SI Sticks it to the Mets

My RSS Newsreader pointed me to a couple of Met related articles that I thought were pretty unfair:

Sports Illustrated: Save your rants
Richard Deitsch rants about Victor Zambrano's $3 million contract. He claims that he had a better year than Victor, so he should get a 25% raise.

First of all, I've read some of Mr. Deitsch's writing, and I would dispute that he's had a markedly better year than Victor Zambrano. Secondly, $3 million isn't that much money for a starting pitcher with Zambrano's service time and potential.

Basically, Deitsch's rant is just a cheap shot at an easy target. It's the baseball equivalent of Rodney Dangerfield yelling out "Let's all get laid" at the end of a movie. It's not really profound, but everyone cheers. Yawn...

Sports Illustrated: The Yankee Blogger weighs in
For another impartial SI look at the Mets' off-season, Yankee blogger Alex Belth weighs in with Five moves he liked and Five he didn't from the off-season. Not surprisingly, the Mets wound up on the wrong side of both.

First Belth panned the Jae Seo for Duaner Sanchez trade, which he liked from the Dodgers point of view:

You didn't have to be an irate Mets fan to know that the organization's decision to start Victor Zambrano (7-12, 4.17 ERA) and Kaz Ishii (3-9, 5.14) ahead of Seo (8-2, 2.59) for much of the season cost the team any chance of making the playoffs. In exchange for Seo and lefty Tim Hamulack, the Dodgers gave up a couple of decent relievers -- Duaner Sanchez and Steve Schmoll. Jon Weisman, author of Dodger Thoughts, agrees that L.A. got the better end of the deal. "Seo blew me away in August after he replaced Ishii in the Mets' rotation. I realize that some of that may have been luck, because he wasn't striking a lot of batters out, and he regressed a bit toward the end of the season." Though Weisman likes Sanchez's surging strikeout rate (7.79 per 9.0 innings) as well as his durability, he concludes, "Relievers are easier to come by, and I like the chances for Seo to add stability to the Dodger rotation and help the team more than Sanchez would have."

I liked Jae Seo, but Weisman's quote is a little strong for a guy who will probably be a fourth or fifth starter his whole career. The Mets needed some real bullpen help, and they traded from their strength. I didn't love the deal, but it made more sense for the Mets than Belth painted it. I question Jon Weisman's statement, "Relievers are easier to come by". If this off-season has proved one thing to us, it is that the present market for good relievers is white-hot, due to the fact they are in short supply.

A Mets trade also wound up as one of five moves Belth didn't like:

Mets trade outfielder Mike Cameron to the Padres for outfielder Xavier Nady
I don't like this one at all from New York's perspective. Saving money played a part in their thinking, but the Mets gave up a plus outfielder for a platoon player. Cameron is going to be a godsend for the Padres defensively, and although he doesn't hit for average, he's got some pop and is more than competent with the bat. By all counts he's also a mensch, as well as a consummate pro in the clubhouse, exactly the kind of cherry-on-the-top guy that winning teams often feature.

I liked Cameron a lot, and didn't love this move, but I understood it immediately. Omar was chasing a middle-of-the-order bat. He didn't want to pay a defensive right fielder $6 million; he wanted that money for what eventually turned into Carlos Delgado. Nady was a young, cheap player with real potential, so Omar was able to clear a lot of salary and get something with a little promise in return. Would I have made this move? No. But if Alex Belth was willing to look beyond his Bronx bias I think he would understand this deal more than he allows.

Between building up Jae Seo as the second coming of Greg Maddox and being purposely obtuse about the Cameron deal, Alex Belth, who has written some stuff I've enjoyed, has proven that he is not someone to be trusted to write impartially about the Mets.

The shame here is that there are some legitimate concerns about the way the Mets have done business this off-season that could be addressed by a writer that wasn't going out of his way to smack the Mets. Even as good of a baseball writer as Ken Rosenthal has been guilty of taking cheap shots at the Mets this winter.

To repeat the Rodney Dangerfield analogy from before, blindly taking shots at Omar Minaya is the hot thing this off-season. It gets cheers in many quarters, whether it be the Bronx or a small market, but lacks real substance. As a serious Met fan, I welcome (and indeed engage in) real debate over Omar's methods, but I can't take this garbage seriously.