Whether Newsday’s Wallace Matthews has become an acolyte of Fantasy Pros911’s Patrick DiCaprio or he merely prefers the idea of Omar Minaya doing a Donnie Walsh impersonation, I can’t say for sure. But Matthews might’ve actually penned a column rational Mets fans might agree with, the Amazins-baiter citing “the illusion of being competitive without being competitive at all”. It’s time, argues Wally, for Fred Wilpon (above) to compose a statement like this rather than instruct Minaya to rearrange the Titanic’s deck chairs ;
“We apologize for our atrocious 2009 and ask our loyal fans to bear with us for a year, because even though we promise to play like hell, we’re probably not going to be very good in 2010. And rather than waste money – your money – on a subpar free-agent crop and be held hostage once again by bad, immovable contracts, we’re going to sit this winter out and come back stronger in 2011.”
A proclamation like that, of course, would require a quality that the Mets don’t seem to possess – humility – and a concession the Mets are never going to make, namely a deep ticket-price cut.
Instead, they are saying things like what Minaya said at last week’s GM meetings: “In the past we’ve always been at the forefront of going after the players we need, and I think things will stay as they have been.”
The last part of that quote is perhaps the most chilling thing a Mets fan can hear: ” . . . things will stay as they have been.”
That means more cosmetic surgery for a patient bleeding from more wounds than any doctor could hope to fix. And once again, they ask you to pick up the tab.