The Crane Pool Forum

This showed up in my Facebook news feed:

NL East from 2010 through 2024

	W	L	Pct.	GB
Braves	1260	1066	.542	--
Phillies	1169	1159	.502	92
Nationals	1167	1160	.502	93.5
Mets	1161	1167	.499	100
Marlins	1020	1306	.439	240

In other divisions, the Cardinals have a 48.5 game lead over the Brewers in the NL Central. The Dodgers are 180 games ahead of the Giants in the West.

In the American League, the Yankees lead the Rays by 56.5 games, the Guardians over the Twins by 110.5, and the Astros over the Rangers by 37.

The team in the deepest hole is the Rockies, 337 games behind the Dodgers.

Other teams more than 200 games behind (in addition to the Rockies and Marlins) are the Orioles (214), padres (258) and Diamondbacks (260).

Clearly, no team has been as dominant in their division over the last fifteen years as the Dodgers.

This is really no surprise. By 2010 we were fully in the post-Madoff Wilpon era. It's crazy that a big market team opening a brand new stadium would have such a protracted period of losing. In the last 12 years of Wilpon ownership, the Mets had 3 winning seasons, and made the playoffs twice (87 wins, 90 wins). That's hard to do in the Wild Card era.

I can't believe we really endured this period and somehow continued to root for this team. What a shit ownership group they were. Not just the money, the assholes they hired, the poor decisions they made, the awful scouting and player development, the shitty PR, the shitty technology, the narcissistic nepo baby with the punchable face.

I hope Steve Cohen owns these Mets forever. I was listening to the Stearns interview the other day. I can't believe we have someone this smart running the team. For years, I remember thinking that I could walk in and run the team better than whatever dipshit was on TV. Now I listen to Stearns speak and find myself thinking "I can't believe he's ours".

Forget Soto. Stearns might be the best acquisition this team has ever made.

Centerfield wrote: ↑Wed Dec 18, 2024 1:44 pm I can't believe we really endured this period and somehow continued to root for this team. What a shit ownership group they were. Not just the money, the assholes they hired, the poor decisions they made, the awful scouting and player development, the shitty PR, the shitty technology, the narcissistic nepo baby with the punchable face.

Don't beat around the bush. Tell us how you really feel.
LOL!

Later

Centerfield wrote: ↑Wed Dec 18, 2024 1:44 pm This is really no surprise. By 2010 we were fully in the post-Madoff Wilpon era. It's crazy that a big market team opening a brand new stadium would have such a protracted period of losing. In the last 12 years of Wilpon ownership, the Mets had 3 winning seasons, and made the playoffs twice (87 wins, 90 wins). That's hard to do in the Wild Card era.

I can't believe we really endured this period and somehow continued to root for this team. What a shit ownership group they were. Not just the money, the assholes they hired, the poor decisions they made, the awful scouting and player development, the shitty PR, the shitty technology, the narcissistic nepo baby with the punchable face.

I hope Steve Cohen owns these Mets forever. I was listening to the Stearns interview the other day. I can't believe we have someone this smart running the team. For years, I remember thinking that I could walk in and run the team better than whatever dipshit was on TV. Now I listen to Stearns speak and find myself thinking "I can't believe he's ours".

Forget Soto. Stearns might be the best acquisition this team has ever made.

💯

I just pulled 2012 to see ,what a team

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Ne ... ets_season

Centerfield wrote: ↑Wed Dec 18, 2024 1:44 pm This is really no surprise. By 2010 we were fully in the post-Madoff Wilpon era. It's crazy that a big market team opening a brand new stadium would have such a protracted period of losing. In the last 12 years of Wilpon ownership, the Mets had 3 winning seasons, and made the playoffs twice (87 wins, 90 wins). That's hard to do in the Wild Card era.

I can't believe we really endured this period and somehow continued to root for this team. What a shit ownership group they were. Not just the money, the assholes they hired, the poor decisions they made, the awful scouting and player development, the shitty PR, the shitty technology, the narcissistic nepo baby with the punchable face.

I hope Steve Cohen owns these Mets forever. I was listening to the Stearns interview the other day. I can't believe we have someone this smart running the team. For years, I remember thinking that I could walk in and run the team better than whatever dipshit was on TV. Now I listen to Stearns speak and find myself thinking "I can't believe he's ours".

Forget Soto. Stearns might be the best acquisition this team has ever made.

I packed it in emotionally and mentally after 2008. Never the same.

Centerfield wrote: ↑Wed Dec 18, 2024 1:44 pm This is really no surprise. By 2010 we were fully in the post-Madoff Wilpon era. It's crazy that a big market team opening a brand new stadium would have such a protracted period of losing. In the last 12 years of Wilpon ownership, the Mets had 3 winning seasons, and made the playoffs twice (87 wins, 90 wins). That's hard to do in the Wild Card era.

I can't believe we really endured this period and somehow continued to root for this team. What a shit ownership group they were. Not just the money, the assholes they hired, the poor decisions they made, the awful scouting and player development, the shitty PR, the shitty technology, the narcissistic nepo baby with the punchable face.

I hope Steve Cohen owns these Mets forever. I was listening to the Stearns interview the other day. I can't believe we have someone this smart running the team. For years, I remember thinking that I could walk in and run the team better than whatever dipshit was on TV. Now I listen to Stearns speak and find myself thinking "I can't believe he's ours".

Forget Soto. Stearns might be the best acquisition this team has ever made.

The Cohen tongue bath is tough to take. This guy racked up more terrible hires in the first couple of years than most teams do in a decade. Nevermind that he looked at all the terrible Wilpon hires, the abusers, and was like "LET'S BRING THOSE GUYS BACK". Then he followed up that "culture change" by chasing after Trevor Bauer, acquired Brooks Raley, etc.

If you want to believe the mythos that somehow Stearns and Cohen are magic and made Severino's arm hold up all season, go for it. He implodes halfway through and 2024 is probably the .500 treading water season they planned for, and maybe Soto takes 99% of the same contract to stay with the Yankees.

The Yankees and Dodgers take contention for granted every season because of how they spend. So I'm OK with having an owner willing to spend like that. You still have to be smart about it, though, and having 75 wins to show for the 2023 spending spree was embarrassing. Pursuing Bauer was embarrassing, too, but it's worth noting that the Dodgers won that pursuit but neither they nor anybody else really noticed when it blew up in their faces.

As for Stearns... the fact that he's a lifelong Mets fan and needed to go elsewhere to find an organization who cared that he had some understanding of analytics says as much about the Wilpons as you need to know. He could be an exceptional GM/POBO who's been handed a huge budget. The worst case scenario is that he's a pretty good baseball mind who worked his way to being in his version of the right place at the right time. The latter would still be a huge improvement over everybody except possibly Alderson that the Mets have had running the team since 2010.

And Alderson was the one choice they had foisted upon them, or at least it was more MLB's pick then it was the 'Pons..

I think Stearns did an outstanding job of improving the roster as the season progressed. (The results obviously bear that out.)

I don't want to draw too much of a conclusion from his one season so far with the Mets. Was he extraordinarily lucky? Or was this an example of his acumen? I hope it's the latter, of course. But we'll have to see how he responds to similar challenges in future seasons. (But hopefully, we'll never again have to see him deal with a Mets team that's eleven games below .500.)

The Cohen tongue bath is tough to take. This guy racked up more terrible hires in the first couple of years than most teams do in a decade. Nevermind that he looked at all the terrible Wilpon hires, the abusers, and was like "LET'S BRING THOSE GUYS BACK". Then he followed up that "culture change" by chasing after Trevor Bauer, acquired Brooks Raley, etc.

What's wrong with Brooks Raley in terms of culture issues?

It takes time to build a culture and develop a new staff. You can't fire everyone on Day One. Certainly took him a little time get up and running in the right direction, but it seems to have stabilized.

I have no issue if anyone has criticisms of Cohen. But it's silly to argue against the results. The last 14 years of Wilpon ownership produced two playoff teams. The first four years of Cohen ownership have produced two playoff teams.

He identified Stearns as the guy he wanted, then treaded water until he was able to get his man.

I'm sorry you're not enjoying this. I think it's been great.

I'm still curious about Brooks Raley. What am I forgetting about him?

Homophobic comments, I think?

Centerfield wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2024 3:13 pm I have no issue if anyone has criticisms of Cohen. But it's silly to argue against the results. The last 14 years of Wilpon ownership produced two playoff teams. The first four years of Cohen ownership have produced two playoff teams.

He identified Stearns as the guy he wanted, then treaded water until he was able to get his man.

I'm sorry you're not enjoying this. I think it's been great.

I thoroughly enjoyed last season, and am thrilled about Soto, though "winning the offseason" isn't everything, as we've seen.

I'm not going to defend the Wilpons, they were bottom tier, even if they were nowhere near the actual bottom. Jury's still out on Cohen as an owner. Lots of volatile Steinbrenner stuff still going on. I'd like to hear less about owners in general. Especially once 5 years removed from being part of the team. There were a lot of good moments during that stretch too, specifically picking to start in 2007 is certainly making a biased comparison though. Though playing .500 baseball over 14 years is pretty good, in a vacuum. Remember if the playoff picture was the same during those 14 years the Mets would've made the playoffs a lot more too. And of course, the biggest sin is Madoff and the timing of it, but certainly not going to pretend Cohen's without questionable investments. Would he have handled the team differently? Who knows. Who cares?

It's 2025. Sign Alonso and Winker and another good SP and let's GO. All I'm saying is I'm not all in on "Cohen and Stearns are completely competent and I should assume they are making smart choices even if I can't see it."

Before it falls off the back end of the main forum and into archive-land, there is an existing thread, started just under one year ago, mulling over the ongoing and early years of the Cohen stewardship if anyone wants to revive it and continue discussions/points already raised.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=33009 (or page 21 of the Baseball Forum if the link doesn't work for some reason)

Raley was one of the five Rays players who refused to wear the Pride Day patches on their uniforms.