The Future Is Brigh...Ah Fuck It

This is the part where I’m supposed to be all thankful for a fun ride and talk about how we’re ahead of schedule and never thought we would be here and the future is bright and blah blah blah. I’m sorry, folks. I just cant realistically do that.

All that stuff SHOULD be true. As much as thats a loser mentality I wish I could write that blog. The reality of the matter is that the Mets 4 Horsemen is one of the most valuable core groups of players in all of sports right now. Building around those guys should be an owner and GMs DREAM. The most difficult part is done. And not only is it done, its dont perfectly. The Mets are so set with their starting pitching that it should legitimate be a matter of when, not if, they win a World Series. With the resources of a big market franchise, these guys should be back time and time again.

But there are certain truths we hold self evident as Mets fans. And none are more guaranteed than the Wilpons being cheap. So I hate to sit here and be doom and gloom on everyone while we’re already suicidal, but I really dont know how open our window really is. There are a lot of question marks going forward from this point and absolutely no guarantees ownership will do what it takes – and spend what it takes – to make this team a contender. Lets run through some of it:

Murphy earned himself like 20 million bucks with the NLCS and then probably lost like 10 of it with his World Series performance. Either way, he’s probably too expensive for the Mets to keep. And rightfully so. Throwing huge cash at Daniel Murphy is nuts. Everyone gave me a ton of shit during the NLCS digging up old blogs and tweets about my thoughts on Daniel Murphy and they still all hold up. I will forever be grateful to Murph for his streak this postseason, but its time to make a business decision and you cant tie up huge money in a guy that has no position and hits like 14 HRs a year. Its Herrera time.

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Cespedes walks, and again, rightfully so. Almost the same situation. I have never seen anyone play as well as Yo did in the month of August. They never make it to the NL East finish line without him. But someone out there is gonna be crazy and give this guy like 175 million bucks. The World Series where all the fans of other teams tell you “See?” and its probably better that happened now than later.

Bartolo is a free agent, Uribeis too. Those are 4 huge pieces to the Mets success this year that are either gone or in the case of the older guys, not totally reliable if you do bring them back. Michael Cuddyer gets a nice raise to $12,500,000 next year to sit the bench, so there goes that money. And of course there’s David Wright, who I love with every fiber of my being but another year on the odometer, now with spinal stenosis, probably isnt helping anything.

So thats the thick of it. And its decision time for the Wilpons. Do they A) have a brain and realize how much more money they made this year and this postseason run by having a winning product, thereby understanding spending money on the team will result in more money coming in? Or B) do they just say “Fuck it, we lost a bunch of money to a Ponzi scheme almost a decade ago and we need to pocket as much as we can. Lets just ride these 5 cheap, young arms to as much money as they can make us while making the postseason here and there.” I know I have my answer. The Wilpons are always pennywise pound foolish and there has never been a better time to pull that nonsense than right now with a rotation of 5 number 1’s all getting paid pennies.

I hope I’m wrong. But I’ve seen this show before. Even in the mid 2000s when they opened up the wallets, all their movies were always reactionary, filling last year’s holes and never looking to the future. Going 9/10ths of the way but never enough to go over the top. And that was pre-Madoff. With the built in “We’re poor” excuse even though the rest of the fucking planet has recovered from that, this is just primetime for the Wilpons to cheap out. I want to say our window is wide open because it should be, but when the Wilpons own your team there’s a huge gap between Should and Is.

PS – Conforto is gonna be awesome.