In 2012 and 2013 the Mets watched the rest of baseball spend money and bring in quality baseball players to improve their teams while they made do with Scott Hairston and Marlon Byrd. Then comes 2014… 2014 was to be the Met’s year. This would be the year where ownership would not be able to bemoan the contracts of Jason Bay and Johan Santana. Sandy Alderson would be free to spend money, and spend he did:
- Curtis Granderson – $60 Mil
- Bartolo Colon – $20 Mil
- Chris Young – $7.25 Mil
- John Lannan – Minor
- Daisuke Matsuzaka – Minor
- Jeremy Hefner – Minor
- Omar Quintanilla – Minor
- Taylor Teagarden – Minor
That will wind up costing the Mets over $90 Mil when all is said and done. That is a serious investment in the team, but it doesn’t feel that way to many fans because of a certain team in the Bronx. Look at what the Yankees did:
- Masahiro Tanaka – $155 Mil
- Jacoby Ellsbury – $153 Mil
- Brian McCann – $85 Mil
- Carlos Beltran – $45 Mil
- Hiroki Kuroda – $16 Mil
- Derek Jeter – $12 Mil
- Matt Thornton – $7 Mil
- Brendan Ryan – $5 Mil
- Kelly Johnson – $3 Mil
- Brian Roberts – $2 Mil
For those keeping score, that is over five times what Alderson was able to spend in the Met’s “Big Year.” To some this is a little bitter-sweet. The Mets look like little fish when we were promised big things. To these fans I have a simple message, “You are rooting for the wrong team.”
Signing four of the top twenty free agents may be something to envy but it is the Yankee way and the Yankees we are not.
The Mets I root for are not the Yankees and I don’t want them to be. I want them to be the Mets and do think our own way. What way is that? It seems to me that the best Met teams are built from a strong mix of savvy trades, player development and a few key signings. Would you prefer the Mets try to be more like the Yankees? There is a reason I’m not a Yankee fan and I would not.
Yes, well, maybe they can’t be the Yankees, but can they pretend to be more like the Red Sox, Dodgers, or even the Rangers or Phillies. An 85 million dollar payroll in New York, where you are charging top dollar for tickets, is laughable.
I don’t want to be the Yankees, but I also don’t want to be the Oakland A’s or Tampa Rays either…. I don’t want to have to aspire to be the Royals or Brewers, if I have to, charge me the same amount those fans have to pay….
I’ve been a Mets fan since 1962. There were times during that period when they had low payrolls, and times when they had the highest in the game. It doesn’t matter. What matters is winning. Every year has been fun, the winning years are the best. Everything else, sorry, is bullshit.
There is no honor in winning with a low payroll, versus a high payroll. The 1986 Mets had a high payroll. I’ve never heard a Mets fan complain about that.
The Mets play in the same market as the Yankees. If this team is ever pried from the a Wilpons the payroll will explode. Nobody would buy this jewel of a franchise and run it like this. Nobody.
And when that would happen the fans will be thrilled to see owners willing to do whatever it takes to win within the CBA. Which is what the Yankees and Dodgers are doing.
Baseball is a business, a business the Wilpons do not belong in. They own Oceanfront property and keep building shacks on that property, with no indoor plumbing.
It is what it is, but that doesn’t make it defensible.
Mr. Gues makes some excellent points here; the Mets’ current reliance on a low payroll is not due to the fact that they are forced to be wily and cunning in the Tampa or Pittsburgh mode–it’s because of ownership’s off-field buffoonery. The Mets have not historically operated as a low-revenue team, nor is there any conceivable reason they should. Of course they should operate with a strong mix of player development and wise trades–every team should do that. The Yankees current approach is problematic because they have an old, brittle team that doesn’t have any young talent to rely on when the inevitable injuries and age-related decline happens. That said, if the Mets were under competent ownership, they would, if they felt it was warranted, be just as active in the big-money free agent market as the Yankees, and to suggest that somehow they shouldn’t be is absurd.
You both make great arguments. There has to be some middle ground where the Mets can spend smart, without breaking the Wilpon piggy bank. And if we can’t, perhaps we need a new piggy bank.
I think part of the problem is that player salaries have climbed in recent years while expectations for team payroll have not. It wasn’t long ago that an $80 million team was a very solid team; now it’s considered the upper echelon of poor.
Alderson clearly “spent” some money this year. Well sort of. From my rough count of last year the budget was around 92-93 M$. Right now we are nearish that value. In my accounting, spending occurs when you increase the value. What Alderson has done is “replace” expiring obligations, such that new faces are in and old faces are out. In fact, it seems the budget has officially gone down a little as of now, so the transactions dont even qualify as replacement yet. When we get the green light to hit 100M$ from the present location, I will fell like we are spending.
Even though few of us could even imagine the nightmare of being a Yankee fan, lets remember, we had a big time, Yankee-like, budget for a while. The difference is we clearly did little with it.
Who has the best record in the AL East over the last four years? The Rays. Can you name a team with 190 wins in the last two years? The Athletics. The Braves have won between 85 and 96 games consistently since 2009. They’ve never spent more than $93MM (http://www.stevetheump.com/Payrolls.htm#2012payroll).
Let’s get real.
Money does not equal winning.
Money does not equal winning.
Money does not equal winning.
I don’t care that the Yankees spend more than the Mets. I care that teams like the Braves, the Rays, and the A’s have better organizations than we do.
Good article. There is something special about watching players you’ve followed through their minor league development that makes games more enjoyable. Even the Yankees in their dominant days in the mid/late 90’s were home grown at their core. I’ll stick with the Mets any day.
Agreed; watching a kid come up makes that kid special, watching a big time free agent perform is ok but not as exhillerating as the kid.
I don’t see how you can construe 87 million dollars as “serious” spending for 3 players over 7 years. If Colon and Young play well they will be moved by the trading deadline. Eventually the team needs some continuity for the fan base. Agree with Jerry Grote that money doesn’t necessarily equals wins. The Mets play in the number 1 market in America so I don’t think it would be unreasonable to see the team payroll in the 120 million dollar range, We all want the Mets to succeed and I really don’t care what happens in the Bronx. The issues at first base are not new to this team. SA should of addressed this already. We can all read between the lines when SA says he’s not going to give anyone away. But there is no room for Duda in the already crowded outfield. So when SA says he will play “some” outfield I just have to wonder. Is Sandy Alderson isn’t here next year would anyone shed a tear? I know we would all shed a tear if the Wilpons weren’t.
It remains to be seen how much bang the Yankees get for all the money spent in the off-season. They bought some nice talent, but they paid excessively for it, I think. The market seemed to be even more inflated this year than usual. $90,000,000 doesn’t buy what it used to! I suppose I’m glad the Mets didn’t spend more than that this year, because it would have meant making long term commitments to players who probably won’t remain that valuable for so long (Jacoby Ellsbury, for example.) Even if they could afford to do so, I wouldn’t want to see the Mets build their team that way.
The Mets overpaid as well. Just not as much as the Yankees. Do you think SA really wanted to give Granderson a 4 year deal? Somehow I don’t see the last year of that contract being beneficial to the Mets.
Agreed. I think Alderson & co. knew they had to do something this off-season (to satisfy the fan base, if for no other reason), but wisely kept their commitments to a minimum in a market that did not favor the buyers.
I’ve been following the Mets since 1966. When I started following the Mets, they were a better team than the Yankees. The Mets won in 1969, they won in 1973. And the Yankees did not. The Mets had Seaver, Koosman, McGraw, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee, Jerry Grote, Bud Harrelson, and my personal hero, Art Shamsky, and the Yankees did not. The Gooden-Strawberry-Carter-Hernandez-Mookie Wilson-Lenny Dykstra-Ron Darling Mets owned this town. Then, the team was broken up, and the manager was fired. I’m still not sure why. It’s not inevitable that the Yankees are the big brother and the Mets are the little brother. As late as the early 90s. the Mets had the Worst Team That Money Can Buy, and the Yankees had Stump Merrill. And you could make the argument back then that New York still was, as it had always been, a National League town. The Mets could have made the same choices the Yankees made. Not the players necessarily, but the philosophy. If you do what you need to do, you have an enormous fan base, and you could make an awful lot of money. New Yorkers go through a lot of things other people don’t go through. Our baseball teams should reward us for that. This is New York, and I’m getting tired of pretending that the Mets need to be put together like the Kansas City Royals. If the Wilpons no longer have the resources to do that, or if they cannot figure out how to install the right people into the right jobs to do that, then maybe its time for them to sell the team.
Amen!
The Mets play in the same market as the Yankees. They have the same potential to make the same profit as the Yankees. The Mets are a poorly run business model. In 2007 they had a winning team but the team was being run from moneys earned from a ponzi scheme not from the profits from their winning team. That should have been a red flag to the Wilpon’s that their management model was poor. The Yankees take their profits and invest them in their team. I agree that some of the contracts are ludicrous but the Yankees can afford them. The team makes a profit and the fans have a competitive team to root for. An interesting article puts this in perspective http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303997604579238550215265832?mod=wsj_nview_latest
The Mets should at least be in a financial position that when a modest expenditure,like Drew, is presented that they can confidently upgrade the team without worrying about hamstringing the future. The Wilpon’s can’t afford this team and should sell.
http://nypost.com/2014/01/30/new-loan-could-end-mets-money-problems/
No,, the Mets are definitely not the Yankees.
As long as the Wilpons own the team, we’re doomed. If it’s not (a) there’s no money; it’s (b) money misspent. Sandy Alderson has done nothing other than slash payroll. The four-year honeymoon with him is over. Can’t blame Terry Collins for the players he’s been dealt. Until we get rid of the dead wood (Duda, Kirk, Ike), the lineup will never get better. Curtis Granderson isn’t the answer, either. I’m hoping the new commissioner forces the Wilpons to sell the team because a big-market team like the Mets shouldn’t be the embarrassment that they are. I’m sick of being asked to “be patient. Better days are coming.” I’ve been hearing that for the last eight or so years. Enough of the losing. Get some good baseball people in the front office who know what they’re doing. After reading “The Worst Team Money Can Buy” about the Mets of the early 1990s, I realized the team is no better off than it was 20 years ago.