Saving This Franchise: Mets need to bully up

Last year at this time, the New York Mets were the prohibitive favorites to rep the National League in the 2007 World Series. As late as early June, the Mets were on the verge of shedding their traditional other-team-in-town status and steamrolling everything in their path.

The Mets could really use a healthy Pedro Martinez. (Getty Images)

And then, they weren't. They played .500 ball from that point, showing the self-contentment of an overfed zoo animal and the urgency of a guy just exiting a toilet stall. Everyone dotes on the September collapse, but the Mets could have gone 0-for-the-month if they hadn't taken the summer off.

Given that the National League is about to get more competitive -- hello, Brewers, Dodgers, Diamondbacks and Rockies -- can we Save This Franchise? I think we can. Martha, get me my protractor, my analysis cloak and my Metsie stamp set.

Short-term outlook: Most of these "Save This Franchise" dispatches have taken a look at organizations that are beyond help -- the Pirates, Reds and their ilk. The Mets, after last September, are perceived as a team in disarray. That's an irresponsible suggestion, bordering on moronic. The Mets will win their division by a wide margin and should be installed as the easy favorite to claim the pennant.

Assets: They have best young three-player core in the majors (David Wright, Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes). They have capable veterans at first base, second base and in left field. Their rotation is anchored by two 25-year-old starters, who averaged eight strikeouts per inning in 2006, and Pedro Martinez, still cowboying up, down and all around after all these years.

Even if trigger-happy general manager Omar Minaya doesn't lift another finger -- for that to happen, he'd have to be kidnapped, felled by a stroke, or suspended by an evil arch-nemesis in some kind of viscous jelly -- they resemble an 88-win team ... which, not so coincidentally, is what the Mets were in 2007. If they had won one more game in September and the Phillies had won one less, none of these conversations are happening.

They recently improved by subtraction when the Braves took the aging and ineffective Tom Glavine off their hands. I wonder if the Mets sent a thank you note or perhaps a fruitcake.

Also, for the geographically impaired, the Mets reside in New York, where their TV and marketing intake pays for an awful lot of $4.97 quarts of milk. This is an advantage akin to being born with a silver spoon in your mouth and a platinum umbilical cord dangling below your navel.

No, the Mets don't have the ticket, merchandise or broadcasting revenue streams that their privileged cross-town rivals do. But when you remove New York Post back covers from the equation, they're not competing with the Yankees.

Their real competitors are the two National League teams that can match them resources-wise, the Cubs and Dodgers. Those are the only ones who, like the Mets, can spend stupidly without consequences. If the Braves or Brewers hand out a dumb long-term contract that occupies 15 percent of their payroll, they're screwed. If the Mets do the same, they can swallow it and move on.

Liabilities: They're old and creaky at a handful of key spots. The aforementioned vets -- Carlos Delgado, Moises Alou and Luis Castillo -- have all seen better days, especially defensively. If Delgado's bat doesn't gain back the speed it lost last season, they'll be power-deficient from the left side of the plate.

As has been mentioned several zillion times, the depth in the starting rotation and bullpen doesn't inspire confidence. Counting on Orlando "El Dorque" Hernandez to give you 175 injury-free innings as a fourth starter is like counting on a wedding band to pull off "Paranoid Android."

As for the 'pen, they're sure putting a lot of eggs in the Duaner-Sanchez--won't-go-on-any-more-late-night-munchie-runs basket.