What kind of contender can Wilpon’s Mets be?

Howard Megdal

If you are a fan of the New York Mets, you've probably spent much of the past week debating, internally, or with friends, the wisdom of the Mets trading for Troy Tulowitzki of the Colorado Rockies.

But Mets general manager Sandy Alderson, once the willing enabler for Fred and Jeff Wilpon's false promises to spend, is finished pretending. That's probably for the best: There aren't many outlets left that would treat those promises seriously anyway.

Asked about whether the Mets could afford to add Tulowitzki to a payroll, in the largest market in the league, that ranks in the bottom fifth, Alederson responded by citing Tulowitzki's salary, along with David Wright's and Curtis Granderson's, this way: "20, 20, 15 and what, 22 dwarfs?"

And so here we are, deep into the post-Madoff years of Fred Wilpon's ownership of the Mets, and nearly four years into Sandy Alderson's rebuild. They've held up their end on the baseball ops side. Now we're going to see the limits of what Alderson can do, knowing ownership can't give him the financial help any perennial contender needs. The owners certainly haven't approved the spending on Tulowitzki yet, and it is hard to imagine they will.

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