Willie loves youth?

Willie loves youth. That's just what he said on Mets Extra when talking about Nick Evans and his call-up and start today. I never thought Willie loved youth. I always thought he didn't like young players.

Santana

As for Santana, I was not with the majority of Met fans on the Santana deal. I just thought it was too much money, too big a commitment in years for a pitcher. AND, there's a reason why so many teams have been getting younger.

I'm not saying that Santana was up to anything in the past, but I think after the 2006 season was the time to almost start over, to at least consider that what you thought you knew may not be true. Resources should have been thrown at scouting, player development, etc.

It's almost like the Mets are in denial regarding what went on in baseball through the 2006 season. 2007 was the time to start getting younger because too many of the game's older stars were at least 'suspect', but the Mets don't seem to have understood this.

Everyone assumes that Florida will fade because the team is young and unknown, but it's also possible that their youth means that these guys are the face of baseball's future. Players who were less likely to be seduced by the chemical advantages that created so many of the game's stars over the past two decades.

Going the youth route might be painful, but that was the right move to building a winning organization after 2006. It's still the right move. Instead, the Mets have assembled an overpaid, under-performing cast of players who may never again be as good as they were. And they also have virtually no talent in the minor leagues to call on. To my mind this is all on Omar and if Willie is going to go, so should Omar.

I blame Omar more than Willie

It's definitely NOT too early to be concerned about the Mets. Sure it's very early, but we have seen too little evidence that the team is in any meaningful way changed from last year's catastrophic collection of individuals.

I wrote a comment on Kranepoolsociety.com about this and thought I'd restate it here.

I get it that a lot of people question Willie's in-game management and, yeah, it's not great at times. However, the bigger problem is that this Mets team just seems to lack character.

The team was put together by Omar. There are simply too many aging, fading big name/big salary players on this team. You know all those jokes that Yankee fans (and others) like to make about how old the Mets are? Well, there's more than a grain of truth there.

Omar is responsible for this. He signed Castillo to a four-year deal. He traded Milledge and resigned Alou. He decided that it was okay to believe in Pedro and El Duque. He put together this bullpen. He assembled the squad of characterless players. And, he's presided over the understocked farm system. That's all his doing and that's a bigger issue than anything Randolph has done.

Oh, and Omar's responsible for hiring Randolph. I don't think Willie's a bad manager, but he sure looks like the wrong manager now. Bad fits, bad arms, bad legs, bad contracts - that's all on Omar.