Forget quality control; how about some freaking common sense? That story is on their sports page – doesn’t anyone in MSNBC’s sports department know anything about baseball? Unfortunately, they’ve already fixed the story, and the headline’s been truncated.

It is impossible to sign Manny and keep under the luxury tax theshold in 2009
It would be worse in 2010 when the Mets would have to resign or replace four starting pitchers and three starting position players, the entire bench, and at least five members of the bullpen with little money coming off the books.

If the Mets could sign Manny for $20 million in 2009 and $25 million in 2010, the only way they could do it and remain under the luxury tax threshold in 2009; 2010 would be impossible.

In 2010:
Santana’s salary is up $1.00 million. MANNY’s salary is up $5.00 million.
Jose Reyes’ salary is up $3.25 million. David Wright’s salary is up $2.50 million.
K-Rods salary is up $3.00 million. JJ Putz’s salary is up $3.60 million.

Without replacing Delgado and Schneider, this offsets Delgado’s 12million, Schneider’s 5.4 million, Wagners 7 million, and Schoeneweis’s 1.6 million coming off the books.

Signing Manny would force a downgrading the starting rotaion in 2009 by replacing Pedro Martinez and Oliver Perez with Tim Redding and Freddy Garcia. With Manny the 2009 starting rotation would be Santan, Maine, Pelfrey, Redding and Garcia with Neise and Figueroa at AAA, a position worse than the beginning of 2008. Not signing Manny would allow the Mets to have a rotaion of Santana, (Perez or Sheets), Pelfrey, Maine, and Redding with Garcia, Neise, and Figueroa in reserve at AAA.

Signing Manny would prohibit any improvement to starting pitching again in 2010. Then, the Mets would have to replace Redding (3.0 mil) and Garcia (8.0 mil) as free agents once again. In addition Mike Pelfey – a Scott Boras client – is up for arbitration along with John Maine again. The Mets would be hard pressed to maintain their downgraded starting pitching next year.

Carlos Delgado, Brian Schneider will have to be replaced or resign at higher money plus Ryan Church, Angel Pagan, and Jeremy Reed in arbitration. The rest of the bench and the bullpen will have to resigned or replaced. Manny is a financial vacuum cleaner sucking every potentially available dollar into his wallet and away from other improvements.

stop being idiots, yeah the dude is an awesome right handed bat…when he wants to play, but we don’t need that problem. I’m honestly really sick of a bunch of young dudes who know nothing about baseball except for playing fantasy sports and watching it bitching that we “need” manny…..we have an awesome team, we had a lame duck manager and a lot of pitching woes lastyear. there’s no reason not to believe that with another start signed and the solid bullpen omar has put together that this line up can’t win. please, SHUT UP, we don’t need any cancers on this team, not getting manny isn’t the end of the world. Grat right handed bat, again he sure is, but a pain in the ass, definitely….if we did sign him, I"d deal with it, but understand that this team can win, stop being a bunch of fantasy playing whiners and believe in your team

We might have gotten Alex Ramirez (all too real…see below) instead:

http://minors.baseball-reference.com/players.cgi?pid=34953

This guy hit 23 batters in 106 innings…one hopes they play “Wild Thing” when he goes out to pitch.

but ESPN says he’d love to have Manny Ramirez in his lineup.