Prepared, and not.

I read Dan Graziano’s article about the Jets aggressive draft philosophy and to be honest, I was immediately impressed. Like women, guys are impressed with confident drafting strategy.*

** Why are you shaking your head? You’re trying to tell me girls aren’t turned on by confident draft strategy? You clearly don’t know women.** (yes, I took this idea from Joe Posnanski)

I can’t begin to tell you what it means for a franchise’s fan base (at least its level headed brethren) to know that management has a clear plan.

Its a credit to their player personnel guys and the GM (the trigger man on all these deals), and their owner who he himself had pressure after putting up money to finance a new stadium. The very unpopular PSL issue was a sticking point for many long suffering Jet fans who didn’t come with the already there fan base that the Giants had.

But a very outspoken coach, a hungry defense, and a surprising (to all but Rex’s Jets to be fair) run to the AFC Championship game have Jet fans feeling good about the future.

This of course brings me to the Mets whose recent acquisition of Gary Mathews Jr. continues their reputation for plug in decisionmaking which both confuses me because I don’t see how it helped letting a worthwhile reliever like Brian Stokes go, to bring in a below average slugger like Gary Mathews.

The only rationale I could give is to push Angel Pagan and give him competition at the CF position with Beltran being out.

Mathews had the typical good contract year, at Texas, made a great acrobatic catch that kept getting replayed and cashed it in for a 5 year/ $50 million deal with the Angels. He’s been a .240 hitter since then and hasn’t sniffed decent playing time since Torii Hunter came to town. He’s a fourth outfielder and despite the Angels paying the Mets $21.5 of $23.5 million for the remainder of the 2 years left on the contract, I still feel as though it was an unnecesary move.

At a point, Stokes was one of the more reliable members of the embattled Met bullpen that took a huge step forward after 2 years of down right atrociousness.

I’m sure having the luxury of a fourth outfielder capable of playing good defense will serve the Mets well, I’m just wondering if giving up bullpen depth was worth it? I’m a huge believer in power arms, which the Mets have few and far between.

What’s frustrating isn’t the move, which only time will tell is good or not, its the realization that the Met staff takes each move with plugging one hole with bubble gum while waiting to see what other hole will open up. The Mets don’t have a complete roster still, so that game plan does….nothing. I wish like the Jets, the Mets would get a game plan and put it in place, atleast then, Met fans would be more forgiving over a move as small (in the grand scheme of things) of acquiring Gary Mathews Jr.