Opinion: Is the Window Starting to Close
I believe the Mets are good enough to win a Championship this season, and I hope they will, but I can’t help but wonder if their five-year window is starting to close.
There is a much-talked about idea in sports about how a team is developed, built, tweaked, etc., from the ground up, and from day one it has roughly a five-year window 
to achieve their goals.
The longer it takes to win, the less likely it is to happen, as players lose focus, become dejected, fans become callous, media is stoked, and changes begin to be made, the window begins to close.
The Mets were on the right track when Omar Minaya took over in late 2004, when he said he would build a ‘New York-style team,’ gritty, with young, home-grown players, while also signing key free-agent players like Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez.
The team struggled in 2005, but finished with a respectable record under Willie Randolph, who, according to Minaya, embodied the New York sensibility he was hoping to capture.
The following season, the Mets were dominant, won the NL East in a landslide, but lost to the Cardinals in the final game of the NLCS – in a series most people expected the Mets to win.
I am always hearing from fans who believe 2006 was this team’s peak, the most open the window has or will be. In other words, Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS was their chance to win, they missed it, and it has been downhill ever since – complete with two September collapses, a managerial switch, coaches being fired, and a GM who appears to be reacting to the past, instead of building for the future.
Last November, I wrote that Minaya 
needed to cut ties with a handful of veterans, not just from his bullpen, but from all corners of the roster, and build a newer version of his team in the model of David Wright, Jose Reyes and Johan Santana; who I believe should be challenged to step up and lead this team towards a new window, so to speak.
This did not happen. Instead, Minaya focused on the bullpen, which was last season’s problem. Unfortunately, he did very little to address other issues that plagued his offense, defense and starting rotation over the last two seasons, and which continue to plague them today.
In short, it continues to feel like Minaya is chasing the past, and not looking to the future, which would suggest people may be right who believe his team’s best days are behind them.
Nobody likes to hear it, but it is early. There are 147 games, or 90 percent of the season, left to be played. Typically, I prefer to give a team until Memorial Day, before I start to judge who they are, and where they may be capable of going.
Individually, the 25 men on this roster are capable of being successful and delivering strong performances. I have no doubt that if they begin to win, as I think they can, this entire post will seem meaningless in review – but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an underlying problem that must eventually be addressed, and which most fans seem to fearing in their heart of hearts.
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