Why Are the Mets Still Saying They Are "Buyers" at the Trade Deadline?

With another awful loss to the Nationals last night, the New York Mets have fallen to fourth place and 10 games back of the NL East leading Philadelphia Phillies. They are also 6.5 games back of the Rockies in the NL Wild Card standings. While that does not seem like a lot, there are eight, yes, eight, teams in front of them. The odds of the Mets still making the playoffs have become quite slim.

How slim? According to coolstandings.com, a site that does literally one million simulations of the remaining part of the baseball season to project playoff chances, the Mets have a 1% chance of winning the division and a 0.7% chance of winning the wild card. Cool Standings uses strength of schedule, remaining home and away games, average runs scored and against, and several other statistics to come up with their projections.

Last night the Mets' lineup had combined for a total of 18 home runs on the season. Five of those came from Jeff Francoeur, all of which were hit while he was a member of the Atlanta Braves. Five players in the Mets lineup did not have a single home run on the season.

Even worse for the Mets is that Carlos Beltran is nowhere near returning; Jose Reyes and John Maine fall into the same category, and, if the Mets are lucky, Carlos Delgado will return in a few weeks. But, what can you expect from a guy that has been injured for the past 3 months?

And still the Mets consider themselves buyers as the trade deadline approaches. How could this be? What are they looking to buy? They are not one big trade away from winning the division. Deep down, the Mets front office must know this, as it was reported they turned down a deal for Blue Jays star Roy Halladay for 4 prospects.

Omar Minaya and Fred Wilpon need to come to the consensus that this season is a lost cause, and it is time to start building for the future.