’t to pick exact like players. The point was that the Mets have trotted some pretty mediocre outfielders out there, when conventional wisdom suggests that getting a decent outfield is easier than getting a decent infield.

Yet the Mets keep putting converted infielders and 4th and 5th outfielders out there. It’s uncanny.

Typically, you have sidestepped the point to nit pick the example.

Agbayani played decent ball for us, yes, but he never played even 120 games for us, so he was a part-timer for the most part.

It would answer a lot of questions..for instance, if the kids can’t really tread water in the bigs, then perhaps Omar goes for Manny in the offseason..