Sunday, August 1, 2010

Who's to Blame?

Adam Rubin wrote about the lack of wheeling and dealing at the trade deadline for the Mets yesterday, and offered a reasoned perspective as to what is really wrong with the franchise right now:

You can clumsily cite principal owner Fred Wilpon and his family supposedly being stingy for such a deal not materializing, but that would be misguided -- even if ownership isn't blameless. The bottom line is the payroll is still hovering around $130 million this season.

The better answer: If GM Omar Minaya had shown restraint in his other salary commitments -- say, not giving Luis Castillo four years and $25 million or Oliver Perez three years and $36 million or guaranteeing seven years to Carlos Beltran -- he likely would have had the flexibility to pull off an Oswalt-type trade now.

It's far more about no discipline than no money.

Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo will make $18 million between them both this season and next season. That is nothing less than a fiasco. The Beltran argument is a bit of a reach; he will only be 34 next season and there was no reason to believe he would have a career-threatening knee injury with two years remaining on the contract.

I have been saying all season that Beltran wouldn't play in 2010. I was wrong about that - he definitely came back earlier than expected. I will say that he is clearly not playing at full strength and nothing less than a full offseason of rest will change that. I still think the days of Carlos Beltran as an elite baseball player have come to an end.

1 comment:

TW said...

Carlos Beltran will hit .280 with 25 120 next year—walk year...
I would like unload Beltran, we should have sent him to Boston, I'm sure we could have gotten Ramirez and at least another prospect worth talking about. The Red Sox could take the salary hit for a season and a half.

Catillo and Perez are albatross, hopefully we can shed one of them in the offseason and a new GM will release the other. If that $18 million were to become Cliff Lee or Carl Crawford, then we might be cooking with gas.

Its Cora that is giving me stomach upset these days.