Collins Quotable–2/10

“He plays the game one way – hard.”

-Terry Collins on Kirk Nieuwenheis

MetsGrrl: Reading the Wilpon complaint

I picked it up on Sunday, and I will say this: Friends, I come not to bury the Wilpons, but not to praise them either. But don’t take my word for it, and don’t take the media’s word for it either. Here’s a quick and dirty guide of how to make sense of this document, if you’d like to give it a go.

-MetsGrrl

Read her whole post here, especially for her summary/take on the 360 page complaint filed against the Wilpons.

Which place do you think the Mets finish?

Take a look at the results of my informal Twitter poll. Agree or disagree?

My latest tweets about Wilpons money troubles

NYT: Madoff Had Wide Role in Mets Finances

I’ll just leave this here.

This seriously makes me think long and hard about the Mets and the “Bonilla on the payroll in 2011” disaster.

The Mets are on Craigslist

Click through to view it on the page before Craigslist takes it down. Quickly! Hurry!

via Ted William’s Head

Close enough, Mets Merized

Jon Niese != Freddy Garcia

I’m not one to call out other blogs, but this made me chuckle.

Mets sign Pagan; Announce Dickey deal

The Mets have signed Angel Pagan to a one-year, $3.5 million deal.

Good news. Just stay healthy, Angel. This could be another great year for you.

The Mets also announced they signed R.A. Dickey to a two-year deal, with a club option for 2013. $7.5 million guaranteed.

Let’s hope Dickey wasn’t just a flash in the pan. The knuckleball is almighty and could extend this man’s career by many years.

Also, he’s my (and many others) flavor of the week, month, yeah. He’s just so RAD.

Dickey and Pagan. Two fan favorites. Two players returning next season. One good day.

Collins Quotables–1/31

“I said, 'I know you want to win that second-base job. You're going to get that opportunity. But you better be ready to play some first base and some third base, because they're going
to need backups also.’”

-Terry Collins to Daniel Murphy

Wilpons may look to sell minority ownership in Mets

Here’s the statement from the Mets:

As Sterling Equities announced in December, we are engaged in discussions to settle a lawsuit brought against us and other Sterling partners and members of our families by the Trustee in the Madoff bankruptcy. We are not permitted to comment on these confidential negotiations while they are ongoing.

However, to address the air of uncertainty created by this lawsuit, and to provide additional assurance that the New York Mets will continue to have the necessary resources to fully compete and win, we are looking at a number of potential options including the addition of one or more strategic partners. To explore this, we have retained Steve Greenberg, a Managing Director at Allen & Company, as our advisor.

Regardless of the outcome of this exploration, Sterling will remain the principal ownership group of the Mets and continue to control and manage the team's operations. The Mets have been a major part of our families for more than 30 years and that is not going to change.

As we have said before, we are totally committed to having the Mets again become a World Series winner. Our fans and all New Yorkers deserve nothing less.

My take:

No surprise here. We knew the Madoff issue had put a crimp in the Wilpon’s wallet. I don’t think it’s affected the team in any way – i.e. not spending money for a certain player.

People will champion this as a sign of change, but as they stated in the release, the Wilpons will continue to control team operations.

So, if you got excited, you’re crazy.

And here’s what Mets fans had to say about it on Twitter:

NYC_CHRIS: tide is slowly turing for a good team

nynjpaweather: Great news. Please Donald Trump get in on this!

nick6489: An explanation for the budgetary constraints the fans have been howling at.

TheRealSoxy: Hopefully opens the door for the minority partner to eventually buy out the Wilpons sometime in the future.

Majin_Bernard: It'll be interesting to see the direction of the club going forward with another head honcho.

What do you think?