Let me start off by saying that I grew up on Mike & The Mad Dog on WFAN 660 AM. I never cared for Mike, mainly because he was such an avid Yankee fan (and a blow-hard). I was really drawn to Russo because he hated and ranted against the Yankees (along with everyone else) constantly. He hated on the Mets too, but it wasn’t to the extent that he did so against the Yankees; and I respected that.
When Russo left WFAN a few years ago, I stopped listening. I didn’t have a SiriusXM subscription, and I wasn’t going to buy one just to listen to Mad Dog talk about all the teams in the country that I have no interest in. So, when I heard that Russo was getting a show on MLB network called High Heat, I was ecstatic that I could listen to him every day again talk about baseball, of all things.
He started hosting High Heat in 2014 and so I didn’t watch religiously. The Mets were mostly irrelevant so I didn’t really get to hear much about my team during its daily broadcast. However, as we all know, the 2015 Mets became very relevant, and that’s when I started to DVR the show. I really started to notice the hate and the dismissal of the team on a day to day basis by one, Christopher Russo.
He killed the Mets throughout the year, and to be honest, most of the time they deserved his negativity. The pathetic lineup that they were putting out on a day-to-day basis between the months of May and July has all been well documented. Moving into September, he was one of the last that said the Nationals were finished. He really seemed to hold out hope they would come back vs. the Mets. Once the playoffs began, he picked against the Mets every round, so naturally I didn’t tune into him lapping up the results of the World Series.
Now, moving into the Winter Meetings, I tuned back in to see his reaction to the recent flurry of moves. Surprise, surprise; he was dismissive of the Mets’ moves. However, the way he was being dismissive of the Mets this time, really got on my nerves.
“I don’t like the Mets offense at all, they’re losing Cespedes, they lost Murphy. I see the Mets as a .500 team again next year the way they were before Cespedes joined the team. (Paraphrased).
I’m sorry, what? Did Russo really say that the Mets were going to be a .500 team in 2016 because they probably won’t re-sign Cespedes?
Chris, the reason why the Mets were a .500 team before Cespedes was because they were a depleated team prior to the trading deadline. While what Yoenis did for the Mets after the trade deadline was nothing short of astonishing, to say it was the only factor driving the Mets into the playoffs last year is ludicrous.
The same week that the Mets acquired Cespedes, they lengthened the bench by acquiring Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe as well. The bench was the most glaring flaw in the first half 2015 Mets because Terry Collins was forced to bat guys like Eric Campbell and John Mayberry Jr everyday, after a plethora of injuries. Russo doesn’t take into account that they got the extra bench pieces plus d’Arnaud and Wright back from the DL shortly after Cespedes’ arrival.
What the Mets have started to do this off-season is make sure that that problem doesn’t happen again in 2016. So while Cabrera and Walker don’t create the splash that some other names are, they are solid additions to strengthen and lengthen the team. It now puts Wilmer Flores in a super utility type position, giving Terry three options at short stop and second base each. And the off-season is not nearly over yet.
Chris Russo, as much as I respect him, doesn’t know squat about the Mets. He is just another ranting talking head that only sees things from a 400ft view. After all, last year he did love the Michael Cuddyer signing.
