Is the writing on the wall for Jim Duquette?

Jim Duquette has made a number moves in his short tenure as General Manager of the New York Mets and thus far and one would have to say that up until this past month the majority of them have been pretty good.

It's easy for a general manager to dump veteran players for prospects at a trade deadline, so he cannot be given too much credit for collecting players like Vic Diaz and Kole Strayhorn. Obtaining Richard Hidalgo for David Weathers and Jeremy Griffiths has paid obvious dividends but giving away Jaime Cerda was an obvious mistake. We'll give him a pass on Cerda because the Wilpons forced Jim to re-sign John Franco and Steve Phillips was the one who signed Mike Stanton. Essentially, everything had been going good for Jim ...

This month, between Kris Benson and Victor Zambrano, Duquette and his team of superscouts are looking extremely unqualified to run the New York Mets. So far Kris Benson has pitched in three games as a member of the Mets and the fans are seeing pretty much the same thing from him that Pittsburgh saw for years: flashes of brilliance sandwiched neatly between downright terrible starts. 6 runs in 7 innings against the anemic Diamondbacks and an absolute beating at the hands of the Atlanta Braves (7 earned runs in 5 innings). It's been years since Benson has held opposing batters to any sort of impressing BAA and while he has good "stuff", he's also been very hittable.

The bad news about the Benson deal is that he may not even sign with the Mets. He (and his family) currently live in Atlanta and may decide to wait until the offseason to see what kind of offer Atlanta comes with. Imagine us giving up Matt Peterson, Ty Wigginton and Justin Huber to watch Benson stink for the Mets and then sign with the Braves this Winter so he can sharpen his game under Leo Mazzone? At this stage, even if the Mets do sign him, it's going to be for more than he is worth simply because the Mets have backed themselves into a corner and put themselves over a barrel by trading for a guy that was not sure to sign. The better he pitches in 2004, the more money he can command from us. If he continues to pitch poorly, he may decide he is uncomfortable in New York.

In regards to Victor Zambrano, it has officially become a public relations nightmare. Victor Zambrano had been very good for the Mets ... right up until he was pulled out of a game in the second inning with pain in his elbow.

The Mets claimed that Scott Kazmir was (1) too cocky, (2) too far from the major leagues and (3) destined to fall victim to injury due to his build. As luck would have it, the Gods have completely mocked the Mets. (1) Kazmir has acted very mature about what he called a devastating trade, (2) will debut in the next week or two for Tampa Bay and (3) seems to be rather healthy ... unlike Victor Zambrano.

We certainly do not know what Kazmir is going to become at this stage, nor do we know if he will remain healthy, but we do know now that it's Zambrano who has the injury problems caused by his natural natural throwing motion. You would think that the Mets, living in the media capital of the world and already struggling with their image as an organization would not trade their blue chip #1 pitching prospect unless they were absolutely certain that he would struggle and/or that Zambrano was 100% the goods ... and healthy. It turns out that this was not the case. The Mets either lied outright, or were incompetent: neither of which are acceptable.

There were rumors about Zambrano having arm problems, but one would assume that the Mets would be 100% SURE that those rumors were fabricated. Any doubt about Zambrano's elbow should have immediately squashed a deal. Zambrano will be 30 next year and Kazmir is is still younger than most minor leaguer players.

This may spell the beginning of the end of Jim Duquette. Jim came to the table with no real GM experience, no real reputation and no real special skillset. The thing Mets fans really admired about Duquette were his claims to build from within, get younger (and better defensively) and hold on to our prospect base.

There is no need to rehash the failure thus far to get better defensively, but the moves for Benson and Zambrano completely contradict Duquette's plan. Benson and Zambrano are both going to be 30 next season and neither are close what you would call proven performers. Both have been noticeably inconsistent and both are coming off of serious arm injuries a few years ago. To obtain them, we traded away a handful of our better prospects, including our top two pitching prospects (one of which was considered by some the best pitching prospect in all of baseball). In a nutshell, the Mets just got a lot older and a lot less healthy while depleting the farm system.

To be a fly on the wall would allow one to determine whether these deals were driven (or forced) by the Wilpons ... but until we hear proof of such, we have to assume that the buck stops with Jim Duqette. There is a worst-case scenario in all of this and right now the Mets are on the perfect track to drive it home.