No reflections or attempts at analysis here.  I'm just indulging in some feel-good non-analytical Nieuwenhuis love, one of the few pieces of good news this season and proceeding to convey how good the news of his emergence is.

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No, this is not about Dub's magic helmet.  This is about Davy starting to get too nice for his own good.  It started with his backing down on a perfectly reasonable stance against Mike Francessa's vendetta, which was a transparent scheme to generate ratings based on sensationalism (and if it resulted in the Mets stupidly dumping Wright, all the better for Mike, who would then be able to trash the Mets for a decade--and who doubtless would be leading the chorus ridiculing the Mets for making the move for which he lobbied ferociously).

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This isn't second-guessing.  This is an illustration of how a GM who was not incompetent would have thought the '08-'09 offseason through.  Any one of us could have thought this through and not laid a turd in the '08-'09 offseason.

Oliver Perez?  His fastball has been losing velocity since 2004, and if it dips any more, his control problems will do him in and he could very easily fall short of replacement.  (Good thing I know what replacement is!)  Let someone else waste $4M on him.  We could use the picks to beef up the farm.

We need a relief ace pretty badly.  Our bullpen is a train-wreck.  Feliciano was more unlucky than bad and has a solid track record of being able to eat lefties and hold his own against righties.  So we will hold on to him (unless a no-brainer comes along).  What...somebody wants to give me a warm body for Schoenweiss??  I would have settled for a cold body that somebody needed to bury.  Done!  OK...back to business.  Frankie is an obvious choice, and we've got the cash for him, but he's coming off a career year in a meaningless category that might inflate his price tag disproportionately as compared to his real value.  We'll offer him what I think he's worth...$4M/year for three years.  If someone wants to give him more, let him risk it.  If it doesn't happen, we've got a solid guy in Fuentes and we can outbid the Braves (by just enough) for Rafael Soriano.  Trading Heilman would be selling real low...but his trends are not good, so we'll shop him.  One more year of sucking and we can simply trade him for a french fry; (he doesn't make much money).

Hmmm...the Mariners have something interesting on the table.  Putz for a boatload of average prospects.  Obviously this will require some negotiating.  Chavez for Reed isn't happening, but I can deal with Smith for Green.  And he is not getting Carp, Carrera, Vargas, and Cleto (maybe in 2007).  Considering the contract and the possibility of damaged goods, I'm keeping Carp..and he can take or leave the rest.  If Putz does well, I can get picks for him in 2010 when he leaves for free agency.  If he falls apart, such is life.

Hmmm...Lowe wants a fourth year, and at his age, that's probably going to bite us.  If we want to win in 2009, we'll need to pay that price (the Braves are looming).  If we play for 2010, we can pass on him and get some stopgaps.  Odalis Perez and Randy Wolf will be solid options for a year or two, and if Jon Niese dominates AAA, either one will be easy to trade (especially considering the bargains that these two underrated pitchers will get us in this market).  By 2010, F!Mart will be ready It depends on what we'll play for, but they're both good options.

Which do we take though?  2009 is risky.  The corners will be weak no matter what, Delgado is at a constant risk of tanking, and the Wilpons will not dump Castillo.  But it has good potential if things break right.  If F! and Niese don't work out, 2010 could quickly turn into 2011 or longer, and Lowe will be solid for at least 2 years, so I'm inclined to go for Lowe, and we'll still have Ollie's pick to compensate.  Santana, Lowe, Pelfrey, Maine, and Wolf will be formidable for a good chunk of time.  Santana, Mejia, Holt, Pelfrey, Maine, Gee and Niese, in the long run?  In addition to any surprises, drafts and minor-league trade acquisitions along the way?  I like it.

Corner outfield...it's weak and Danny Murphy is way too much of a regression risk.  Ibañez?  Type A?  With that kind of defensive liability for a very good (not great) hitter at corner outfield?  OK, he's in an extremer pitcher's park but the bad outweighs the upside here.  Do we want to take the kind of risk with Parker Bro...*ahem* Milton Bradley?  Delgado's a risk and he can fill in (poorly) at second if it comes to that.  Abreu, Burrell and Dunn are the best options, and Burrell is being lowballed by Tampa (and he was not offered arbitration!).  That clinches it.  Burrell it is.  Murphy will be a (potentially super) sub to spell Burell against tough righties and back up Castillo in case he tanks.  (We will let him sink or swim at second.)

If that's not enough we can shop Murph.  He's killing the winter league and someone might bite.  We could package him (with Carp, say) for a guy like (Lord willing) Adrian Beltre? 

So what am I doing for the short term and the long term?

Short Term:  Nice rotation.  3 of the best studs in baseball at premium positions.  Church has a mediocre bat for a corner outfielder, but his glove makes him an average player, and Burrel should be adequate.  Delgado with Evans to spell him against some lefties?  Let's cross our fingers.  Castillo?  If he tanks, we might have to put Murph in that position and again cross our fingers.  With Fuentes, Soriano, (perhaps K-rod) and Feliciano back in form (and without Schoenweiss) our bullpen should rebound (statistically, it's a certainty).  And Parnell and Kunz could mature.  Bench: Endy Chavez and some easily acquired strong backups.  With our 4 superstars, we always have a chance.  Estimated Cost: about $100M, but well-spent.

Long term: Schneider, Wagner, Delgado, and their contracts are gone in 2010, leaving us with only Castillo as a real albatross.  Wright and Reyes get raises, but are still well under market value.  We still have a very strong rotation and a good and inexpensive bullpen.  Ike Davis and Nick Evans are a good bet for a cheap and effective first base platoon in Ike finds his power.  F! should be ready.  But he might not be, and we have no catcher (Thole is interesting, though) or right fielder unless we resign Church (and we really would like a better option).  We have holes, but we only have $70M or so in well-chosen commitments and we'll have some money to spend to fill those holes if our prospects don't pan out.  (Matt Holiday comes to mind.)  The plan: F! Beltran, and Holiday in the outfield.  Wright and Reyes on the left.  Evans, Murphy, Castillo, and eventually Ike on the left (with an eye for a mid level and highly tradeable upgrade--Nick Johnson, Adam Laroche, Marco Scutaro, Mark DeRosa, Iwamura, or Adam Everett--if it's necessary).  Johan, Lowe, Pelf, Maine, Niese, possibly Holt and Mejia on the mound.  Soriano, K-Rod (or Fuentes) Feliciano, Parnell (perhaps) on the left.  Cost: if prospects pan out (and we can trade Lowe) about $115M (we add Holiday).  If not, about $135.  We'll have to acquire some mid-level talent like Laroche and Scutaro.

If injuries or power outages to key players kill us, those are the breaks, but it's a solid plan.

The Mets starting lineup (including our starting pitcher) on August 11th was very close to the worst possible starting lineup a professional team could field given the assumption of good faith, in that a clone of every starter in the game could have been acquired off the waver wire during the past week and a half; (indeed, our starting pitcher for that game was subsequently released).  A fair question to ask then is, yes, the Mets have been ravaged by injuries.  But they also field a payroll of about $130M (the $140 mark is misleading, since it accounts Sheffield's salary as being liable to the Mets).  Even with these injuries, should this team be this bad?

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Reprecussions positive and negative:

Positive: 

1.)  Obviously Bernazard had to go.  Yes, I don't trust Rubin and I think that was a hit piece, but Bernazard's behavior and comportment has no place in any profession, and it's about time he got what was coming to him.  He was competent, but hardly irreplaceable.

2.)  I would not be surprised if Fred Wilpon actually did still root for the Dodgers.  If he devoted half of his exqusite P.R. sensitivity to the business of being in command of a baseball team, the Mets would be perpetual playoff locks.  Ergo, a debacle like this was pretty much the only thing that gives Mets fans strong grounds for hoping that Omar Minaya is demoted from his position at GM.  His talents are undeniable, but the evidence that he is, all in all, the wrong man for the job is now overwhelming.

Negative:

1.) I am no fan of Adam Rubin, and my impression of him is that he is smart enough to realize that the copious quantities of ink trashing the Mets farm system are spent in the service of intellectual dishonesty and just plain dishonesty.  I would not be the least surprised if he was in fact belittling the Mets farm in order to push key players out of their posts so as to attain a position in player development.  Rubin, being fairly intelligent, comes off looking way too good when pitted against Minaya's rambling, incoherent codswallop. On a better note, there is little chance that the Wilpons will now take the P.R. risk of rewarding him with such a position, as it would simply raise suspicions further.

2.) If Omar gets fired, the N.Y. media might be dangerously emboldened.  The N.Y. media have displayed too much influence already and Omar would have been much better off throwing Bernazard under a bus and making the decision seem like a no-brainer so that the media would have played the traditional role of informing rather than becoming agitators and advocates, and--even worse, getting its way.  If the media were to become even more powerful in this town than it is, be prepared for 100 years of baseball futility.

Occasioned by David Wright's being completely overmatched by a AA/AAA fringe pitcher Rodrigo Lopez, I take this opportunity to ask, what are David Wright's luck-neutral stats?

There are two projections I'll make: one pessimistic and one optimistic.  For the pessimism, I regress Dub's BABIP to his career .350 and keep his K%, XBH% , BB%, GB/LD/FB and HR/FB constant.

A .350 BABIP over (297 ABs - 82 Ks) is 75 hits for a .252 BA.  Giving him the same XBH% yields 23 XBHs, and obviously, the same HR/FB results in 5 HRs, since I'm holding his batted ball profile constant.  This yields 15 doubles, five homers and 3 triples for 111 total bases and a .373 slugging percentage.  His 44 BBs and 2 HBPs give him 121 times on base for a .352 OBP.  So David Wright is posting, in reality, a .252/.352/.373 vital stats line that resembles a down year for Luis Castillo.  This, for a 3rd baseman in the NL in 2009, is crap.

Let us give him some more generous assumptions.  Citi Field has theoretically robbed him of 6 home runs and Wright's LD% is matching his career high of 2008 at 25%.  (It's probably safe to say that Wright got unlucky in 2008 given his expected BABIP.)  So if we add about 20 points of BABIP and up his homers to 11, the line adjusts to .269/.367/.468.

So, given the most generous assumptions possible, Wright has been a somewhat-above-average NL 3rd baseman.  With less generous assumptions, he has been a more-or-less severe liability at the plate.  What is dragging all his numbers way down is of course, his inordinate number of strikeouts.  This gives a better account of Wright's struggles with making contact better than I ever could.

There is obviously something wrong with David Wright's approach, and I don't think I'm qualified to make a guess about what it is, nor do I trust Keith Hernandez, who quite simply diagnoses the same ailment to every batter who struggles (He's uppercutting, his swing is too long, he's not going the other way, etc.)  I don't blame Hernandez for what appears to be an obvious bias in favor of contact hitters and against power hitters and strikeouts, as that was the way he played and his substandard power for his position is what is unjustly keeping him from the Hall of Fame.  However, I would like to ask the Mets community if anyone has any clue what is ailing David Wright, how serious it is, and whether they have a clue as to what he should be doing.  His current rate of production is simply substandard for a Major League 3rd baseman whose defense has stagnated after much promising improvement over his career, and it is further exascerbated by how awful he looks at the plate.  Good pitchers, like Sabbathia, Gallardo, and A.J. Burnett, have made him look like a minor leaguer, and he has occasionally been blown away even by fringe pitchers.

Alex Cora looked much better against Rodrigo Lopez than Wright.  I doubt immensely that from this point on, Wright will be a worse hitter than Alex Cora (even in this immensely productive--for Cora--year).  But the fact is, our superstar's luck-neutral performance has been average at best and Slappyesque at worst.  Does anyone have a clue as to what gives?

I would say it's slightly better than typical Metsblog chatter, but not much better.  As it's essentially Reyes for 2 average players of the type that are easily obtainable without sacrificing superstars and two prospects, one of which is a Niese-type that isn't particularly difficult to find, you're essentially betting Reyes on Bucholtz, and that's far too steep a bet for one prospect, regardless of how strong he is.  What surprises me is that no one considered the more reasonable option: redo the deal with Beltran instead of Reyes and Anderson instead of Bowden.

Beltran is a bona-fide superstar signed for 2 more years at a contract that, while certainly not cheap, is not outrageous.  As he is not home-grown, much older than Reyes, and had expressed a desire to play for the Yankees, there is little reason to consider him an essential component of the team's identity as is Reyes, whose phenomenal growth Met-fans watched lovingly for years (before many turned on him and Wright for the most retarded reasons imaginable like the piss-ant fairweather friends we all know several Met-fans to be).  He is a huge upgrade over Ellsbury and would lock the Sox up as a favorite in the division--and give them a good shot at humiliating the Yanks in 14 straight games.  Plus, the New York media would overlook the fact that the trade almost punts 2009, since they are stupid enough to think that Ellsbury's whiteness and grission compensate for Beltran's unbelievable awesomeness.  ("WHooOOOo's kidding whOOOoooOOOoo?  Of coa's Ellsbury's bedda' than Beltran!!")

Beltran for Lars, Bucholz, and Elsbury is a deal.  Easily leveraged around Murphy and certain other lower-level Red-Sox prospects.

Ironically, though the Yanks and Mets don't do deals, their needs and resources seem to compliment each other.  Every word I said about the above trade could be said regarding Beltran for Austin Jackson, Phil Hughes, and Melky.  ("WHooOOOo's kidding whOOOoooOOOoo?  Of coa's Melky's bedda' than Beltran!!  He's got like 10 clutch hoemuhs")