Loughlin F. Rodd (Sam) Podcast Proposal New Media Research Studio Professor Bianco March 1, 2014

Can the Mets Win Ninety Games in 2014?

For my NMRS podcast, I would like to examine General

Manager Sandy Alderson’s recent assertion that the team should win ninety games this coming season. Mr. Alderson’s public expectation for the Mets comes as a surprise since the team finished fourteen games below .500 last year and will be without its best pitcher for the duration of the season. That being said, the likelihood of the expectation actually happening is not so far out of the realm of possibility that it does not warrant a thorough analysis. An aside: having worked in sports broadcasting before, I can attest to the difficulty of maintaining a dialogue on one’s own while on air; thus, I would like to have my brother, who is an astute fan, work as my co-anchor on the podcast.

My podcast would be roughly 1.5 hours in length and would look at the Mets potential win total for 2014 through three lenses:

1. The best-case scenario;

2. The worst-case scenario;

3. The most likely outcome.

Each of these segments would be between twenty and twenty five minutes in length and be based upon statistical projections, Spring Training reports and a number of other pieces of information. After I examine the potential outcomes for the Mets through these three perspectives, I will hypothesize as to whether Mr. Alderson has any ulterior motives for making his public ninety win declaration. I plan to cover the following hypotheses within the podcast:

1. Alderson, in preparation for anticipated success with the nucleus of

talented, young players on the team, is attempting to instill a culture of

winning and having high expectations;

2. Mets 68 year old manager , and his coaching staff, has done a

solid job with an awful team over the past three years, but Alderson, who

was a evangelizer in the early 2000s, may want to move on from

Collins next year. Given Alderson’s avant-garde baseball disposition, he might

want to join the ranks of the Phillies, Cubs and White Sox by hiring a younger,

cheaper, statistically fluent and more pliable manager. The theory here is

that Alderson is setting an unlikely threshold for success that would allow

him to move on from Collins when it is not met. Collins is in the last year of

his contract and has engendered a not negligible amount of good will with

the fan base; firing him for having a win total closer to most prognosticators

expectations for the Mets (around 81 wins) may not play well in the press

(something Mets ownership is always conscious of), so publicly declaring

ninety wins as the Mets goal is a way to make firing Collins more palatable

for fans when the team falls short;

3. Alderson was driven by the Mets ownership to make the ninety-win

statement to boost ticket sales. Knowing the ownership’s financial woes, and their proclivity for making bad baseball decisions in misguided attempts to

bring fans to , this is a fairly likely scenario;

4. Alderson truly believes what he said.

This portion would occupy the final twenty to twenty-five minutes of the podcast.

To close out the podcast, my brother and I would give our joint prediction for the Mets’ win total this coming season.