Only core that needs breaking up is at ESPN

After suffering through the Fox telecast on Saturday afternoon, I ended up missing much of last night's ESPN telecast. Too many of the national broadcasters don't even pretend to be up on what is happening with the teams involved. I DVRed Sunday night's game, but once it ended in disappointing fashion, the prospect of sifting through commentary from another clueless national crew was not appealing, so I deleted it.

So I am both sorry and glad that I did not have a chance to hear the latest inanities from the mouth of Steve Phillips.

When I think of Steve Phillips talking about the core, the first thing that comes to mind is that Phillips came close to giving away most of the core. And when I hear people talk about getting gritty players to replace the core, it should be obvious that the gritty types only win championships in conjuction with a core of superstars, not instead of it.

Metstradamus has done a great job of laying out both of these points.

Omar Minaya's record has its ups and downs, but he appreciates the value of a core and has generally used sound judgment in assembling it. No blunders anywhere close to the magnitude of a Mo Vaughn or Roberto Alomar. Of course the Mets have financial advantages when pursuing star free agents and players deemed too expensive by their current clubs. But Brian Cashman apparently had the same opportunity to land Carlos Beltran and Johan Santana and he passed. Minaya recognized these players as ones he had to have if at all possible.

The Mets are lucky that they have the resources to go out and get pieces of a core. And they are very lucky that GM Phillips did not give away Jose Reyes and David Wright.

Tell us what you think of Steve Phillips.