Minaya's Reply To Phillips

John Harper over at the NY Daily News, writes about Steve Phillips, his picks for the NL East and Omar Minaya's comments:

The slights keep coming for the Mets. It was one thing for Jimmy Rollins to declare his Phillies, those perennial underachievers, as the team to beat in the National League East this season. Now Steve Phillips, the former Mets GM, is all over ESPN in his gig as baseball analyst picking the Mets to finish third in their division.

Noting that he is friendly with Phillips, the GM the Mets fired four years ago, Wilpon said he didn't take Phillips' prediction of doom for the Mets personally.

"Let Steve have his opinion," Wilpon said. "Let everybody have their opinion, but we feel good about what we have here. The talk doesn't bother me. We definitely have something to prove. We need to get back to the playoffs, but beyond that, my whole goal for the organization is, I want us to be the team everybody looks at and says, 'I want to be like the New York Mets.'

"Right now people say that about the Atlanta Braves, the Minnesota Twins. Those are the teams that have been built on long runs. We're building from within around pitching and defense. Everybody questions our pitching, but we've got young guys with great arms who are going to step up at some point."