One thing I would add to The Mad Hibernian's comments below is that Mets fandom is probably more tolerant than many teams' fans of a rebuilding effort, given that the Mets have had such great success with building around home-grown talent in constructing the 1969-73 and 1984-90 teams, and such spectacular failures in importing veteran talent in the early 1990s as well as many individual instances (George Foster, Mickey Lolich, etc.). Granted, the 1997-2000 team was heavily imported veterans and the 1986 team had some of those (Hernandez, Carter, Ojeda, Knight, HoJo, Teufel), but the lesson is clear enough.