Coming To Grips With Losing Jose Reyes

If there is one thing the Mets executed perfectly since the end of the season was to condition the Mets fans to expect to lose Jose Reyes. While I'm very disappointed Jose Reyes is gone, it took me zero time to get over it. If I went in to this off season thinking there was chance the Mets could seriously re-signed Jose Reyes back and I got blindsided by the ESPN scroll that he signed with the Marlins, I would have been devastated.

Jose Reyes has faults. He hasn't played over 133 games since 2008. He has what could be described as "chronic" hamstring problems which is a problem for a guy whose #1 attribute is speed. But I'm a traditionalist. If I have a good home grown player, I want him to start and end his career in a Mets jersey. It's not just with the Mets, I like to see that everywhere in every sport. I don't want to see Pujols leave St. Louis and LeBron shouldn't have left Cleveland. I just like when a star stays with one franchise like Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripken. We're coming to a point where when everyone comes back for an Old Timers day, Gaylord Perry's jersey won't look so unique.

I was recently thinking though, while Jose Reyes said all the right things about loving New York and wanting to come back, could you really blame him for really wanting to leave? In 2004 they signed Kaz Matsui and moved him over to 2nd base, somehow the Mets got him to sign a 4 year 23.25 million dollar contract that was way under market value (when David Wright got 6 years/55 million the same month) and he's the only major league player that I've seen have to be re-taught how to run. Was he really treated that great by the organization?

It's crazy but one of the things that annoy me the most about it is from a statistical and historical standpoint. He's the Mets all time leader in Triples and Stolen Bases. Reyes is no longer a Met but he took those records from a beloved, all-time Met in Mookie Wilson which is what I really hoped he would be. Now those records just belong to some former Met that never really lived up to the promise of what we wanted his career to look like.

Jose Reyes - NL Batting Champion...and well deserved

Jose Reyes is taking alot of crap for the way he went about winning the NL Batting title. People see it as him being a coward and taking the easy way out to winning the batting crown. Just like last night's blown save by Jonathan Papelbon wasn't the reason the Red Sox didn't make the playoffs (it was a month in the making), Jose Reyes taking his last two at bats off did not win him the batting title. It took 537 at bats of hitting .337 that did it.

The Mets weren't playing for anything. I don't know why people are making such a big deal about a guy trying for something that would benefit him individually in a situation like that. It's not easy to win a batting title and now for the rest of time he can see his name on the list of former NL batting champions. I'm almost positive I would have done the same thing.

Then people talk about the fans who came to see Jose Reyes. There are two types of fans who showed up at the game yesterday, the suckers who bought season tickets and finishing out the string (you knew what type of season this was going to be) and the guys who paid two bucks on StubHub to get in (I was one of them the night before). Be happy that you got to see a classic Reyes bunt base hit, got to give him his ovation as he was pulled from the game and got an early ticket to go to McFadden's.

On a side note: Hey Rob Parker (from ESPN), why does Derek Jeter's name have to come up at all in your column? You're not un-biased enough to have a legitimate opinion on what Reyes opted to do yesterday.