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1. Craig Calcaterra Posted: February 04, 2010 at 03:18 PM (#3453902)Khan:Space
Discuss.
Who is worse at this point? Hmm.
Dear Mr. Chass,
It has come to my attention that there is a typographical error in the title for your latest missive. I am sorry to have to tell you that the song's actual title is "Meet the Mets". Please do not be embarrassed by this unfortunate (and certainly inadvertent) malaprop, as it can happen to any of us, particularly as we enter our "golden years". I, for one, recall with crimson cheeks the time I sang, "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy" during a karaoke performance early in my academy days. It led shortly thereafter to an interesting and educational experience with a sailor from Southampton, the details of which I will omit at the present time, but the vestigal remnant of my embarrassment still remains. I am certain that you will redeem yourself in your next attempt, which I await with anticipation.
Yours Truly,
V.
Probably because the Bay move, without the other supporting moves (Starting pitching, 1B, starting C, and so on) is seen as being insufficient to turn the team around. Combine that with the hilariously extended discussions with the Molina camp that, after two months, resulted in him going back to the Giants, while at the same time all the decent SPs were being grabbed away, and it's not hard to see why the Bay move isn't being viewed as a success.
It also appears that the Mets were the only team to come close to matching what Bay thought he was worth, so it's not like there's anything special about being the only team willing to pay a player what he wants. The lack of suitors in the Bay market has to be viewed with suspcision - it leaves one with the impression that Bay only signed with the Mets because he would've gotten fewer guaranteed years and less money from everyone else. Add that to what Ryan said - the Mets have holes in their starting rotation, their bullpen and at two or three starting positions on the diamond. The bench is old and not particularly good. Jason Bay only leaves the Mets six solid MLB regulars away from being a good team.
The larger issue is the long-held perception that Omar really does fill his team's needs like he's filling out a grocery list - go to the outfielder aisle first and get the exact outfielder you want, then go the starting pitcher aisle and get the exact starter you want, etc. Meanwhile, as he's filling out the list, he's missing out on everything going on around him. If there is no ability to multi-task and no ability to deviate from the exact order in which he or Little Jeffy think the team's needs must be filled, you end up with an unproductive off-season like this.
Bengie Molina might have been the best catcher on the market, but that doesn't mean the Mets needed to sign him...
I'm not gonna miss him striking out 100 times, grounding into 25 double plays in clutch situations, and being unable to score from 2nd base on a hit up the middle.
I'd rather have nothing than have trash.
Unfortunately, nothing is not an option. You're stuck with Omir Santos.
They have Josh Thole. Yorvit Torrealba is apparently willing to sign even though he still has a grievance pending against the team. Rod Barajas is alive.
So am I, but you wouldn't want me to be your starting catcher either.
Most free agents sign with the one team willing to give them the most money/longest contract, etc. The winner's curse is inherent in this sort of thing. Do you view the signing of CC Sabathia with suspicion? Do you think Sabathia would have gotten as much years/money from another team? There weren't any other suitors for Bay because the Mets put their offer on the table early and clearly and dared others to match. Nobody did. So yeah, the Mets had the highest bid, but that's how you sign free agents. If the Mets had come in at 3 yr/$45 mil, you would have seen other bidders involved. But the Mets didn't want other teams to get vested or for Bay to get intrigued by other teams, so they put a good number on the table to scare teams off, and stood by it. They got the player. It's the same approach the Yankees used with Sabathia. Bay's a good player. Why get upset just because the Orioles weren't bargain hunting on him with a 4 yr/$52 mil offer?
It's not clear to me that this is what happened. The story the entire time was that the Mets wanted Molina, but were not willing to go to 2 years. I think it's likely that Molina was only interested in the Mets if they would offer the second year, which nobody else would.
Given how disastrous the current catching options are, it's possible that the Mets had Molina valued VERY accurately (worth 1 year, $5 million or so) and did a very good thing by refusing to budge on their offer.
Now, the problem is whether or not having this offer out on a line for 2 months prevented them from doing other things. When people on this site accused Omar years ago of his laundry-list approach, my response was always, "Come on guys, he's not THAT stupid." But, maybe he is. Or it's Wilpon's fault. I don't know.
I think the difference is that Sabathia was clearly a more highly-sought after free agent. Bay did not generate the same type of interest. The Mets and the Red Sox seemed to be the only two teams linked to him, even though there were other big-market teams with the money to afford him and the room to put him on the roster (the Yankees and the Angels immediately jump to mind). A case can be made that Bay didn't want to play for the Mets so much as he didn't want to sign the two-year, $25 million contract that seemed to be the only alternative.
I don't know if that's true or not. Even if it is, did the Mets really need to guarantee another year AND an additional $21 million AND add a reasonably attainable vesting option to keep other suitors away? Overpaying just to keep other teams from making an offer still isn't the most efficient use of payroll - especially when the Mets had multiple holes being left unfilled while Bay waitied for another offer.
What Ryan said, PLUS...the perception over here is that Bay will replace the production Delgado was SUPPOSED to give them last year if he'd had healthy hips and was, y'know, 4 years younger. So signing Bay becomes a wash -- not an enhancement -- to the offense.
now THAT'S an incompetent organization--they can't even fuck up correctly
Zaun could have been had for $2M plus. It's a total guess, but Zaun could have been the FA that would have preferred to go to the Mets, but was lower on their pecking order.
This sounded like a reference to Piniero to me.
That;s what is supposed to happen in an auction / negotiation. You don't start your e-bay bid by bidding $1000 for something with a reserve of $250. You start low and then outbid others during the auction, so that you leverage an optimal deal. Yes, you could end up in a bidding war and pay $1,500 but that's betting on the long odds. You're more likely to end up paying less than $1000.
If your first bid is accepted without question you paid too much.
1) why did they want him (so much more than Zaun say) in the first place?
2) when negotiations stalled, why didn't they just go get another C (Zaun say)?
3) did the focus on Molina distract them from other moves?
Now 1 & 2 could be explained reasonably well if they decided that Molina was the only guy on the market worth more than what they have and they made him an offer and stuck to it. That would be fine even though we might disagree with #1.
It's #3 that's the big question and, based on Chass' piece here, it seems that it may actually have.
Now, there is of course another explanation, more plausible IMO -- which is that Wilpon cut the payroll by $20-30 M or whatever and Minaya made the reasonable decision to spend his available payroll on Bay and Molina and hope for the best with everything else. And of course no reason that both things can't be true (reduced payroll and over-focus on Molina).
The Mets' first bid wasn't accepted without question - Bay sat on it for weeks. At the time the Mets made their bid, everybody assumed Boston was at 4 yr/$60 mil. That may or may not have been true, but it would have been silly for the Mets to come in under that. Leading with a high number is certainly a risk, but people are using the fact that ultimately there were no other serious bidders after the Red Sox signed Lackey to exaggerate the magnitude of the potential overpay. We know there were no other bidders at $65 mil. There may have been another bidder at $60 mil, at least initially. We will never know how many bidders would have been out there at $50-something mil because the Mets and Red Sox made sure those bidders would never get in the game. This isn't ebay - you don't have perfect information as to what the other bids are and you can't just keep outbidding the other guy by $1. Plus, in any real life negotiation, there are human beings with emotions that have to be managed. I don't think the Mets valuation of Bay was so outlandish that they could have signed him with a much lower offer.
1) Because they're idiots.
2) Because by the time negotiations first stalled, Zaun had already signed, and none of the other available catchers were any more inspiring than Molina (with the possible exception of Yorvit)
3) There was an article a bit ago that indicated that, unlike most organizations where a GM is given a total budget for player salaries, Minaya was forced to seek approval for funds on a case-by-case (or FA-by-FA) basis. If true, it would explain many of the causes for the Mets' painfully methodical approach and fixation on specific FAs, since to switch targets would require reapproval for any funds. Also, if true, it would shift more of the blame for the Mets' apparent FA misses from Minaya to ownership.
Jeffy Wilpon is the de facto GM, and if they were honest about it, things may not have funneled to the Wilpons on a case-by-case basis.
Now this is a dilemma: Murray Chass writing about the Mets' incompetence.
Nothing new: he's been doing it since 1977.
My evidence for this is that, if they weren't incompetent, they would have fired Omar.
The Mets will never be anything other than lucky-good so long as the current ownership remains in charge.
We don't know if that's true.
Jeff Wilpon is villified because we hate nepotism and the idea of some boy idiot dabbling in our favorite team. But I don't think he's running things, not in the way that a GM does. In fact, the very clear problem is that NOBODY is running things. This has been the issue with the Mets since the Kazmir trade.
My feeling is that Jeff reinforces his father's corporate strategy of: let's move slowly, talk about it, and form a consensus on any move. I don't think he sets the specific player-acquisition agenda. Jeff is just another layer of oversight that handcuffs the GM.
I remember SI using it in 1990. And I doubt that's the first time, either.
And the reason for that is
1: Omar doesn't have an overall budget, he has to discuss an issue (or even player) specific budget with the Wilpons.
2: Both Jeff and Fred have veto power- but neither uses it on any consistent basis- and Fred can overrule a Jeff veto, but whether he will or not...
3: Anyone at anytime has a chance to get either Wilpon's ear... then see #2
Hell, even Omar thinks it's true. His "I have full authority" interview might well have been entitled "The Lady Doth Protest Too Much."
They did get the 2nd best hitter on the market.
I'm not defending Minaya, because I think he has left the team with huge holes, but it always seems like there's enough going on behind the scenes to make it difficult to say for certain what happened. With 1B, it seemed like their first preference was to bring back Delgado, but they had to wait until he played to make a decision. That looks like a mistake now it looks like he's unable to play 1B. I wouldn't mind seeing the organization revamped, but that isn't going to happen. So this is the team we've got. They've survived having offensive zeros at catcher since Loduca tanked and they acquired Schneider, which was another damning indictment of Minaya's pretty bad ideas about what constitutes a worthwhile ballplayer.
Not getting stuck with Molina for 2-3 years will be a good thing in the long run, but I think we all assumed that money would be spent elsewhere, even this late in the offseason. There's still time and talent out there. I'd roll the dice on Wang, even if he won't be ready at the start of the season and Castillo will drive him mad with his lack of range. The team isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. The pieces are there for them to luck into filling holes. RF might be a mess, or Frenchy could explode, or Pagan could catch fire in April and push him to the bench once Beltran comes back, or Martinez could be so good at AAA he's in the lineup full-time by July. 1B could be a productive platoon or a black hole. Murphy's young enough that he could still develop. They're an interesting team in that there's a ton of room for variance this year, whereas the past few years they've been set, for better or for worse, at each position going into the spring.
It's an embarrassment that he would use someone else's line even in the title of a blog entry. But of course, he doesn't blog.
I categorically deny that this is possible.
I'm not defending Minaya, because I think he has left the team with huge holes, but it always seems like there's enough going on behind the scenes to make it difficult to say for certain what happened. With 1B, it seemed like their first preference was to bring back Delgado, but they had to wait until he played to make a decision. That looks like a mistake now it looks like he's unable to play 1B. I wouldn't mind seeing the organization revamped, but that isn't going to happen. So this is the team we've got. They've survived having offensive zeros at catcher since Loduca tanked and they acquired Schneider, which was another damning indictment of Minaya's pretty bad ideas about what constitutes a worthwhile ballplayer.
This has been the main defense of Minaya - that he's had to work with a lot of sneaking around his back. But that's what I find to be the most damning indictment of his abilities, that his decisions have been poor enough that it allows the perception of his weakness to further reinforce itself.
In other words, if Omar did make more intelligent decisions frequently enough - people under him wouldn't try to go past him directly to the Wilpons so frequently. And the Wilpons wouldn't listen to these other voices as often if they had confidence in Minaya. It's the sign of any bad manager when the underlings revolt under him and the superiors ignore him above him.
I mean, if some geek cited a *number* and didn't source it, what would Murray say?
Good news - since the payroll is only $120 million this year, they will obviously have plenty of cash to spend going forward on Crawford and Webb and Martinez. And you can stop saying this over and over and over again.
I'm too lazy/busy to look up the citations, but if I had to guess, I'd say its first usage was sometime on or about April 20, 1962...
Somehow I don't think "you're all" waiting for me to post whatever you think it is that passes for analysis.
Here it is in a New York Times headline from 1991, but not by Murray Chass.
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