Very few things can make it harder to like a person, than association with a terrible event, which is what the Mets are in right now.
I want to write a response to a very particular viewpoint that has been flying around really all winter. The statement is the Mets didn't spend money this offseason, because they didn't have it either due to losses from Madoff (before last week) or now due to money that may have to spent in a settlement (since this past week).
If the above statement is true, then I think a really important question must be asked. From a baseball standpoint, is a budget a bad thing?
In order to understand the argument I am about to make, I will need to create a quasi-strawman to compare to. I know this is weak for making an argument, but I feel compelled to do this (and explicitly state it) so you the reader can understand the scope of my argument. If we didn't have the money problem, then we would spend a lot of money to get high tier free agents, like Cliff Lee, in order to give us the best chance of winning now. That is essentially the backbone of the strawman one can derive from saying that the Madoff situation is preventing us to spend money.
Ultimately, I feel the Mets have done something very mature this offseason in that they didn't spend that much money. Specifically, they didn't have to deal out extended deals to players. That is the scary thing with the spending money approach. You sign a lot of players, to play for a long period of time, and then you are stuck with them on your roster, plaguing your team in later years. The Red Sox and Yankees will both have to deal with this in two seasons when the players they locked in now are aging, but cannot be replaced due to the amount they are owed.
Here lies the basis of my very limited scope argument. If the Madoff situation is the only thing preventing the Mets from spending a lot of money, then in the long term development of the organization, this is a good thing. It is much easier to build a dynasty when broken pieces can be replaced, not have to be kept.
The problem with the above statement is the limit on it. It completely ignores the Minaya era when all we did was spend, spend, spend, and not really make any significant progress in the latter years. To say that the Madoff issue is the only thing keeping us from spending is to say that the Madoff issue is the reason we are not doing things Minaya's way. Personally, I don't believe that. Situations like this are complicated, gray and tend to have a good amount of reasons.
That begs the question why did I write this to begin with? Well I watching a video about situation on the Wall Street Journal, that essentially said in the end that the signs of the Mets were in trouble became clear when we didn't spend money this offseason. While their may be some degree of merit in that claim, it ignores that the Mets also knew they needed a change in offseason strategy, which also prompted a change in spending patterns.
The only substantial, wide scope claim you can draw from this is spending less is an important lesson for the Mets right now, as we learn how to make a team that can always run on working parts and if the Madoff situation is reason why we had to do this (and I'm not convinced that it is), then the Madoff situation was good for the Mets.
