Who Is Running The Mets?

As a rule, I try to avoid the loudmouth sports talk television shows that make up most of the programming on local sports cable channels.  Recently, however, I happened upon SNY's Loudmouths, which pits Chris Carlin and Adam Schein, two former talk show hosts/producers on WFAN against each other in spirited, loud debate about current New York sports news.  On this day, they were responding to questions and comments from the fans, and one of them had this to say:

"Omar [Minaya] is going to do the same thing at the trading deadline that he has for the past 2 years; nothing."

Kudos to Loudmouths, an SNY program, for posting this comment, because I feel that this organization has not been criticized enough for its approach (or lack thereof) towards the last 2, even 3, trading deadlines.  In 2007 and 2008, when the Mets were right there in the mix, Omar did nothing at the deadline in both years--both years!--when they clearly had issues, especially ones in the bullpen.  Their complacency is difficult to understand, especially in 2008, when they had come off a terrible and terribly well-documented collapse at the end of the previous year, and they still had the arrogance to basically say, "Our team is good enough as is."

I am not saying it is easy to be a general manager.  But when I see virtually every contender add star veterans while only giving up 30 cents on the dollar (see whom the Pirates received for trading away Jason Bay last year), you have to wonder where Omar is.  Yes, he has brought many stars to this team.  But that's in the offseason.  During the season he just seems...lost.

But I don't mean to allocate all of the blame to Minaya.  As an organization, they have failed their fans.  I do not know if the Bernie Madoff incident has made the Wilpons cheap, but even before that, they didn't seem too keen on adding payroll midseason; it has been noted that they do not want to pay the luxury tax under any circumstances.  So the question I have is - Are the Wilpons handcuffing Omar, or is Omar incapable of making a deal for a veteran?

It's probably a mixture of both, but either way, this team has been bitterly disappointing since that very fun 2006 season.  They haven't added a significant offensive player (Delgado) to this team since the 2005 offseason.  They wasted the last 2 years when they were in contention, and now, they deserve the empty seats they will see at Citi Field in 2009.