The Mets Face a Vista of Empty Seats and a Discrimination Lawsuit

NYTimes.com:

Citi Field was so empty as the Mets took the field Thursday night, it looked as if every spectator could have fit comfortably in the lower bowl. Even then, people would have had room to spread out. When Curtis Granderson casually tossed a ball into the stands, it landed rows from the nearest fan.

“It’s been a ghost town,” one elevator operator said.

This scene has become more common in the six years since the Mets left Shea Stadium. As the team kept losing, average attendance slowly dropped. Mets games in September have become a punch line.

The Mets’ dwindling crowds are the backdrop to the federal lawsuit filed last week by Leigh Castergine, a ticket sales executive fired by the team last month.

Castergine accused the Mets and Jeff Wilpon, their chief operating officer and son of their owner, of discriminating against her because she was having a child out of wedlock. The Mets apparently indicated to her that she was fired for failing to meet sales goals.

“The claims are without merit,” the team said in a statement. “Our organization maintains strong policies against any and all forms of discrimination.”

Castergine’s suit, in part, attempts to show how difficult her job was by likening it to selling “deck chairs on the Titanic” or “tickets to a funeral.”

The Mets hired Castergine in December 2010 to help curb a steep decline in attendance. It was a crucial time as the trustee seeking assets for victims of Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme sued the Wilpon family, which had invested hundreds of millions of dollars with Madoff.

In 2008, the Mets’ last year at 57,000-seat Shea and the last time they finished with a winning record, they sold more than 51,000 tickets a game, second in the major leagues behind the Yankees. During the inaugural season in 42,000-seat Citi Field, the Mets’ average attendance was about 39,000, although they lost 92 games. The next year, the average dipped to almost 32,500, and the Mets brought in Castergine.

Attendance represents the number of tickets sold, not the turnstile count, so, in reality, Citi Field has had plenty of empty seats.

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Why Are The Mets Playing The Oakland A's???

Dumb. That is interleague play. Another stupid idea by Bud Selig that has long out-lived its usefulness. The Mets should be playing the Dodgers, Giants or Padres, teams in the National league that fans have long known, welcomed and that the Mets even have real history/rivalries with.....and they're facing Oakland in a 2-game series no less?!? Dumb.

RELATED: d'Arnaud set to return to Mets for opener vs. A's

Mets Take 3 out of 4 from Marlins

On the road no less. And wonder what all the "experts" out there ready to dig David Wright's grave think now? I've said it before, the Mets have a "core" they should never give up on no matter what happens: Wright, Niese, Harvey (if he return to form), Mejia and Murphy. The right GM can build a winner around these guys if only Fred Wilpon ever loosens the purse strings:

MIAMI -- Daniel Murphy hit a three-run homer and the New York Mets matched a season high with 17 hits Sunday to beat the slumping Miami Marlins 11-5.

Jonathon Niese (4-4), who has been plagued by poor run support this year, won for the first time since May 22. He allowed less than four earned runs for the 19th consecutive start, giving up three in six innings.

Mets starters have an ERA of 1.74 over the past six games.Niese drove in a run with a suicide squeeze bunt, but the bulk of the offense came from higher in the order.  

David Wright drove in a run for the sixth game in a row.Curtis Granderson thrived again in the leadoff spot, reaching base four consecutive times. He and Lucas Duda each had three hits.Murphy had two hits, including his sixth homer. 

Kirk Nieuwenhuis, making his first start since being recalled from Triple-A, doubled twice.

Rookie Anthony DeSclafani (1-2), making his fourth major-league start, gave up seven runs in 3 2/3 innings and departed with a 7.59 ERA.The Marlins (37-38) fell below .500 for the first time since April 30. Ten days ago they had the best home record in the majors, but they went 3-7 on their longest homestand of the year, losing all three series.

The Mets had scored a total of 13 runs in Niese's previous five starts, but he led 7-0 before giving up three runs in the sixth. The left-hander then struck out Derek Dietrich with the bases loaded to end the inning and his afternoon.

RELATED: Wright leads at third for ASG, but Murphy needs help

Mets Continue To Mess With Daniel Murphy's Head

Today it was announced that manager Terry Collins is moving the slumping Curtis Granderson from the cleanup spot and replacing him with...who else? Daniel Murphy:

Terry Collins is considering moving Curtis Granderson out of the cleanup spot, the manager said after Saturday’s game.

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Update 10:30 a.m.: Granderson will bat second on Sunday. Daniel Murphy will bat cleanup.

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Granderson, who signed a four-year, $60 million deal this past winter, went 0-for-5 earlier in the night. He left six runners on base.

I've been saying for years that besides David Wright, Daniel Murphy is the best hitter the Mets have--a consistent .280 to .300 guy who could easily score around 80 to 100 runs for you and drive in around 70 every year all the while playing a decent 2nd base...if the Mets just left him alone. And just looking at Murphy's career stats, he's more then proven this. But this is the Mets organization, a woeful program operated by Fred Wilpon that hasn't won it all in 28 years and here's yet another reason why. Instead of leaving Murphy (a homegrown talent who always plays hard regardless of the situation) be, the inept Mets management continue to show a willingness to screw with his head. Whether it's constantly putting Murphy on the trading block, incessantly trying him out at different positions, getting into his head when he goes through a periodical slump or in this case, panicking and moving a guy with a lifetime total of 39 home runs to the cleanup spot all because your new multimillion dollar CF is off to a bad start...it's always Murphy who gets the short end of the stick. Will they ever learn to just leave Daniel Murphy alone? He's earned that right.

Matt Harvey Decides To Have Elbow Surgery

ESPN.com:

New York Mets right-hander Matt Harvey has elected to undergo Tommy John surgery that will sideline him for the entire 2014 season, general manager Sandy Alderson said Friday.

Dr. James Andrews will perform the procedure later this month.

Harvey had been steadfast in saying he planned to rehab and undergo a throwing program over a six- to eight-week period in order to be able to pitch next season with a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.

Alderson and other team officials, however, had portrayed that strategy as an uphill battle and regularly had suggested surgery was the likely route.

The GM indicated Friday night that Mets doctor David Altchek and Andrews agreed that Tommy John surgery was the prudent route, although they also were willing to let Harvey try the throwing program to disprove the need for the procedure.

"Based on the conversations that I had with both of the doctors, I felt this would be the right decision," Alderson said. "So in that sense I'm happy Matt has reached the same conclusion."

Harvey reached the surgery decision without ever going to the Mets' complex in Port St. Lucie, Fla., to begin the planned throwing program. He recently had been getting physical therapy at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.

Easily the right decision. There's essentially a 50/50 chance that Harvey returns to his original form, but even that's better than his chances if he'd gone with rehab IMO. Now the Mets should sign definitely Dice-K to a one-year deal, at the very least.

Wlipons Must Pay Trustee, Go To Trial

Just sell the damn team Fred...please:

The New York Mets are preparing for the baseball season, and the team's owners will have to prepare for trial.


U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled Monday that Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon, his family, businesses and charities must pay as much as $83.3 million to the trustee trying to recover funds to net losers in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme. He also ruled that the sides will go to trial March 19 over an additional $303 million that trustee Irving Picard is seeking.


Of the approximately $83 million, only $1.7 million is associated with Mets accounts. The rest is associated with other Wilpon businesses and charities.


The Wilpons' lawyers had filed a motion to have the case tossed entirely, but that was rebuffed by Rakoff in Monday's ruling.


"We are preparing for trial," Sterling Partners, one of Wilpon's holdings, said in a statement. "We look forward to demonstrating that we were not willfully blind to the Madoff fraud."


As a matter of law, Picard had contended, he was entitled to $83,309,162 in Ponzi scheme profit allegedly made by the Wilpons in the immediate two years before Madoff's arrest on Dec. 11, 2008.


The Wilpons had asserted that because they thought they had $500 million invested with Madoff at the time his scheme was discovered by authorities, they actually were losers -- despite withdrawing more money than they had deposited with Madoff.


Picard believes he also is entitled to $303 million in principal invested by the Wilpons with Madoff because, he alleges, they had warning signs a fraud might be occurring. Rakoff has set a high standard for Picard to be able to collect principal -- "willful blindness," meaning the Wilpons would have had to all but have known something was awry with Madoff and purposely looked the other way.


Rakoff wrote in Monday's decision that he is skeptical that Picard can prove to a jury that the Wilpons acted in bad faith with respect to their investment with Madoff, but Rakoff decided the trustee had enough evidence and witnesses to allow him to try to attempt it at trial.


"The Court remains skeptical that the trustee can ultimately rebut the defendants' showing of good faith, let alone impute bad faith to all the defendants," Rakoff wrote in Monday's decision. "Nevertheless, there remains a residue of disputed factual assertions from which a jury could infer either good or bad faith depending on which assertions are credited."

RELATED: $83M question: Will Wilpons lose Mets?

Citi Field Revenue Down 30 Percent Since 2009

Blame Fred Wilpon. When the product on the field sucks, esp. in a rough economy, people are not going to spend their hard-earned bucks on poor play, no matter what spiffy new stadium your team's in:

The Mets' ballpark-related revenue, including parking, concessions, stadium advertising and more, has all together dropped more than 30 percent since Citi Field opened in 2009, and premium-ticket sales have fallen almost 50 percent, according to financial records.


Hundreds of pages of documents, which Newsday obtained under the Freedom of Information Law from New York City, provide a partial window into the cash flow of the franchise, whose owners are dealing with financial challenges because of fallout from the $50-billion fraud committed by Bernard Madoff.


The records do not include some line items that would be found in other parts of the Mets' operations and are designed to show only that the Mets can repay their debts to the city. Not included is revenue from the team's television contract with SportsNet New York and minor league operations expenses and the player payroll. Other records show that the player payroll was $142 million last year and is estimated to be $90 million for the new season.

Mets Release Fernando Martinez

BleacherReport.com:

The New York Mets parted ways with once-top prospect Fernando Martinez on Monday, placing him on waivers to make room on the 40-man roster for Ronny Cedeno and Scott Hairston.


In a way, Martinez represents the Mets perfectly. Signed during the much-maligned Omar Minaya era, Martinez inked a $1.4 million contract as a 16-year-old despite not being eligible to play until he turned 18.


The club signed Martinez at the same time as fellow teen Deolis Guerra, living up to the promise that they would be active in the international market. The two players were regarded as the top Latin American prospects on the market. Neither made it big.


F-Mart was considered among the team's elite young "can't miss" stars. A Newsday report from back in 2006 had a Mets insider saying there was "no way" the club would move Martinez—or Jose Reyes, David Wright, Lastings Milledge, Carlos Gomez, Aaron Heilman, Mike Pelfrey or Phil Humber—for a front-end starter like Dontrelle Willis or Barry Zito.


Only David Wright and Mike Pelfrey now remain from this group, although some people have speculated that Wright will soon be on his way out, too, and that Pelfrey doesn't deserve a job in anybody's rotation.


Martinez was considered a five-tool prospect, but his star began to lack luster almost immediately and failed to shine at all by the end of 2011. There are only so many second chances you can give a guy, even someone who is still only 23.


Part of me wanted the club to hold onto Martinez, especially with the Mets officially in rebuilding mode. But the more realistic side of me knew that this was an inevitability, if not this winter then early in the season once he went down again.


As a pro, Martinez was hampered by injuries that ultimately led to his fall from grace. He played just 60 games with the Double-A Binghamton Mets in 2007 because of a hand injury, and he made only 86 appearances in the Eastern League the following year because of a problem with his right hamstring.


In 2009, it was a right knee injury that sent him to the disabled list. In 2010, it was back pain and the other hamstring. Last year a sprained wrist shut him down.


In six seasons of pro ball, Martinez never managed more than 90 games in any one year. That is almost all you need to know.


That five-tool prospect the Mets thought they had on their hands never hit .300 over the course of a season, never stole more than eight bases and only hit more than 10 homers once. In his major league career, he hit .183 with 24 hits and 26 strikeouts in 47 games over three different years.


I wish you well, Fernando, but it wasn't meant to be.

If he never turns out to be anything Martinez will go down as yet another Omar Minaya bust. But really, what choice did the Mets have here? F-Mart was always injured and the few times we did see him play in the big leagues he looked vastly overmatched. Still, it was Fred Wilpon who gave Minaya the keys to the franchise back in '04, so at the end of the day the blame for F-Mart not working out lies with Fred.

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