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Tim Marchman, another idiot.

metsguyinmichigan Aug 31 2009 08:25 PM

I don't understand what's up with these guys. This is one cheap shot after another. Worst line: What might (or might not) soothe the nerves of Mets fans, though, is that this team was probably fated never to do anything at all, even if it hadn't lost four MVP-type players and a Cy Young candidate Here's you go: Leave aside the image of a shirtless executive challenging minor leaguers to fist fights, or a general manager accusing a good reporter of being out for a job running the farm system, or rumors that the team's owners will soon be seen on what's left of the Bowery shaking tin cups. What matters about the New York Mets is that, Sunday's sound 4-1 beating dealt to Chicago Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano notwithstanding, right now they're the kind of bad that drives people to drink. If they were a band, they'd be Creed; if they were a food, they'd be tripe soup; if they were a gesture, they'd be a lazy, lazy slouch. Few have seen their like. On their annual visit to Chicago this weekend, for example, the Mets lineup counted one player good enough to start for a championship team. That player, Luis Castillo, hits for so little power and plays such shoddy defense -- on Sunday he managed to reprise the season's most infamous play by botching two pop flies in shallow right field -- that he's barely useful even when getting on base more than 40 percent of the time. Smart fans wanted him released last winter. He's now the team anchor. This is horrifying in its way, but of course the Mets' disabled list is currently populated by players earning salaries of about $87 million this year, comparable to the payroll of the St. Louis Cardinals and greater than those San Francisco Giants, Colorado Rockies and Texas Rangers. The Mets' four best hitters, their three best starting pitchers, their top reliever, and their top hitting and pitching prospects are all injured, and even if this is in part because of bad management and bad medical care, you can still forgive them a bad lineup, or even three. What was really appalling was that Castillo was joined not by limited but useful players forced into roles beyond their talent, but by one of the stranger collections of broken toys you'll ever see on a major league field. The number three and four spots in the lineup were taken by Daniel Murphy and Jeff Francoeur -- pinch-hitters who can't hit. The five spot was taken by Jeremy Reed, a defensive specialist who isn't an especially good fielder, and Cory Sullivan, a bad defensive outfielder who hits like Castillo without the on-base skills. And all three games in the Cubs series were started by middle relievers. You really wonder how this team would do against the Sacramento River Cats. The problem isn't that these players shouldn't be playing -- someone has to take the field, and this is who the Mets have. The problem is that they were on the team to begin with. Except for Bobby Parnell, who pitched on Saturday and, for a third straight game, showed that as a starting prospect he makes a very good relief prospect, none of these players are of any conceivable use. And yet aside from Francoeur and Friday starter Pat Misch, all began the year with the Mets. It's almost as if general manager Omar Minaya has no idea at all what he's doing. What might (or might not) soothe the nerves of Mets fans, though, is that this team was probably fated never to do anything at all, even if it hadn't lost four MVP-type players and a Cy Young candidate. Teams structured like the Mets -- the reigning world champion Philadelphia Phillies, for one -- have done well in the past and will do well in the future. But they rarely do quite as well as they should. The injury plague, with the attendant spectacle of Francoeur batting cleanup, is a MacGuffin. The Mets are a stars-and-scrubs team. Like the late 1950s Milwaukee Braves (who had Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn), the late 1990s Seattle Mariners (Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson and Edgar Martinez) or even the Minnesota Twins of a few years ago (Johan Santana, Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Joe Nathan), this team is built on the premise that its best players are so transcendently good that it essentially doesn't matter who plays with them and backs them up. A team like this will typically have a strong minor star like Joe Adcock or Jay Buhner or Carlos Delgado, a strong-willed manager and truly terrible players in key roles. Why any team would ever be built like this is an interesting question -- after all, there is a lot of advantage to be had in making sure that your lesser players aren't actively bad, and no general manager is so dumb or inept that he doesn't realize this. The obvious reason is that star players suck up a lot of cash, leaving less money to fill out the rest of the roster. Another reason is that it can actually be useful to have a lot of C-grade talent around; if someone like Reed or Sullivan gets hot, you ride him, and if he doesn't, it's no big deal. Structurally, though, this puts immense pressure on management already under stress because they have a team with lots of great players and are expected to win a championship. And this is a key reason why organizations set up like this tend to bleed talent. (Think of the Mets giving away players like Brian Bannister, Heath Bell and Jeff Keppinger, or the Mariners losing Jason Varitek, Derek Lowe and Mike Hampton.) Another is that the kind of headstrong manager you need to manage a lot of star players with big egos is the kind liable to run useful players off because he doesn't like the cut of their jib. Put together a team that's built around iffy secondary talent and a structure that's -- if anything -- not built to accommodate it and you get messes like the Lou Piniella Mariners or the Mets of the last few years. In this reading, the Mets' problems, grotesque as they've become because of injuries, are inherent and built deeply into their structure. To change and succeed they'd have to build an entirely different kind of team, one with less concentration of cash and talent. Perhaps they'd have to trade David Wright or Jose Reyes. They'd certainly have to be something other than what they are. That, though, doesn't seem likely at all. For decades now the Mets have operated on a boom-and-bust cycle under management with sketchy lines of authority. This has gone on under enough different regimes that one suspects it has less to do with Minaya and field manager Jerry Manuel or any of their predecessors than with the one constant over this time: the same Wilpon family that everyone expects to see wheeling hot dog carts down the street in exchange for hard currency any day now. They're the ones who brought Mets fans Frank Tanana and Anthony Young, Jeff Duncan and Jason Phillips, Cory Sullivan and Jeremy Reed, and they're probably the ones who will have to go if this team is to put on something other than a hideous parody of winning baseball. For now, Murphy will continue to hit third. Tim Marchman lives in Chicago and can be reached at tlmarchman@gmail.com.

PiggiesTomatoes Aug 31 2009 08:50 PM Re: Tim Marchman, another idiot.

[quote="metsguyinmichigan"]Tim Marchman lives in his mother's basement in Chicago and can be reached at tlmarchman@gmail.com.

I think that says just about all we need to know about Mr. Marchman.

If that wasn't enough, here's a diddy from March. Me thinks Timmy never achieved his dream of Mets' bat boy and has trouble letting go.

Andrew Beaton: Do you believe Omar Minaya and the Mets had a successful off season just because of the revamped bullpen that now features Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz, or do you believe that they needed to acquire another front end starter or another top of the order hitter? Tim Marchman: All Minaya has to do is spend ownership’s money as well as he can, so he had a terrific winter because the easiest problem to fix was the bullpen and he fixed it as well as he possibly could have. The team as a whole had a really lousy winter. Given the way the last two seasons ended and that they’re moving into a new park that’s largely financed with public money it’s just embarrassing that the Wilpons didn’t give Minaya more money for another starter and an outfielder, even if it meant taking a loss. This was their big chance to get rid of the idea that the Mets are a cut-rate, ghetto team and they totally botched it up. A team with four of the top dozen or so players in baseball, the second highest franchise value in the game and a new park, and they’re too cheap to buy a pennant in the best buyer’s market in years. It’s really bizarre.

[url]http://www.hotfootblog.com/2009/03/05/interview-with-tim-marchman/

Rockin' Doc Aug 31 2009 08:59 PM

Hey archman, pull your head out of your ass and ponder what time of embarrassing lineup Pinella would be pencilling in for the Cubs if they were to lose Lee, Soriano, Ramirez, Theriot, and Zambrano for a large portion of the season. Like the Mets line ups this summer, it wouldn't be pretty.

Number 6 Aug 31 2009 09:20 PM

I don't see Marchman's argument as being personal or indefensible. I think the Mets have done, overall, a pretty poor job of filling out the "non-star" spots on the roster in recent years. I feared the results of that tendency going into this season especially, what with an everyday lineup likely to feature Schneider, Murphy/Tatis, Church and Castillo. Whether the team's star power would have been enough to push them into contention had there not been the injuries is unknowable. But the fact that there has been a lot of hoping and praying when it comes to the role players is pretty accurate, and it's telling that only one of their many hopes and prayers were answered this season (Castillo). The fact that the rest didn't turn into miracles shouldn't be surprising. For the most part, with arguably one or two exceptions, I've been happy with how the Mets have spent the big money. Beyond that, I think that Marchman's criticism is warranted.

Edgy DC Aug 31 2009 09:57 PM

You can't find a dozen lumps of pure crap in that piece without trying?

metsguyinmichigan Aug 31 2009 09:59 PM

No team, I contend, can lost four MVP-caliber players and a Cy Young candidate and expect to contend. And I wonder if any team has ever sustained such losses. I don't know if we can blame Omar for not anticipating what is unthinkable.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Aug 31 2009 11:37 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Aug 31 2009 11:42 PM

Marchman's critique is harsh. It ain't at all unmerited. Yes, Francoeur's superficial power numbers have been good, and he's tough to root against... he's the same extremely flawed player he always was. He's-- apart from the arm-- really not very good defensively, and offensively, he's riding on a BABIP-fueled wave, and just about due for regression to the mean. (2800-plus PAs in his career tell us that unless he's going through one of his very occasional power surges, said mean isn't terribly pleasant for fans of his team to stomach.) And you can't honestly argue that his assays of this year's Murphy, Reed and Sullivan-- however abrupt and reductive-- are inaccurate, can you? Even if you do take issue with the "shit lumps"... that the critique is spiked with some somewhat assailable secondary points shouldn't obscure the big one-- the team's architecture has been flawed for some time, and all top-loaded teams tend to be significantly more vulnerable to injuries than a team with more efficiently-spread wealth. This team has been perhaps the most top-loaded, talent-wise, in the majors for about 3 years now. Though the litany of injury-related misfortunes has been truly biblical, and the catalog of troubles has long since surpassed absurd, the truth is that this team, frankly, was one major injury away from falling from serious contention to "You Gotta Believe"... and has been so since 2006. While we can't blame Omar for not anticipating the unthinkable, we can probably lay a decent amount of blame at his feet for doing precious little anticipating in general. (I'm pretty sure I've carped about the backward-looking offseasons elsewhere in the forum this year-- the successive years fixing last year's problem and imitating 2006's 'blueprint,' instead of building from it-- ad nauseum.) I can't shake Jace's FAFIF post of a week or two ago. I'm not saying I can see the horizon better than anyone else hear... but my limited senses tell me that things don't look as much brighter as the healing of several superstars may portend. The future looks dark. Writing like this may sting, but it doesn't raise my ire at all.

Number 6 Aug 31 2009 11:40 PM

[quote="Edgy DC":3hori3vd]You can't find a dozen lumps of pure crap in that piece without trying?[/quote:3hori3vd] I don't mean to say that the column is gold. I definitely think he's guilty of some pretty serious hyperbole. Maybe this doesn't bother me so much because there is a substantive argument amidst it, and anyway, this truly is a terrible team to watch. Don't get me wrong, if others have found a way to be positive and enjoy watching the games during this stretch, then I respect that, and honestly envy it. And for those whose standards of quality journalism can't forgive this type of writing, then I also understand. But I've certainly found myself falling back on some of this hyperbole myself watching the games and talking about it with others, and all this may bother me if I didn't think that the Mets brought some of it on themselves. Not the injuries, mind you; no team, with one notable exception, deserves what the Mets have gotten this year. Neither Omar, ownership, nor anyone else, can be exclusively or definitively blamed for that, nor is it productive to try and do so. What they can be blamed for, though, is poor roster construction. Watching these guys play, and I mean the ones who still remain who were expected to have an active role on the original roster, I agree with Marchman that even without the injuries the Mets would have been hard pressed. Hoping to get above average production from 4 positions, C, LF, RF and 2B, at the start of the year was in itself wishful thinking. More likely from each of these positions individually was below average (2B, RF), and significantly below average (C, LF) production. Production that the rest of the offense had to hit like gangbusters to carry. But the plan was to go with this setup, despite being in the middle of an offseason free agent market where a significant upgrade would have been unusually cost-effective. I agree that the Mets roster is boom/bust. Yeah, it's easy to pick on them now because the booms are all hurt, and the columnists that do so without any other point are shallow and boring. But Marchman does try to remind us that some of the busts that are out there now were expected to hold down regular positions and key bench spots. And with the exception of Castillo and Sheffield (who has his own red flags), they've been busts in those roles. Given their track records and how they could realistically be expected to play, that shouldn't be too surprising. Combine these performances with a normal injury rate, and this team gets significantly closer, but likely doesn't come close to justifying expectations. [quote="metsguyinmichigan":3hori3vd]No team, I contend, can lost four MVP-caliber players and a Cy Young candidate and expect to contend. And I wonder if any team has ever sustained such losses. I don't know if we can blame Omar for not anticipating what is unthinkable.[/quote:3hori3vd] If I'm reading paragraphs 3 and 5 correctly, I don't think that's really any part of his point.

Number 6 Aug 31 2009 11:42 PM

LWFS said it better.

Nymr83 Sep 01 2009 01:02 AM

The Mets are a stars-and-scrubs team. Why any team would ever be built like this is an interesting question I would contend that this is a good way to build a team in an era of free agency and constant trades. a team full of slightly above average players has a hard time getting significantly better with a single trade before the deadline or a single signing in the offseason. a team that is equally good overall but with a "stars and scrubs" approach can get more overall improvement out of a single signing or trade.

metirish Sep 01 2009 04:48 AM

I'll read this at work but I have liked TM in the past.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Sep 01 2009 05:23 AM

I think "poor roster construction" is a valid criticism to an extent, but it's also a target you could paint on any organization depending on its makeup, and an argument that's turned to all too quickly by groupthinky pretend GMs who sometimes act as if "efficient use of resources" is a column in the standings. The "top-heavy" criticism seems particularly silly in that in the Mets' case, paying less for the position players they have, or getting worse players for their collection of above-average guys, doesn't by itself solve the problem of too many poor players at other spots on the field. (I adisagree with their spending so much $$ on the bullpen however). "Bottom light" might be a better description, but then again, no team is constructed ideally, particularly on April 1st. Just about everyone gave a healthy Mets club a good shot to contend this year and I would presume that if catching and the outfield were the complete foreseeable clusterfucks they became this year, moves could have been made to address them as they contended. Given all the injuries in the end, going with the AAAA guys rather than trading the next-generation of prospects for more legitimate fill-ins was probably the best course of action, since the Mets aren't going to be the kind of team the Marchmen want them to be until they develop the kind of internal depth that would allow for the filling of roster vacancies and upgrades from within anyway. I mean, they certainly could have played it more aggressively and maybe should have, had they realized the seriousness of Reyes' troubles off the bat, but in the end I'm happy not to have wasted too much on this season.

Edgy DC Sep 01 2009 05:38 AM

[quote="Number 6":3ldxgli5]And for those whose standards of quality journalism can't forgive this type of writing, then I also understand.[/quote:3ldxgli5] Believe me, my problem with his writing isn't aesthetic. It's that lies printed in the paper --- even (espeically) lies printed side-by-side with truths --- get mistaken for truths an responded to as truths and lead people who should know better to respond to them as truths.

Edgy DC Sep 01 2009 05:44 AM

[quote="Edgy DC"][quote="Number 6"]And for those whose standards of quality journalism can't forgive this type of writing, then I also understand.

Believe me, my problem with his writing isn't aesthetic. It's that lies printed in the paper --- even (espeically) lies printed side-by-side with truths --- get mistaken for truths an responded to as truths and lead people who should know better to respond to them as truths.

And you can't honestly argue that his assays of this year's Murphy, Reed and Sullivan-- however abrupt and reductive-- are inaccurate, can you?

Murphy and Sullivan, certainly.

The problem is that they were on the team to begin with.

Sullivan wasn't on the team to begin with. He was called up as as late as July 20th after injuries to several other players.

Is he telling me that every or any other team is finding starters on July 20th? Because that's crap. What teams tend to come up with in such crises are Cory Sullivans.