Is it Time for the Mets to Clean House and Rebuild?

For about two or three years, Mets fans have been entertaining the idea of "trading the rotten core." It is impossible to turn on talk radio for too long without hearing some fan call up and demand that the Mets get rid of their best players. Now obviously it would not be such a smart idea to dumb our most talented players and replace them with "gritty clutch players" who are not talented. Just look at the 2009 team which won only 70 games after the stars were hurt. The gritty clutch Alex Cora playing with two torn thumbs could not propel the Mets to be anywhere near competitive.
The "trading the core" to get rid of them idea is just a reaction to pain from excruciating seasons in which the Mets collapsed with these players. It is not a logical idea. However, the real question that Mets fans should be asking themselves is whether the team should be sellers this offseason to try to build a team that will be competitive in a couple of years (not to get Alex Coras at every position andwin the World Series in 2011). This is a very interesting question as the Mets have some intriguing talented players that could be of use to another team and could fetch back some prospects. We probably would not want to trade good young players who are under club control for a while like Ike Davis and David Wright. We would only want to trade players who are not under club control for too much longer, such as Jose Reyes and RA Dickey. The idea is that if we will be unable to compete in 2011 anyway or if our odds are not so good, and we are not sure that we want to re-sign them especially for the money they will command, we can capitalize on these assets and get some good prospects in return. Unfortunately, this would only work with players who do not have bad contracts. The Mets have a bunch of talented players (Beltran, K-rod) and somewhat talented players (Jason Bay) who
unfortunately have bad contracts. Trading these players would likelynot yield any prospects unless the Mets would be willing to eat a lot of their money (which they won't be as all Mets fans know). Therefore, the point of dealing these players would be to dump money. Now I don't know about you, but I don't care if Fred Wilpon saves some money. It seems that he has a fixed budget of money for the team to spend each season and saving money this year will not lead him to increase that next year. And the players will long term bad contracts (Bay, Johan Santana) will be very hard to get rid of. So a "rebuilding" move is pretty much pointless unless it yields us prospects that we can use.
That being said, the Mets do not have too many options to trade. They can trade Reyes, but will they really get value for him? He is making $11 million and has only one year left on his contract. His value is not too high right now. I'm not sure how much we'd get for dumping him. RA Dickey is coming off one good season. I'm not sure whichteam would give up too many good prospects for him. If Beltran plays well and is healthy, he can be moved at the deadline, but by then we should know if we are in it or should be dumping players.
In short, I think that it would not be smart for the Mets to "rebuild" at the expense of 2011. As I've discussed earlier on this site and as I will show further in my upcoming Mets 2010-2011 offseason plan, I think the Mets can have some sort of shot to compete in 2011. The possible gains are not enough to warrant giving that up. Instead, the Mets should look to rebuild by actually spending money in the draft and in international signings (something Sandy Alderson has promised to do). That is the way to rebuild. Then each year you phase out an old player or two or three and replace them with rookies who are actually talented and are ready having played a year in AAA and at least close to a full year in AA. (The mistakes of rushing and destroying prospects and not spending in the draftwere key errors of the Omar era that left our farm system in the shape it is in.)
I must make one final point. The Mets success in 2006 was largely due to their incredible production at CF and SS. These positions are usually black holes for teams offensively. The Mets had top offensive and defensive players at these positions. A team cannot just get rid of good players at the four spots where it is hard to replace them (Catcher, CF, SS, 2B). A star at these positions is much rarer than anything else (even an "ace"). The Mets cannot dump Reyes unless they have a plan to replace him at SS (which they don't). Even if they would get a top pitching prospect and a top 1B prospect, they would lose out dramatically at SS and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it. That is why it is key to keep stars at these rare positions, and that is why I think they should sign Reyes to a contract extension rather than dealing him.