I think Omar needs to be held accountable for the team’s situation. Ollie Perez three years? For realz? Relying on a 37 year old first baseman to be your everyday cleanup hitter and one of your primary run producers with no reasonable backup plan? Again, for realz? Picking your corner outfielders from a group of Gary Sheffield, Daniel Murphy, Fernando Tatis, and Ryan Church? I say a third time, for realz? Jose Coronado was supposed to be your Triple-A Shortstop and 19 year old Ruben Tejada his Double-A counterpart? C’mon, sing along with me: For realz?

He gets credit for picking up Sheffield, but what GM wouldn’t have done that for 400k? Maybe Steve Phillips? I don’t know if he’s even that dumb. Doc Gooden is as much the reason Sheffield is on this team as Omar is. But he did close the deal, so for that, I will give him credit.

I get that there are lots of injuries here, and the problem isn’t so much that Pagan/Reed are on the roster, its that they’ve been playing almost daily, and unless Fernando hits while Beltran comes back, they shall continue to do so. And its not like Ryan Church was anything special before landing on the DL. .352 SLG and .080 ISO for an everyday corner outfielder on a contending team? One more time: For realz?

I mean, some of the things I said were meant as jokes more than legitimate criticisms (The Doc and Sheff thing most notably, Omar does deserve credit for that for sure, absolute bargain of the offseason). And of course other teams are going to hurt if they lose five or six players to injury. But its not like this was entirely unexpected. There really was no viable backup plan for Delgado. Aside from the last minute Sheff signing, the team had zero corner outfielders with a track record better than Ryan Church. The two most viable/versatile middle infielders in the high minors were Jose Coronado and Ruben Tejada (I guess you could add Malo and Reyes, but that doesn’t change the point I’m making one bit). This is just not good team concept/roster construction/whatever you want to call it, and you’re putting yourself in a position to get exposed by injury, as the team is right now.

The Mets, right now, are missing 5 Projected Starters (Reyes, Beltran, Delgado, Church, and Schneider) and a key bench player (Alex Cora). Of course bench guys are going to have to take on bigger roles, and AAA players as well. It’s just the nature of the situation when you have that many injuries. What would any other team look like if you randomly subtract 5 of their starters and a key backup?

Delgado is 37 years old, and was expected to be a major run producer. Injury was a clear risk here, and there were plenty of cheap options to help protect yourself from that risk on the FA market from Pat Burrell to Adam Dunn to Raul Ibanez. They may not be first baseman, but that brings us to the second regular I’m actually complaining about, Ryan Church, the “underachiever” of the century. .080 ISO is just not going to cut it as a big league corner outfielder, so while forming a specific backup plan for first base might not have been realistic, Omar could have at least tried to add a run producer at a corner spot in the outfield. Brian Schneider? Sure, maybe he was a regular, in name only. He was average at best and a huge injury risk to boot.

Jerry might end the "Honeymoon" with Omir Santos when he stops producing. Hey, we all know he’s a career minor leaguer, but he’s been getting big hits, has been getting them in big spots, and has played a very good defense behind the plate. Ride it out while it lasts…

Well, seeing as how Castro has been at least as good defensively and can actually be expected to maintain his offensive level of production, a big HR at Fenway isn’t enough to persuade me that Omir should be playing more than 40% of the time. He’s playing considerably more than that. I’ll take it as long as he keeps hitting, but before his big night at Fenway, he’d spent the previous two weeks tailing off considerably.

Putz has been dealing with nagging injuries all year….not exactly fair to chalk him up like he’s some mediocre pitcher…

Oh, and by the way, Carp still has HUGE platoon splits. To paraphrase, Dennis Green, he is who we thought he was….someone whose career upside is Mike Jacobs due to an inability to play defense nor hit Lefties at a competent level. Not exactly someone we’ll ever miss.

Yeah this one I was just kind of venting, I don’t actually think there’s a problem here, though it would be nice to still have Carp right now, and I can’t help but wonder if there was just a bit more due diligence Omar and his crew could have done before completing this trade. Its not like Putz was the picture of health last year. But like I said, I’d still have absolutely done this trade assuming I found no outstanding medical issues in the offseason.

The Mets haven’t had a "problem", they’ve had a catastrophe of injuries. Again, 5/8 of their opening day lineup is currently not playing. How the heck do you expect a GM to overcome that?

My statement about Omar’s problem solving abilities was more a blanket statement than an indictment of this particular situation. He needed to get a SS who could field a bit sooner, but otherwise, I wouldn’t expect any GM to really handle what’s happened here differently. Its the lack of anticipation that bothers me, and the fact that he spent the entire offseason worrying about the bullpen and virtually nothing else until signing Sheff right before opening day. Just like last offseason, when he spent the entire winter waiting to acquire Johan Santana, and essentially got lucky that Twins either overplayed their hand or the Yankees and Sox were just never that interested. Was Johan a great pickup? Of course, but there were more issues than filling one rotation spot, and Omar neglected them for the sake of fixing the issue that was a problem in 2007, failing to anticipate any additional problems that might arise in 2008 (ahem, bullpen).

While Omar does deserve some credit for signing Sheff and picking him off the scrap heap, I see it as a comparable to what happened with Jose Valentin in 2006. A guy who was thrust into a role that no one would have dreamed he could handle, and managed to do so very admirably. So while Omar did a great job finding hidden talent, he didn’t make this move as a solution to a significant problem, he did it as a bench booster and for the sake of flexibility, a la Valentin. Both wound up being solutions to significant problems, but at the same time, neither one had even recently played the positions they wound up being asked to man full time.

Nelson Figueroa is a soft-tossing ROOGY, if he was any good he wouldn’t be allowed to pass through waivers so many times, yet teams keep letting him clear unclaimed.

Maybe, but he’s also the best sixth starter the Mets have had since before 2006. Every time Figueroa gets called up and tossed aside, I think back to this guy to remind me that handling depth isn’t something to be treated lightly.

A tradeoff of getting Johan —ing Santana, among other veterans, and being left crap to work with by the previous regime (Thank you Jim Duquette!). In some ways, I’m actually excited about this crop, because we’re finally beginning to see Omar Minaya’s prospects trickle their way through the system, guys that he and his crew signed/drafted and developed. Mike Pelfrey, Fernando Martinez, Daniel Murphy, Bobby Parnell all fit that mold. That’ll be the true test of him as a general manager, how his prospects do at the next level. And of course, you choose to omit that the Mets have one of the more promising A+ and A ball teams we’ve seen in quite some time.

That’s fair, and I don’t disagree with your sentiment, but my point is why can’t you have a Wilson Valdez waiting? Why did that take a week to get done? There were no prospects to block. Tejada and Havens can and probably should have been sharing the middle infield in St. Lucie anyway. If Jonathan Malo wasn’t a real answer, shouldn’t you have learned that and prepared for it after that extra long look in spring training?

And then with the other premium defensive position, Omar’s done the complete opposite and is still managing to screw himself. I understand that Castro and Schneider are brittle, but do you really need to keep Javier Valentin, Robinson Cancel, and Omir Santos stashed? This seems, yet again, like a lack of foresight. If Josh Thole learns to play defense adequately, he could be a very reasonable and very cheap big league catcher as soon as next year. He’s torn up Double-A, and there are loads of veteran pitchers (and catchers) in Buffalo for him to learn from. In this situation, where you actually have a prospect, and you have a prospect at a position of need in the near future, and you’re pushing payroll limits to begin with, you do whatever you can to give Mr. Thole a chance to earn himself a shot at the job. The longer he stays in Double-A, the higher the chance that you’re going to have to go out and (over)spend $5-15 million on an aging veteran replacement. If you put him in Triple-A, at least he’s in an ideal environment to speed up his defensive progress.

I just don’t think much of your criticisms are quite fair. Take pretty much any team, look at their opening day lineup, randomly subtract 5 players from it and a key reserve, and do they look much better then the Mets currently do? I doubt it.

Yes, I was being a bit unreasonable for the sake of style, but I’ve defended Omar for a long time now. Through the rotation mess that was 2007, culminating with Tom Glavine’s ultimate Mets performance. Through the bullpen mess that was 2008, and his lack of ability to thoroughly address the problem in the short term. Now, after watching him once again fix last year’s problems while loading himself up with new risks and while using conversations he had waiting for bagels as his primary talking point, I’m just done defending him, he’s totally fair game for many of these criticisms, even if I overstate them sometimes for the sake of humor.

You also use the term “catastrophe of injuries”. A lot of times, as sports fans, we like to think injuries are, for the most part, arbitrary. The truth is, at least as often as they are arbitrary, they are not arbitrary. They are predictable, or at least a level of risk is predictable. Though they’ve been healthy recently, even the leg problems of Reyes and Beltran were not completely out of nowhere, nor were they non-risks that were to be simply ignored. Angel Pagan might be an acceptable solution if you had someone at another position to account for some lost offense, again, such as a real corner outfielder. Delgado and Schneider’s risks were exponentially higher, and given the history of concussions and baseball players, Church was a completely wild card health wise. His injuries may not be concussion related, but when dealing with risk, you assume the best but plan for the worst. Not one of these risks was acceptably accounted for, let alone all of them.