Archive for the ‘Adam Dunn’ Category

Omar needs to hit a Home Run at the Trade Deadline

BY MATTHEW FALKENBURY
ASSISTANT EDITOR

As July 31st gets closer and closer, the questions surrounding what exactly will Omar Minaya do come the Trade Deadline become louder and louder. With Beltran, Reyes, and Delgado still out for at least a few more weeks, the fans, including yours truly are wondering just what is the plan for this team.

If they are going to sell, what exactly can they get back in return? That answer is actually quite simple, don’t worry about it cause Freddy and Friends wont sell with a new ballpark in its Rookie Season.

Of coursethey could always stand pat and just wait out the injuries, which isn’t too bad an idea. Then again, if your like me, I have a hard time thinking that Beltran, Reyes and Delgado will come back and start hitting the cover off the ball. I have this odd reasoning that states that players coming back from injury need to readjust to Major League pitching, odd right?.

Then their is door number three, which is that Omar goes out and makes either a big move or a few small moves to try to keep the team afloat until the three musketeers or is it muscle-tears come back from their stints on the DL. With that I wanted to present to you the Top 5 players the Mets and Omar should look into acquiring at or before the Deadline to help keep our season alive.

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Adam Dunn wouldn't help this team.

BY ANDREW CAVAGNARO
STACHE WRITER

A few days ago a reader of Daily Stache sent a message regarding a paragraph in a post where I stated that Omar Minaya should make a deal to help this floundering team. Over the past few days, and several poor showings by the Metropolitans, I have changed my mind.

As recently as this week I felt that the addition of Adam Dunn or another thumper would help plug the hole of this struggling baseball team. However, it can be seen that the Mets are sinking quicker than the RMS Titanic. There was no plugging the hole in that grand ship as there is no quick fix for this team. A disabled list filled with a pedigree of All-Stars and quality players has decimated the roster.

An Adam Dunn or Mark DeRosa(trade this week) will help, but in no way can Mets fans believe that either of these players will take us to October. Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and Carlos Delgado have failed to take the Mets into postseason play the past three years. What makes us think that a team without those three All-Stars, but an acquisition of Dunn, can get them into the playoffs.

A 37-39 record, and a trend of playing the game without regard for fundamentals has put Omar Minaya in the spotlight. If you listen to WFAN of ESPN Radio, you will hear loud and clear the Mets fans pleas for the general manger to make a deal. But if you a look at the Mets farm system, you can see that it’s barren to begin with.

Fernando Martinez may turn out to be a wonderful player, but what are they really going to get for him? Jon Niese is having a difficult year and Daniel Murphy’s stock has dropped. On top of all of these issues, all of the other general mangers in Major League Baseball know how desperate the Mets are and will rob them blind if they are to make a deal.

This season is an anomaly with regard to the amount of injuries that have debilitated the Mets. Several of the walking wounded will return in the month of July and Delgado may return sometime in August. A trade involving an already below average minor league system will further hurt organizational depth once these disabled players return.

Also, purging the farm system now will cripple the Mets in attempts to make trades during the off-season. The real issues of this team flow internally.

Consistently playing the game without focus and a lack of fundamentals is not an example of poor talent, it is an inherent display of a poor organizational environment from the top down.

When the Mets run the bases, many fans want to cover their eyes to avoid witnessing an imminent blunder. Every time a fly ball goes up in the air, fans hold their breathe. Can Adam Dunn really fix these issues?

Adam Dunn is probably miserable in Washington.

BY MIKE ERHARDT
STACHE WRITER

With the Mets riding a four game losing streak as they try to single everyone to death – we the fans, look for an answer. Its an obvious answer: the trade market. Everyone knows that we need bat, particularly someone with power, can play the outfield and a little bit of first base.

Now, we can’t just snap our fingers and have a trade magically happen and we can’t just say – “hey lets go get this guy” and who ever will be trading “that guy” away will just want to do it because it makes sense for our Mets. In fact, that makes it even more expensive of a trade for us in terms of what young players we will have to give up.

For the past few weeks on WFAN and metsblog.com every caller and blogger has been saying the same name: Adam Dunn. The Nationals record is so bad right now, that they are already eliminated from playoff contention for the 2010 season, so Adam Dunn can be got.

But I must admit it really gets me agitated when I here people say, “lets go get Adam Dunn.” Its not the .247 batting average, the extremely high strike out rate or his lousy defense. The thing that bothers me most is that now that we need Dunn in this line up he is going to cost us our young talent.

Adam Dunn was commanding anywhere from 15-18 million dollars a year in the 4-5 year range and no one would touch him. His price tag continued to drop all off season and could have been had for a bargain basement price (the Mets style ever since shelling out cash to Pedro and Beltran).

Dunn settled for the worst team in the bigs, Nationals for 2 years and 20 million. Any team could have offered him the same 2 years with a smaller dollar amount and he would have gone their instead of Washington. Now, I know – there are some good arguments stating why the Mets should not have inked this slugger before the 2009 season.

I know, he bats left handed. Everyone was saying in the off season that we need a right handed power bat for this line up. Manny Ramirez’s price was way too high for the Wilpons – that much we know. But our starting line up in the beginning of the season read as this: Reyes (S), Murphy (L), Wright (R), Delgado (L), Beltran (S), Church (L), Schneider (L), and Castillo (S). We have four left handed bats, one right handed, and three bats that hit on both side of the plate.

When a lefty comes to face us – we have four batters on the right side of the plate and four on the left. So what does it matter if Dunn is another left handed bat, its not like he would have replaced Wright in the line up giving us an entire left handed and switch hitting roster. Dunn is also an every day player who hit 40 or more home runs in each of the last five seasons and is on pace to do it for the sixth straight season – an everyday player who is in the line up when a lefty comes to pitch against his team.

Before the season started – the Mets only had one everyday outfielder in Beltran. Murphy is a rookie and never has played a full season and Church played one full season in 2007 and was coming off two concussions this past season. The Mets also were expected a 37 year old Delgado to play every day and just assumed that he wouldn’t either get injured or not need a breather every now and then. Now, I know Dunn’s defense is undeniably bad – but he can feel in at two spots, the outfield and first base.

Now that the Mets offense looks hopless and just dropped a game below .500 – Omar is going to need a bat. It was wrong of Mets management to assume that Delgado’s 37 year old body was going to match the 159 games he played in last season, or assume that Church was going to be the same .300 hitter he was prior to his two concussions, or assume that Murphy was going to have a the same .313 batting average that he posted through his first 131 career Ab’s in the 2008 season.

We need Dunn and it makes sense to pick him up, but it will cost us a few of our up and comers. It’s just too bad that Mets management didn’t realize that Dunn made sense on February 10th – the day before Adam Dunn conceded to playing for the Washington Nationals for 2 years/20 million.

BY MICHAEL GANCI
EDITOR

Foxsports.com’s Ken Rosenthal is reporting that the Mets may be closing in on a deal with lefty starter Oliver Perez. The market for Ollie has been quiet, and it looks like the Mets are going to be the winners of this waiiting game. Details of the potential agreement have not been disclosed, but it looks like a three year deal, with a fourth year vesting option included.

Maybe this is a sign that the Boras xcoming to New York rumors were true. Now the question on everyone’s minds is this. Did they talk about Manny? It wouldn’t seem likely, because someone would have picked something up about it by now. If this Rosenthal report does happen to come to fruition, then the Mets are all set with starting pitching, and then it will be time to focus on offense.

Noone knows what the Mets are willing to do. Are they going to stand pat? Are they going to go all out and make a play for Manny Ramirez? Or will they sign a guy like Bobby Abreu or Adam Dunn? I don’t know, but the rumor mill should be hot for weeks to come.

The Wilpons should realize that it is time to open their wallets.