Is it Half Full or is it Half Empty?

BY MATTHEW FALKENBURY
ASSISTANT EDITOR

Spring Training is in full swing across Florida and Arizona. Teams and their fans are waiting for the first week of April to finally come along and finally get things going in the world of baseball. I, sadly enough, am not one of those people.

The 2009 season zapped alot of my enthusiasm for the Mets and the people who are in control of the Mets. Its not the losing, cause lets face it, even the best teams in baseball will lose at least 60-70 games a season and the worst teams will win about 60-70 games a season. Its always those 30-40 games in the middle that decide your fate, and with the way they played the game of baseball, I’m not shocked they lost most of those games in the middle.

I refuse to sit here and read and listen to all the stories where some player tells you, “things will be different”. “I’m in the best shape of my life” and so on. We have heard that garbage for too long in the months of February and March only to see things fall apart in September and October.

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Watching a tortoise move just barely missed the cut.

BY MICHAEL GANCI
EDITOR

So today, as the Jets try to win their way into the playoffs and as I continue to try to think of new ways to evaluate the Mets and the blog, I started to think about the off season in baseball, and the lack of action that has taken place previously, and of course, the first person I blame is Omar Minaya.

Call me spoiled. The Mets have already come to terms with Jason Bay, and they have even added superstars Mike Hessman, R.A. Dickey and Henry Blanco, but the majority of us seem to think that there is more work that needs to be done. Watching Omar talk and listening to him speak is downright agitating, to say the least, so I decided to take the Omar Minaya chronicles one step further.

What would I rather do then hear Omar Minaya speak? Let’s look at the nominees.
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Santa and The Mets have had their Moments....

BY MATTHEW FALKENBURY
ASSISTANT EDITOR

Christmas Time is my favorite part of the Year and In honor of that, i have taken the wonderful poem T’was the Night Before Christmas and added a little blue and Orange to the Party….ENJOY!!

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Citi
Not a creature was stirring, not even a Reyes.
The stockings were hung by the Apple with care,
In hopes that St Omar soon would be there.

The Mets Fans were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of Jason Bay danced in their heads.
And Manuel in the Dugout, and Fred looking like a sap,
Had just settled their brains for a long winter’s nap.
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How would you like to see this guy in Queens? (PHOTO BY ICON SMI)

BY WENDY ADAIR
STACHE WRITER

The Mets have several holes that they need to fill this winter and Starting Pitcher and everday Left Fielder are two of the most important upgrades to have going into the 2010 season.

Roy Halladay may be coming to the Mets from the Toronto Blue Jays, while it is not likely he will decide to come to New York choosing to be a Met instead a of a Yankee.

In order for the Mets to acquire Halladay by trade, they will be in the position of giving up several top name prospects combined with one or two other players, whether they are position players or pitchers .
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What are you thankful for?

BY MICHAEL GANCI
EDITOR

I know it’s a little bit early for the Thanksgiving article, but I really could not help myself. With the meal of the year looming in the not so distant future, I decided to compare what the Mets should be thankful for, even though things do not seem so peachy at this junction.

First, we should be thankful we are not the Royals, Athletics, Nationals and Pirates. These are teams that were also pretty atrocious last year and don’t seem to be improving much. Can anyone actually see any of these teams being a playoff contender any time in the near future? I can’t, and say anything you want about the Royals having the AL CY Young award winner, they don’t have anything close to what they need to be a playoff team.

I am also thankful for Jeff Francoeur. This was one of the lone bright spots of the 2009 season. When the Mets acquired him for Ryan Church, I didn’t really know what to make of it. I knew it was the right move, but this guy was a “Brave”. There was no way this was going to work. But in a season in which we saw a lot of misjudgment, this ended up being one of the best moves to make. Now they are discussing an extension, and we could do a lot worse than having him in right field next season.
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Francisco Rodriguez has probably been the brightest spot for the Mets so far in 2009. (PHOTO BY ICON SMI)

According to Metsblog.com and the Mets website, the Mets are not going to pick up JJ Putz’s $9.1 million option for the 2010 season, opting instead to buy him out for $1 million, and Putz will most likely be a Free Agent.

JJ Putz was brought to the Mets in a mega 3 team 12 player deal last winter, and due to elbow problems that required surgery only had 29 appearances in 2009, he had an 5.22 ERA and a 1-4 record.

During his last three appearances, Putz gave up 7 earned runs and this was the reason his ERA ended higher than anticipated, no doubt this was extremely frustrating to both Putz and the Mets.

The 2009 season began with the hopes of Putz being the setup pitcher for Francisco Rodriguez, but with the injury situation the way it was, once again the bullpen was by committee and Jerry Manuel shuffled his relievers around similar to the way he did in 2008 once Billy Wagner was done for the season.

The setup role is fairly new to the world of baseball, until recently you were either a starter or a reliever, set up man and closer were not defined.  Putz had been a closer for Seattle but was willing to be a setup man when he came to the Mets, he hopes that another team will believe in his ability to return from elbow surgery.

Although the surgery was considered successful, the Mets are not willing to risk Putz’s health and the much hyped acquisition of JJ Putz from the Seattle Mariners proved to be a waste and Omar Minaya would be wise to be more cautious in his dealings this winter.

Time for Hot Stove Baseball folks.

BY ANTHONY LAFAMAN
STACHE WRITER

Well, I am glad that ordeal is over with. Yankees won, blah blah blah. You can’t get away from it. They’ll have a parade and they will get some keys to the city and then hoepfully them and their rotten fans will go to sleep until April. I mean all I heard from my Yankee friends was how long it’s been since they won a championship. Puh-lease. The only good thing that came out of this is that Pedro lost and the Phillies are not champions. Oh and now the Mets are not mentioned everytime someone says “the last time the Yankees won was against the Mets in 2000″. So thank the good lord for not making me a Yankee.

I want to move on to the off season, Nov 9-11 are the GM meetings in Chicago, great town. Maybe one day Ganci will get some press credentials and then we can really get this ball rolling. The winter meetings are mid December I think (too lazy to check) and that’s always interesting. In my opinion the Mets needs to address the following positions.

After the game you and your friends could always enjoy a nice game of online poker.
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Mets' fans would love for these two to buy one way tickets out of town.

BY MICHAEL GANCI
EDITOR

In what was something that Mets’ fans were looking forward to hearing, Mike Francesa spent over an hour talking about the Mets with Jeff Wilpon, Dave Howard and Omar Minaya. I certainly feel like I spent 45 minutes of my life while learning nothing new.

That’s a lie. The Mets are going to have a Hall of Fame put in Citi Field. I just have one question. Is it going to to honor the Mets or the Brooklyn Dodgers?

I give Francesa credit, which is something that I don’t often do. The guy asked the Mets “brain trust” all of the questions that Mets’ fans wanted to hear, and he even was a bit harsh from time to time, but what did the hierarchy do? They simply didn’t answer anything with concrete answers.
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Has Omar Minaya been as bad as this guy? (PHOTO BY ICON SMI)

BY ANDREW CAVAGNARO
STACHE WRITER

The question that has been bouncing around my head today is a peculiar one. It is a question that I wouldn’t have even needed to ask three years ago. So here it is, who’s the better general manager Steve Phillips or Omar Minaya?

Three years ago, Minaya would have been the slam dunk winner, however two collapses and this season’s embarrassment has made this a decent debate. Yes, Steve Phillips brought in Mo Vaughn and was at the helm for the awful 2002 and 2003 seasons. However, a NLCS and World Series appearance definitely helps his case. His deal for Mike Piazza may go down as one of the best in franchise history.
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It's no secret that many people think the Mets should get rid of Omar Minaya. (PHOTO BY ICON SMI)

BY ZACHARY SCHULMAN
STACHE WRITER

If the Wilpons want to give the Mets fans hope going into next season, then the one thing they SHOULD do is to fire Omar Minaya now. By showing that there are going to change the chemistry and direction of this team now, it will give the fans some hope for 2010 instead of letting the fans speculate about what will happen. The last thing we need is more angst.

It is three strikes and you are out in baseball. When Minaya took over in the winter of 2004, he brought the Mets back to relevance in 2005. In 2006, the Mets had one of their best seasons in franchise history, going to within one game of reaching the World Series. In 2007, it was virtually the same team as 2006, only with a brittle, aging slugger named Alou added to the mix. And while Moises could still hit, he couldn’t stay on the field. The Mets became complacent and manufactured the most colossal regular season choke job in baseball history. Strike one.
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