Really, Mets360 readers, what’s left to say? It wouldn’t be completely honest to say that it was hard to not write some angry tirade about the team in this space. It was pretty easy, actually. That’s because I’ve joined many Mets fans in moving past anger and into something much worse: apathy. This isn’t uncommon. It’s the sort of feeling we’ve been accustomed to towards the end of the summer over the last five or six seasons. It’s the feeling of knowing the season is lost and the team is playing out the string. Only this time it’s a bit more concerning. Rather than becoming apathetic towards a single season with the hope of better things to come, the feeling has started to apply to the team as a whole.
This isn’t just the result of how poorly the team has played in the last month or so. While it’s easy to be upset about how many of the players have been performing, it’s hard to be angry at them for it. That’s because these players are in the same situation the fans are in at this point: hoping for help with nary a bat in sight. It’s a hole General Manager Sandy Alderson put us all in and, at least from the outside, it appears that it may be close to impossible to dig out of it.
While fans are starting to shake their heads and stop caring, the media has taken a different approach. The scathing article by the NY Post’s Mike Vaccaro this week underscores how fed up the team’s beat reporters have become with the state of the franchise and Alderson’s shtick specifically. His nonchalant, snarky, and often times condescending tone with the beat reporters and, by extension, the fanbase has appeared to have taken a toll.
The beat in NY is tough and headlines need to sell papers, but even in this market the collective tone against the team has taken a remarkable turn. It’s impossible for most of us to know what’s going on in the Mets front office or to really understand what’s happening behind the scenes. However, the reporters have a much better understanding of the climate surrounding the team and its inner workings. It appears as though they’ve had enough. Some of them seem to be taking it all personally, which has got to be some kind of sad, pseudo-accomplishment on the team’s part.
Alderson has shown an odd mix of feeling as though he doesn’t need to explain himself while simultaneously revealing more than would be expected. Perhaps the backlash from the former has led to the latter. Either way, it’s maddening, refreshing, and confusing all at the same time. It could be that this was the plan all along. If so, well played, Mr. Alderson.
To be fair, Alderson couldn’t have predicted the calamitous injuries to befall the team this season, but he could have been better prepared for them. Washington has dealt with injuries to some of their most important players, but they’ve turned it around after a rough start. So while losing your best three hitters from a lineup that was already thin is bound to impact any team, the lack of depth that has led to a remarkably bad offensive run is directly the fault of Alderson.
It would remiss to not mention ownership, which has become an absolute embarrassment for a NY sports franchise, but that topic has been covered ad naseum for years. While a NY team sitting in the back half of league payrolls is a travesty, Alderson has been working within these constraints for years now. Poor ownership doesn’t admonish Alderson of his mistakes. Everyone has become resigned to the fact that the MLB will continue to allow the incompetent Wilpons to keep owning a baseball team for some reason, but Alderson knows what his resources are and he’s simply done a poor job leveraging them.
For instance, why did he jump on Michael Cuddyer so quickly while giving up a first round draft pick? It seemed a bit premature, though some of us were more optimistic that it would work out than others. Could this have been the result of fear of the market getting away from him? He’s been criticized of that before and has apparently “read” the market wrong for free agents in the past. Specifically, it appeared as though his internal valuation of players was way out of whack with how the market ended up valuing them.
This is a very real concern. It’s made even worse when it results in doling out a premature contract because a team is afraid that the price tag will shoot up beyond their own valuation. This is indicative of a team out of touch with the economic reality of the game while trying to outmaneuver their own financial straits.
The counter argument here is: what do you expect Alderson to do? Obviously he can’t make a deal that isn’t there. He’s also absolutely right in not letting himself get fleeced in a deal and sacrificing the future. The issue here is that he put himself in this situation. It was clear that the team was incomplete and incredibly thin offensively. Many of us have been calling for him to deal pitching for hitting for quite a while. It wasn’t hard to see this coming. It didn’t take a crystal ball to see the problems a super dominant pitching staff backed by an incompetent lineup would create. Saying they’d “lose lots of 1-0 and 2-1 games” was not conjecture. It’s now the reality.
Give Alderson and his team credit where it’s due. Through trades, drafting, and their ability to develop their pitchers they’ve achieved their goal in creating what is apt to become one of the best rotations in baseball. They’ve failed miserably on the other side of the ball, though, and it’s going to take the kind of creative thinking this front office has not shown a knack for to right the ship. Either that, or we continue to wait for the possibility that some bats in the system work out while the pitching inches closer to free agency.
Winning cures all, of course. The feelings of a fanbase are fleeting and shift with a team’s success. Maybe some out-of-the-blue trade suddenly presents itself before the July deadline. Maybe this really is a collective team slump and they’ll break out of it. One thing is for sure, the fans and the media have run out of patience. Alderson’s laissez faire attitude has finally reached its expiration date and things have turned ugly. He’s done a great job of alienating both the media and the team’s fanbase in the process.
I don’t feel alienated?
At least he carries himself with dignity, unlike the front office, Minaya, Duke, Phillips, etc., etc.
Washington Payroll: $165 million.
Mets Payroll: $101 million.
What a disgrace!
Yes, Sandy Alderson has alienated us with his snide comments about “Panic City”! Number of at bats for AAA players is ridiculous: Tejada (not good)-156; Plawecki (not ready)-144; Campbell (not good)-132; Herrera (not ready)-82; Ceciliani (not ready)-64.
One good thing: Not signing Duda to a LT contract. (But it almost happened.)
Regarding Duda, I wonder if this isn’t just some crazy slump resulting from him “trying to do too much.” I mean, that’s a nebulous concept, but we’ve seen players like Wright fail while to trying to shoulder the load. Hopefully he pulls himself out of it.
Good post.
I am happy to see the national and local media starting to shed light on the disgrace that the Mets ownership has been. If there’s any hope to get them out it will come when there’s a total groundswell of people pounding them.
I have yet to figure out whether Alderson actually cares at all about seeing the team win or whether his only concern is keeping the payroll at its lowest possible level.
Thanks, Larry!
I’d think that obviously any GM (and owner?) wants to see their team win. In this case, though, I wonder if keeping costs down is a more pressing priority. I mean, Alderson has said many times that he can increase payroll and add some money, but he always seems to halfheartedly do it. Maybe ownership keeps pulling the rug out from under him? Some reports have suggested that he has had to work with than he initially expected. From the Wilpons, that wouldn’t surprise me.
Rob what Fred wants is 2 million+ suckers going to Citifield and keeping his franchise afloat. Winning is nice. It’s just not priority number 1. I was and still am one of the vocal anti Cuddyer fans. He isn’t David Ortiz. So if he’s not a leader than why do you desperately sign him to a 2 year contract? It’s a typical Alderson signing. Very vanilla. Very safe. Someone who happily will take the money and not rock the boat. What will next years mantra be? Are you still with us? How can you believe anything Alderson says? The Met’s deserve Collins! We are family?
Great writeup. Very considered and even keeled. I fear this frustration will continue until the end of the season, though.
Thanks! Unfortunately, I think you may be right. :/
I don’t want to hear how players are waiting for help. That’s downright pathetic and if that’s the case, the season is lost anyway no matter what SA does.
This is a good point, but we’ve got to remember that these guys are human. Many of them shouldn’t be in the roles their being asked to fill and, to be frank, some of them simply do not look like major league ball players.
Funny how the media loved polling fun at us Mets fans for being so miserable as a group, only to turn on Alderson the moment he slights them.
This isn’t just the team’s beat reporters, either. Buster Olney is getting in on this, per Steevy’s link in the latest Gut Reaction post: http://tinyurl.com/nvrfqdq
It’ll be interesting to see how Alderson and the team handle the extra pressure that, in reality, they’ve created for themselves by raising expectations after preaching (and receiving) patience. Of course, Alderson seems to relish in this stuff so who knows.
Alderson has alienated me since the summer of 2012 when he didn’t make a move to bolster the bullpen. His inaction caused his self fullfilling prophecy to become true; that the team wasn’t good enough. RA Dickey thoughtfully broached the inaction in his book from the players perspective.
Three years later and the team is still lacking and Alderson still continues to be inactive. Alderson obviously is incapeable of taking the Mets to the next level.
folks, worrying about winning or placating the fan base or even assuring the fan base there is a plan is not his concern. His charge was to save the team for the Wilpons. He did that in spades. That’s all that matters. With Wilpons high standing with Buddy Boy Selig and now Manfred Man and his Earth Band and a team with finances under control (not to us, but imagine what might have happened with their part of the Madoff settlement), the Mets are in a very stable spot as a business. That’s all they care about. All this boo-hooing by fans and writers is just another joke for a few guys puffing Cubans and sipping Johnny Walker Blue, and laughing at our suffering,
It’s a Twilight Zone episode —- and we are the entertainment!!!!!!
Sandy Alderson is the most pressing problem with this organization.
He should be fired along with his condescending/superiority attitude, which has produced nothing.
He hasn’t done anything positive since coming here. The five blue-chip starting pitchers are all products of the Omar Minaya administration.
Not Noah or Wheeler. Sandy traded for them.
Traded for them using the assets that he inherited from Omar. Do you really think Sandy would ever have what it takes to land the top free agent the way Omar got Beltran. Money, yes, but it took more than money. Also, it took a GM with the balls to go to the Wilpons and say, “You’ve got to spend. ”
Omar understood NY. He made mistakes, errors. But his overall plan was far better and far more appropriate to NYC than anything Sandy can muster.
The Met’s are still trying to replace Reyes and Delgado after how many years? Amazing how we take for granted what we once had. There is no RBI threat without Wright in the line up. Just a bunch of patient hitters who can’t deliver a clutch hit if their careers depended on it.
To say that Alderson hasn’t done “anything” is an overstatement. But he hasn’t done much.
Not spending? Any beancounter could do that.