"He has not yet pored through each organization post-deadline, but a
system that was bottom five might be the 10th best, he said."

These trades got the Mets nothing and they were excessively expensive.
There is a means to estimate the value of prospects and draft choices
and I am not an expert on the math but I know that if they just drafted
and signed from the international leagues they wouldn't had spend NEARLY
as much money as Cohen has spent in these trades as he picked up the
majority of the saleries.

How happy do the Houston Astro's have to be to have Verlander returned
at a DISCOUNT price compared to what signing him would had cost.

I think Cohen paid out 35 million on that deal alone and now has no
competitant starting pitching AT ALL. You can pay for a lot of scouts
and prospects for that do.

I'm not a fan of Cohen and I wasn't from the start. It was evident
immediately after he purchsed the club that the minor league system was
rotten from the inside, and you can not create a sustainable winner
without a steady stream of young players. And he loaded up on free
agents. At least with Sandy at the helm, he had someone who knew how to
at least build a roster.

Epler is a total idiot and has no clue how to build a team. He collects
players like a coin collector collects coins, distracted by the nice
shiney ones. It is not EASY to build an Angels team with Trout and
Otani and Rendon and STILL be a third place team. Somehow Epler never
looked at the 27 Yankees roster to notice that they had 3 starting
pitchers with ERA+ over 130 and a CLOSER who pitched 213 innings to a
tune of a 2.28 ERA and 19 wins.

He seems to fail at math to understand that 1458 INNINGS need to be
pitched in a 162 game season so even if you are lucky enough to get 5
starters with 200+ innings each, that you are still 400+ innings short
of a season.

Expecting Marte and Cahnu to repeat their seasons was foolish
considering the age and injury history, especially Marte who completely
faded in Septemeber the previous year. And they needed to sign at least
2 more decent starters/middle relivers to pad the staff. Just such an
idiot.

Now Cohen is going to learn another thing about baseball economics...
then the team doesn't win, nobody will show up at the stadium or tune
into games. How much revenue will they lose? Plenty. There is nothing
compelling about this club.