In 2012, the Mets will have $15 more to spend than they would if they had signed Lowe, and they will have saved $9 million over the past three years.

The Ollie signing has not turned out well so far, obviously. This article isn't meant to directly compare Lowe and Perez anyway, it is meant to point out that the Lowe signing hasn't been a great success either.

The Perez article I wrote is meant to instill some hope that he will be able to turn it around.

Lowe is better than Perez; no one is arguing this fact. Gut that doesn't mean the Lowe deal will turn out to be better than the Perez deal.

Lowe is going to have the better numbers this season, but I'd still rather have Ollie over the next two years than 37-39 year old Lowe for $15 mil over the next three years.

I don't understand how it can ever be too early to write an article that basically updates the scorecard on the Mets offseason. I'm not saying that the Braves signing Lowe was a bust; I'm merely saying that he isn't currently living up to his contract. Just like any mid-season article, I am judging this on half a season of baseball. This isn't a Derek Lowe eulogy, it's an assessment of his disappointing start.

As far as replacing Ollie with Lowe, I'm sure if the Mets had actually signed Lowe, he would be on the DL right now.

You can't really know how replacing Perez with Lowe would actually have turned out. Obviously he'd be better, right now. Will that be the case at the end of the year, or have the Mets/Warthen destroyed Ollie? I thought Perez and Lowe would finish would roughly comparable numbers this year, and it'd be hard to expect Lowe to get better in following years. Arguably both contracts are a gamble, but Ollie's got an upside, while Lowe has a downside.

And for all the stats you can throw out there and claim are better, bottom line is that the Braves haven't won enough in Lowe's starts. Perez was injured, and badly coached in Spring and April this year. (Don't tell me he wasn't injured, with the way the Mets pitching performed in June, if he could pitch, he'd be here) While it's too early to evaluate the two against each other, Lowe certainly isn't looking like a clear win, and that says a lot given Perez's unperformance this year.

http://www.ceetar.com/optimisticmetsfan/2009/05...

Wright goes from knowing he's the only one that will get it done, to knowing that one guy can't get it done and he should be selective. He's in an impossible situation. He could be selective and take the billion walks he'd get and hope the guys behind him suddenly start hitting, or Manuel finally stops putting Tatis there. Or he could try to get a hit. Part of the power outage is the general approach the Mets have preached this year. Going the other way, battling in atbats. Other parts of it is just that they never throw him pitches to hit out. Especially lately. They do what they can to get him out on the corners and whatnot, and if they walk him, so be it, but if they get the calls, hit the spots, gravy.

This is one of the reasons Babe Ruth is still probably the best to ever play the game. he routinely homered on pitches outside the strikezone. he could go days without seeing a strike. And he hit it so hard that even his pop-ups went so high and came down so hard they were frequently dropped.