Bay Watch may be officially over, and it’s the worse case scenario for the Mets.

Adam Rubin’s report this morning that the Red Sox are considering getting back to Jason Bay is immeasurable in its potential to embarrass and further weaken Omar Minaya.

With the Wilpons staying in the background this off-season, and in perception they are making Minaya own the club’s future. This is potential political suicide on their part. If not corrected in some manner it will get worse before it gets better. And if Bay is lost, Minaya will have to move quickly to improve his 25 man roster. It’s the only way now.

They’ve set themselves up for this by giving the public face of trying to improve the club. If an unknown Plan B emerges because of an off-season of failure, it will not sit well with the fan base. A rebuilding plan that emerges suddenly in December will lose the Mets even more credibility in a town that doesn’t tolerate a lack of candor well. A decison to rebuild from the beginning would have been an easy sell after the last three seasons.

For an organization that’s always been obsessed with what’s on the back page of it’s city’s tabloids, they’ve never realized that they cannot have it both ways. On one hand, you cannot seek to spin the bad news while not doing enough to create good news on your own. Since the 2007 slide, this has been the Mets operational model.

Neither Minaya nor Jerry Manual have enough personal capital to protect the club from the negatives that will come from a disasterous off-season once spring training starts. There are just too many holes in the roster to overcome a juggernaut of unfavorable attention that will come with inconsistent play.

Much will be learned about the future of the Mets during the next few days.

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Bobby Parnell’s first start this season has to be put into perspective. At best, it should be paralleled with what would be a first spring training start. To bad it was against hitters who’s timing wasn’t the same as it would be in March. No one was probably surprised that it wasn’t very pretty.

The move of Parnell to the rotation was likely a well reasoned baseball decision and part of a blue print that goes back to last season. A lot of people were on the same page with it, including Parnell.

The Mets did not want Parnell to be their fifth starter at the beginning of the year and made it no secret that they wanted him to make the team as a reliever. It was clear early on that he would do just that. According to the blue print for Bobby Parnell, the next step would be to move Parnell to the rotation if and only if the opportunity presented itself.

It did.

If the Mets were in contention they would not be attempting to take a top set-up man and make him into a starter. Retrospectively, the Yankess probably would not have done the same with Joba Chamberlain last season had not their young owner so publically admonished his baseball people.

There were two times where it would have been appropriate to move Parnell to the rotation. One is next spring. The other is right now and under these circumstances.

Because the Mets had a plan for development and are following it, they get good marks for it. But they will now have to stay with it through the next 7 to 8 starts that Parnell will get. In many ways this is a blessing as they get to see if Parnell is a viable starter going into next year. If not, they will find out now and everyone has made productive use of an opportunity.

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Baseball America listed Savannah Sand Gnats right-hander on its Prospect Hot Sheet:

Signed out of the Dominican in ’07, just a few months after Jenrry Mejia, Familia has emerged as ace of the low Class A Savannah staff. The 19-year-old righty lacks polish, but his low- to mid-90s fastball already rates as plus-plus, according to one scout for an AL club. The reason: Familia has exceptional life on and command of the pitch, a combination that’s rare for such a young pitcher. His changeup his is second-best offering for now, and he’ll need to refine his breaking ball to make it as a starter. On the season, Familia has gone 9-6, 2.90 in 20 starts for the Sand Gnats. Over 118 innings, he has stuck out 97, walked 40 and allowed just 94 hits (three home runs).

Toby Hyde rated Familia as the 27th ranked Mets prospect at the beginning of the season. Says Hyde:

Familia ranks here on the basis of a nice pitcher’s frame and a fastball that boasts average to plus MLB velocity already. Familia, despite inconsistent velocity, consistently threw strikes. In his first start of the year, Familia was throwing 93, 94 mph while that was down to 89-92 in his second appearance. The previous fall, scouts reported that he was consistently in the mid-90s. Familia’s off-speed stuff, a slider at 78 mph and a change at 84 are both about as far away from MLB caliber as one might expect from a 19-year old.

It will be interesting to see if the Mets promote Familia to AA. The firing of Tony Bernazard may have left a decision making vacuum. One theory is to let young players have a season of success that they can build upon. This is a extremely defensible position. If Familia has the goods, he’ll make the AA staff in spring training next year.

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Indian’s owner Paul Dolan was frank in his comments to ESPN:

Due largely to the team’s troubled finances, Dolan said the recent trades of Cy Young winner Cliff Lee and All-Star catcher Victor Martinez were necessary long-term moves

The Texas Rangers are currently receiving monetary assistance from Major League Baseball. If Dolan’s numbers are the norm, its easy to put the recent unprecedented firesale by the Pittsburg Pirates into perspective.

The Mets attendance numbers are not what they hoped for this year in the new ballpark. The Wilpons lost money in the Madoff scandal. Some reports are indicating their primary partner Saul Katz also lost money. Still, the SNY network appears to be a profitable deal. Along with the WFAN contract, its what hopefully seperates the Mets from clubs like Cleveland.

The direction the club takes running up to spring training next year will serve as evidence of just what kind of fininacial position ownership is in.

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I started listening to Met fans a couple of weeks ago on WFAN. They are a passionate bunch. Yet they are realistic. They know that this season has become a wash and it’s time to look to the future. So its why a collective shrug of the shoulders occured over the reacquisition of Anderson Hernandez and the recall of Elmer Dessens to fill in the gap for two more wounded.

I agree with them.

The thought that some of the Mets talent which is in AA is not ready should not be applied here. They are not being asked to come up and contribute in a pennant race as was Fernando Martinez. This year is over. Players like C Josh Thole, 2B Jonathan Malo, SS Ruben Tejeda not only need to see the big leagues, but need to be seen. Maybe even 1B Ike Davis who’s big league pedigree gives him a leg up. Nick Evans should be getting big league at-bats right now. Whichever starter whoever is closest to being ready for the big leagues should be brought up to get the 6 starts that might remain. To be fair, allowing Bobby Parnell these starts serves a similar purpose.

After such a season, the Mets badly need to develop their young players. Take advantage of what you have. This is spring training fast forward.

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The Mets did one thing right yesterday. Well, two if you count beating the Rockies. The other was firing Tony Bernazard. Beyond those, everything else could not have been more wrong and sickeningly more revealing.

Not having access to the SNY feed of Omar Minya’s press conference yesterday, I linked onto Matt Artus’ excellent blog, Always Amazin’. He was going to be live blogging with an active comments section.

I followed along with moderate interest until Minaya clearly called out Adam Rubin as a source with an agenda. Minaya went straight to an innuendo that Rubin sought Benazard’s ouster to get his job.

I quickly leaped to incredulous and found myself commenting in Artus’s comments as “Coach”. Bobby Ojeda made the remark on SNY that he hadn’t felt that uncomfortable since Darryl went after Keith before that spring training picture. I agree with Bobby O and found yesterday’s press conference equally surreal to that spring training day.

Yeterday was one of the most revealing moments in the history of the franchise and it showed just how very small it is. And not in size, but in stature. Any organization that allows and indeed condones the conduct of a man like Tony Bernazard is one without class. Omar Minaya’s childish shoot the messenger spin yesterday served to confirm it.

Minaya both hid behind and dismissed his own organizations Human Resources report. Minaya said he was shocked by some of the findings. He seemed to indicate that some of it might be innacurate, but any chance at a follow-up was denied when he made his astonsihing accusation that Adam Rubin sought to get Bernazard fired. Writing in NY Newsday today, Wallace Mathews said it best:

The Mets are the only organization in professional sports that can call a news conference to announce it has killed the Wicked Witch – and wind up running over Toto instead.

So in Minaya’s world, Bernazard never would have been fired if Rubin hadn’t been reporting on the later’s clear misconduct.

Essentially this means that Minaya and Jeff Wilpon supported Bernazrad’s thuggery around the organization. They let a man of Bernazard’s stature – both as a team VP and a 10 year major league veteran – run around the entire place treating people with vulgar contempt. No reasonable person can believe that Minaya and the Wilpon’s didn’t know about the way Bernazard conducted himself. Thus a reasonable conclusion is that he did so with their blessings.

Tony Bernazard was a cancer that everyone on the planet recognized except for the Wilpons and Omar Minaya. Allowing an employee with such power treat people that worked under him in an abusive manner does not speak well of the people who sign the checks.

All of this is in conflict with my own personal feelings and impressions about the Wilpons. Their love for the game, the team and the city are and always have been genuine. But it is perhaps their own naivete that everyone in the game is like them in that they see a team as family and a family thats working together to the common good. Were they seduced by a Rasputin like character in Bernazard whom knew how to suck up to the boss?

Perhaps my conclusions now are an effort to walk back my own initial impressions here about all this. Maybe kind of like Omar should have done yesterday when he tried to deflect the heat onto an honest reporter. I hate to think that decent people like the Wilpons would give approval to abusing people that work for them. I have great affection for organization I was once part of as it was the place I spent formulative adult years, and do not like watching them lose. But I take it in a strange personal way on days like yesterday that I have a hard time understanding myself.

This one’s not going to go away, and it probably really shouldn’t until the Wilpons do some serious self assessments. I hope that both of them start making some trips around their organization to do some damage control. Look their people in the eye and tell them how much they appreciate all they do for the organization. I believe a gesture as this best reflects the kind of people they are. Otherwise the harsh narrative that Wally Mathews advanced today will become the reality.

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Nick Evans in all fairness made the club in spring training, but in a numbers oriented move the OF/1B was moved down to make room for the signing of Gary Sheffield. The question that remains is what the Mets will do when Livan Hernandez is needed as that fifth starter.

Matt Cerrone speculated today that the club could opt to move Darren O’Day out. I agree that this could be a smart play. The two games this weekend at Citi Field had to change quite a bit.

The new ballpark is big and likely to be bigger than anyone suspected. The gaps are much deeper than anticipated and ball that get to the wall may become triples more often than anyone would have liked. The high walls in the outfield seem to deaded the ball and there’s a difficult well to play in RF. You saw an accomplished major league outfielder in Ryan Church have trouble with it. Marlon Anderson showed that he won’t be very good at home in CF. It makes Jeremy Reed much more valuable that expected. Sheffield and Daniel Murphy could prove to be liablilities in the OF when the Mets play at home.

If Sheffield hits, he’ll stay. And if he does, he might replaced after his 3rd time at-bat by Church or Reed. Hopefully Murphy will be able to hold his own in the OF. If not, the Mets could find themselves with a team that does not match their own home stadium.

The Mets have a fly ball pitching staff and it will be a disaster if they find out they don’t have a fly ball outfield.

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Thank goodness someone finally said it. Matt Cerrone accurately tells how the tightness in Johan Santana’s elbow was blown out of proportion by the media for its shock value. Here’s Cerrone’s take:

…actually, if you paid attention during that week of spring training, elbow-gate never really started… he never really complained of pain in the elbow, he complained of pain in the muscle and tendon in the tricep, above the elbow… also, the Mets never needed to send him for an MRI, and, believe me, if it was truly an elbow injury, he would not have been allowed to look at a pitcher’s mound, let alone throw a simulated game three days later… he’s fine, so it seems…

It was always never more that tightness in a spot above the elbow in the tricep that always gets tight. Both Ray Ramirez and Mike Herbst learned under the late Tommy McKenna. They knew what they were dealing with, and so did the the rest of the staff.

Many in the media made fools of themselves and seem to have developed a tendency to go after the Mets medical staff. They did so last year in the Ryan Church concussion escapade.

After getting burned in 1991 over some back spasms John Franco had, Frank Cashen put a muzzle on Steve Garland and me. I don’t know what the situation is now. But if the writers had either listened to or had gotten their information from Ramirez, the story would never had grown legs as it did. But the way the New York print media likes to run with things, accuraccy can’t get in the way of a good headline.

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Marty Noble - the most senior of all Met beat writers – has a blog that you must have on your favorites. Yesterday, he blogged about John Franco being in camp. Here it is:

John Franco is back in uniform, working as a Spring Training instructor. And his responsibilities are? “I do what Darryl does,” he says. But Darryl Strawberry’s job description is “to be Darryl Strawberry.”

“I’ll have to grow,” Franco said.

Franco, always a conspicuous presence in the clubhouse when he played, is quieter these days. “I’m on the other side of the room now,” he says.

I know what they mean about Franco. I was a frequent foil for Franco and catcher Rick Cerone in 1991. For some reason I was always getting fined in the kangaroo court that Franco insisted upon. We’d often wished Franco were an everyday player who’s energy and exhuberance the team could have fed off. I wonder if Darryl still gets on Franco about the two walk-off homeruns he hit off of him when he pitched for the Reds.

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And do Jerry Manuel’s comments let the cat out of the bag?

Manuel managed the White Sox when Albert Belle and Frank Thomas were there, so he’s accustomed to dealing with star players who can be difficult to handle. Manuel said that Ramirez’s bat would take care of any perceived problems.

David Wright’s statement of support and Jeff Wilpon’s denial leave it less than certain what the Mets will do, and it could be part of the sort of high stakes poker played by Scott Boras. It’s a sure bet that Boras would love to draw the Mets into a bidding war with the Dodgers for Ramirez while at the same time getting the Mets to resign Oliver Perez.

At any rate, I admire the Wilpons and Minaya from not getting into a bidding blitz. The beginning of spring training is over the near horizon and will seem like its upon us after Sunday’s Super Bowl. It’s easy to see why the Mets can feel they can stand pat with the players they have. Aside from his curious acquisition of multiple left-handed light hitting outfielders, Minaya’s done well. He took care of the last two innings in a manner which exceeded expectations and the pieces are there to refit the bullpen in a new, more confident image.

But virtually nothing was done for the line-up and the bench. Alex Cora is a net equal to Damon Easley and there are way too many lefty-hitting outfielders to choose from. It appears that fo the right side the club is depending on Fernando Tatis to have the same kind of year along with the development of Nick Evans power.

Its not hard to see what the acquisition of Ramirez would mean in the fourth hole batting in front of Wright and Delgado. Let’s face it, Ramirez is the most dangerous right handed hitter to play in the big leagues since, well, maybe never. The size of ballparks has changed in the NL and teams can get out slugged more frequently than in previuos years. No wonder teams carry 13 pitchers.

But maybe its that the Mets do not have the money to compete as they once did before Jack Madoff. With the first morning of pitchers and catchers maybe two weeks away, the cards that the Mets have are playing will be flipped up on the table. If neither Ramirez or Perez or at least a Ben Sheets is not signed, then it will be clear the poker hand they had wasn’t very good.

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