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1. RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) Posted: February 08, 2012 at 09:43 PM (#4056878)Hookers and blow.
Spent like a drunken sailor on Latin free agents. Cespedes should be a Met.
AOL Fanhouse?
GM of the Orioles?
Bleacher Report? SB Nation?
Deputy Assistant Editor, BBTF?
I don't know, but Murray Chass might.
hired by the Mets again?
If by "paid some dividends" TFW means, "weren't such complete disasters that they weren't cut in midseason", I'll play along.
I'm pretty sure this is hogwash.
That's "assertive"? Doing what most other team's were doing, something for which there were no penalties anyway?
Writing a column is so much easier when you don't have to have words do things like make "sense".
I believe the word meant here is "baffling".
A while back, when Alderson blamed the Mets 2011 record on the bullpen, strongly implying they would have won at least 85 games if not for having had to have traded Rodriguez, I thought it was the usual frustrated gassing by a Wilpon front man. Given the moves since then, though, Alderson may have actually believed what he said.
This is absurd. Is this idjit really suggesting the Alderson hadn't heard of Bernie freaking Madoff when he took the job?
Really?
And people are supposed to believe this?
That Duquette was ever given the keys to a MLB franchise is ludicrous, any one of Lasorda's many dogs has got to be smarter.
It is quite possible that Alderson didn't know the extent that the Mets finances were tied to Madoff or that for years the Wilpons were only operating in the black because they were pulling $50-75m from BMIS every year.
Of course it is not possible that the Wilpons did not know- though their behavior suggests they were in denial for quite some time (and possibly still are to some extent- all the things they've done to hold onto the Mets have been likely to reduce the size of the Wilpons' golden parachutes when they eventually throw in the towel- or it gets thrown in for them)
I typically want the Mets to go all in on prospects, but I'm pretty sure Cespedes will be a bust.
Come on, this isn't exactly Kazmir for Zambrano. They took a slight downgrade in CF (and it should surprise nobody if Torres happens to outperform Pagan in a given year) in return for a pretty good bullpen arm.
Intruiging? I don't see how it intrigues. But baffling? No.
No way do I buy this. Alderson was hired Oct 27, 2010. Madoff got arrested Dec 11,2008. No way no how in that 1.5 year period MLB and Alderson didn't know that Madoff had seriously damaged the Mets finances. To suggest otherwise is preposterous-rumors of the Mets involvement with Madoff started swirling almost from the moment of his arrest
Heck, right here on BTTF, on August 28, 2009, we had a discussion on Wilpon having to sell the team because of Madoff related losses.
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/newsstand/discussion/madoff_author_sees_sale_of_ny_mets_coming/
Yeah, it's baffling.
So what? The size of the deal has nothing to do with its ability to puzzle the hell out of us.
The Pagan trade isn't baffling to me in the least - and I wouldn't be surprised if Ramon Ramirez contributes more than either centerfielder does - it's the Francisco and Rauch signings that are odd. If I only had $10 million to play with, I don't know if I would have spent all of it on the bullpen. But it was a sore spot. We already had strong in-house candidates for every defensive position, starters are expensive, and starting pitching is the strength of the farm system. The bullpen was a reasonable place to spend money. But I do also get uneasy when I see a GM develop a bullpen fixation.
Could he have gotten 2 cromulent starting pitchers with 10 million? Maybe, but you'd be rolling the dice as to whether they'd definitely perform better than Gee and Pelfrey (presumably the 4 and 5).
I think that he (and Wilpon) probably also believe that it has the same impact on fans. This is almost certainly why they didn't explore trading Isringhausen last year.
Well, as far as cash goes, this deal didn't cost the Mets anything, really. Pagan will be making $4.85M for the Giants in 2012, while Ramirez ($2.65M) and Torres ($2.7M) are making $5.35M. So this cost the Mets $500,000, net. If you want to say that Pagan was a trading chit, OK . . . but what was he going to bring back, more than an adequate replacement in CF plus a bullpen arm?
I'm with you if you want to focus on the Rauch signing as a baffling expenditure of scarce resources, overkill on the bullpen. In that sense, in fact, it is this trade combined with the Francisco signing that helps make that case: why in the world -- if you either have made those moves or have them on the drawing board, and knowing you have SUCH limited resources to spend, would you also spend your last few precious dollars on an injured, risky arm like Rauch for a bullpen that is a luxury? To me, the trade represented a way to leverage Pagan pretty effectively, and it should have been a way to avoid spending the dollars on Rauch -- even if Alderson was tempted in that direction. That is, what is baffling to me is why this trade wasn't the means to the end of avoiding that signing. It just makes the Rauch signing that much more baffling.
But anyway, I think that the discussion here (while fine as far as it goes, on Alderson's choices and the plausibility of his being surprised by the extent of the financial debacle) misses or at least fails to focus enough on the real talking point that this article brings up. It really brings into sharp focus, by surveying the last two off-seasons and the player acquisitions, how utterly devastating the financial mess has been. It is so easy to get lost in the day-to-day, this or that individual decision, and even to get focused on what the latest news means for the future of the Wilpons' ownership. By looking at who the Mets have signed (whether or not they should have spent this or that $2M on this guy, or that $1.5M on the other one), and how they have been so consistently and utterly limited to the bargain bin, you get a stunning-for-its-clarity picture of the state of the franchise, post-Madoff.
And here's the question it raises for me: where's the bottom? When will the payroll hit the point where they will actually not simply put all savings from departures of any player costing REAL money into the pocket of Fred Wilpon (or more accurately, into that of his creditors)? Will it be when the payroll hits $75M with the departure of David Wright? Fifty million when Santana is gone, or under $40M when Bay departs? Is there any reason to believe that they won't keep hoarding 90 cents of every dollar they save for as long as the Wilpons own the team, and they remain in desperate financial condition? If anyone really thinks $90 is the floor, I'd like to hear why you think that.
Well, $80 could have been the floor, right? Alderson got the go-ahead to sign Rauch and Francisco.
I'm not a baseball finance expert, but I do know that the Wilpons are desperate for cash, and a winning baseball team creates cash. I don't really see this turning into a situation where the Mets are one of those teams that just happily loses 90 games and collects on the revenue sharing payments. What's the least they can spend and still keep 100% sales on their skyboxes?
Of course I have no doubt that this will create a split the baby situation in which the Mets suck, spend a few bucks each offseason (on the wrong players) to try and boost season ticket sales, and still suck. I can be just as pessimistic as you can.
$90 million is a real, legit payroll. If Sandy can't win with that, how did he survive Oakland back in the day?
It's one thing to build a winner with a $90 million payroll. It's quite another challenge when you're tasked with taking a crappy team with a $118 million payroll and turn it into a winner with a $90 million one. I don't know that's a tool in any GM's bag.
Sure it is, but Sandy hasn't had any money to play with at all. Santana and Bay represent almost 50% of that number by themselves.
Maybe. As I said, I am deeply skeptical that the payroll will bottom out there. There is no way the Wilpons can afford a $90m payroll and keep up with their debt payments, under current revenue conditions. Does it make the Mets' situation worse than the A's? Actually, they are comparable, in this sense: in both cases, ownership issues are putting franchises in the position where there is no attention whatsoever being paid to winning. The A's are trying to leverage a move, and the Mets are trying to keep one step ahead of creditiors. It's not a contest; both set of circumstances are horrible for fans.
I would say that if you have no money and a pitcher's park, spending meager cash on what you hope is a killer bullpen is about as sensible as it gets.
All it gives you is a puncher's chance - but that beat the alternatives...
I think the A's have already hit rock bottom in terms of fan interest, so ownership doesn't care if Beane trades every single recognizable player they have. The Mets are getting there in a hurry, but I don't think they're there quite yet. Again, it seems like a little thing, but why on earth would Wilpon approve of $12 million going to Frank Francisco while he's whoring around the country for $20 million donations? He still wants wins. I don't think he's going to get them, but...
They couldn't spend NO money in the off-season. They lost players ranging from Reyes to Capuano. I think given how much came off the 2011 payroll (including Beltran and K-Rod, as well as Reyes), it's awfully hard to point to the amount they spent on the few bullpen arms (putting aside the wisdom of those moves) as real strong evidence that $90M is really the floor. Unless the team is sold, the payroll will fall lower.
Well, they could have. But I'm not claiming you're wrong. Payroll may well keep falling.
It will take a while to know who's right (assuming no sale of the team, of course). The first shoe to drop would be trading David Wright, but after that, they can't really substantially dump money until after the 2013 season, when Santana (24/25.5 each of the next two seasons) and Bay ($16/$16) come off the books. So that's over $41M on the 2013 payroll that, right now, is pretty much untradeable, meaning that it's hard to see it getting that much lower if they're going to even fill out the roster for 2013 for too much less than, say, $80M. Can they really fill 23 roster spots for less than the two most expensive players (and on an average of less than $2M/player)? I doubt it.
So as a practical matter, I suspect $90M is the realistic floor until 2014 -- unless, say, Jason Bay suddenly has a renaissance and makes his contract for 2013 tradeable, or Johan Santana's shoulder is miraculously restored to full health. It's in 2014 that things would get interesting . . . and you could see the $40-$50M Mets.
Of course, if the Wilpons still own the team by then, I'll be too drunk all summer long to care.
How's that?
Alderson hasn't been particularly impressive as the Mets GM. It's been tiresome, listening to him flack for the Wilpons. His offseason moves have been weak. Get over it.
Now that's baffling. Regardless of the nature of your park, spending the little money you have on your bullpen is on the face of it wrong.
I think it's within the generally accepted realms of argumentative internet exaggeration. Like mine was. But yours is more florid and graphic than mine, so I prefer it.
I suppose I agree with all of that.
It's been done.
See 1978-79, 1994-95, 2002-04...
I think he's been overall fine. Not better than fine, but not worse either.
I don't blame him for toeing the company line; he's the GM and it's kind of in the job description. And when you're an ex-Marine GM, it's kind of programmed into the DNA to salute and go about your business, no matter what you might say behind closed doors and no matter what you might really think. I have no idea what Sandy Alderson really thinks of Fred Wilpon and the mess he's made of the Mets' finances, but I'd be shocked beyond belief if he let any of those feeling slip in public.
Once you accept the reality that Alderson is not to blame for the lack of any money in the cash register (you could say he shouldn't have taken the job under those conditions, which perhaps he shouldn't have, but the question of whether he should be there is distinct from how well he's done with the hand he's been dealt), then you ask whether he's done a decent job with the low-rent acquisitions he's made.
Have they been stellar? No. Of the ones we can judge so far, there have been some hits and some misses. For my part, I don't think you can say anyone shopping in the bargain bins is a failure simply because there have been misses. It's in the nature of the beast that there will be misses. But he's gotten some value, with some guys who contributed in ways that helped keep the Mets somewhat respectable for a decent chunk of the season.
Where he moves from just "eh" to "fine" in my book is in the moves he has made that put into practice the philosophy of targeting high-end players. In the Beltran trade, he turned down packages of two or three OK prospects in favor of Wheeler, a high ceiling prospect. In the draft, they went for Nimmo, whom they felt (rightly or wrongly) was the prospect with the most upside available to them -- and they went above slot to sign him. Those two moves (the only real cases where Alderson has been able to make a move that was arguably unconstrained by the money situation) reflect an approach I agree with -- but of course we can judge the execution only in the longer term.
So in the moves where Alderson is acting within the constraints of the situation, Alderson has done OK. No better, no worse. In the few moves where he has been able to be relatively freer, because he had an asset he could utilize (Beltran in the one case, the dollars to spend to draft and sign Nimmo),I think he's done well and taken the right approach. That seems to me a fair assessment -- it's not a miracle worker, but there are no miracles where the Wilpons are concerned.
It depends on the overall payroll, Pelfrey's 2012, how the Mets minor league pitchers are doing, and whether the Mets feel like offering him arb then dealing him at some point offers the possibility of getting some surplus value that way--all of which is to say, it looks like there are too many variables for us to have any real idea of whether Pelfrey will be tendered in 2013 other than the fact that structural factors encourage tender offers. It's entirely possible Pelfrey will project to be the second best starter on the Mets for 2013, and if he continues to throw 200 innings a year and is in line for $8m while projecting to an ERA+ of 100 (meaning his 2012 is similar to his 2010), the Mets are both unlikely to be able to replace that more cheaply by trade or FA, and they can probably move him at that salary while picking up a decent prospect. If I had to bet I'd bet he'll be back, for any one of or combination of the above reasons, while the only reason he won't be back is if he's overpriced in arb3 and the Mets can't expect to move him in spite of that. If the process works, the Mets should be paying around 80% of the salary Pelfrey would get as a FA. In addition to that break on price, the Mets should know better than anyone else what Pelfreys real value projects to be. Tendering him can easily be the right move even when the Mets don't need him and don't want him.
I'm just not seeing all that much difference here.
There isn't, within that part of the ground on which we would review him. You think we disagree more than we do. The major differences are two: First, I cut Alderson more slack because I don't think you can expect much more than a mixed record when any GM is shopping for retreads, cast-offs, injury rehabs, Rule 5 hopefuls, etc. If the GM hits a few reasonably productive, low-cost gems, that's about all you can expect. And I see the fact that Alderson is limited to those acquistions as another thing to blame Wilpon for, not a thing to pin on Alderson.
And second, I expand the universe of decisions upon which I make my judgment, and include the Beltran trade and Nimmo draft pick. I see those as more relevant and important, because they are the only decisions (maybe I'm forgetting another one, but i don't think so) in which his hands weren't tied by resource limitations. And as I said, they both reflect a philosophy I approve of and earn him points in my book. So they raise his grade. If you want to look just at the off-season, OK -- I agree with you his performance is "meh," especially weighed down by the Rauch signing. If you want to look at how he's done overall as GM, I think he's done better than that. Great? Nah -- not nearly enough opportunity to do even good things to rate anything close to that.
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