I’m not sure if you’re trying to praise Ankiel or insult him.
Gosh, I feel bad for Royals fans.
Yeah. They are a constant reminder things could be worse.
It’s sorta not fun rooting for a small market team in baseball. Nothing exciting really ever happens and there’s really not much hope at all when the season starts. At least as a Boston or New York fan, you have tons of stuff to read about.
Arizona isn’t even a “small market” team, but nothing interesting ever happens here. I’m supposed to be excited by Adam LaRoche? Really? How many guys who strike out 100 times a year do we need? Because, by my count, he’s the 6th guy in our lineup who will strike out 100+ times a season (and Mark Reynolds does it twice every season). I don’t follow baseball as much as I used to, and I know the strikeout isn’t seen as negatively as it once was, but I’m pretty sure you won’t win with 6 guys striking out 100+ times a season. At least we got that Abreu guy. Wait, what? Oh for fuck’s sake!
Actually, this team has a ton of promising young players, and Edwin Jackson was a nice pick up that fits right in. But this team really needs something interesting, someone to lean on. They need someone who can carry the team offensively for a week or two when the team goes cold after a hot start. I might just be bored though.
The Diamondbacks did one smart thing this off season. They got rid of that waste of a uniform, Eric Byrnes.
I went to 5 D-backs game last year and Byrnes lost 2 of them with errors.
Jon Heyman is now reporting that Ben Sheets has signed with Oakland.
I would, at this point, trade Omar Minaya straight up for any general manager who has ever lived, including Jim Duquette, who once traded Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano. I’ve been a Mets fan for twenty five years and this is the lowest it’s gotten.
You seriously don’t think he’s worse than the guy who runs the Royals, who in the last eight months has been on a mission to recruit and overpay players who wouldn’t even be good enough to make the Mets’ opening day roster? Yuniesky Betancourt? Jason Kendall, are you shitting me?
I have never in my entire life seen a major league team run worse than the Kansas City Royals. I have whined and complained about both of the previous two Blue Jay GMs and holy moly they made some dumb ass moves, but they were genuises compared to the Royals “brain trust.” Omar Minaya is Branch Rickey by comparison. A Met equivalent to a typical Royals trade would be if they traded David Wright to the Blue Jays for Scott Downs and the guy who plays drums outside Gate 5 at the Rogers Centre. Omar’s not THAT dumb.
Yeah, no, I seriously do think he’s worse than the guy who runs the Royals, if you adjust for their relative resources. I mean, give Dayton Moore the Mets’ payroll, and I’ll bet you he can figure out how to sign Jason Bay and Francisco Rodriguez, you know? He can’t sign guys like that - obvious guys - so his incompetence appears worse because let’s face it, if you get to spend $100M you’re going to have a few decent players on your roster just by accident.
But considering the economies involved, is 4 years, $25M for Luis Castillo really worse than 2 years, @$6M for Jason Kendall? Is the $12M the Royals are spending for an ERA around 5.00 (Gil Meche) significantly worse than the $12M the Mets are spending for an ERA above 6.50 (Oliver Perez)? The Royals just voluntarily signed Rick Ankiel and Scott Podsednik; the Mets voluntarily gave up one of the few relievers they had with an ERA under 4.00 in exchange for Gary Matthews, Jr and last year traded for Jeff Francoeur. Again, considering the differing payrolls, is Ankiel/Podsednik really any worse than Matthews/Francoeur?
I could do this all day. Minaya’s incompetence is covered a bit because the sheer volume of spending he’s allowed to do results in a roster that’s marginally better than the Royals’ roster. But if the Mets spend $150M and they get 70 wins, and the Royals get only five fewer wins while spending less than half of that amount of money, which GM is the more incompetent?
I don’t want to spend ages arguing about the specific merits (or otherwise) of those particular players, but as a general response to your question, i would argue that, yes, the KC situation is worse, precisely because a small-market, low-budget team simply cannot afford to dump a whole chunk of change on shitty players. They need value for money precisely because they don’t have much to spend.
When the Mets spend about $18 million for a year of Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez, they still have about $117 million to spend on other talent. When the Royals spend $18 million for a year of Jason Kendall and Gil Meche, that constitutes over 25 percent of their total funds available for salaries, and leaves them with just over $50 million for the rest of the roster.
(Figures based on 2009 salary totals for both teams)
“I think Daniel Murphy can do enough that we can survive,” manager Jerry Manuel said.
Doesn’t that leave you brimming with confidence.
Fernando Tatis is coming back. All is well.
In other news, Jon Garland just signed with the Padres for $4.7M. Jon Garland would not just be the second-best starting pitcher in Queens; he would be second best by a mile.
Is that official? I don’t want to get my hopes up prematurely…
You can’t expect the Mets to compete with big budget teams like the A’s and Padres.
The first PECOTAs of the year are out today and there are some interesting things in the division standings.
Three teams project to win 90+, the Rays at 96, The Red Sox at 95, and the third place Yanks at 93. The Twins win the central with all of 82 wins. The A’s win a tight AL west team with only the Angels not in contention. The NL is more as expected as only the Nationals winning 82 causes the eyes to bug. The Rockies, Cubs, Mets, and Brewers are all worse than that.
Either there’s something wrong with those ratings, or being an O’s or Jays fan this year is going to suck really *really *bad.
Well, yeah.
PECOTA projections for season standings do not have a track record of being any more accurate than most fans could do just making educated guesses, so the numbers don’t really mean anything. Still, though, isn’t this kind of what you’d expect? Tampa’s young so will get better, and Boston and New York should be pretty good too. Baltimore is an atrocious franchise, and Toronto just traded away their best pitcher and wasn’t very good to start with.
Actually their predictions aren’t far off what actually happened in 2008: Tampa 97, Boston 95, New York 89, Toronto 86, Baltimore 68.