It could work…as it allows Dunn to stay in LF next year, or move to RF if we don’t resign X.

Dunn may indeed be worth 2-3 years at 25-38 million.

His power numbers are pretty consistent (40 HR’s exactly, 4 years in a row….right at 100 RBIs.) However, his BA sucks. He’d be lucky to hit .250 for us.

So essentially it comes down to….can we live with Damon in CF, and Dunn in LF with Matsui DH? Or are we better served wth Damon in LF, Cameron in CF, and Matsui DH?

geesh, that was smart. who was the genius that thought of it?

http://tinyurl.com/5vhher

Pete, I love the blog and all the work you put into it. But this statement is pretty absurd. It sounds like you were listening to some random ESPN baseball “analayst” like John Kruk who says that the only reason the Marlins beat the Mets to end the season for two consecutive years is because the Mets are hated by them, and so the Marlins up their game accordingly. But give this thing some critical thinking for a moment.

Here was the Mets 2008 record against divisional foes:

Mets were 10-8 against Florida.
Mets were 11-7 against Philadelphia.
Mets were 12-6 against the Nationals.
Mets were 7-11 against the Braves.

The Phillies and Braves always play the Mets hard, regardless of whather the Mets are filled with a bunch of overconfident dudes on the team, right? If you are familiar with the Mets history then I doubt you will dispute this. That leaves the Nationals and Marlins. The Mets were 12-6 against the Nats this year, which is very good. And the Mets were 10-8 against the Marlins. The Marlins were an 84-77 team in 2008, so that is an adequate performance by the Mets versus that team. In case you don’t know, the Marlins were 10-8 against the Phillies this year, and 8-10 against the Braves this year. So no team in the NL East had more wins in 2008 against the Marlins than the Mets did. It is unfair to criticize the Mets for not dominating them like thee did to the Nationals, because the Marlins are actually a good team.

The bottom line is that the Mets played very well against the two teams that you are probably assuming gets those 5 magical extra wins against them, the Nats and Marlins. The Mets also did very very well against the Phillies. And the Braves always beat the Mets. Only once in the last 11 seasons have the Mets posted a winning record against Atlanta. Surely, you can’t attribute their 2008 struggles against Atlanta as some newfound hatred that the Brave players have for guys like Jose Reyes. The Braves and Mets have been fierce rivals for the last decade.

Also, the Mets divisional record was 40-32. THis is right in line with divisional records posted by other solid ballclubs like the Yankees and Phillies and Dodgers. And it is a better divisonal record than Boston. The point is, they did pretty well against their own division. If you turn 5 of those losses into wins, you get a record of 45-27. This is pretty crazy unless you are a completely dominating team or play in a super-weak division. And the Mets don’t fit either of those categories. They play in the toughest division in the NL, and they had major issues with their pitching staff all year long that prevented them from being a dominating team like in 2006. A record of 45-27 would have been 2nd best in baseball by a wide margin, and only worse than the Angels by a very slight amount. And gues what: the Angels were probably the best AL team and played in the weakest division in the AL. It is just unrealistic to expect the Mets to have 5 extra divisional losses due to bad additudes, when in fact, their divisional performance was strong.

So you are completely wrong about this point.