No one kills Mets management as much as I do, in fact I love calling out the clueless Jeffey Skill Sets and that shyster David Howard, but I’m kind of puzzled with the reaction of some Mets fans to the offers the club has made to Jason Bay and Bengi Molina.

 

Most of the criticism goes to the fact the Mets made just a $5 mil bump in monies to Bay. It’s a first offer, it’s a start, it now gets the negotiation going. The front office has concluded that Bay fits the club better than Matt Hoilday and I agree. The Mets even used (are you ready for this?) STATISTICAL  ANALYSIS to show how many fly balls Bay has hit last season would translate to $iti Field and it’s safe to say Bay would send many a souvenir baseball into the left field seats.

 

The big knock on Bay is his defense which I feel is a fallacy. The guy did have 15 outfield assists last year and his fielding number are better than league average plus with Carlos Beltran in CF I’m willing to bank on his ability to cover the ground that Bay can’t with the trade off of 30+HR and 100+ RBI.

 

So the Mets first offer is 4yr/$65mil. Bay’ counter off will be more years and of course more money. The thing to watch is who besides the Mets are in the running for Bay’s services. His former team the Red Sox are not known for giving out big deals to 30 year olds and have a track record of not getting personal with the help. Theo Epstein is all business. We’ve also seen that Bay is not giving the Sox a home team discount.

 

The Highlanders now with Curtis Granderson are not players for Bay. The Mariners? As bad as we feel the Mets are with dough they won’t be out spent by the M’s. The one team that could come in and make it interesting is the Angels.

 

It looks like the Mets want Bay and most likely will get him. For all the criticism of Omar he usually gets the guy he wants, it doesn’t always work out but count me as on board for Bay.

 

With all the jokes about the Mets cornering the market on backup catchers they still need a legit #1 backstop and if it takes 2yrs for Bengi Molina, then sign him. Sure he’s long in the tooth and as Joe Mc Donald said last night on our PRO BASEBALL CENTRAL show, you run the risk of Brian Schneider revisited but for 2yrs/$18 mil I’ll take a shot that Bengi is still on his game this year and is at worse a backup to Josh Thole in 2011. The one concern I have about Molina (and it’s not his speed on the bases ) is last year when the Giants brought up uber catching prospect Buster Posey to add some more pop in the G’ints flaccid offense, Bengi Baby didn’t ‘t respond well to having a pocket full of Posey, staring at him on the bench, so attitude is a bit of a red flag.

 

But like Casey Stengel said, You have to have a catcher because if you don’t you’re likely to have a lot of passed balls.”

 

Mets Police has a great post where Detective Dan had an actual conversation with an employee in the Mets office. Dan sent back his season ticket invoice, not with a check but with a “no thank you” note. It looks like the Mets are getting a lot of these no thanks notes from season ticket subscribers so they are now burning the phone lines to ask why and boy oh boy, did Dan tell them why.

 

Maybe, just maybe, there has been a revelation in management that the Mets fans are not mad anymore, but worse, they are apathetic. At least with hate there is still passion. Remember it’s a thin line between love and hate but once apathy sets in you’re fucked.