N.Y. Magazine: Leitch: The Mets’ Inexplicable Funk

The Mets need you to know that the reason they haven’t made a significant signing in a matter of months is not because the Wilpons were fleeced by Bernie Madoff. “Categorically unrelated,” a spokesperson told CNBC. But for a team that has a new stadium opening, two awful “collapses” in two years, and a crosstown rival spending like Brewster’s Millions, it’s a strange time to suddenly become stingy.

The Mets blitzed out of the gate, picking up two of baseball’s top relievers in Francisco Rodriguez and J.J. Putz. (Actually at bargain rates, relatively speaking.) But the team still had plenty of needs, particularly in the starting rotation. The obvious target seemed to be Derek Lowe, a big-game, big-city pitcher whose deadening ground-ball presence might be especially needed at the new Citi Field, which Mets players who have tried out the stadium say is a “launching pad.” (Perhaps the most underreported story of the Mets off-season: That Citi is expected to be a homer-happy park.) But when it came down to it, the Mets weren’t willing to pony up as much as the rival Braves, and now not only do they not have Lowe, they’re going to have to face him four times a year for the next four years.

(violently rips Lou Courtney’s ‘Hot Butter’n’All’ off turntable)...I thought Citi Field was going to be a pitchers park?