Category: Latest News

Mets Trade For Anderson Hernandez

Anderson Hernandez
Image by Keith Allison via Flickr

The Mets did another deal with the struggling Washington Nationals today re-acquiring light-hitting infielder Anderson Hernandez. You probably recall that the Mets sent Hernandez to the Nationals about one year ago to complete the deal for Luis Ayala.

This season with the Nats he’s hitting .251| .310| .320 with 9 doubles, 1 homer and 23 RBI’s in 77 games.

The Mets sent Single-A second baseman Greg Veloz to the Nationals in return.

Clearly, this is a move intended as insurance for Luis Castillo‘s injury. This doesn’t bolster the team for a playoff run. Far from it. Hernandez is a live body that can play second base and that’s all.

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Mets Jose Reyes Suffers Rehab Setback

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

The Daily News is reporting that Jose Reyes is still having pain in his right leg while rehabbing in Port St. Lucie. He flew back to New York to be examined, again, by Mets team doctors.

I know that some have advocated for the injured Mets players to just shut it down for the season. And I recognize that there isn’t any point in coming back to make a playoff push for this season. That ship has sailed.

I would like to point out that if the injured Mets are ready to play that it would put a much better product on the field. Although the purpose of playing the season is to win, the Mets are also a business. Putting fannies in the seats and viewers on TV comes a close second to winning championships for the team. If the Mets can get Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, and Reyes back on the field in September they should do it. At least give us a quality product to watch, even if the season is a goner.

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Mets 2009 Season Close To Oblivion

Carlos DelgadoWe’ve been waiting for months now for the injured Mets to heal and get back to help this team to a miracle playoff run. But if the current Mets can’t, at least, hang on there won’t be a chance at all. The Mets need to go 40-18 over their final 58 games of the 2009 season to reach the 90 win plateau. That’s the number of wins that it took the Milwaukee Brewers to beat out the Mets by one game in 2008 for the wild card spot in the National League. It should take about that same number of wins to take the wild card spot this year.

The Mets had a good little run going against Houston and Colorado over the last week. But that will come crashing down quickly if the Mets lose tonight to the D-Backs and Dan Haren. Losing three out of four games at home to a team that’s completely out of it, like the D-Backs, is going to hurt the Mets badly this late in the season.

Even if Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, J.J. Putz, John Maine, and Billy Wagner are playing for the Mets in September, will it really matter? September could be a very quiet venue for the Mets. And the season ticket holders that are trying to sell on Stubhub and eBay will be taking a big loss in the secondary market.

I understand why Mets GM Omar Minaya chose to stand pat at the non-waiver trading deadline. The team often looks dead and spending resources appears to be a lost cause. But it would have been nice to bring in some much needed offense that would be here next season too. Say a Victor Martinez. But that didn’t happen. So we’re still watching and waiting. Watching this impostor of a big league team. Waiting for the players to heal. The same high-priced players that are drawing their salaries from the pricey seats at Citi Field.

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Mets Stand Pat at 2009 Trade Deadline

Flickr photo courtesy of Eric Kilby
Flickr photo courtesy of Eric Kilby

I have to say that I’m surprised that the Mets didn’t even pull off a minor deal at the non-waiver trade deadline. Of course, there will still be trades for players that have made it through waivers until August 31. After the brutal week that GM Omar Minaya had, he could have used a trade to take the attention away from his lack of mass communication skills.

Victor Martinez going to Boston wasn’t shocking. But I had hoped the Mets would make a splash by landing him. The Mets will need a catcher and first baseman next season and nobody better than Martinez could fit that bill.

I thought that the Mets would have tried to land some Major League talent who is under contract for more than this season. Apparently, the Mets brain trust is married to their prospects. They better pan out. That’s all that I can say.

I haven’t seen anything from Bobby Parnell, Jon Niese, or Fernando Martinez that would prevent me from trading them for a proven Major Leaguer that’s under contract for more than half a season.

I’m not saying that the Mets should have gone all out to make the playoffs this year. But they could have tried to fill some huge holes in the lineup that they’ll have next season. Left field, first base, and catcher are all question marks for next season.

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Mets Wilpon Apologizes For Minaya’s Outburst

Minaya1Mets COO Jeff Wilpon met with the media before last night’s game against the Rockies to express the organization’s dissatisfaction with Omar Minaya’s meltdown during Monday’s press conference. Mets fans are well aware by now that Minaya implied that Daily News reporter Adam Rubin wrote damaging reports about Tony Bernazard because Rubin wanted a position in player development with the Mets.

Wilpon said that Minaya apologized to Mets ownership for making a “very, very large mistake”. He went on to say that Minaya is well aware that he put the team in a bad spot with his comments about Rubin.

Rubin has received a voice mail from Wilpon apologizing on behalf of the Mets team and he hopes that Rubin will accept a call from Minaya to apologize.

Clearly, the simple firing of Bernazard has turned into a complete disaster for this PR-challenged team. I always thought of Minaya as fairly media savvy despite his lack of command of the English language. But this episode has exposed Minaya as easily shaken and a poor communicator.

All of this has left the Mets, and us fans, as the laughing stock of the league. Definitely take a look at Ray Ratto’s column for CBS Sports. He describes the Mets dysfunction in the front office and goes on the say that fans of the Royals, Nationals, and Pirates are thinking that it could be worse. They could be Mets fans.

Listen to Jeff Wilpon’s meeting with the media here:

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Omar Minaya Apologizes For Trashing Adam Rubin

bag head
Flickr photo courtesy of abbynormy

After Mets GM Omar Minaya attempted to discredit NY Daily News reporter Adam Rubin at a press conference today, he thought better of it and issued an apology. Interestingly, COO Jeff Wilpon was by his side looking like an adult forcing a child to apologize for bad behavior.

You can see the original press conference here. Oh, by the way, the press conference was to announce that the Mets fired VP Player Development Tony Bernazard.

Rubin quickly became the focus of the press conference to everyone’s surprise. This just goes to show that the Mets can make a bad situation even worse. You can see Rubin’s response to Minaya’s accusations here.

It’s been a bizzare day, even by Mets standards. This kind of bad PR just can’t be doing Minaya any good right now. Unbelievable… Does the embarrassment ever end?

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Mets Fire Bernazard; Rubin’s Motives Questioned

Omar Minaya

The Mets finally fired VP of Player Development Tony Bernazard after several stories of misdeeds came out like this. It’s not a big surprise considering the transgressions that we’ve heard of. Minaya said that Mets human resources was looking into complaints about Bernazard prior to the NY Daily News publishing damning stories about him. Minaya said that inter-personal communication problems by Bernazard were the reason for the firing.

The bombshell came when Omar Minaya implied that the journalist that broke the stories about Bernazard, Adam Rubin, had an ulterior motive for writing his stories. Minaya said that Rubin has spoken to him and other people in the Mets organization about getting a job with them in player development.

Minaya said that he “scuffled” (whatever that means) when he read that Rubin was the person writing the stories. SNY showed Rubin on camera during the press conference, who appeared to be shocked by this public revelation.If this is true, it seems to be very unprofessional of Rubin. I can’t wait to read what Rubin has to say about this.

Instead of Bernazard, Rubin became the focus of this press conference. Amazing! It was another great moment in this season’s Mets soap opera.

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