Two years ago, I wrote a piece about the Mets' 2011-12 offseason. If you've mentally blocked that offseason, it's the one that saw an historic nominal payroll reduction, with something in the neighborhood of $50M net coming off the books. The goal of that piece was to put that immense payroll decrease into perspective by [...]
The Mets signed 27 draft picks in 2013. Here are their bonuses and pool allotment numbers.
The 2012 Mets were officially eliminated from postseason contention yesterday. Despite having been unofficially eliminated many, many weeks ago, the closure that comes with mathematical elimination can be healing, in a way. It allows us to turn our attention completely toward the 2013 team (well, and football). To start thinking about the future of the [...]
To be clear, I mean that as an actual question, not a rhetorical one. It's a question with lots of reasonable, subjective answers. The Mets have been lucky, because David Wright has rediscovered his stardom, and Kirk Nieuwenhuis has unexpectedly settled right into the Major League lineup, and Johan Santana's left arm is not only [...]
With the offseason coming to a close, the Mets' 2012 Opening Day payroll looks to be settling somewhere in the neighborhood of $90M. Nominally speaking, that's an historic dropoff from last year's Opening Day payroll of roughly $143.2M (per Cot's, adjusting for Taylor Buchholz's roster bonus). There's just no way to paint a $50M+ decline [...]
Hmmm... there was probably a better pun to be made there. Oh well, moving on. I'm among the minority of Mets fans that, even after his 2011 season, still liked Angel Pagan. I could certainly understand why so many other Mets fans were frustrated with him. But I never understood the logic behind the non-tender [...]
1. For starters, 2009 & 2010 were better than you remember In 239 games during the 2009 & 2010 seasons, Pagan hit .296/.344/.448 (.792 OPS) over 1009 plate appearances. Playing all 3 OF positions, but mostly CF, Pagan earned a UZR of +22.7 in 1952.1 defensive innings. All told, in a year and a half's [...]
Yesterday's walkthrough of one possible route of roster reduction left the Mets' 40-man roster looking like this: C (3) - Mike Nickeas, Ronny Paulino, Josh Thole IF (9) - Ike Davis, Nick Evans, Zach Lutz, Daniel Murphy, Josh Satin, Ruben Tejada, Justin Turner, Jordany Valdespin, David Wright OF (5) - Mike Baxter, Jason Bay, Lucas [...]
Counting players on the 40-man roster and the 60-day DL (which doesn't count against the 40-man), the Mets currently have 45 guys on their Major League roster. Between now and the November 18th deadline for submitting reserve lists, that will be whittled down substantially. Some players will depart as free agents, some will be released, [...]
With the official end of the 2011 MLB regular season fast approaching, the Mets once again find themselves playing out the string in a season that has already been unofficially over for quite awhile. Like many fans, over the past few weeks my attention has begun to shift away from the action on the field [...]