Trying To Keep Up With The Joneses.....

Why did the Mets sign Pedro for so much money? Are they trying to copy Steinbrenner and overpay gies who will suck? He is obviously in decline and is guaranteed to not stay healthy for 4 years. If you're going to try to emulate the Yankees, you've got to spend more money on more guys. The more guys you pick up, the more likely you are to get someone who will produce.

I'm a Yankees fan, but also a New York fan, so it's sad to see the Mets making such a poor move like this.

Some interested stats on Pedro's performances from http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/gammons/story?id=1946349

Year---BaseRunner---Hits---Strike Outs---StrikeOut/Walk Ratio (all per 9IP)
2000------7.22-------5.31------------------------8.82
2001------8.19-------6.48-----12.57--------------6.52
2002------8.98-------6.50-----10.79-------------5.98
2003------9.79-------7.09------9.93--------------4.38
2004-----11.20-------8.00------9.41--------------3.72

Granted, his numbers should improve slighty since he won't be facing a DH anymore, but it's blatantly clear that he's declining. So why sign him? Maybe it was a financial tradeoff for the Mets. There's definitely going to be more interest in the team this year. I'm sure a ton of Mets fans will buy jersey's with Martinez's name on it, maybe not to rout for him, but to shove it in the face of all the Yankee's fans. But what about the following year? The honeymoon period will be over and the Mets will still be stinking it up.

Kudos to Martinez for getting the Mets to sign him for 4 years and millions and millions of dollars.

(P.S. I had to make up the chart with all the '-' because i orginally spaced it out using spaces, but all the text just moved back into a jumble after I posted it. Maybe it's time I learned some HTML)