Apparently there's still a large misconception floating around major league circles. Allow me to clarify you GM's out there who happen to be reading this blog looking for ideas:Jim Duquette no longer works here.
How else could one explain this phenomenon, the one which manifests itself into White Sox GM Kenny Williams requesting Filthy Sanchez and Mike Pelfrey for Freddy Garcia...a pitcher that is experiencing some "dead arm" issues.
Williams obviously has been drinking the Chuck Lamar kool-aid while reading his new book "The Best Trades Are The Ones You Don't Make, Unless The Mets Are On The Other End Of The Phone".
Well, the other end of the phone is now in Baltimore, and thus is the perfect bridge to the results that you've all been waiting for:
What is most surprising to me about this year's Hall of Hate class is that it doesn't include a single player...which leads me to your vote leader, WFAN's Mike Francesa. Francesa led the way with a whopping 316 votes. Francesa is currently on vacation, but will return once again to the WFAN airwaves with the comfort of knowing that all of the hate that he has spewed on the airwaves towards the Mets, with the express purpose of firing up Met fans everywhere, is slowly working. He has turned his supreme and irrational hatred of the Mets, which has manifested in his support for his Yankee arch-rival Red Sox during a close pennant race in hopes the Mets would be swept, into induction into the very exclusive company of the Hall of Hate. For that, he deserves our congratulations.
Also, by your vote, Jim Duquette is indeed a proud member of the 2006 Metstradamus Hall Of Hate class. Duquette received 270 votes, putting him second out of the fifteen nominees.Duquette is currently the Vice President of baseball operations for the Baltimore Orioles, and no doubt scheming to try to acquire Mike Pelfrey for Rodrigo Lopez to cement his reputation as the greatest enemy of the New York Mets franchise. Although Duquette has a long way to go to earn that title, he feels that if he works hard enough, it's more than an achievable goal.
Induction into the Metstradamus Hall Of Hate via fan voting is a good start towards that goal. There's no better way to learn how to be a good general manager is to cut your teeth and oversee a colossal screw up, learn from that colossal blunder, then go somewhere else to put what you've learned to good use.
This year's induction class will here to forth be known as the GM class, as Steve Phillips also made the top three via your vote receiving 221 votes over an 11 day period.
If you are ultimately responsible...as Steve Phillips was...for bringing David Wright and Jose Reyes into the organization, then you have to had done some extremely bizarre things to have so many Met fans hate you, as 221 of you do. You can point to the whole "24 and 1" debacle from the Alex Rodriguez free-agent negotiations. You can point to the trades from Mo Vaughn and Robby Alomar. You can point to the irrevocable relationship with Bobby Valentine which indirectly led to the Art Howe era.
But most of you will point to the line that reads "all of the above".
It's worth it to note that although the fourth place vote-getter missed out by a significant amount of votes, it is rather impressive that a man who has been dead for close to two decades received 145 votes.
So congratulations to this year's inductees, and thank you to those who took time out to vote. Here are the complete results of the voting:
Mike Francesa 316
Jim Duquette 270
Steve Phillips 221
Dick Young 145
Guillermo Mota 120
Jeff Torborg 117
Pete Rose 116
Mel Rojas 111
Joe Torre 108
Richie Hebner 65
Eddie Murray 30
Tony Fernandez 27
Anthony Young 23
Alejandro Pena 17
Gene Walter 8
17 comments:
Metstra...you may know this but Mike Pelfrey can not be traded this year.
I did.
You should let Ken Williams know that. He obviously isn't clear on that rule.
Or he is and think that Omar isn't clear on that rule.
Metstra:
Brilliant work. The Duquette Hall of Hate plaque is priceless. Guess Francessa's would have to be a "double wide". Your site continues to entertain with it's creativity, humor, and subject matter.
The fact that Dick Young is not a member of the Hall of Hate shows that there are not enough people age 35+ casting ballots.
The man tramautized my youth. The Seaver trade was probably the franchise's low point.
Duke screwed up, to be sure. But I don't think we can hate him because his intent was not evil, just misguided.
Young, on the other hand, was looking to drive Seaver out of town, was a mouthpiece for the Mets management and protected a relative working for the team.'
I hate him!
I've never listened to Mike and the Mad Dog, but after reading Sports Guy's running diary of the show one day, I couldn't help but be annoyed. So Francesa got my vote. That and the Billy Wagner music debacle was by far the dumbest, most blown out of proportion, so-called travesty I've ever heard of.
Thunder Matt's Saloon
To quote Eric Cartman from South Park - "Tom Hanks? Tom Hanks couldn't act his way out of a nut sack".
Mr. Hanks - You pick a team, you stick with the team, no matter how bad things get.
Cripes, I root for the triad of bad, Mets, Jets and Isles.
As for the Hate Of Fame, I am a tad over 35 myself, but do not quite remember the whole Dick Young thing. I was just starting to become a fan at the time. I gotta find these stories.
As for Pelfrey and trading him, there have been various reports about him being able to be listed as a PTBNL. Some sites say yes, others no.
Metstra - Thanks for the heads up on Neil Smith.
Holy Crap!
I was one of the many who posted on other boards that Pelfrey could'nt be traded because of rule 3(b)(7), the Inky Rule.
I was wrong. :(
Pelfrey can be traded now as the player to be named later. It has been done before.
Anyhow, they can trade him now, send him to the minors (he cant stay on the ML club) and then when January comes around (one year after he signed) ship him to the other team.
Kingman,
That has been an idea I've kicked around for a while. Don't be surprised if next year holds the debut for the veterans committee.
Who in the world would want Pelfrey as the player to be named later if he can stay in the Mets' organization for 6 more months and possibly get hurt? That's just absurd. And, from the Mets' POV, why would they want him around, pitching for them when he really belongs to another organization. I don't understand why his name keeps coming up as trade bait to begin with.
As for hate, all I can say is "how quickly we forget." Steve Phillips may have brought us the Alomar and Vaughn era, but he also got us to the World Series with signings and trades such as the ones that brought Robin Ventura, Mike Piazza, Al Leiter and Turk Wendell to this team. Yes, he's a better analyst on ESPN than he was GM for the Mets, but we cannot forget all the good things he did for this team.
How can you guys vote for Steve Phillips on this one? Yeah the guy is annoying, yeah he made some mistakes... but he also led us to a World Series and drafted some of the guys that are now our core.
A-Rod signing? Gimme a break, I didn't want that loser on my team anyway.
Robby Alomar? Coming off an MVP-ish year Philips was supposed to know Alomar was done?
C'mon guys... there are many worse GM's.
P.S. Get over Scott Kazmir!!!
adoniram,
I agreed with you on Phillips until the Toronto Star wrote a story today (and hotfoot brought it to our attention) that Phillips offered offered David Wright for Jose Cruz Jr. in 2002 when Wright was in single A Cap City and Cruz was hitting in the .220's, so to heck with him.
Worse GM's? Please name them. Please name the other GM (or GM's) that traded their number ONE prospect for a MEDIOCRE pitcher with arm problems. And before you give me Brian Sabean (Liriano and Nathan for Pierzynski), who has done as many good things as bad for the Giants, did Sabean come out years later and tried to claim that he was the lone management type that was against the trade, but didn't have the cajones to veto the trade even though he was the GM?
Although I DO subscribe to the theory that without that horrible trade there would be no Omar Minaya, and thus no Pedro, Carlos, or Carlos...why did it have to take the WORST trade in the history of trades to make that happen?
So I'll get over Scott Kazmir on my own time, thank you.
I am to young to remember the Seaver stuff with Dick Young, but I do remember the mean article he wrote before Doc game back from rehab in 1987 that the fans should all boo Doc. For that he deserves induction too.
Don't forget that David Wright came to the Mets indirectly from the loss of Mike Hampton to free agency. He was a supplemental draft pick the Rockies owed us for signing Hampton. Yet another Steve Philips mess up that we got LUCKY on. But of course Philips even trys to throw away our luck by trading him for Cruz Jr. You really can't make this stuff up.
OK, the worse GM's comment was referring to Phillips, not to Duquette although I see how that can be confusing since I followed it immediately with the get over Scott Kazmir comment.
I still maintain that there are worse GM's than Steve Phillips. As for Duquette, yeah, the Kazmir trade was an abomination. However, you gotta remember when he says he didn't like it that he was only the interim GM. That's a big factor.
adoniram,
Absolutely that's a big factor. Duquette was always a puppet for the Wilpons from day one. The Wilpons wanted Kazmir gone so he was gone.
But what gets me about Duquette was that he comes out and says he was against it, trying to save his own skin when everyone KNEW he was a puppet in that deal. If he's going to make a big deal out of being against that deal, then he should have said something THEN! Saying something after the fact to the media to cover his ass just makes him look like a complete moron. He had his chance to speak up during the fateful meeting.
Ultimately the Wilpons are to blame for that debacle. But Duquette trying to cleanse himself after the fact was pathetic on his part.
As for Phillips, there were worse GM's than Phillips, I agree. But if Riccardi takes that Cruz Jr. for Wright deal, how would you feel about the man who traded Wright AND Jason Bay? Like I said...I was willing to defend Phillips until I heard about that. That's inexcusable.
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