Forget Getaway Day, This is Getaway Season

By Metstradamus
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008

Forgive me for being away. I just spent some time in Atlantic City ... partly to "get away from it all".

Of course, Atlantic City may not be the absolute best place for a Mets fan to get away. After all, aside from losing money, A.C. is Phillie country. And being in Phillie country, you hear a lot of things about how the Phillies have matured, the Phillies have arrived, the Phillies this and the Phillies that. Nothing provides perspective on how much your own team stinks than juxtaposing them with what you aspire to be. Just one year ago, who could have imagined that the New York Mets would aspire to be the Philadelphia Phillies? Not me. And not you either. But this is where the Mets find themselves these days.

Obviously, for a team with Johan Santana, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, and David Wright, this is unacceptable. The million dollar question becomes thus: What can be done to save the season? You can change coaches, but the Mets have tried that already ... and firing coaches only means that there's a possibility that Rickey Henderson will come back and win more money playing cards.

You can fire Willie Randolph, but after the circus that surrounded his "almost firing" a mere three weeks ago, do you really think it's going to have the desired effect on the players in the room at this point? And unless there's a Buddy Harrelson waiting around for a job, can a new manager magically make this team a team that plays .600 baseball? Perhaps Wally Backman is that type of guy, but after his legal problems, can you really see the Wilpons hiring him?

Then there's the roster, which is filled with either players the Mets would be crazy to trade, or players that nobody else wants. It hamstrings Omar Minaya when it comes to making changes for the sake of changes. And surely, the Mets will stick to their plan of trying to acquire more old players with big names to keep up ratings on SNY and get people to the ballpark whether the Mets actually win or not (maybe there's a point to be made here). But maybe Omar Minaya can add by subtracting, and perhaps Oliver Perez could be a good start to that subtracting process ... while being added to a team desperate for pitching. Consider:

The Brewers are another team poised to make a push for an accomplished starter. Their Class AA Huntsville affiliate features four of the top six OPS leaders in the Southern League — third baseman Mat Gamel, right fielder Matt LaPorta, catcher Angel Salome and first baseman Chris Errecart. Rival clubs also like Class AAA center fielder Tony Gwynn Jr., though the Brewers might prefer to keep Gwynn as a replacement for Mike Cameron, who is a free agent at the end of the season . . .

Now Oliver Perez might be stretching the definition of "accomplished", but if the Mets were dumb enough to trade May's A.L. Pitcher of the Month for Victor Zambrano, perhaps somebody else is dumb enough to pull off a similar deal. Not realistic, but hey, it's a start.

And just maybe that's not the only move the Mets need to make. I'm not sure I advocate blowing the whole thing up and starting again, but answers are hard to find these days. It's easy to wait until after the first season at Citi Field, when a boatload of contracts go off the books, to start over again. But there has to be some opportunity to remake this roster and at least attempt to save this season ... if for no other reason than between last September, the Braves sweep, the Padres sweep, the boos, and various bullpen disasters during the recent Diamondback series, there might be a whole bunch of Mets so irreparably damaged emotionally that they're looking for a change of scenery ... or perhaps to get away from it all.
 

Obviously, Metstradamus has no answers. Do you? Go to his site and tell him. He'll pass them along (and take all the credit for them).