The New York Mets have been in turmoil for several seasons; blown playoff spots in 2007 and 2008 led to losing seasons the last two years and they're treading water one game under .500 so far in 2011.
Today, Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon made blunt criticism of several of his players in an article in the new issue of the New Yorker magazine by Jeffrey Toobin, out today.
SB Nation New York summarizes Wilpon's comments on three of his star players, Jose Reyes, David Wright and Carlos Beltran:
On Reyes:
"He thinks he's going to get Carl Crawford money. He's had everything wrong with him. He won't get it."
On Wright:
"Really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar."
On Beltran:
"We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series. He's sixty-five to seventy percent of what he was."
The article also has some comments on the controversy surrounding Wilpon's involvement in convicted financier Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme; according to ESPN New York, Madoff made comments trying to absolve Wilpon of guilt:
Madoff then offers Wilpon endorsements in the article, trying to absolve the Mets ownership family of knowledge of the Ponzi scheme.
The disgraced Madoff wrote Toobin in an email: "Fred was not [at] all stock market savvy and [brother-in-law] Saul [Katz] was not really either. They were strictly Real Estate people. Although I explained the Strategy to them they were not sophisticated enough to evaluate it properly, nor were most of my other individual clients. They were not in a position to perform the necessary due diligence and did not have access to necessary financial info or records."
What a mess. Baseball Nation and SB Nation New York will continue to update this story.