Trust me I know the feeling… I live in Seattle and our team has been pretty bad the last few years… but when King Felix pitches we are pretty much sold out… at least 10,000 extra seats full….

Shea capacity is 55,601

Mets home avg last year 47,579

Though I guess that average from last year may be inflated from big series against good teams I would think the Mets as a good team in a huge market generally draw well (I don’t live in NY so I don’t know)…

The only guy I’m sad to see gone is Delois. He’s the only pitcher in our farm system that has high-end-of-the-rotation potential. But that’s all it is, POTENTIAL. He’s young and could blow his arm out at any moment.

Incidentally, as a Mets fan, I would have traded these same exact players straight up for Phil Hughes. Sometimes I’m unhappy with Minaya as our GM, but then I see how bad it could be. Just heard a rumor that Smith went back to the Yanks to ask for Kennedy and Melky and was told to get lost.

Also, provided Santana plays as expected, the Mets can probably expect to see an extra 20,000 in ticket sales on the nights he pitches, which, if we expect $50 of revenue for each of those seats (tickets/parking/food all very expensive here in NY) and he pitches 16 home games is an additional $16 million in the Mets pockets (not including post-season). Perhaps 20K is optimistic, but you get the point here … not a bad deal financially either once they get him signed.

I understand your points, and agree with most of them, and it seems we agree on the only one I was trying to make, namely that there was no way the Twins to come out looking good in this situation. That’s intended as a blanket indictment of the organization as a whole, from Pohlad to Ryan to Smith, and would encompass much of what you’re talking about.

In other words, it was the Twins themselves who largely created conditions (1), (2) and (3) that you just outlined, in which case I have a hard time cutting them slack for a possible “yes” answer to (4).