Who's to BlameI have had my share of qualms with Met ownership over the years.  I don’t think any Met fan, in their right minds, would say, “Gee, Fred and Jeff Wilpon sure are swell owners to have.”  I’ve decided to look back to see just how bad they were.

2010: The Met payroll is over $125 Mil for the year and the Mets are led by Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes and Johan Santana.  We even have a newly acquired outfield star, Jason Bay, and an expensive “Big Name” closer with, Francisco Rodriguez.  Omar Minaya was granted one last shot at redemption with his job on the line and the contracts of Luis Castillo, Bay and Santana only beginning to look awful.  With a team in the top 10 in payroll the Mets finished with a 79-83 record.  Storm clouds loomed largely on the horizon, but nothing had yet broken loose.

2011: The Mets had lost Santana before the season and stood at the precipice of a $115 Mil season with some familiar names.  Ike Davis had joined Wright, Reyes and Beltran but injuries would leave most of the first base duties to the light hitting Daniel Murphy.  More troubling, in December Fred Wilpon was named in a lawsuit on behalf of the victims of Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme.  The Mets would cut ties with expensive, useless, players like Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez but the team was not expected to do well in light of not being able to improve their roster, due to financial constraints.  These same constraints led the Mets to deal their star outfielder, Beltran, to the San Francisco Giants for prospect, Zack Wheeler.

2012: The Met payroll dropped again to a pitiful $90 Mil mark as the Mets watched their star, home grown, short stop bring his services to South Beach.  What made that taste worse to Met fans is that the Mets wound up with pitiful compensation for their beloved player, who had just won a batting title.  Had the Wilpons not have been under these constraints I would bet that Reyes would still be a Met and I fully believe that Alderson would have moved him had he been healthy at the deadline.  On the bright side, the Mets found a home for the bat of Murphy at second, and R.A. Dickey turned in a Cy Young performance. (We should also mention that Johan Santana pitched the first Met no-hitter in history)

2013: The Payroll stood still and we watched as other teams made moves to better themselves.  Alderson made himself some shrewd moves by acquiring Marlon Byrd off the scrap heap and bringing in a team of talented but not overly expensive relievers.  Dickey’s Cy Young performance also bought the team a trade for Travis d’Arnaud, Noah Syndergaard, John Buck and Wuilmer Becerra.  The season saw the emergence of Matt Harvey as one of the league’s top 5 pitchers.  It also saw Harvey get injured and would mean no Harvey for all of 2014.  It saw the Mets spend to retain the services of Wright, but it also saw the downfall of a former fan favorite in Davis.

What has the Wilpon involvement with Bernie Madoff cost the Mets?  Jose Reyes might still be a Met, but if you talk to fans, he’s injury prone and paid too much money.  Not to mention that the Toronto deal might never happen if Miami didn’t hold their fire sale.  Who might the Mets have spent on had the league forced the Wilpons out after 2011?

Before 2012 the Mets had high hopes for Ike Davis which ruled out Albert Pujols (thank God) and Prince Fielder, they might have spent money to bring in a starter for the injured Johan Santana, but would they have actually paid for C.J. Wilson.  Further, imagine if they’d had money to spend and shackled the Mets to a new collapsing closer?  Heath Bell, Jose Valverde and Matt Capps were all possibilities.  If the Baseball Gods were on our side we might have wound up with Michael Cuddyer but that would have required a lot of luck.

Before 2013 the Mets still needed help in the outfield.  It would have been great to pick up Josh Hamilton or B.J. Upton, right?  What about bringing in a bat like Lance Berkman’s to replace the struggling bat of Davis?  Sure, the Mets might have looked at grabbing an Anibal Sanchez, Stephen Drew, Hyun-Jin Ryu, Angel Pagan or Francisco Liriano, but it’s just as likely they might have spent that money re-signing Mr. Dickey to a long-term deal after his Cy Young.

The problem in recent years with the Mets has not been the Wilpons.  The problem hasn’t been Terry Collins or Sandy Alderson either.  The problem was that the Mets had stripped their farm system bare during the Omar Minaya era and they desperately needed some time to re-stock and rebuild.  In the end, not being able to spend might have made the Mets a far better team come 2015.  Just sayin’…

12 comments on “Are the Wilpons really to blame?

  • Brian Joura

    In order to strip the farm bare there had to be something there in the first place. We hear over and over again how Minaya paid no attention to the farm system but check the farm system he inherited. What he left behind was far, far superior. I know I’ve published this recently but Minaya took over at the conclusion of the 2004 season and here is BA’s Top 10 list published in December of 2004:

    1. Lastings Milledge, of
    2. Yusmeiro Petit, rhp
    3. Gaby Hernandez, rhp
    4. Ian Bladergroen, 1b
    5. Ambiorix Concepcion, of
    6. Alay Soler, rhp
    7. Shawn Bowman, 3b
    8. Victor Diaz, of
    9. Jesus Flores, c
    10. Matt Lindstrom, rhp

    The star of that group is Lindstrom, who in seven years in the majors has combined for a whopping 4.8 fWAR. Maybe Petit will pass that eventually but currently he has a 1.3 fWAR in his career.

    Would you trade that entire group for Wilmer Flores? How about Cesar Puello or Lucas Duda or Dillon Gee? Shoot, would you trade it for Josh Edgin? I know you wouldn’t trade it for Matt Harvey.

    Minaya correctly sold high on Petit and Hernandez. His mistake was not selling sooner on Milledge, even though he got the better end of the deal when he finally made it. He gambled and lost on not protecting a Lo-A catcher but Flores has never been able to stay healthy, making that loss inconsequential. He lost on Lindstrom but it was hardly earth-shattering.

    You could easily create a Top 10 list of mistakes by Minaya but stripping the farm system bare simply isn’t one of them.

    • FreeBald

      Sure Minaya hit the Golden Ticket with Harvey in his 6th and final draft. By then the damage had been done.

      Only the emergence of Dillon Gee, a 21st round pick, prevents the 2007 draft from being a total bust. The Mets first two selections that year, Eddie Kunz and Nathan Vineyard, are who appear in the dictionary in the definition of the word “bust.”

      Unless Ike Davis rediscovers his ability to play baseball the 2008 draft is a wasteland as well.

      Yes, Steven Matz has been derailed by injuries, but he could put it back together and ultimately prove useful. Unless/until he does the 2009 draft seems to have been useless as well.

      So from 2007-2009 Minaya and his staff made roughly 150 player selections over three drafts and produced one MLB 4th starter, and a first baseman who may be best known for standing nude behind R.A. Dickey during a TV interview. Bravo.

      Aside from Harvey the 2010 draft has yet to produce but to be fair more time needs to pass before it can be fairly judged. It still may give more than the bounty it already has. 2005 and 2006 provided multiple useful major leaguers such as Pelfrey, Niese, Parnell, Murphy, and Joe Smith. That can’t be ignored.

      However, the 2007-2009 draft classes are precisely those that the current front office would be relying on right now to put players on the major league field given the financial restrictions imposed by the Madoff situation. I freely admit that I would be far less interested in Minaya’s drafts if Madoff never happened, but it did, and in that light it seems clear to me that Minaya didn’t stock the farm system well enough during his tenure.

      Maybe it’s simply a matter of semantics. Did Minaya “strip the farm bare?” I think Mr. Joura made a compelling argument to suggest he did not. But he didn’t improve it nearly enough.

    • Jerry Grote

      I’ve seen this twice now, and I’ll take a moment to disagree. Talent development is a crap shoot, mostly all luck. Really its what you do when the talent is on the board … the first 50 is almost always the top 90-95% of all the WAR talent you will see. And without a doubt, the further down you go in the first round the less likely you will have a shot at talent.

      If 99% of the picks are luck, then you absolutely need to be bang on when the game is on the line. Winning your first pick will tell the tale for an organization.

      So the question was, did the previous regime in the few years prior to Minaya do their job with the top picks? Their picks reflect the 1999-2002 seasons for picks in the 2000-2003.

      The Mets get Traber (Olerud comp) and some other guy in 2000. There really isn’t any discernible talent they pass over. Previous year, 97 wins. Nothing available, nothing gained.

      The Mets get Aaron Heilman and David Wright in 2001. No contest there; they do start a regrettable sequence of events that leads to both Kevin Appier and Mo Vaughn, which might have been Jeremy Bonderman. No matter; Wright trumps all. (Previous win: 94). Clearly a win.

      The Mets get Scott Kazmir, later fumbled away, in 2002. (Previous win: 82)

      The Mets get Lastings Milledge in 2003. Before he falls from grace, he becomes the #9 prospect in baseball. The interesting comp here is that Chad Billingsley gets passed by the Mets for Milledge. By the peak of their minor league careers, 2006, Billingsley is rated #6. Milledge, #9. Minaya passes on offers for the crown jewel of the Mets system. (Previous win: 75)

      As another point, if the cupboard was “bare” in 2004, it was at least in part because the two crowning jewels were established at SS and 3B and had been in the minor leagues for the previous regime.

      And how does Minaya do with his shots at the first round? Three times he gets inside the top 10. #3 pick (!) turns up Phillip Humber. #9 turns into Pelfrey. #7 is Matt Harvey. I don’t know that Minaya loads up on high quality talent when given the shot. To this point, we’ve gotten some 11 WAR cumulatively from all his 1st round picks. I suppose we need to give him credit for not taking Delino DeShields.

      Quick remembrance: Mets give up a pick in 2009 to sign Francisco Rodriguez to … the Angels. The Angels, with two consecutive NYC gimme picks, use one of the two to select Mike Trout. We won’t debit the Minaya regime for what could have been.

  • Chris F

    There’s plenty of folks to spread the blame around to. In every circumstance, it retreats back to the owners and the decisions they make in hiring a FO and the staff. That determines the culture of the team and the way forward. It is clear the Wilpon’s have not instilled a win a WS über alles culture, like say the Illich/Dombrowski pairing (or Lucchino/Cherington or Magic/Colletti, or the Cardinal Way…). The team seems constantly to fumble all over itself at nearly every turn, like in building CitiField but yet forgetting it was a stadium for the Mets not the Dodgers, or every time Jeffy opens his trap only to have the GM slam it shut and walk back the nonsense. The plain fact is, the level of baseball acumen that we have seen from the upper echelons at nearly every turn has been a failure. The Wilpon’s have spent a lot of money on the Mets for payroll, but time and again the lack of making the right decision seems to be a hallmark of this team. Who’s to blame?

  • brian

    It has to fall on ownership. Jeff Wilpon is nothing more than a spoiled, dim-witted, loose lipped, heir to fortune. The Wilpons hired Minaya who seemed more interested spending for the sake of spending and brought us the homegrown talent of Mike Pelfrey. It’s not about spending 100 million, It is about spending it correctly. Alderson is a very intelligent baseball man (hired by the Wilpons) who has slowly corrected the errors of the past. Whether he succeeds or fails, the responsibility is the Wilpons.

    • AntiAntiIntellectual1

      It isn’t about payroll all the time- the Mets have ignored player development for a long time. It’s not just drafting the right players, but about nurturing and developing them through the minors. Strangely, the Mets have been successful at this during the Wilpon tenure (50 percent or more ownership) once since the early 1980s and that was in the mid-1990s when whey signed and developed Edgardo Alfonzo, Bobby Jones, Generation K, Todd Hundley, Butch Huskey, etc. or guys they inherited and developed like Carl Everett, Jeff Kent, etc. and were able to deal those excess pieces for valuable parts down the road. Scarily, it was Steve Phillips who was in charge of player development back then.

      Think about the Braves and Phillies in recent years, and now the Rangers- their prospects and minor leaguers are desirable because of the successful track records of those organizations- the Phillies have been able to trade pieces that never really developed for them into bigger pieces (Halladay) and the Braves were able to hype the Bruce Chens, Melvin Nieveses and others of the world to keep their dynasty going.

      Mike Pelfrey was rushed up here with less than one year of minor league seasoning in 2006. 96 total minor league innings– not enough time to learn the second pitch that he desperately needed to master.

      Frank Cashen didn’t sign a single free-agent in his 9 year tenure as GM of the Mets. He dealt from strength. He sold his excess pitching whether it was Wes Gardner and Calvin Schiraldi for Bob Ojeda; Rick Ownbey and Neil Allen for Keith Hernandez; and Floyd Youmans, Herm Winningham, Mike Fitzgerald, and Hubie Brooks for Gary Carter or trading his best and most marketable player, Lee Mazzilli, for Ron Darling and Walt Terrell (who he later parlayed into Howard Johnson) and drafting and developing Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, Greg Jefferies, Lenny Dykstra, Roger McDowell, Kevin Mitchell and on and on.

      If the Mets drafted Albert Pujols, Mike Trout, or Jose Fernandez, there is no guarantee that the player development system would have developed those guys into what they became at the major league level.

      The problem with ownership is they can’t see past the next game’s ticket sales- they can’t grasp that having a pipeline of young talent will ensure continuity and a solid base from which to compete year after year. And I find this disgusting from an owner who professes to be nostalgic about the Brooklyn Dodgers who at the time Fred was a fan, was run by Branch Rickey- a man who invented the farm system as we know it. Fred got penny pinching from Branch Rickey, not the player development part.

  • Jerry Grote

    re: Is there anyone here that would absorb the Reyes contract? Thank goodness he left in 2012 instead of saddling us with that anchor.

    So, in 2012, the Mets go into the off season … failing to invest in free agents because of financial constraints. Basically, for those you that suggest that the Wilpons’ lack of spending destroyed this franchise, tell me who you would have acquired in free agency in 2012 that would have changed the fortunes of the NY Mets?

    No? Want to use 2013? OK. Step up if you felt the Mets should have gone after Bourn. Now step up if you were disappointed we didn’t get a certain CFer now playing in Atlanta.

    Stop being a hypocrite. It’s not about the money. It’s about an abject failure to develop players through the draft between 2008 and today; a complete failure on the part of the front office to supplement reasonable talent with adjunct players; and our manager committing thousands of plate appearances to players unsuited to ML competition.

    You can hang Wilpon for not hiring Minaya or Alderson. After that, its not like every other team absolutely needed bajillions to succeed around the Major Leagues. The Pirates had less than the Mets to spend, since Sandy Alderson has been in power, with less starting talent than Sandy has had.

    Stop laying it the feet of ownership.

  • Metsense

    I blame the Wilpon’s because of poor financial judgement.
    The Mets have a $93M dollar payroll. The Mets and everyother team has an additional $25M in television money. They are refusing to add this money to the buget even though there are three glaring holes in the offensive lineup. They are deliberately handicapping themselves against the other teams.
    If the Mets signed Choo, Ellsbury and Peralta then they would be signing three players with high OBP’s, something that is a “Met philosophy”. Signing all three would be putting a good player at every offensive position at the minimum cost of a second and third round draft pick. It would add depth to the organization and leave the young pitching and minor leagues intact. By spending this 25M the Mets would make more money than the expenditure.
    I blame the Wilpon’s for poor financial judgement.

    • Jerry Grote

      wait … are you joking here? The Mets should sign Elsbury, Choo AND Peralta?

      The last time a team signed the two most expensive Free Agents available, the Yankees got the Texiera and Sabathia contracts. No team, to my knowledge, has ever signed the top three free agents.

      We have no reason to believe that the Mets WON’T reinvest that $25MM into payroll. But fans assume that reinvesting the money will result in some phenomenal rate of return by increasing the turnstiles or soda pop sales.

      Just as a point of reference, the Yankees signed Tex and CC after the 2008 season. Their attendence in 08 was 2.464MM, a total they have not since eclipsed. They have failed to increase their attendence while the Wilpons have apparently, through willful hate, destroyed the Mets franchise by not spending more. In fact, in the two years following the signings, their attendance fell by nearly 10%. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teams/yankatte.shtml

      People, get a grip.

      • Metsense

        Inn2008 the Yankees drew 4,298,655 with 92.3% capacity and was #1 in attendance. The Mets were #2 in 0(http://espn.go.com/mlb/attendance ) with 4,042,047 with 89.1 % capacity.
        2013 the yanks drew 3,279,589 with 80.5% capacity and was 4th in attendance. The Mets were 21st in attendance at 2,135,657 and 63.9% capacity. The Mets lost 1.9 million fans. Spending that 25M will get some of the 1.9 M fans back, at least enough to earn back the $25 M invested. If the total 55M could sign the best three free agents then great because these holes need to be filled. I have a grip and won’t settle for the Wilpon double talk. One free agent is not going to turn this team around.
        You read your sources chart incorrectly, the correct attendance was there. I verified with ESPN linked above.

  • David Groveman

    Great Discussion:

    My 2 Cents – I don’t like the Wilpons and I think the Mets would be better off with new ownership. That being said, I don’t think they’re responsible for the state of things rather the method the Mets ran their team under Omar Minaya would be. The Mets ignored the farm system and brought in very questionable contracts. I’m still hopeful for 2014.

  • Bob

    I wouldn’t say the Beltran for Wheeler move was a payroll move as much as it was a smart baseball move to trade an expiring contract for a prospect as many smart GMs have done throughout MLB history. You also even allude to the possibility of trading Reyes had he been healthy.

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