A Metropolitan Manuscript- Apples, Queens and Numbers

[Bluejaysfan65]

Its back alright... And bigger and better than before!!

[royals19]

Citi Field
April 26th, 2013
Meeting Room 2-A
Mets' monthly situational meeting

The Mets were in 4th place. At the quick bat of an eye, things didn't look that bad... maybe another sub .500 finish but it wouldn't be that bad. However to the Mets Front Office, this was their worst nightmare, not being good enough to win and not being bad enough to get a high draft pick. Not being able to spend and weary of calling up players and starting their service clocks, there hadn't been really any roster moves made outside of optioning Hefner and Torres.

Owner Fred Wilpon sat at the head of the table leaning back in his chair, not really seeming to give a care. Sandy Alderson was traveling with the team on their roadtrip so it was Willie Singleton, Paul DePodesta and J.P. Riccardi informing the owner along with a handful of scouts.

Quote: Originally Posted by Fred Wilpon

Alright, what's the situation... and please put it in lamens terms.

Quote: Originally Posted by Willie

Well Mr. Wilpon, we're in a tight spot. We're playing middle of the road baseball. What I mean is that, we're not bad enough to build for the future but we aren't good enough to win right now. We're stuck in this gray area in between.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

So what exactly do you need?

Quote: Originally Posted by J.P Riccardi

We need more money... plain and simple.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

Look, I told you guys before the season, that you need to work with what you have... We've got guys like Johan Santana, Francisco Cordero and David Aardsma coming back. On top of that you've got Wheeler and d'Arnaud. Surely you can make lemonade with that!

Quote: Originally Posted by Willie

That's the problem Mr. Wilpon, you aren't giving us enough lemons. In order to create a winning team, we need money to invest in player development, scouting and the international market. We need to invest in finding players for our big league roster and Mr. Wilpon, that is completely inconceivable at this point. It's only April and we're struggling to find players that can be productive at the big league level.

Quote: Originally Posted by Riccardi

To just piggy back off of what Willie said, we're willing to work with the money you gave us but we need you're authorization to begin selling off pieces on this team. That's the only way we're going to be able to free up enough money to start doing things the way we want to.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

Absolutely not... I'm not going to allow you to trade the pieces off of this team... I'm... I'm confident we can win with this group.... Now how about you quit giving me excuses and give me results! Everybody but Mr. Singleton leave.

Wilpon got up out of his chair and slammed the door shut and went over to the mini fridge and got a water.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

Please Mr. Singleton, help yourself to anything you'd like.

Willie got up and grabbed a Gatorade from the fridge and sat at the opposite end of the table.

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

We aren't selling off any of the players because it's not my choice to make any more.

Quote: Originally Posted by Willie

Wait what?

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

I just got another court order in the mail. They've found more dirt on me so I've decided to sell the team to pay for this court case and to go out on my terms. I will control the team for the rest of the year and the new group will take over the day following the World Series. I promised them that I wouldn't make any drastic changes to the team until they consulted you.

Quote: Originally Posted by Willie

So, who exactly are you selling us to and why do they wanna talk to me?

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

I sold it to Patrick Ewing. He's some sort of basketball player who's backed by the television network MSNBC. I'm going to get about 800 millions dollars for the team... As for why they want to talk to you, they're going to make you their Vice President of Baseball Operations and they want to confer with you about what direction they want the team to go in.

Quote: Originally Posted by Willie

But what about Sandy?

Quote: Originally Posted by Wilpon

Mr. Alderson is probably going to be fired. They want to clean out all nonessential personnel who are affiliated with the old regime. First, however they want to talk to you about who to keep and who to show the door to.

Willie couldn't believe it. He was finally going to get his shot to run a pro baseball team. He was upset that things weren't going to work out this season but he was excited that it was his team to rebuild and build his legacy around...

[beamerball811]

Good work with this so far. I'm interested in seeing what you do under the Ewing ownership.

[royals19]

I'll be honest... the Phillies and Mets rivalry has been pretty intense but if there's probably another less intense rivalry out there. Braves vs. Mets. It used to be scolding hot, probably hotter than the Mets and Phillies rivalry but you know, things change and people change.

It all started with one player... Tom Seaver. Tom terrific had signed with the Braves but was ruled ineligible by the commissioner's office. Seaver intended to return to school but was ruled ineligible by the NCAA... Seaver's family petitioned Commissioner Eckert and eventually teams were allowed to match the Braves offer and the Mets won the lottery, effectively stealing him from the Braves...



While this served as a launching pad for the rivalry, it was furthered by John Rocker who said some highly critical and explicit things about New York. This in turn would lead to people throwing stuff at the Braves' players, namely batteries.

However, things cooled with the opening of Turner Field and the rivalry didn't wasn't really an issue any more. In fact, Chipper Jones named his son "Shea" in honor of the Mets' old stadium because it played a special role in his career...

I'm not writing this to say that we're going to start something with the Braves... if anything, I admire the Braves and consider them the model franchise. I'm writing this because the people need to be informed of the Mets' past and just in case something kicks up again. We're in a "Cold War" of sorts... things could blow up at any minute... I really hope that doesn't happen but hey, we gotta be prepared for everything.

[royals19]

Quote: Originally Posted by beamerball811

Good work with this so far. I'm interested in seeing what you do under the Ewing ownership.

Thanks dude, it's just one step in the right direction for this troubled franchise. However, it will make things more interesting and we'll finally be able to turn this ship upside down.

[beamerball811]

Quote: Originally Posted by royals19

Thanks dude, it's just one step in the right direction for this troubled franchise. However, it will make things more interesting and we'll finally be able to turn this ship upside down.

Hopefully so. Interested in seeing what you do with this club.

[royals19]

Looking past the "Contenders" typo, we're heading down to the Ted for what should be an action packed series. I don't expect us to make it out of here in one piece... the young guys don't really understand the significance of playing against the first place Braves. If they didn't know any better, they'd think it was just another series... but it's not. It's a chance for us to see how we stack up to one of the model franchises. Looking forward, we have a long way to go before we even field half the team that Atlanta has.



Let's not kid ourselves here... this kid is probably the best defensive shortstop in baseball... he's got the range to both sides, the arm strength. Simba can do it all my friends. And today he did, he turned double plays out the wazoo... I was afraid we'd never make it past second base.

It would seem like a base hit would get through up the middle and Simmons would make a diving stop or there would be a ball the third baseman would miss and Simmons is right behind him making the Jeter throw. You can't get the ball past him. It's impossible.

Luckily though, Ike Davis and David Wright led the way against Kris Medlen who's having an "off" year compared to his performance down the stretch last season.



Luckily though, we had Matt Harvey on the bump today and it wasn't even a contest. Harvey gave us 7 strong innings and was lights out. He's actually a legit ace. He's young and still developing but the kid is a legit contender for the Cy Young this year.

Watch out world, here comes Matt Harvey...

[royals19]

Now remember how I said we optioned Jeremy Hefner? Well we gave Germen a shot at the rotation and he pitched well but I'd prefer to pitch him out of the bullpen in his rookie season. We could've logically called up Zack Wheeler here in the opening days of June but, there's the super 2 we have to worry about and we're trying to cut down on the walks.

So instead, we had to dig deeper into our system and we came away with the perfect #5 option:



"Carl f'n Pavano" This dude doesn't have the same stuff he did with New York or Minnesota but he can still eat innings and that's what we're going to ask from him. We're going to ask Pavano to throw until he can't anymore. We need innings from our guys, they aren't making it through the 5th before we have to go to the pen and those guys are getting worn out.

Pavano has a 68.1% career groundball rate but his Opponent batting average is well above .300 so he's an interesting case. I think that if we can generate more weak contact by throwing pitches lower in the zone than he'll see that batting average drop.



In all seriousness, Pavano isn't going to hold down the rotation forever. He's likely going to stick until Zack Wheeler gets the call within the next 2-3 months. After that point, we'll have to make a decision... I don't know if we'll DFA him, release him or option him... It's all based on his performance here in the next 10 or so starts.