Omar Minaya Makes Lemonade

This hot stove season, young as it may be, has already been frustrating for us Mets fans.

I think that may just come with the territory of cheering for a team that, traditionally down on it's luck, blew a 7 game lead in the last month of a season in which they were supposed to go to the World Series, but what do I know? I'm only speculating here.

My point is that we want to see something. We're irrational. We want results - now. Where's Johan Santana? Weren't we supposed to get A Rod? And Miguel Cabrera? Why didn't we trade for Brad Lidge?

And we forget that the free agent signing period is only 8 days old, and that the World Series has only been over for three weeks, and we're hard on Omar Minaya because we all placed varying degrees of blame on him for the debacle that was 2007, and he almost gave Yorvit Torrealba 15 million dollars, and he treated Paul Lo Duca like crap.

And we forget that it's not as simple as just "getting" Johan, or Eric Bedard, or Scott Kazmir. We forget that signing A Rod might not have been the best idea (I still think giving a 32 year-old a 10-year contract is unwise. While the treatment of Paul Lo Duca has certainly been shameful, in making Paulie Walnuts a martyr we conveniently ignore the fact that a 36-year old catcher made an initial contract demand of 3 years and upwards of $20 million. He can say all he wants how badly he wanted to stay, but a reasonable deal for Paul Lo Duca would have taken an awful lot of downward negotiation to actually work out. The man was slimed, but from a baseball standpoint it might have made good sense in the end to say "thanks for the memories, Paulie."

After the Torrealba deal did fall through, though, we were left in a bit of a catching quandary, to say the least. Despite the signings of Ramon Castro and Luis Castillo, taking care of two of our immediate priorities, we still had a need that had to be filled and could have potentially detracted from the all-important search for pitching. Who wants Michael Barrett? Jason Kendall? Gerald Laird? Whoopee! Ramon Hernandez and Bengie Molina are going to be hard to pry away from their respective teams, methinks.

So instead Omar made a very shrewd deal, getting another serviceable, mid-range talent catcher in Johnny Estrada (who we didn't have to sign for 3 years and $15 million, and who can be non-tendered in December if something better comes along) for...

We won't be seeing this next year

Guillermo Mota! That's right, I didn't misspeak and mean to say Carlos Gomez. Or Phil Humber, or Kevin Mulvey. Guillermo Mota - the late lead-blowing former steroid user and weakest link from last year's atrocious bullpen. Not a top prospect. Not anything remotely valuable. Omar traded Guillermo Mota, and swindled the Brewers into giving us an acceptable, switch-hitting catching option to platoon with Ramon Castro when they could have held firm and parted with nothing more than a bag of balls, which quite frankly many Mets fans probably would have been okay with.

Yeah, we all want an ace. We want to see marked improvement in our Metsies before '08 begins. But give it time. You don't think our GM with a zeal for flair and pulling off the big deal isn't trying to make that happen, if not for the sake of the team, then certainly for his own self-preservation?

We often lose sight of the fact that we no longer have a complete moron as our GM. We forget that having a GM who understands the value of not making a move just for the sake of making a move is a very good thing, and a fresh departure from years past. In our own passion for winning, and outrage at the way this season ended, we forget how lucky we are for a change to have some very good, or at least remotely able, minds at the top of our organization.

Omar was able to bend the book on conventional wisdom, and dealt from a weakness to fill a need - that is brilliant, and so un-Steve Phillips it's got to put a smile on your face.

The jury's still out on just how good a hot stove season this will end up being, but give credit where credit is due. You're pretty happy right now. This small move was enormously encouraging.

(Photos courtesy images.orblogs.com, thefeed.blogs.com)