True, but now we have #rallyparakeet! 
Which admittedly won’t help as much on the road, but with the new additions, I think we may see a change in that as well–we did sweep Marlins on the road.
We had the pleasure of introducing baseball to our daughter’s friend (aged 17) from Germany yesterday. We took her to a Sea Dogs game (AA team of the Red Sox). It was so much fun explaining the rules of the game to her! It was a beautiful, warm day. It made me realize I need to go to more games.
I am not sure how far the Mets will go in the playoffs, while their pitching is absolutely monster at this point (other than Colon, who while he is amusing, also tends to get hit pretty hard a lot of the time), their hitting is still somewhat suspect. They are playing teams right now that have dreadful pitching and even worse bullpens, and for the rest of the year most of the teams they are playing are sub .500. I could also argue they caught lightning in a bottle, the eastern division of the National league is weak (the Nationals have way underperformed, I would be surprised if Matt Williams has his job after this year, especially if the Mets take the division) and given they play half their games against their own division, it benefitted them as does a weak schedule for the rest of the year.
It is funny, someone was ranting about that in the sporting press, about how the Mets fans despite the fact they are winning, are talking about how the future looks grim, that there is no way the Wilpons will try to keep Cespades and next year we will be back to a AAA lineup with bargain basement players like Cudyer and the underperforming Granderson and such, and that the pitchers will be gone in a couple of years. On the other hand, given the track record of the Mets under the Wilpons, first spending money on bad players and a crappy GM because they had Bernie shovelling out the returns, then in the post Bernie world running the Mets like they are the Brewers (while charging NYC prices for tickets and concessions), I fully understand it as a long suffering fan. The reality is this is probably a one shot deal, even with the great pitching, the Mets farm system has very few if any position players above the mediocre line, so fans see a return to the past 9 years of crap performance. Cespades is a rental, and despite what the idiot press reports, he costs only about 2 million this year, thanks to insurance paying for David Wright being out and Mejia suspension
I also will add that there is reason for skepticism, something that for some reason everyone wants to dance around. We keep hearing how the Wilpons “Won’t spend money” as if they are just cheap, but the reality is I don’t think they have the money. The reason the Mets used to spend a lot of money is Wilpon was funneling money from the Madoff Ponzi scheme, so he had a lot of money to burn, which he doesn’t have any more. More importantly, the Mets are seriously in debt, when the whole Madoff thing broke and the aftermath, they said that the Mets had about 700 million in debt from the new Stadium, and while a lot of that was done with city bonding authority (and thus at low interest), that has to be significant debt payments, plus from what I know SNY, the tv network, has somewhere between 150 and 200 million in debt. Even at good bond rates, the mets have to have 30-40 million a year in debt payments to make, which explains why they keep the payroll at <100 million or so. The bad part is that debt is likely long term, which means we have a lot of years of the mets trying to operate like the Brewers while charging the fans a lot of money to go to games. As a long time mets fan (I remember the 69 World Series ,watching it as a young kid) I’ll try to enjoy this year, but I suspect we are in for a lot of years of mediocrity after this year.
I’m enjoying this year because the Mets aren’t usually still in the pennant race in mid-August, but the financial constraints of the Wilpons is certainly reason for concern going forward. They need to make the playoffs this year, since there’s no guarantee of who’ll be there next year. The 69 Mets were built on pitching too, but getting Donn Clendenon during the season turned the tide. Maybe Cespedes will do that for us this year.
Musicprnt–I’m not a finance person, but my understanding was, that as a big money market, and the SNY money, there should have been more money. I don’t think Madoff kept the Mets afloat. We were in the playoff hunt for years and had the crowds to show for it. NY is a big money market. Just like the other big cities with baseball traditions. So I don’t see why he should have to continue a small market payroll, except that Wilpon is using the Mets to help him make up the debts he accrued playing Wall Street Roulette.
And I don’t agree either with the negative picture of the future you paint, except to say–“typical (one sort of) Mets fan”. Luckily, I know some other kinds.
Tonight was unquestionably the best game of the year from the standpoint of a Yankees fan. (And there have been a lot of good ones.) Even though I felt like I couldn’t stand the stress anymore during that last 12-pitch at-bat by Tulowitzki against Miller.
@garland:
Take it from me, the Wilpons were using the money from the Madoff ponzi scheme to fund the mets. The Mets were running 180 million dollar payrolls because Wilpon was getting like a 20% return from that scheme, and that was going towards payrolls they were doing. With the loss of that, the Mets had to cut way back and haven’t recovered yet, even though the Madoff mess was settled years ago, and the Wilpons actually lost very little in the end, they got back a lot more in clawbacks then was taken from them. The real problem is that the Met’s payroll was funded by the funny money returns, pure and simple, the 80 million above the current level reflects what Bernie was giving them.
Yes, as a major market team, you would figure they would have the money, but therein lies some issues. The Mets are technically worth about 2 billion dollars as a franchise, and people have offered that kind of money.
Okay, so what is the problem? Sports networks like SNY have real value, they are cash cows, but SNY can’t contribute towards the Mets because it has a ton of debt (when the Madoff mess happened, it was listed at around 200 million dollars), so revenue from SNY is paying for that debt…so effectively is out of the picture.
Ticket sales alone are going to do it, and until recently, the mets ranked about 15th or 16th in terms of attendance, not surprising given how mediocre the Mets teams have been.
Then we come to the 500 pound Gorilla, the Mets spent 1.5 billion on Citifield, and they have a mountain of debt. The city helped, about half of that was done through City tax free muni bonds, but they owe somewhere between 600 million and 700 million a year in debt, which translates into the numbers I am talking about, and that has to be paid for, and that is the 35-40 million a year in debt payments based on common calculations for debt that size and duration.
Okay, how how about merchandising? The Mets aren’t the Yankees, and merchandising and branding isn’t anywhere near the Yankees.
Fred Wilpon’s primary business is Sterling properties, they are a developer of properties in the NYC area. There are two problems with that 1)The business is not on the scale of Donald Trump, we aren’t talking a 10 billion dollar empire, it is relatively modest 2)it hasn’t done all that well from what has been reported in the financial press and 3)neither Fred nor Saul Katz, his partner, are eager to use what money that business has to fund the mets, they are basically two separate entities. There were articles at the end of last year that Saul Katz was getting restless, that he was tired of having to kick in several million a year personally at the end of the year to balance the books.
They will likely do better as the Mets are in a pennant race, but certainly not enough to go after anyone decent. We are stuck with one more year of Granderson, who to say the least is not worth 15 million, and they have a number of years of David Wright at 20 million as well, and I would bet pretty good money you will see him either underachieve, or be physically unable to play a lot (it is ironic, one of the knocks on Reyes was he was always hurt; yet since he left the Mets, Reyes has played almost continuously, while Wright has played basically half a season the last couple of seasons, and if we are lucky, maybe month and a half worth of games this year). Alderson caught lightening in a bottle with Cespedes, and Uribe and Johnson were solid pickups, but the rest of his record is tragic (Cudyer, Granderson, Chris Young) in terms of bottom basement scrounging. The deal to get Syntergaard paid off big time, but D’arnaud so far is at best an enigma, he is not a great defensive catcher, his hitting has been spotty, but also spends most of his time on the DL…
Then we have the farm system, and I stand by my view on that. If you look at the Mets lineup, the players coming out of the farms system these days is pretty mediocre, Murphy is not recent, neither is Duda, and the rest are at best mediocre, Tejada and Flores are .250 hitters, and the rest that come up from the minors bat .350 at vegas, then bat .200 in NY (Neuwenheiss anyone?) and they don’t have any real stars coming up, Conforto looks promising, but he hasn’t hit much yet (he also has been up a short time, granted). Put it this way, the Mets right now have no one batting at .300 or above, Murphy is in the .280’s range, Cespedes is at .293 or so last I checked, and that is it, everyone else is roughly .260 or below. Mets have great pitching, there is no doubt, but they are gonna lack big oomph when Cespedes goes, and we’ll be back to where we are started. Almost every major league scout and front office personnel interviewed said that David Wright is not gonna do an Arod and come back as a star, so there is another concern. The Mets had no chance but to sign Wright, had they not the Wilpons would have been drawn and quartered and run out of town on a rail.
My take is the only way the Mets will be a real big market team is somehow to force the Wilpons out, they have demonstrated since Doubleday was forced out bad judgement, and in recent years, even worse management skills. Alderson can claim he reinvented baseball and so forth, but in reality the mets are lucky, they are in what is probably the worse division in baseball, Atlanta and Miami are dreadful as is Philadelphia, and Washington can’t get its act together (my bet? Matt Williams is toast at end of season), either they are hurt, or just can’t play. If the Mets were in the central division, they would be in 4th place and wouldn’t even have a shot at one of the wildcards, and if in the Central division they would not have the buffer they had playing the horrible teams in the Eastern division. The Mets are a decent team right now, but not great, the pitching is stunning, the rest is barely decent.
I kind of wish baseball would step in and force the Wilpons to sell, I don’t think having a major market team operate like the Brewers or A’s is healthy for baseball, they did it with the Dodgers, but I doubt they will with the mets.
Although the outcome was disappointing, last night’s Jays’ game was one of the most fun evenings of baseball I’ve had. Not at the level of Joe Carter’s walkoff home run to win the World series, which was the best game I’ve ever attended, but still lots of fun. We all knew that a loss was coming, if not last night, then soon. It’s a shame that it had to come on a stupid move, or lack thereof, by the manager. He is famous for leaving pitchers in the game too long, and he did it again last night. It was not one of Price’s great outings so he should have come out after the 7th, without a doubt. His second mistake was bringing Sanchez in with two runners on base, which is often his downfall. He is best when he starts an inning. So, onward and upward, but boy, was that a fun night!
alwaysamom,
I hoped Price wouldn’t go out for the 8th inning because I’m a Red Sox fan and wanted the Jays to win. I think musicprnt went into extra innings on his/her post. 
The Red Sox might be using Mgr John Farrell’s lymphoma diagnosis as motivation on the field. They have scored 15, 22, and now 8 runs (as of the 13 inning) since then and have 7 more games left on this homestand. Too bad it’s a little too late for them.
The Jays are putting on a show against the Angels this weekend, winning both games so far and last night by 15-3. Josh Donaldson silenced the MVP chants for Mike Trout, when he got 6 RBIs in the game to reach 100 for the season. Half a game behind the Yankees. Go Jays!
Mets got more runs the last two nights than I think in all of June, lol. Though they allowed almost as many… #Coorsfield. Still, two wins is two wins; I’ll take them! Go Mets! And go Jays!
I was concerned about playing in Colorado because of Mets pitchers’ tendencies to give up HRs, but I’ll take the 2 wins. I never would’ve expected the Mets to score so many runs themselves.
Pinch me–I must be dreaming. This can’t be the 2015 Mets!
8 homers, coming back to win 16-7 after being down 7-2!
And Captain America (David Wright) finally back, with a moonshot HR off his first swing!
Listen, it’s the Mets; I’m not taking anything for granted.
But dang this is fun.Welcome back, DWright!
Certainly is interesting, who would have thought? I don’t know if they are fired up and playing way above their heads, but it is fun to watch. Given how fouled up washington is (I think their manager is toast), the Mets should take the division. On the other hand, if they have to face the Cubs, they better watch out, Madden, he of the funky glasses, has performed his magic somehow, and they may be out to avenge 1969 finally lol. Still, it is great to be in a pennant race, and next year will be next year, so instead of wait till next year, it is enjoy this year:). I just hope the Mets wise up, and move Colon to the bullpen, maybe bring up Gee there as well, to supplement Klyppar and the kid who pitched last night.
Who are these guys? They’re one of the worst offensive teams in MLB, except for the past 4 games. So glad DWriht had so much success in his first game back (except for the 2 errors). Hope this was just a one game anomaly for DeGrom though. Very out of character for him.
Actually, they’ve been leading the league in a lot of offensive categories for the last 30 days or so (basically since Uribe/Johnson/Conforto and to a greater extent Cespedes) and how that has reverberated with the rest of the line-up.
Cespedes has done wonders for the team. I wonder how well Wright will play, it is too early to show anything, but his hitting looks rusty (as does his fielding, not surprising). Keep in mind that the Mets right now are facing mostly mediocre teams with crappy pitching so it may be hard to see if this keeps up, and usually when teams start playing like this they end up coming back down to where they normally hit. That said, the Mets should make the playoffs, unless Washington goes on a tear and the Mets cool off, they should be able to take the division. What they should fear is the Central division, the Cards of course are up there, Pittsburgh is challenging them, and the Cubs are doing one for the ages (if the Mets get eliminated, I am rooting for the Cubs, I want to see Joel Madden and his funky glasses take the world series!).
The Jays had luck on their side last night with a 6-5 win over the Rangers, winning it in the 9th. And the Yankees apparently had zero luck in their game against Houston, losing 15-1. Yikes. Jays ahead by 1 game!
I don’t read this thread for a couple of weeks and come back to find that no one is talking about the Cubs? They are 18-4 so far for August. They are the 4th best team in all of baseball, it stinks for them that 2 of the teams better than them are in their division. They have a better record than many first place teams.
The Cubs have a young team and weren’t supposed to be contenders until next year. They are currently the National league’s 2nd wild card team and are close to overtaking the 1st wild card spot. I don’t think anyone can catch the Cardinals.