Last week, the Mets traded their closer, Jeurys Familia, to the Oakland Athletics for a “defense-first” – translation: he can’t hit – third baseman, a 26-year-old career minor league relief pitcher with all of seven innings on his MLB resume and $1,000,000 in international slot bonus money. That’s it. The Baltimore Orioles, meanwhile, traded their closer, Zach Britton to the Yankees for two of New York’s top prospects and a throw-in. So basically, Baltimore is building with an eye towards the future. Basically, the Mets sold Familia for the million-dollar slot money; the players involved only help circumvent MLB rules about a straight player sale for that kind of cash. They didn’t take on Major League talent. They didn’t take on Major League salary. They didn’t restock – or really even improve – their farm system.
That should tell you all you need to know.
The three-headed monster that serves as the Mets’ GM right now – the triumvirate of Omar Minaya, J. P. Ricciardi and John Ricco, who stepped in after Sandy Alderson’s health-related resignation – pulled the trigger on what they thought was the best deal possible. Or what ownership told them the best deal was. There are stories that Oakland was willing to part with better prospects if the Mets would eat some or all of free-agent-to-be Familia’s remaining contract for this year. Better prospects? Who needs ‘em when you end up with a cool million out of the deal, right? This is the state of the Mets’ hierarchy at the moment, this is where COO Jeff Wilpon’s head is. The Mets could conceivably turn things around pretty quickly with the right moves. With their unwieldy structure right now, it’s not clear that anyone in this organization would know the “right move” if it walked up and kicked them in the knee. There’s a lot of talk right now about “when the Mets hire a fulltime GM,” this or that will happen. So that means waiting until the off-season to anything but shed payroll. It makes a person wonder why they’d bother to shed payroll in the first place. It’s certainly not to open the door for all the young talent in the minors: there really isn’t any. Are they planning to make a splash in the very strong upcoming free agent market – hence the pause for the new GM? Given this franchise’s history, that would appear doubtful. No, the odds of Manny Machado and/or Bryce Harper taking their respective talents to Queens are quite long. And with the air around Citi Field right now, who could blame them?
Or maybe the shedding of payroll isn’t so mysterious, after all. Yoenis Cespedes has just gone on the disabled list for the rest of the season, about to undergo some major surgery on his heels. That means that the Mets will collect a substantial amount of insurance money, a hedge against lost playing time, similar to the loot they collected when David Wright was injured in 2016. Through some pretzel-like semantic language, the Wilpons will end up pocketing the reimbursement, rather than reinvesting it back into the on-field product. They consider the salaries of those lost players as part of the team’s payroll – money already invested, if you will – and therefore this insurance return is nothing less than their due.
It can’t be overstated how many ways that stinks. But, hey, so do the Mets, am I right?
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If as is rumored the Wilpons got supposedly 75% of Wright’s contract back from insurance that makes last years payroll right around 150 million dollars. This year every MLB team got 50 million dollars from Disney’s purchase of BAMtech. So how is it that the Mets payroll is the same as last years? And if Wright doesn’t play that’s another 15 million off the books (besides Cespedes) So why is ownership dumping payroll again? Its not like the Mets are in Luxury cap levels.The Wilpons talk a good game. But actions speak louder than words. They’ve abandoned the fans again and they simply don’t give a damn about what you and I think. The team will draw over 2 million at Citi and with the price of tickets, concessions, television and radio they’re doing just fine. Do the Wilpons really care about the fan base?
Pete, Jeff Coupon addresses that subject. You see, he initially has to lay out the insurance money, and so it counts towards the payroll. The insurance pays back 75% to Coupon, not to the Mets. I think Ronald Reagan called it voodoo economics?
Gus this is why the Coupons will never win a WS
more garbage
If all these stories have some truth about them, I am wondering why these GM’s the Mets have been hiring, have practically no say about making the baseball decisions. Last year, they must of seen the returns for Reed, and capitalized on the trade for Familia. A return of the #9 and #23 prospects, + the International pool money coming back with the Mets paying 1/3 of Familia’s salary would of made the deal.
These GM’s, all of them, are just happy to get paid and have a job but with no real decency to go to the Wilpons and ask them to take a back seat in 2018 dealing.
It’s their money.
I will go further.
Onto the field, even the manager doesn’t know what’s going on. How could he, when the Wilpons are the dictating each and every move the team, needs to do. The misspoken words, are not his fault. He truly didn’t know anything about Cespedes. Take Reyes, for example. Do you guys think, if he was in charge, Reyes, would be playing? The same of Dom Smith. He came in to handled 1st base, but was relegated to the bench, and LF when we had a clear need on 1st base. He tells his true feeling, then get sent back. Now is Jeff McNeil who would not be playing 3rd base. Better yet. Why not shift Cabrera to 3rd and let Jeff play 2nd as he has played more in the minors.
Most other ML teams, multiple players, come up, and start smashing. Our players come up, and are put in situations to fail, by, either not playing them consistently, or playing them out of position, or getting bench after 2 games, where they had a 3 hits in 8 at bats. A double, a HR, 2 BB, 3 RBI’s, and a single.
It was disheartening to see what the Orioles got for Britton, which the Mets could have sorely used.
In a way, I can’t blame the Wilpons. Look at all of the wasted money on Cespedes, Bruce, Frazier, Vargas and Reyes that has yielded nothing.
That being said, there is nothing worse than bad ownership.
Look at our crosstown rivals. Since George bought the team and Hal took over, the Yankees are committed to winning.
There should always be hope. Hell, even I have hope for my Jets with a new QB. It just feels like the Mets are slipping into the dark ages, and will be there for a long time because of many reasons.
This organization reminds me as a kid of looking at that one brussel sprout on my plate. Tortured by just looking at it and the awful experience of having to chew it up and swallow it.
I believe the two players involved are in the 2019 Mix…whether we agree or not, they believe they are patching and filling around the SP’s to take another shot in 2019. Otherwise, I would have expected younger and far away Aball “dreams”
You are totally mischaracterizing the two deals. Yes, the Orioles got slightly better prospects for Britton, but not substantially better. Carroll and Wahl are roughly the same age and have similar stuff. Tate was obviously the best prospect in either deal but the bonus money is worth more than Rogers. The two deals were closer than your description.
Certainly the Mets are cheap, but you also mischaracterize the financials of this deal. They didn’t get $1 million, they got the opportunity to spend a million on prospects. You could describe this deal as Familia plus $1 million for Wahl, Toffey and a very good 16 year old prospect to be named later. The Mets will wind up spending money on this deal, just not right away to the A’s.
You folks usually post better articles than this.
And how good of a prospect is Dillon Tate? He’s 24 and in Double-A with a nice WHIP but an 8.2 K/9 which doesn’t exactly wow you.
And he’s really been helped by his home park this year. He has a 2.15 ERA and a 0.975 WHIP at home compared to a 5.72 ERA and 1.376 WHIP on the road.
The rumor is that the Mets are going to acquire more int’l money and then go after the Cuban CF Victor Victor Mesa, who was the top guy on FanGraphs’ international prospect board. Rumored to get around $3.5 million and the Mets don’t have that much cap room available. When they trade Cabrera or anyone else on the block, expect int’l money to be a big part of the return.
I agree that the gap between the Familia and Britton packages is rather narrow. I do think both returns are light but as fans it is very hard to judge the marketplace. I can’t imagine why a true World Series contender like the Astros and Cubs would pay more for a rental like these two. I’m not asking for Gleyber Torres caliber, but a projected major league contributor would have been reasonable. I do think the $1 million in international money is the biggest get and it needs to be invested in a premium top 3 guy.
This is a good article as all of them are on this blog.Clinical stats and comparisons are great, but we cannot forget the emotion. Most other writers are stat oriented, but I am old school. Read some stats, but I grew up with the emotion of the players and team.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mets sign Familia in the off-season when his contract expires, they will need to fortify the bullpen and he apparently likes being with the Mets.
The Astro’s got Jeff Bagwell for 37 year old rental Larry Andersen back in 1989.:)
Jeff Bagwell right now would be better than Reyes.
Post PED he probably looks like him too!