Just like Minaya or anyone else, he’s going to have earned my respect and trust. I know that the success of his Oakland teams is marred by steroid use so in my mind he doesn’t have a huge track record. Minaya got results early, then floundered and was fired. This is New York, the biggest market in the sport. I have little patience for losing in a sport with no salary cap, a team with a new city financed stadium and some of the highest prices around. I know I honestly wouldn’t be sad if a new owner solves the Madoff mess and simply brings in his own GM which I can envision in 2 years. If the Mets surprise this year, then I’ll give Alderson some time but in my eyes he left some moves unmade and has already wrong footed the team and the fans with some comments. What I do know is men “smarter” than him have failed miserably.

Burnett also provided value, we traded him for Al Leiter.

That’s the whole point of the draft, IFA and the farm in general. To provide value for your organization. As long as you retain SOME of that value it can bring you more down the road.

Koosman brought us Orosco who became Viola who became our starting SS one year Tony Fernandez.

Jim Fergosi became Nolan Ryan who became Dennis Rasmussen who became Tommy John. That’s a lot of good innings pitched for a 30 year old SS over a 15 year period.

Start building enough “value chains” and it keeps you from making the franchise crippling disasters in the free agent market because you have so many “holes to fill.”

Know who’s a great example of this theory? None other than the Atlanta Braves who have been in the playoffs 15 times in 20 years.

Once the player is waived or retires any potential value he could have brought is over and you have to start a new one. The only way to do this is through your farm.

Most of our expensive free agents or trade acquisitions wind up being waived or retire. Any value going forward is finished. Even when we dump a salary (Matsui, Wagner, Francouer) we wind up waiving whatever “value” was received so that chain is ended.

We forfeit one of our top draft choices every other year while Boston usually has 3-4 in the first couple of rounds. Boston gets 3 or 4 chances every year to start a value chain, we get 2 or 3 every other year.

That’s why we always have so many “holes to fill.”

Scouting and drafting is the lifeblood of building a baseball team. Trades come from having something desirable to other teams. Free agency should just be an ancillary approach as much as the other end (non-tenders, waivers rule 5′s)

Drafts and IFA’s should form 50% bare minimum of your 25 man roster and they should include 5 of your best ten players. Bare minimum.

Facts are Phillips did draft a guy in the 4th round who can play either OF at a gold glove caliber, with an arm, hit for average, some power and runs the bases like a demon and he was one of our top 5 players in 2009 and 2010.

All things being equal we watch (or not) GMJ all summer long last year.

For a team that is always as needy at so many different positions every single year, year after year, we really aren’t in a position to complain when one of our draft choices does turn out and play well for us.

like NJ said, pagan was given away for nothing. so what that they got him back? No different than saying Burnett was drafted by the mets, or any other player that they traded away.

Pagan didnt see the bigs till 7 yrs later after he was sold to the Cubbies. Then was traded for back to the Mets sometime later.

Sorry T Agee but on this we will have to agree to disagree.

At least he got Pagan back when he had the opportunity.

I’ll take that over a flat out bust anyday.

All prospects progress at different rates, some washout, some can’t stay on the field, some are just bad choices to begin with.

The list of things that can derail even a great draft choice is endless. Car accidents, gambling, drugs, dog fighting anything can happen. Add those things to an already difficult assignment like prospect projection, signability and development and it becomes clear that you need to devote an enormous amount of time, effort, money, resources, attention and anything else you can think of to lessen the risk, increase the odds and hasten the development of all your prospects.

The more prospects you have and the more you do those things the less chances your going to “have holes to fill.”

The more holes you have to fill the more chances of making a mistake that costs you years and sizeable payroll as well as other assets like picks and prospects.

Reece Havens could have two bang up seasons and be here in September 2012 for good or he could develop slower like Pagan did. You never know how it’s going to work out but having more prospects is much better than having fewer.

Cause if you want to give Phillips credit for drafting a guy back in 1999 whose debut in a Mets uniform came a decade later in 2008. Well I just don’t know if I could take that seriously?

What a shot in the arm it is to have an Ike Davis come up and play pretty well for you. He didn’t cost you any prospects, draft picks or subtraction from your 25.

All new GM’s benefit (or not) from the work they or their predessor did (or didn’t do) in the previous 5 years.

Alderson should benefit from some of Omar’s picks, Omar benefitted from 3 guys Phillips produced and was absolutely crushed by Duquette’s asinine trade of Kazmir. Phillips was also the beneficiary of Mcillvaine’s and Hunnsiker’s drafts that included the following that he brought up and/or traded: Bobby Jones, Jason Izringhausen, Preston Wilson, Billy Koch, Vance Wilson, Terrance Long, Jay Payton and AJ Burnett.

Among the players drafted before Phillips became GM that really would have helped him were Darren Erstadt, Aaron Rowand, Garrett Atkins, Jeremy Guthrie, and David DeJesus.

Unfortunately, despite correctly scouting these future major leaguers we didn’t sign any of them and considering how many “holes” we always have to fill it is an area of the business that we cannot afford to let quality future Major Leaguers get away.

If you were to add Darin Erstadt’s 2000 with Anaheim to our 2000 World Series team I think everyone would agree that things could have been quite a bit different. Check out his 2000 w/Anaheim.

.355/409/541 25 HR’s, 121 RS, 100 RBI. Think we could have found room for him in our outfield?

This is where the Wilpon ownership has really failed the fans over and over again.

The list of players we have correctly scouted AND drafted, and then not signed is sickening and was then followed by 8 years of de emphasizing scouting, drafting, signing and developing the best talent possible in exchange for some of the worst free agent and trade acquisitions in the history of the game, going all the way back to the end of Frank Cashen’s run and encompassing the entire tenure of the Wilpon’s ownership.

PAY THEM to give up their free rides and convince them to start on their professional career’s early. In the long run it is much less expensive to do so then to go free agent all the time and frequently MUCH better for the team and fans too.

There are a few moves I really like and no moves that I don’t. The one regret I have is that we don’t have any club options on any of these guys for next year. It’s pretty much one and done. Almost everyone Alderson has signed has had success in the Majors before and I would have loved to be able to hold onto the guys who did well for 2012 but I guess that would have raised the cost.

I’m really glad we signed Dickey for 2 years and an option. Perfect move. Some guaranteed money for RA, reasonable price considering the results of last year vs career to date but with a very high probability of success with that wacky knuckleball. Looking next for Reyes 4 years and Pagan 2 + option.

Harang is getting over $4 million from the Padres this year. Do you think he is worth that?

Webb, who hasn’t pitched in 2 years, is getting $3 million from Texas. I admit, he does intrigue me, but I really don’t see this as a very big upgrade from Capuano’s deal.

And Penny, who hasn’t been good since 2007, is making $3 million from the Dodgers.

Basically, just more expensive versions of what we already have.

Who is he going to TRADE? We have no one worth trading right now that would give a worthwhile return.

It’s easy for you to sit here and say “another GM……” It’s also easy to sit behind a keyboard and say trade this for that…….YOU ARE NOT A GM, no matter how much you say you know the game.

After 2006, anything less than a World Series would be considered a failure. The Phillies becoming the dominant force in the NL probably didn’t help. How much would it suck to sit through another division rival going on a decade spanning run of success?

I think Omar had a lot of the same problems JPR had in Toronto. Came in with lot of hype,
didn’t have a lot to start with but found some success early,
meddling ownership,
an organization with no clear direction,
and really, hadn’t developed the tools to be a successful GM by that point.

Neither of them seemed to really know how to handle the media or the finer points of wheeling and dealing with other teams.

Omar is obviously a fine talent evaluator and maybe this experience will make him a better big league GM.

So, you’re defending a guy that just didn’t get it done for this team, mean while KILLING a guy before a pitch has been thrown in his first season.

You are a joke.

Not every newly appointed GM makes a trade or many trades very early in their tenure. Some like Omar do but Omar was a GM in the same division as the Mets for 3 years before coming back.

Even Steve Phillips, who was already here didn’t make any trades until after he had been on the job for 5 months and he already knew all the players on the team.

I’m not surprised one way or the other by Alderson’s lack of trading activity. I am positive that if he had been offered Bumgarner for Perez we might have had a trade already.

Just like the idea isn’t just to spend money as opposed to spending it wisely the same so is true about making trades. You don’t make trades when the return is less than you feel is in your teams best interest.

We have heard reports that he was talking extensively with both Boston and SF. If those talks didn’t lead to a trade I feel that it was probably not in our best interest to not make one.

They have yet 2 play 1 game. “One game”.

How about just waiting for the season to pan out before you say what he did was a bad move.?

All Alderson had to do was spend just a little more, not a lot. I don’t mind the Young & Paulino moves but I don’t think he spent smart and did a good job at all outside of that.

To answer Sach above he could have spent just a little more or a little wiser to pair Young with either Penny, Harang, maybe Webb? That’s the short answer.

He’s also made NO TRADES!!!!!

If anyone here was told that the Mets would have made NO TRADES by the time ST came along nobody here would have believed it. Another GM may have valued different players and made a trade for pitching by now.

I am NOT saying the guy is a genius, but can we give the guy a year or two before we claim to be experts?