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Every spring, it is the same scenario. As the leaves bud into a beautiful, green bloom and thoughts of spring renew hopes of glory, there comes a revitalization of interest from each fan.

If hope springs eternal, then for the New York Mets, autumn is where those hopes die.

Throughout the scorching summer months that follow the resurgence of life in spring, the team keeps their chances alive and their fans’ interest piqued. However, as the leaves wither away into a cold, shriveled shell of their former selves, they begin to gracefully fall to the ground.

So with the change of the season, the visions of grandeur change into delusions as the team also withers away into irrelevancy.

As players begin to fall one by one, some in not-so-elegant fashion and others float into another team’s backyard, one thing is clear: The chances grow more dim by the hour. As the seasons begin to change, so the baseball season has already done so; both have changed into an icy, cold and still demise. The eerie quiet of winter will be upon us much sooner than we anticipate.

Just as the change in seasons is inevitable, it is equally so for the Mets.

There will be change. This current management cannot withstand the awesome weight of multiple collapses and multimillion dollar busts much longer before it buckles under the enormous pressure. The one carrying the brunt of the weight is GM Omar Minaya.

How much longer can he sustain the scrutiny and weight of the future on his shoulders?

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Times are changing and Twitter has quickly become a great source of sports information. Everyone from sports stars to professional sports writers to Internet-famed sports bloggers are writing daily. So TheFantasyFix.com decided it was time to host a roundtable discussion with the LADIES of TWITTER!

So here was the question:

As the conclusion of the 2010 Major League Baseball regular season approaches, we would like to identify those players who fell short of expectations (busts) and those who exceeded expectations (surprises).

Name one bust/surprise to this point of the 2010 season (describe their 2010) and state what you expect from them in the 2011 season. (rebound, maintain, regress etc..)

And away we go!…

Biggest Bust Of 2010: Jason Bay | LF | New York Mets

Jason Bay was a highly coveted free agent after the 2009 season. He was a three-time All-Star who had just hit .267 with 36 home runs and 119 RBI. With the exception of a .745 OPS in 2007, Bay had an OPS of near .900 or better every season from 2003-09.

As a result, the New York Mets rewarded him with one of the worst contracts in Major League Baseball—a four-year, $66 million deal that could top $80 million with a vesting option in the fifth year.

Bay will turn 32 in less than a month. His age, history of injuries (shoulder surgery in 2003 and arthroscopic knee surgery in 2006), and sub-par defense (lifetime UZR/150 of -7.8 in left field) should have deterred the Mets from offering such a lopsided contract. The Boston Red Sox’s best offer in retaining Bay was a four-year deal between $60 million and $65 million; they refused to include a fifth year.

Thus, with his monstrous contract and even higher expectations for on-field performance, Bay is the biggest bust of 2010. He has not played since suffering a concussion in July nor do the Mets expect him to come back before season’s end.

Not only was his fielding below average (-3.9 UZR/150), he struggled with swinging the bat. Bay was batting .259 with six home runs, 47 RBI, and an OPS of .749. He’ll most likely miss 40 percent of the season. The Mets clearly didn’t pay Bay an average of $16.5 million a year for him to play bad defense, hit an offensive wall, and then sit out with an injury.

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The New York Mets are about to enter the home stretch of a wasted season. Along with said wasted season, comes a long winter to recuperate. However before that opportunity arises, the team still has a little over a month of games remaining. They also have several players that they counted on heavily for this season showing their battle scars.

For example, Jason Bay (concussion), with his hefty free agent contract, is just beginning to continue physical activities and just about ready to get back into the lineup. Why? Because he wants to get back in time to play a handful of meaningless games and chance re-aggravating some previous injury?

How about Jose Reyes? He started the season injured (thyroid), and it continued throughout the season (hamstring), not that he missed a ton of games, but he did sit out enough to be missed in that anemic lineup.

In fact, Jeff Francoeur, Jon Niese, and a handful of others all spent time on the DL this year or have missed some time with a nagging injury as well. That’s part of a 162 game season. That’s to be expected. However, at this stage of the season that remains, it may not be prudent to have the most injury-prone players in harm’s way. In particular, the players that are deemed to be “the core players,” are the ones that have the most to lose by sustaining another injury this year.

Reyes may have tweaked his previous injury and still could be ready to go, but why risk it? The aforementioned Bay is worth too much to the franchise to make his current injury worse. So to reiterate, why? If these players are hurting and have nothing to play for, why play?

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On the New York Daily News‘ website, they had a poll asking whose fault it was that Mets’ season has spiraled out of control. They gave you four options:

• The Wilpons have steered the team into the iceberg.
  
• Omar Minaya’s personnel moves have been dreadful.
• Jerry Manuel’s in-game decisions make him seem clueless.
• The players that haven’t been able to win.

So, they are telling us we can only pick one?

The biggest problem for the Mets is that it isn’t one thing. There is no quick fix for the Mets. They need a complete overhaul.

First off, the Wilpons are in no position to be running a major league ball team. Their finical and legal problems are holding the team back from completing deals that they need to do. It’s hard to judge whether it’s Minaya’s fault, or that of the front office. He can’t make a deal without first getting the approval by the owners. So, who knows what happens behind closed doors? I don’t think the Wilpons will sell the team, but they could hand ownership responsibilities over to a different person until they are able to collect themselves.

Minaya gets the brunt of the ridicule because he is the one who assembled this team. Like any GM, he has made some bad moves. Difference is in New York they are under the microscope more and usually for a lot more money than other teams, i.e., Oliver Perez. I’m actually not even that mad at Minaya. He did make some good moves in the offseason. R.A. Dickey, Hisanori Takahashi, Rod Barajas, and he still deserves credit for trading for Johan Santana and Angel Pagan back in 2008. Though he is not the team’s biggest problem, I think it’s just time to move in a different direction and let him go at the end of the year.

The Mets have a ton of talent on this team, but they can’t take what is on paper to on the field. To me, that shows that the problem is with the coaching staff. I’m not one for blaming managers for the team’s problems, but in this case I will. There has to be something that Manuel is doing wrong. Of course, none of us know because we are not there in the Mets clubhouse playing with them, but you get the feeling something isn’t right. Manuel, as well as Howard Johnson, need to be gone in 2011. The only coach I would keep is Dan Warthen because the Mets pitching has been outstanding this year.

Now, onto the guys who actually make it happen on the field. It’s been painful to watch the Mets’ offense go up to the plate and back to the dugout like clockwork. We’ve been watching games that are routinely 1-0 in the seventh inning, with no sign of life in the batting order. You can do whatever you want with the front office and coaching staff, but when it comes down to it, the players need to perform, and they aren’t doing that. It may just be time for a complete overhaul of this team, keeping only the cornerstones of the franchise.

So, what to do in 2011? Well, first off, if the ownership wants to show anything to the fans of this team, they need to fire Minaya, Manuel, and all other coaches not named Dan Warthen. The replacement manager comes down to the three people; Joe Torre, Bobby Valentine, and Wally Backman. I’m a big fan of Backman, but the other two have much more experience than him, which would be important for this team. However, Torre will always be a Yankee to me, and I feel like Bobby V had his time here and they shouldn’t go back to him. So, I would go with Backman as the Mets’ manager in 2011.

Next comes down to the players. Big contracts like Carlos Beltran, Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo, and Francisco Rodriguez will try to be moved in the offseason. Beltran will have the most value, but like Perez and Castillo, and if they were to move Beltran, they would have to eat a large portion of his salary.

He’s due to make $18.5M next season, and though it looks like he is starting to get back to his old form, many teams would not want to take that risk. They would probably have to eat $10M or even $15M of the last year on his contract to get back anything good in return.

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I was watching this team play baseball yesterday in what was a must-win game for the Mets. They knew how big these next six games were going to be. They needed to show in last night’s game that they were ready to do anything to win and that they would not go down without a fight. But they didn’t do that.

At times this season the Mets have looked like a team that battles back or fights to stay in the game. But something has happened to that team, and whatever they had at the beginning of the year is gone. It happened around the time Mike Pelfrey started to fall apart, and around the time Carlos Beltran and Luis Castillo came back.

I don’t think Beltran and Castillo are clubhouse poisons who made this team go into a tail spin. They haven’t played great, but still that’s no excuse for why the rest of the team has struggled so much. It could have been that when these two guys came back, the team just shifted into a different gear. The players figured, now that we have them back, they can take some of the load off of us. It doesn’t really make sense, but a lot of things the Mets have done this year haven’t made sense.

I came to the sad realization a couple days ago that this team isn’t going anywhere. The Mets don’t have what it take to make the playoffs with the type of attitude they have right now. I’m not the only one who thinks this either. In a recent poll on Mets Paradise, 85 percent of the voters believed the Mets will not make the playoffs.

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop watching them or stop attending games. This is my team, and if it is going down, I’m going down with it. I love the Mets, and that wouldn’t change whether they were in the World Series or in last place.

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We all know this team needs a huge change. A little fix here and a little fix there isn’t working. It’s either go hard or go home. This “2011” team is a team I think is very possible for the Mets. Again, this is just an opinion.

The payroll would be lower than this year if this can happen. That is with Castillo and Perez gone. If they trade those two, this team can be in great shape.

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If you’re a Mets fan, you are familiar with heartache. The very term “Mets fan” is synonymous with pain. This trade deadline has brought us too many moments of agony to rehash, but there are several that stick out in the collective memory of the fan of the Mets. These trades are the lemon juice in a cut type of transaction. They were the ones that really stung.

In the spirit of the MLB trade deadline winding down tomorrow at 4pm, I decided to take a look back at some of the worst mistakes the Mets have made in the trade market. It is not a fun task to undertake, but it is a necessary one. How else can we learn for our future if we do not examine the mistakes of the past?

Warning: to read this list, it takes a real fan, one that has courage and can remain realistic. This is not for the faint of heart. If you have heart trouble, please consult with a physician before reading this list, as the results of it may very well cause a stroke. It almost caused me one just compiling it.

5. Oliver Perez-

It’s been just about four years since Duaner Sanchez had that taxi cab accident. The ripples of that incident are still felt to this day in the Mets fan base. Why? The Mets acquired two pitchers on July 31st of that 2006 season. One was Roberto Hernandez and the other was the infamous and often documented Oliver Perez. What did they give up for them? Xavier Nady.

Okay, not a tremendous loss, but consider this: last season, the Mets and their fans were discussing the need for an outfielder that has power, so they go out and spend big money on Jason Bay. Bay still hasn’t “adjusted,” so they still need a power hitter in the outfield. Nady had two seasons of 20 and 25 home runs respectively during the time we’ve watched Oliver Perez struggle game after game.

Nady was hurt for a majority of last season and is struggling this season, but during the first few seasons after that trade, the Mets could have used him. Not to mention, the cut ties with Roberto Hernandez after that season. He did a solid job for them in ’05 and that part of ’06. They have had bullpen issues every season since. Then they cut ties with Sanchez eventually anyway. So the only remnants that remain from that day and that accident are Oliver Perez and his multiple seasons of an ERA over 6.00.

4. Scott Kazmir–

I remember this day like it was yesterday. Most older fans will say that a little later on too. But for now, allow me to set this situation up for you. Two seasons before that taxi cab accident that eventually brought us Ollie, there was another accident of sorts. An accident of impulse. On July 31, 2004, the New York Mets traded their highest scouted prospect, Scott Kazmir to the Tampa Bay (then Devil) Rays for Victor Zambrano. Not Carlos Zambrano, but Victor. Why? Because he had mild success against the Yankees.

Many fans have held this move much higher than # 4 for years, but looking at the overall numbers, it belongs here. The main problem is the word “potential.” Kazmir was exuding potential. Everyone deemed him the “next” Roger Clemens, only without the juice. He is a big lefty that throws hard. He wowed all of the scouts and opponents as well.

After the trade, he was a big part of helping Tampa Bay get to the World Series in ’08, helping many Mets fans cringe, though the Phillies won it, causing the fans here to cringe even more. Kazmir has been often injured and often struggling. He is not the pitcher that everyone has envisioned with a career 4.12 ERA. He is not the unhittable, but he is younger than Oliver Perez.

So, therefore, conventional wisdom would suggest that he could still turn it around with the right pitching coach. Though I am not so sure the Mets have that right now. What really made this so bad, was that Zambrano was often injured in his time with the Mets and sported a 4.45 ERA. You compare the numbers. I’d still take Kazmir.

3. Lenny Dykstra–

The day that Lenny Dykstra was traded was a terrible day in the Mets franchise history. No one seems to mention this trade, but it was awful. Lenny Dykstra AND Roger McDowell (the inventor of the hot foot) both were traded to a division rival, the Phillies. In June of 1989, the Mets moved two of their most beloved heroes of the ’86 Championship team and Dykstra eventually helped bring the Phillies to the World Series in ’93 while endearing himself to their fan base as he did with ours.

McDowell went on to Los Angeles eventually and continued success for several more seasons. What did the Mets get in return? Juan Samuel. The same Juan Samuel who sported a .228 AVG and was traded away just a few months later. So the Mets received nothing for these two warriors, Dykstra and McDowell, and they went on to help other teams to success. Another great front office move.

2. Nolan Ryan-

The name is equivalent to greatness and perfection. He was unarguably the greatest pitcher to ever pitch and he was a Mets player for a few short years of their early existence. On December 10, 1971, he was traded with a few other inconsequential players for Jum Fregosi. Who? The guy who managed in Philly and Toronto? Yeah, that guy. The guy who had a career AVG of .233 and only played 146 games with the Mets before being sold, not traded, to Texas? Yes, that Jim Fregosi.

So we received a forgettable player, who’s only real accomplishment was being an average manager, in exchange for the greatest pitcher of all-time. Don’t believe me, the numbers speak volumes, 5,714 strikeouts and 7 no hitters, the Mets still have none and he leads MLB history in both of those while being a Hall of Fame inductee since ’99. The Mets certainly pulled the trigger there, didn’t they?

1. Two words: “The franchise”. Tom “Terrific” Seaver –

He was simply put, the greatest Mets pitcher in the history of the team. Then, they traded him due to a dispute with management. That day is still referred to as the “midnight massacre”. It occurred on June, 15th 1977. The same day, the Mets traded Dave “King Kong” Kingman to San Diego.

As for Seaver, he posted a 2.57 ERA with the Mets in 12 seasons that included an attempt at making peace with them in ’83. He had 2,541 total strikeouts and 198 wins with the team. He, too, is a Hall of Fame member as of ’92. He led the Mets to glory and unexpected, miraculous success in both ’69 and ’73. He was the captain and leader of the Mets for more than a decade. After leaving the Mets, he, too, had a no hit game. He was a legend that deserved better from this team.

Perhaps the lack of perfect games or no hitters from this franchise is actually just the baseball gods getting them back for trading away so many legends. The old saying goes, the baseball gods giveth and they taketh away. In a more realistic way, the baseball gods giveth and the Mets front office taketh away.

Let’s hope that they do something this season to turn that around on this trade deadline. But knowing the history, they probably will not. In fact, all we really can hope for is that they don’t mess up too badly and trade away another future hall of fame inductee or world series winner.

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The Mets haven’t been to a World Series since 2000.

Here are 10 players that have not lived up to the expectations in the Mets uniform since 2001.

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Recent reports have Omar Minaya saying that the Mets are Buyers, but are in “wait and see” mode….What in the world does that mean?

The Mets were on fire in June and were a half game back from first place, apparently that wasn’t a good time to make a trade. Now the Mets are in a horrible funk and just finished a 2-9 roadtrip and apparently they are not sure it’s a good time to make a deal either.

Andy Martino of the Daily News reports one team source says “in a sense, the players still need to prove they are worthy of an addition.” Really? I guess the players didn’t play well enough in June. Martino also reports that “there is some disagreement among Mets decision makers about the need to add a starter.”

Whoever in the Mets organization feels there is no need to add a starter, THAT PERSON SHOULD BE FIRED!

It just seems like the Mets hierarchy play mind games with their fans and with their players. It’s like they try to give off the illusion that they really want to do whatever it takes to win. Every now and then when people start questioning if the team has the ability to add payroll, they come out and say they do, every one gets happy, but then nothing happens.

At one point even players were expressing their desire for the team to add a starter, but nothing happened.

It’s like the Mets are in a state right now that when the media starts chewing them up and fans complain, they make a move to quiet the critics and please the fans just enough to get them to shut up.

The offseason is a great example, fans were furious over last year and how things were handled, the media was calling for the heads of Omar and Jerry so to quiet all of that they go and sign Jason Bay and people think to themselves “Ok they are trying to make the team better.” Nothing really happened after that. They signed Henry Blanco and Rod Barajas and everyone questioned, but they had a good start, especially Barajas and it shut everyone up for a while, but now they aren’t really performing.

It’s like the Mets just make moves to shut everyone up and NOT TO JUST IMPROVE THE CLUB TO WIN. It’s like they are aiming to just fool everyone. To justify not making a move Omar has also said things like “Beltran coming off the DL is like making a midseason trade.”

It’s not like making a midseason trade, it’s what a team looks like when IT’S HEALTHY. It’s continued recovery from a nightmare of a year last year.

What is this “wait and see” approach? What are they waiting to see? Are they waiting for a team to ask for just about nothing, just handing over one of their stars to the Mets? Are they still waiting for another Johan trade they made by pure luck?

Are the Mets more concerned about convincing people they are not in panic mode? They are doing a great job at convincing people this organization is like a chicken running around with its head cut off.

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When Omar Minaya was brought to New York to take over as general manager of the Mets, New York was divided equally into two sections: lovers and haters. 

Minaya’s biggest strength as GM is also his biggest weakness in that he is a patchwork GM. Let me explain: Minaya sees a potential problem spot in the organization and typically addresses it in a quick method in order to “stop the bleeding,” similar to a band-aid (hence the patchwork title). However, Minaya has (on several occasions) failed to build the organizational depth that is necessary to a Major League ball club. To his credit, he has improved from earlier in his tenure, but is still no Billy Beane, not by a long shot.

For example, the 2009 Mets were hit by a slew of injuries that left the organization searching for answers at literally every position. The shallow depth of the team was exposed when Minaya was forced to trade for career journeyman SS Wilson Valdez just so the team could throw someone out there who could actually play the position. At one point last season, the Mets had a starting outfield of Jeremy Reed, Angel Pagan, and Cory Sullivan. Wow.

Now in 2010, the Mets still have the same problems. What would happen if golden boy David Wright were to ever seriously injure himself? The Mets would start 32-year-old journeyman Mike Hessman (just promoted from Triple-A today) as the regular guy? What if Jose Reyes goes down again? A middle infield of the aging Luis Castillo and future manager Alex Cora? Yikes. This is a team that started Mike Jacobs as its opening day cleanup hitter, then tried Fernando Tatis and Frank Catalanatto out of the spot before turning to youngster Ike Davis, so it’s easy to see that this is not a new problem.

Left field was the problem spot last season, so what does Omar Minaya do? He signs Jason Bay to a ridiculously bloated (but necessary) four-year deal, but what if Bay were to go down? I know that Jeff Francoeur is just riding the pine, and despite Bay’s poor stats, he still breaks up the lineup better than Frenchy any day of the week. 

My point is simple: winning is built through organizational depth, and I’m not just talking about Triple-A fodder. It’s about creating a system and a style of play that the front office believes in, and executing that vision with the players that are most fit for the idea. Not simply just throwing talent together and trying to make it work. 

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