The Mets Salary Catastrophe

Adam Rubin over at ESPN New York had a great blog today outlining the morass which is the Mets current salary structure.

The 2011 commitments:

Santana $22.5 million
Carlos Beltran $18.5 million
Jason Bay $16 million
David Wright $14 million
Oliver Perez $12 million
Francisco Rodriguez $11.5 million
Reyes $11 million
Luis Castillo $6 million
Ryota Igarashi $1.75 million
16 players at major league minimum: $6.4 million

Total: $119.65 million

Hat tip to Metsblog for the link. To continue our horn-tooting, we at Fonzie Forever pointed this situation out in almost identical terms back in February:

The Mets contract commitments in 2011 are horrific:

Santana: $22.5
Beltran: $20.071
Bay: $18.125
Wright: $14.25
Perez: $12.0
K-Rod: $12.167
Reyes: $11.0 club option

I'll save you some calculator time. That is $110 MILLION committed to just seven players.

Awful, ain't it? I'm not sure exactly where Rubin got his numbers from, and there are different numbers floating around all over the place, depending on whether you go to Cot's, or USA Today, or elsewhere, but I got my numbers here.

Here's the reason why this sucks - aside from the obvious, being that Jason Bay and Oliver Perez are owed more than $30 million dollars. There seems to be no plan. Are we building with youth around a core of stars? Are we adding payroll next year? Decreasing payroll? Did we enter 2010 with serious plans of winning this year?

I get more and more fed up with it every day. This started out as a hobby for writing about baseball, but as each day passes it becomes more and more apparent that the Mets might actively need someone (or someones... ahem Amazin Avenue) to expose how foolish Mets ownership has been. They've been awful, and I'm starting to have my doubts that the Mets will ever win with the current ownership[1].

Ownership clearly has the goal of hanging around the fringes of the race every year. Playing meaningful games in September. Adding a piece to get the fans excited enough to sell tickets each season.

Is that good enough for you?

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[1] Notice I did not say management... for the record, I still think that Minaya and Manuel are doing at least an average job.

Ollie Looking Good Today at Port St. Lucie

Courtesy of Adam Rubin of the Daily News, we have some video of Oliver Perez throwing today at Mets camp.



Obviously, first day of camp, but he looks good. Metsblog opined that he looks "more balanced," which I agree with.

Part of my optimism for Ollie's recovery has to do with the way I feel about last year's injury. Injuries to pitchers do not faze me at all unless they are to the arm or if they somehow linger. Knee, leg, back, foot -- so long as it can be 100% fixed, I don't mind them at all. Why?

Let's face it -- the human body was never intended to throw a baseball. It's awful for the elbow, it's hell on the shoulder. Even if you do it perfectly, it wears you down and frays your tendons and makes a mess of you. When a pitcher is injured, however, he can't do any of that harmful stuff.

I feel that when a pitcher is injured with something not arm-related, they can spend more time honing the other parts of their craft which need honing. They can do yoga, study tape, lift weights, do endurance running -- whatever aspect of their game needs work aside from ACTUALLY throwing the baseball.

So to me, I see an injury like Ollie's as an opportunity for a guy with a great arm but with awful mechanics (plant foot terrible, falling off toward third) to be able to work on his strength, conditioning, flexibility, and technique.

Hopefully, he was able to do that over the last eight months or so and come back better equipped to perform this season. Of course -- the throwing the baseball is the most important part. But I'm glad that he was able to avoid doing that for half a year, and maybe he will come back stronger than ever.