Time for a change?

By issuing general manager Omar Minaya a vote of confidence Monday, Mets COO Jeff Wilpon put to bed any talk of his fledgling franchise making immediate changes within its front office.

On one hand, it's hard to fault Wilpon for his willingness to stay the course. Expected to be one of the top teams in the National League this season, the Mets have been plagued by a host of crippling injuries, silencing their offense, weakening their bullpen, and landing their team in fourth place. New York hasn't had its top four hitters -- David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, and Carlos Beltran -- all in the starting lineup since May 10. It has been without top setup man J.J. Putz and starter John Maine since the beginning of June. And within the last month, outfielder Fernando Martinez and starter Fernando Nieve, two players called upon to fill some of the voids left by all the injuries, also went down.

In his willingness to keep Minaya around even after an extremely disappointing season, Wilpon certainly took Mets' unfortunate injury situation into account. What team could possibly overcome the losses of so many key players? No general manager can be expected to plan for so much bad luck, so it's perhaps unfair to blame Minaya for the Mets' disastrous '09 campaign. Once the team has a chance to get healthy in the offseason, they'll surely be competitive again in 2010, so why should Wilpon bother shaking things up so drastically at this point?

But while it's true that Minaya can't be blamed for the number of injuries the Mets have suffered, he can be blamed for the way he's handled them. While players like Mark DeRosa and Matt Holliday have been dealt and names like Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee have been bandied about the rumor mill, Minaya has largely sat on his hands, making just a minor move to swap right fielders with the division rival Braves. He has done nothing to address the Mets' lack of depth behind Johan Santana in the starting rotation and nothing to replace the free-agent-to-be Delgado's production at first base, both in the short and long term. The only piece they've added via trade is Jeff Francouer, who was so disappointing in the eyes of the Braves front office that it actually dealt him within its division for nothing more than Ryan Church.

What does the Mets' lack of activity on the trade market suggest? Perhaps they simply aren't willing to take on more payroll after the Wilpon family reportedly lost hundreds of millions in the Bernard Madoff scandal. Perhaps they're optimistic that Beltran and Reyes, in particular, can return by August and help the team make a late run at a Wild Card berth. Or, most likely, they simply don't have the goods to get a deal done.

The proof of the latter point is in the way Minaya has responded to the Mets' injuries compared to the way other teams have handled theirs this season. The Phillies, for instance, summoned J.A. Happ from the bullpen to fill a need in the starting rotation. The Yankees have used homegrown products like Phil Hughes and Phil Coke to replace oft-injured relievers Brian Bruney and Damaso Marte. The Red Sox overcame the loss of Mike Lowell by moving Kevin Youkilis to third base and using AAA call-ups like Aaron Bates and Jeff Bailey at first base. All these teams found adequate replacements from within -- either by making adjustments to their major league rosters or finding reinforcements from the minors -- in a display of their organizational depth.

The Mets, on the other hand, have tended to cherry-pick whoever is available off the free agent market or the waiver wire. To plug holes in the outfield, Minaya has looked to Gary Sheffield and Fernando Tatis. To add depth in the infield, Minaya has brought in the likes of Angel Berroa and even took a look at Julio Lugo. To overcome some of the team's pitching deficiencies, Minaya has turned to Tim Redding and Elmer Dessens.

Meanwhile, the few organizational options the Mets have turned to clearly did not belong in the major leagues. Martinez, the Mets' most highly-touted prospect, was the ripe old age of 20 when he was called up in April, struggling to a .242 on-base percentage before getting injured. Among the other youngsters counted on to fill holes on the Mets were Nick Evans (.131 career average in AAA) and Bobby Parnell (18 runs in 25.1 innings last year combined AAA and major leagues).

All of this -- the Mets' inability to make trades, their tendency to give a roster spot to whichever washed up veteran is available, and their lack of suitable replacements at the minor league level -- is indicative a team with absolutely no organizational depth. That is 100 percent on Minaya. In five years as general manager, he has done a great job attracting premier talent to Queens, bringing in the likes of Pedro Martinez, Beltran, Delgado, Johan Santana, and Francisco Rodriguez. But at the same time, he has completely failed when it comes to developing talent within the organization, making the Mets so dependent upon a handful of star players that an injury to any of them would be crippling.

The roof caved in on the Mets' 2009 season when they could do no better than a bunch of aging has-beens to patch the holes on their team, mainly because no one from their AA or AAA affiliates -- a combined 45 games under .500 -- could serve as either an adequate fill-in or a major piece in a blockbuster deal. It's the reason why the Mets are a fading laughingstock, instead of a club that can compete in spite of its injuries. It's also Minaya's single greatest failing as a general manager, one that, perhaps, should cost him his job.

Quit dreaming, Yankee fans

Apparently, all it takes is one innocent comment from J.P. Ricciardi to make an entire legion of Yankee fans absolutely lose their minds.

The Blue Jays general manager set off a media firestorm yesterday, when he insinuated that Roy Halladay, an early-season Cy Young candidate and arguably the best pitcher in all of baseball, could be had for the right price.

As is the case anytime a superstar player is involved, all eyes immediately turned to the Yankees. FOX's Ken Rosenthal mentioned the Bombers first on a list of potential Halladay suitors, saying that the Jays could be intrigued by some highly-touted prospects currently in the lower tiers of the Yanks' minor league system. Meanwhile, YES Network blogger Glen Giangrande wrote in a post entitled "Halladay: A Natural Fit for Pinstripes" that the Yankees should somehow go and get the stud righty without giving up Phil Hughes. Another blogger suggested that Halladay's friendship with former teammate A.J. Burnett might cause him to push for a trade to the Bronx. Yankee fans, of course, ate all of this up, taking to sports talk radio and message boards with dreams of watching a formidable starting rotation led by Halladay and CC Sabathia.

Let's digest this for a second: The Blue Jays are supposed to trade a legitimate ace who won't become a free agent until after the 2010 season -- within their division, mind you -- for a package headlined by some low-minors prospects they hope will pan out -- leaving a 23-year-old pitcher who is already in the majors out of the deal, of course -- all because Halladay apparently has some unsubstantiated desire to be reunited with a former teammate. Dream on, Yankee fans. Believing any of this talk reflects poorly on us as baseball fans, it reeks of big-market arrogance, and really, it's just plain stupid.

First off, recent history says aces rarely get traded within the same league, let alone the same division. Look at the top five pitchers traded in the 2008 calendar year: Johan Santana, Erik Bedard, CC Sabathia, Rich Harden, and Joe Blanton. Bedard was the only one to stay in the American League, but even still, Baltimore made sure it sent the current Seattle Mariner as far away as possible. Look at all the top-flight pitching Billy Beane has packaged out of Oakland in the last five years: Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, Dan Haren, Harden, and Blanton. Not a single one of them stayed in the American League. Look at Florida, who over the years had no problem trading big bats -- Mike Piazza, Carlos Delgado, Paul Lo Duca -- to the division-rival Mets. Yet even they shipped Boston's Josh Beckett out of the NL East back in 2005.

But for argument's sake, let's say the Yankees did want to make a run at Halladay. After all, the Jays and Yanks did pull off an intra-division blockbuster a little over 10 years ago, when Roger Clemens was dealt to the Bronx prior to the 1999 season. Keep in mind what the Yankees gave up in that deal, however: David Wells, coming off an 18-4 season in which he finished third in the Cy Young voting; lefty-specialist Graeme Lloyd; and speedy second baseman Homer Bush. That's three major leaguers, all contributors to a historic 1998 championship winning squad, for the 35-year-old Clemens.

There's no doubt the price would be just as steep for Halladay, who is three years younger than Clemens was at the time of his trade to the Yankees. At the minimum, every young piece on the Yanks' major league roster -- Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera, Brett Gardner, Alfredo Aceves, Phil Coke, David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, and yes, even Phil Hughes -- would have to be in play. Top prospects in AA and AAA, most notably Austin Jackson and Jesus Montero, would also have to be in the conversation. What incentive do the Blue Jays have to trade a stud of Halladay's caliber to a team they'll see 19 times a year without pillaging the Yankees of their top young talent? Absolutely none.

That's actually what makes a potential Halladay trade so unattractive from the Yankees' perspective. Despite essentially spotting Boston an eight-game lead in the AL East, the Yanks trail the Sox by only one heading into tonight's action. A primary reason is that unlike last year -- when Hughes and Ian Kennedy combined to go 0-8, Cabrera earned a demotion to the minors, and Cano hit a career-low .271 -- the young guys are contributing in a big way this year. Hughes has been dominant in a relief role (16 strikeouts, six hits in 14.2 innings), teaming with Coke, Robertson, and Aceves to stabilize a once-shaky Yankee bullpen. Cabrera has already matched a career high with eight home runs, Cano is back above .300, and Gardner has given a team typically characterized by its plodding veterans an element of speed it hasn't had in recent memory. Why tinker with any of that at this point?

Certainly, there is no team that wouldn't want the services of Roy Halladay. But Yankee fans should expect that he'll just be given away on a silver platter to a division rival. The Yanks would undoubtedly have to give up a ton to get him, including a lot of important pieces on a team that's 15 games over .500, and ultimately, that's just too high a price to pay.