In the Bergen Record, Bob Klapisch says, ‘The Phillies are everything the Mets are not, most notably durable.’
According to Klapisch, six Phillies each played 150 games or more this season.
…i know people dislike hearing how the Mets failures this season is solely on the injuries… truth is, this team played sloppy even when everyone was healthy, this season and last season… but, the injuries cannot be ignored…
…like i mentioned before, with regards to why the Mets hit so few home runs in Citi Field, it’s hard to hit home runs when you do not have home-run hitters… similarly, it is hard to win games when you have so few, proven, every-day players… i mean, had the Phillies lost three or four of their six iron men, say, Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino, and, say, three-fifths of their starting rotation and their second-best arm in the bullpen, i am not sure their ‘grit,’ and ‘toughness,’ would have been enough to get them to the post season… at some point, a team needs quality talent to get quality results…
…in the days following the end of this season, Jeff Wilpon proudly told reporters the Mets have been, and will continue to be, among the top teams in payroll…
…like i have said before, , it’s not about how much you spend, but how you spend it… this argument has come up a lot of late, since the Yankees once again are in World Series… i even notice Red Sox fans again 
dipping in the Yankees-Buy-a-Ring pool, despite the Sox winning two of the last four World Series with the second-highest payroll in baseball…
According to Baseball Analysts, the Mets spent the most money of any National League team from 2006 to 2008, during which they also won the most games of any team in the National League.
…so, i don’t think it’s fair to suggest the Mets are cheap… instead, the question should be, while they clearly spend money and get results, are the spending their money in the best way so to get the best-possible results…
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“According to Baseball Analysts, the Mets were the most efficient team in terms of payroll and wins during 2006, 2007 and 2008.”
But that isn’t really true. It’s saying they were the most efficient over that 3-year stretch combined, but that’s completely skewed by the dominant 2006 season. In 2007 and 2008, the Phillies had more wins with a smaller payroll, meaning they were more efficient in two of those three years.
Noted… the post has been adjusted. For whatever reason, I had the factual statement as an addendum, and misread the initial statement. Thanks for the heads up.
Of course, your larger point is still true. It’s crazy to call the Mets cheap and injuries were far and away the biggest reason they were so bad.
They probably wouldn’t have been a great team if healthy (mid-to-high-80s wins I would guess), but they obviously would have been a lot better.
Fine if you don’t want to call The Wilpons cheap than what do you call an owner that never pulls the trigger on deals that would put the team over the top? Frugil?
Guerrero, AROD, MANNY, etc. etc. The list goes on and on. Imagine pairing up Mike Piazza with VLAD in his prime. I promise you the Braves wouldn’t have won 14 or 15 straight divisions.
Beltran, Pedro, Wagner, Delgado, Santana, K-Rod…the list goes on and on. What part of “highest payroll in the NL” don’t you understand?
Basically Lorenzo, seems to me like you want the Mets to pull the trigger on *every* high priced player that becomes available. I suspect you were not happy when the Mets lost out on the Zito sweepstakes.
I didnt want Zito and did you read my examples????
I dont want the Mets to sign every single free agent but I do want them to sign the ones we NEED. Now make your case against AROD, MANNY, and Guerrero among many others… And also are you telling me you didnt think the Mets needed another bat going into the last few seasons? Instead going after a big name we relied on the less expensive and always injured Moises ALou and this season we relied on a rookie in left field…
Of your 3 examples. Vlad is the only one where maybe the Wilpons could be accused of being frugal.
A-Rod’s $250 contract was (and still is) a sick joke. He went to the Rangers and did squat for them. He was also not a difference maker for the Yankees until they went out and spent another pile of cash to get Teixeria to bat in front of him. Now finally the Yankees have bought themselves a winning team.
And OK, suppose the Wilpons went out and got Manny last year. Steroids followed by a 50 game suspension right as the Mets were falling apart. That would have been a great use of 25 MILLION DOLLARS. Plus he did great in the postseason didn’t he?
The Wilpons are not cheap Lorenzo. They just don’t spend wisely.
When you don’t spend wisely you better spend money to fix those dumb decisions and they don’t. We are now stuck with Castillo and Perez because unlike other owners they wont eat the contracts. Recognize the mistakes and replace those mistakes with better talent ..Wilpons don’t do it..thus are cheap. The Philly’s even do it – Adam Eaten is an example.
And anyone that gives Omar Minaya a 3 year extension after two straight collapses is a complete m@ron and it sucks that as fans we are stuck with them. Wish we could fire our ownership.
And for the record they absolutely BLEW it with AROD. I would have taken him for 250 million …. Yea he did nothing for the Rangers cause they are the Rangers. He still put up sick numbers. The revenue he would have brought in would have been well worth it. The Coupons blewwwww it and you know it man.
Matt should fix this glitch in the reply feature.
I kind of would argue that Arod was a difference make with the Yanks. He obviously didnt play well in the playoffs, but with out Arod playing well, the Yankees dont even make the playoffs every year except last. And 2008 you can blame their pitching, or lack thereof.
He may not have been clutch in the postseason, but his MVP year of 2007, the guy couldnt be stopped and a few walkoff hits.
Now, is he worth $250 million? I don’t know. Business-wise, maybe he is, in terms of returning revenue. Especially with his previous contract and what the Rangers were still paying the Yanks. But, Steve Phillips for all his poor judgement, on-field included, was he right in saying that signing a guy to a contract like that wouldn’t sit well with our roster? Its an easy excuse yes, but with teams unlike the Yankees, who don’t have superstars at multiple positions, maybe it doesn’t fit right.
I’ve had this argument and debate with many fans of the three teams I deal with the most. Phillies, Red Sox, Yankees. If those teams lost the equivalent of who we lost, they would have had a miserable season as well.
If we go back to the past couple years. Wasn’t David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, making a minimum of 150 starts. 2005 and 2008 Delgado made at least 140 with 159 played last year. Castillo this year played 142, Murphy 155. There is some durability there. Just not this season which was a fluke… statistically speaking this is an outlier… it does not represent the durability of the team.
It’s not that the Phillies spent their money better than the Mets, It’s that in 2009, their bench was never expose for any length of time. Take a look at their bench and what they had at Triple AAA. Eric Cairo. John Mayberry Jr. Paul Bako. Miquel Cairo. Matt Stairs. Are these guys any better than what the Mets had? Except for the 3 weeks that Ibanez missed in June/July, the Phillies basically trotted out the same lineup everyday all season. Bruntlett, I believed, batted under .150 for the season. He never played much. Imagine he had to play second or short for 2-3 months along with say Matt Stairs playing first for the same amount of time. I don’t think the Phils would be in the WS.
The Mets problems are:
(1) The don’t carry out an effective 3 year plan. I’m not saying they don’t have one. They may very well have one – one written on a cocktail napkin.
They need a three year plan mapping out who may be ready from the minors, who may be a free agent, who may be available via trade from a small market because they’ve reached arbitration years, etc.
This way they can plan ahead better rather than trying to solve the problem of the day. They can build and make choices for the now and the future.
(2) Omar Minaya is HORRIBLE at understanding the market. He overpays.
He overpaid for Perez. It’s not hindsight. It was too much last year and we all knew it. No other team would have gone more that two years. Most would have just gone one year. Omar overpaid.
He overpaid for Julio Franco. Then gave Marlon Anderson 2 years – the Mets cut him last year and it cost them $1.7M.
(3) The Mets will always face speed bumps and won’t be able to build a consistent long-term winner BECAUSE the Wilpons are short-sighted when it comes to the draft. The draft is the key to building a long-term winner because you develop help for the major league team or develop players that can be trade for such help.
Jeff Wilpon can say that the Mets went above slot for Matz and they did but not by much. The point is that Wilpon’s comment was misleading because while the Mets when slightly above slot for their first pick they went slot or below the rest of the way and ended up spend less on the draft than nearly 95% of the team. That is a poor way to build a long-term winner.
The Mets carried out 2 consecutive 3 year plans. They decided to overhaul in 2004 and they did, culminating in the 2006 season. Then they decided in continued excellence which they carried out in 2007 and 2008 (both years they were the best team in the NL east. They lost the division, but they were the best overall) 2009 they put together the pieces to make sure they were complete from start to finish, hitters to bullpen. You have to take a mulligan on the injuries. The importance is to now see the bounce back in 2010 since that is the new third year of the current plan.
People go on about the $140 million team that the Mets had. It wasn’t a $140 million team when $80 million of it was on the DL. There was one early September game where I figured the Mets’ starting nine made a combined $26 million for the season and that included $14 million for Sheffield, which the Mets were only paying a small part of, and $6 million for Castillo.
Also, if you catch it on repeat today, watch the first couple of minutes of The Daily Show. Jon Stewart, as a Met fan, shares how he feels about this World Series.
Klapisch says that Jimmy Rollins is the new Manny. Is he serious? Just because Rollins had one game winning hit the other night? Heck, Chad Curtis had a few game winning hits in the 99 World Series. Does that make him the new Babe Ruth?
Brian Doyle hit .438 for the Yanks in the ‘78 Series. I guess that makes him one of the all time greats. When does his monument go up? :)
Had the Mets not been so injured this season, they would have won in the upper 80’s perhaps low 90’s. I am not suggesting they would have made the playoffs. What I am suggesting is that spending money does produce a winner. The injuries this season exposed other problems with the Mets. It was sloppy play, not having their head in the game, that prevented them from at least being competitive with all the injuries. Thankfully, the money will continue to flow but I’m not so sure the other stuff will change. That’s why I had hoped the Mets would have brought in a new manager. What makes anyone think Manuel can motivate players next season more than he did this past one.
Just look at the teams to make the playoffs.
Yankees #1
Red Sox #4
Angels #6
Phillies #7
Dodgers #9
Cards #17 (before they traded for Holliday, DeRosa)
Minny #26 beat out the Tigers #5.
Rockies #19.
So of all the teams in the playoffs 5 and almost 6 were in the top 10 in spending (Mets, Cubs, Astros, Mariners, missed) and the Cards made an all out effort to win by trading for Holliday and DeRosa who they won’t be able to resign most likely or it would push them up to inside the top 10.
What does that tell you?
Spending Money works. Ok so some teams fell short. Mets were decimated by injuries, he Astros spend stupidly. Cubs were a disappointment as were the mariners.
You need to be very very good scouting and developing to make it without spending money. Like the Twins and Rockies.
The Mets had a bad but you can owe it to a rash of injuries to key players. The Cubs are the team who truly disappointed in 2009. They won 97 in 2008 and, for the most part, returned the same team and weren’t hit by as many injuries as the Mets. That team greatly underachieved in 2009.
Oh i agree. What I was pointing out was that SPENDING wins. not in 100% of the cases, but overall the teams who spend more win more. It’s pretty simple.
5 of 8 teams who made the playoffs were in the top 10 in Payroll. A 6th team the Tigers needed to collapse to not make it. and a 7th team the Cardinals if they resigned Holliday and DeRosa at Market Value this offseason would have been #10 this year.
So in reality of the 8 teams to make the playoffs 6 were in the top 10 in spending. 75% of the teams who made the playoffs were in the top 1/3rd in spending.
It’s a fundamental problem with baseball. It’s really unfair to all teams, but it won’t be changed anytime soon. The Fact the mets were #2 and a full 66 million behind the yankees is just silly. Boston was 89 million behind the yankees. Or more then the salaries of the 16 bottom teams.
I’ve wanted a salary cap on baseball, profit sharing. Make Baseball a country wide sport again. Use the football model. It still gives the bigger franchises an advantage at minor league spending, coaches, scouting etc. But at least the salaries and the teams on the MLB level will be fair and balanced. That’s another debate for another day.
Money wins huh? Well maybe in some sense it does, but let me ask you this. Would you work harder at your job when you have a guarantee of millions, or when you make the league minimum? Now remember, at league minimum you are working to get those millions. Point being, some guys don’t work as hard when the money is already there.
Sign Steve Phillips as a talent evaluator
Sign Kris Benson for the 5th starters job
At least we can have the back pages for a few days when Steve has another affair
The METS problem is simple, they don’t go all the way and finish what they start. They tease you like a hot prom date, and only give you a peck on the cheek when the night is over. They sign Beltran, and stop, they sign Pedor and stop, they sign Santana and stop, they fix the pen and stop, they never do what it takes to repair the whole team. We nned at least one arm and one bat to keep up with the NL East, If, they only get one of the two, or, go cheap, we will have the same results in 2010. They need to attack, be agressive and sign or trade for 3 or 4 pieces this off season.
This whole debate is driving me crazy, how many times are we going to have posts and debates about this until the 2010 season. First of all, yes it was the injuries that decimated the team. I think the biggest lose to this team was Jose followed by Beltran and Jose was out fairly early in the year. There is NO WAY to know how the team would have done if they were all healthy. I am tired of the speculation, oh they wouldn’t have won anything anyway, this team sucked even when healthy, they made baserunning mistakes, okay yes they did make mistakes but there is no way to say how they could have done if they were all healthy, maybe we should have won more games but it wasn’t just the lineup, the pitching staff was all over the place, the only pitcher that was left from the starting rotation was Pelfrey and he had a bad year. It’s time to move on from last year, who knows what would have happened.
The same as nobody knows what will happen next year, we just need to put the very best team we can out on the field.
I still think that in addition to a LF and #2 pitcher, we need to replace either Maine Pelfrey or Perez in the rotation. We just won’t win if these guys are killing our pen 60% of the time
i just feel that we would be better off right now if we had a different gm and a different manager…of course a new owner would be optimum…the basic fact (injuries or whatever) is that the phils have passed us and have a better team (i am not in denial for a moment here)…i have little faith that the same cast of characters are going to change their stripes…they are too reactive and not proactive…
Spend as much or as little as they want…just spend it in the right places.
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