I guess I am in the camp of maintaining the youth as our future or potential future replacements at key positions. Ike Davis, F Mart, W flores, J Marte, J Familia, B Holt, Mejia…guys we know are starting to climb to the top. We need replacements in the near term for Beltran, for starting pitching help, for Francoeur possibly for Castillo etc.

I would love to find a gem or two from our system that become the next Reyes and Wright for us. Perhaps if we hold on to a few and develop them at the right pace, we can pull out a few real MLrs and possibly a star or two.

I just feel like we are constantly shopping for things the system has not produced because we trade away our minor league talent for ML talent. M Carp, P Humber, AJ Burnett, S Kazmir, J Bay, L Milledge, etc etc etc. Not all are all stars and some are not even ML players but we traded them all for talented major leaguers. I’d rather we find suitable trades with our major league talent for other major league talent and preserve as much of the farm as possible. To me…trading an all star like Reyes for and all star like Gonzales makes some sense

Second, why do you want to trade reyes? If you want gonzo, you can trade away some major prospects for him who are virtually unproven at the big league level. If they want Ike Davis I’d ship him off and if they want F-mart I’d ship him off. I would much rather keep an amazing shortstop, who is amazing defensively at a position where defense is important, rather than keep an unproven minor leaguer. I know that keeping the farm intact is important so I wouldn’t trade away the farm but I’d try to see what it would take and include one of my big prospects (Fmart or Davis) and possibly Neise.

Third – do you feel okay relying on Neise for the fifth starter? I don’t think we can rely on him when he too is comming off an injury plus a surgery.

As to the value of the players I am talking about trading…

1) Reyes still has enormous value. You can make an argument that your not sure he is healthy right now but I can make an argument that he played 160 games for 4 years with no recurring issues til this year. He is a game changer for us and the baseball world knows it and covets him….period.

2) Pelfrey is a known commodity at this point. Not sure what the arbitration value of his worth is but….he is a .500 pitcher with decent stuff that is still young enough to improve. What was Wolf or Marquis or Garland worth? Are those guys tradeable in any year?

3) I agree with the comments about Carter and Murphy. But I felt with us taking a bad contract in Young from the Rangers, and them taking a lousy contract for OP for us 2yrs and $24M, we should be generous and provide more. LEts be honest, we are doing the Rangers more a favor here by taking young than they are doing us a favor by sending him. Not because of his baseball talent but because of the years and dollars owed him still 4yrs and $64M for good player. Lets see an avg SS/2b type with good hitting instincts and some power for all world 2b numbers As bad as OP has been, the contract he has is nothing compared to the Young contract. Murphy is more of a throw in to make them feel better and we do not need him. Murphy in texas would be 85 – 90% of what Michael young is…except at a less valuable position defensively.

Its time to shake it up. This team needs a new feel and I am for giving up Reyes to bring in a top talent back

Next, why would ANYBODY with a head on their shoulders want Perez? Seriously, he has like negative value at this point and he’s being paid 12 million dollars. No way he gets traded without us eating a huge portion of his contract and that defeats the purpose, because it seems to be you deduct his salary in your payroll.

Once again, i am cringing at your lineup with Young at SS, honestly. I feel kind of sick looking at it

Also, I can’t see how we can depend on Santos/Thole for our starting catcher, does that mean Santos is the starting catcher? Or a rookie catcher who still needs fine-tuning?

1) Young isn’t a 2B, hasn’t been one since Soriano came over in the A-Rod trade with the Yankees five years ago. He was a SS after that and played most of ’09 at 3b. The Mets have a fellow named Wright at that position.

2) Young has an expensive contract, not a bad one. He’s a career .300+ hitter, had a streak of six years with 200+ hits and hits for power. True, he’s owed a lot of money but he’s only 32 and has a decent shot at 2500 hits and maybe 3000.

…but …but… the GM in MLB the show accepted it.

I am in favor of trading around some pieces (some major from our current squad) and being a bit more aggressive in places to upgrade the team.

Here are 3 of my current thoughts…

1) Trade Reyes, Pelfrey and Carter(1b/of AAA player from Wagner trade) to Padres for Adrien Gonzalez

2) Trade Murphy and Perez for Young (and have him play SS),

3) Sign Lackey and Randy Wolf for $29M per yr combined and Holliday for 18M

Rotation….

Santana
Lackey
Wolf
Maine
Niese

Regulars

Castillo 2b
Young ss
Wright 3b
Gonzalez 1b
Beltran cf
Holliday lf
Franoceur rf
Santos/Thole

All in this adds about $68M of new salary coming in with Gonzo at $5M, Young at $16M, Holiday at $20M, $9m for Wolf and $18M for Lackey.

We are getting rid of Reyes, Pelfrey and Perez which is $10M, $5M for Pelfrey (arb year) and $12M for Perez. Plus likely losing Delgado and Wagner and Putz which is $12M, $10.5M and $6M

All in with these moves, we are adding $68M in next year commitments but shedding $57.5M in commitments.

So this ups next yr payroll by $10M roughly. There will be other smaller contracts coming off like Cora and Reed and others but likely to add back those salaries with replacement players