Master Index of Archived Threads
Revisionist History on Glavine
| G-Fafif Jul 26 2007 03:03 PM |
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From John Delcos of the Journal News in his LoHud Blog:
I've never heard of such an interpretation of Glavine's signing and I don't buy it at all. I always took the wooing of Glavine as a misguided impulse on ownership's part, considering where the club was after 2002. Glavine would have been a great pitcher for a team one starter away from a title. The Mets, entering 2003, were not that club. I don't believe his accepting big-time monetary compensation to come here instead of Philadelphia (another nonwinning tradition he would have lowered himself to partake in had the bucks been there) had a thing to do with the later moves under a different regime. Glavine eventually worked out because the team was torn apart and put back together by somebody else in a different era. By then, Tom was a holdover, not the first domino. It's to his credit he persevered and has produced since the second half of 2005, but he was never the harbinger of anything except gettin' paid. Among the beat writers, Delcos seems to understand how to best utilize his [url=http://mets.lohudblogs.com/]blog[/url], but this assertion makes zero sense to me. I also read "Having Glavine has made everything easier" as Delcos prefers talking to him as opposed to other Mets.
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| metsguyinmichigan Jul 26 2007 03:09 PM |
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Good call, Greg.
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| SteveJRogers Jul 26 2007 03:12 PM |
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Spot on Greg! Glavine was brought in to be the 2003 version of Mike Hampton, to insure that Al Leiter would not have the pressure of being The Ace like he had been in 2001 and 2002.
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| G-Fafif Jul 26 2007 03:13 PM |
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I despise Roberto Alomar's Met tenure as much as anybody, but I was doing handstands the morning the news came down. I'd say picking up Alomar's option after his intensely indifferent 2002 was the horrible decision, not the original trade. That was worth a shot.
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| G-Fafif Jul 26 2007 03:14 PM |
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To say nothing of dead presidents.
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| SteveJRogers Jul 26 2007 03:30 PM |
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Heh, oh of course.
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| Benjamin Grimm Jul 26 2007 03:44 PM |
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Glavine helped the nation heal after Watergate.
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| G-Fafif Jul 26 2007 04:29 PM |
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And [url=http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/2007/07/26/2007-07-26_hes_a_primo_pitcher_but_he_does_his_best.html]is leading us through our darkest hours[/url], according to John Harper:
Indeed. Michael Vick will be volunteering for the ASPCA as a result of Tom Glavine's career. Lots of "what a guy!" quotes from Wagner and Wright. What do fellow lefty pitchers Oliver Perez and Pedro Feliciano think of him? Harper somehow forgot to ask them.
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| Edgy DC Jul 26 2007 05:14 PM |
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Steve, why do I want to eat my keyboard every time you talk about aces?
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| metirish Jul 26 2007 05:26 PM |
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SNY -Friday Night at 10:30PM.....Tom Glavine - Tom Glavine: Road to 300.
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| Willets Point Jul 26 2007 09:02 PM |
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This is a good thread to keep around just in case I accidentally poison myself and need to self-induce vomiting.
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| Elster88 Jul 26 2007 09:31 PM |
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None of this makes any sense.
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| Johnny Dickshot Jul 26 2007 09:36 PM |
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Glavine signed because the Mets gave him the $$. WHY they gave him the $$ is the unanswered question. To suck and then gather in high-profile free agents? No way.
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| iramets Jul 27 2007 03:50 AM |
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And as little relevant Edgy thinks Wins and Losses are, I still insist that if I told you Glavine's W-L record as a Met in advance, none of you (maybe not even Edgy) would have agreed to the signing. To lesser degree with Pedro, you were all nervous about commiting the kind of money Glavine got even when you thought his total wins over the contract would be much, much greater than it turned out to be. It's just in retrospect that you're okay with Glavine's generally awful career as a Met starter, and consider his signing to have been a savvy move. To me, Glavine's a disastrous Met, in a league of his own--well, maybe in the same league as Alomar and Vaughan and Matsui, players who I would have much rather seen the team avoid and instead use the grotesque sums of money acquiring and developing homegrown talent, who on balance would have given you performances on the field that were just as good as the big names gave you. Signing them is just CYA--when they fuck up big time, GMs can just throw up their hands and say "Who knew? Did you see the resume he had?"
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| Willets Point Jul 27 2007 07:34 AM |
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Amen, Ira.
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| Johnny Dickshot Jul 27 2007 07:39 AM |
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So now Willets too is presuming to speak for the rest of us?
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| iramets Jul 27 2007 07:57 AM |
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Are you presuming that I'm including WP in my general observations, or that he's including me in his? if so, sir, you presume too far.
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| Johnny Dickshot Jul 27 2007 08:47 AM |
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I can't refute the arguments you say I make, if I haven't made 'em, is what I'm saying, and Willets through his agreement with your sentiments, is also saying what you're saying I'm saying, which I'm not.
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| metsmarathon Jul 27 2007 09:40 AM |
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if you had told me only glavine's 57-54 w-l in advance, i could draw from it that glavine has allowed about the same amount of runs to be scored against him as for him. what this might mean is that the mets offense has been terrible, while glavine has been terrific. of course, it could also mean that glavine has been terrific, but the offense terrible. or it could mean that both have been, on the whole, middling. altogether, you could say that, regardless of the above three scenarios, that at the time, the mets needed either a better pitcher or a better offense, or both. and therefore that there were better places to put their investment than tom glavine. also, that glavine's been relatively healthy and that at the very least, they haven't been paying the guy to stay at home. and who among us is calling the glavine signing retroactively savvy?
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| iramets Jul 27 2007 09:42 AM |
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Okay, so let's hear what you think:
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| metirish Jul 27 2007 10:12 AM |
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I think when all is said and done Glavine will be viewed as a bad signing as far as wins and losses go.However there seems be a view point these days to gauge what some players brought to a team other than win/loss.In that case his signing might be viewed as a positive,I think the Wilpons would try and sell that.
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| Willets Point Jul 27 2007 10:17 AM |
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Aren't these the same thing?
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| iramets Jul 27 2007 10:31 AM |
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Whatever. The point is Tommy's a great acquisition, despite what those stupid old numbers show.
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| Willets Point Jul 27 2007 10:33 AM |
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Apparently so, since the long-suffering Glavine has to deal with all this terrible offense.
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| soupcan Jul 27 2007 11:46 AM |
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Glavine has no right to take issue with the offense since he's been a Met.
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| Vic Sage Jul 27 2007 12:12 PM |
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last year, Glavine went 15-7, and made $10M.
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| metsmarathon Jul 27 2007 12:15 PM |
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aw, fuck. should've proofread... meant to say that based on only a 57-54 record, you could determine that either: A) glavine good, offense bad B) glavine bad, offense good C) glavine average, offense average D) some combination thereof i do not think glavine has been terrific, nor do i think the offense has been to blame for his 57-54 record as a met to date. hope that helps.
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| Benjamin Grimm Jul 27 2007 12:32 PM |
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I've been trying to remember what I thought of the Glavine signing way back in late 2002. Maybe my written reaction has somehow survived the ezBoard massacre, but I'm not going to dig through that mess. I think my memory is pretty accurate:
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| iramets Jul 27 2007 05:37 PM |
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This is such crap. If the Wilpons hadn't signed Glavine INSTEAD of other Free Agents, if they'd offered an unlimited budget for acquiring every FA to come down the pike, this would make sense. It's not about how rich the Wilpons are, it's about their (somewhat reasonably) setting limits on the Mets' budget to sign FAs, and then allowing the GMs to spend it foolishly, resulting in some shitty, shitty years--the Glavine era, IOW.
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| Elster88 Jul 28 2007 09:14 AM |
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Wigginton is nasty
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| Nymr83 Jul 29 2007 05:29 PM |
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i think Ws and Ls are the only meaningful measdure of a TEAM'S success/failure, but are close to WORTHLESS for an individual pitcher.
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| iramets Jul 29 2007 05:33 PM |
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Really? Over a career, or a four-year period? Knowing nothing other W-L, you'd flip a coin to decide if you wanted to take a pitcher who went 48-48 over the past four years or one who went 96-0? Interesting. Note how this thinking allows you to remove any individual pitcher from bearing the brunt of criticism. Note, too, how the same logic that protects pitchers could easily be applied to teams: couldn't a 90-loss season be made to seem a credible showing by pointing out the great number of 1-run losses, bad luck, terrible umpiring calls, bad hops, ungodly injuries, etc. No? Why not? Because over a large enough sample, these things tend to even out somewhat--which is exactly why they have relevance over a large enough sample with individuals. Glavine's four years encompass close to a full season of games he pitched, and so are about as valid a statistical measure as that which you hold as a holy and incontrovertible measure of baseball effectiveness, a full season of games.
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| Nymr83 Jul 29 2007 05:54 PM |
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i really meant over a season, they're a better but still not very good measure over longer periods. Ws rely way too much on run support, why not look at stats that don't?
if i want to criticize a pitcher i can look at his ERA, WHIP, etc, not how many runs his team has scored for him
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| G-Fafif Jul 29 2007 06:02 PM |
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Which, for the record, had nothing to do with wins as a barometer of effectiveness, just that I thought a Mets beat writer had created a context for Glavine's signing that didn't exist when it occurred.
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| Edgy DC Jul 29 2007 06:28 PM |
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This is about you. I just came into it because it's my job. There's nothing good coming from this. You know that.
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| iramets Jul 29 2007 06:49 PM |
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And for the record, I was expanding on the general topic of Glavine's signing, and the retroactive amnesia most Mets fans choose to indulge themselves in regarding it. Didn't mean to imply that you've ever agreed with anything I've ever said. What's so fucking hard about saying "Glavine's a colossal misjudgment, an awful disappointment, a huge mistake on the Mets' part"? Come on, everyone, say it along with me: "Glavine's" Come on, you in the back. Just say it. You think if you admit that, you'll be saying something awful about yourself? Maybe, but we all have done some pretty foolish things in our time, or supported others doing foolish things in our names, but how on earth can we learn not to do stupid shit if we can't even articulate the nature of the stupid shit we've already done? This is all about personal growth, folks. You're doomed to keep repeating these mistakes if you refuse to agknowledge having made them, and no one wants that, do they? Do they? Oh, for Chrissakes, if you're all going to stand there like a bunch of dummies and refuse to say your lines in this little catechism of ours, this is going to be a very long night, boys. I simply don't understand why you're identifying so closely with the Mets that any mistakes they've made, and that you've endorsed, are things you're committing to defending. No one thinks that Glavine pitched $40 million dollars worth from 2003 to 2006. Hell, his wife and agent (not the same person) probably are secretly appalled at how few games he won and how many awful games he threw. He simply was not worth that kind of money, not even close--would the Mets have done worse to keep, oh say, Mike Bascik around and save 39-odd million to spend on younger, more promising FAs than Glavine? Really? How much worse? Enough to wipe out the advantages to be gained by another, less hateful signing than Glavine? I don't think so. I'm trying to show a simple object lesson here, one that the Mets should have learned from Mo Vaughan and Roberto Alomar and numerous other FA signings over the years--if these guys go seriously south, your ballclub will be messed up for years, unless you have the courage to bench (or trade or otherwise replace) them. For Glavine, this benching might have just meant thinking of him as a number 5 starter, which means getting four starters who are better than he is, or maybe it means swapping him out when his value seemed deceptively high (as it has at various points over the years, usually at the trading deadline), or maybe it means taking him out of the rotation if that's what you need to do to give a chance to your Kazmirs and Bannisters instead of treating THEM like disposible commodities. But if you insist on seeing his 48-48 record as the fulfillment of your fondest hopes, there's just not that much I can do anymore, other than to rant here and be ignored.
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| iramets Jul 29 2007 07:23 PM |
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I think I'm going to stop posting for a while.
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| metsmarathon Jul 29 2007 08:24 PM |
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raise you're hand if you're endorsing the glavine signing as a great, super move that the mets should repeat again and again and again.
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| Edgy DC Jul 29 2007 08:40 PM |
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Nobody today, it seems. We were split at the time.
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| metsmarathon Jul 29 2007 08:49 PM |
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dang... must've missed that the first time around...
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| Edgy DC Jul 29 2007 09:03 PM |
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His money really seems like less to me than it did at the time.
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| Kid Carsey Jul 30 2007 06:43 AM |
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Pretty funny that ira was in favor of Glavine.
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| duan Jul 30 2007 08:38 AM |
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can i just put on the record that I want to STOP being reminded of the fact that I thought we should have pursued Fonzie A LOT more vigorously than we did.
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