The first scenario: The Wilpons elected to invest heavily with Madoff on the basis that he promised returns well above market value. Conventional wisdom would've suggested they be skeptical. "This seems too good to be true". Instead they jumped in headfirst to what Madoff told them was an ocean but was actually a kiddie pool without hesitation. Instead of sticking with proven, reliable, traditional options they decided to roll the dice by committing fully to the hope that what was "too good to be true" wasn't. They were wrong.

The second scenario: The Wilpons elected to invest heavily with Barwis on the basis that he promised that his training methods would provide results far beyond those of traditional baseball strength and conditioning programs, despite his resume being primarily populated with football players (hot take: football is not baseball) and had no experience running a S&T program for an entire MLB franchise. Conventional wisdom would've suggested they be skeptical. "This seems too good to be true". Instead they jumped in headfirst to what Barwis told them was an ocean but was actually a kiddie pool without hesitation. Instead of sticking with proven, reliable, traditional options they decided to roll the dice by committing fully to the hope that what was "too good to be true" wasn't. They were wrong.

While there's no real way to make a direct connection between the Barwis Method and the spike in Mets soft tissue injuries during his tenure with the team, we can nail down three facts:

1) Soft tissue injuries among Mets players have risen over the last three years, with players who participated in the Barwis Method over-represented.

2) Mets players have not demonstrated any advantageous progress in their strength and conditioning results over the last three years beyond what would be expected for a normal S&T program. So far we've seen no juice to justify the squeeze.

3) The Wilpons have yet again put themselves in a position where they're too deeply invested in a bad situation to easily extricate themselves. With Barwis' operation having been relocated to the Mets complex in St. Lucie, Rubin has reported that separating themselves from Barwis may not be a simple matter.