9
2011
Did The Decision To Keep Perez Hurt Ticket Sales?
An article by 
I want to share part of an email that came my way on Monday. It came from a longtime reader who occasionally emails the site and it really struck a chord with me. She wrote:
Why is Oliver Perez still here? I feel like I’m being punished by the Mets for some unknown reason, or maybe mocked is a better word. Every day I continue to see Oliver Perez in a Mets uniform, I see everything that was bad about the last two seasons that I would rather forget. I feel the same way about Luis Castillo, but not to the same extent. Have we been such bad fans over the years, that now they have resorted to torturing us? Is that why Perez is still here? To dampen our hopes, thrash our dreams, and weaken our spirits? I’m sorry, but as a longtime season ticket holder, make that former season ticket holder, I deserve better than that.
I think many fans can relate to this, and like former president Bill Clinton used to say, I can feel her pain.
It wonder if keeping a player who is so despised and unwanted by fans can adversely affect a fan’s outlook for a new season. I’m also curious to know if it has any impact on ticket sales?
It’s well documented that adding an elite player can boost ticket sales for a Major League team who usually see a nice spike in such cases, but can keeping a terrible player – a player who has alienated an entire fanbase - do the exact opposite? Is the decision to keep Oliver Perez a big reason why ticket sales for the Mets are in decline as recently reported in the NY Post and the NY Times?
In an off-season where the Mets had no cash to haul in a prized free agent or trade for a marquis player, perhaps the biggest addition they could have made was cutting bait with both Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo long before tickets for the 2011 season went on sale.
All of the bargain basement signings and reclamation projects that were brought in this off-season, did little to excite a fanbase that has been in a four year slumber. Most of those moves were useful, but they were nothing more than filling out the bench as well as the back end of the rotation and bullpen as cheaply as possible and everybody knows that. There was nothing here to get excited about or rouse your spirits.
I’ll tell you what could have done that… You already know… Lisa knows… I know… It seems everybody knows except for the ones who could have done something about it.
The sad part about it is that Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo will most likely get released soon anyway. But now it won’t have the effect it could of had if they had used their axes in November.
Sometime before April 1st, you will finally see the names of Perez and Castillo on a list of roster cuts as they pare down the team to the “best” 25 players. Hopefully.
For a day or two after the announcement you’ll read a thousand blog posts and newspaper articles mostly with titles that will read “FINALLY!” and “It’s About Time!”. Then when all the dust finally settles, and the celebrations die down, and the last remaining remnants of ticker tape are swept away, we’ll be left with just one unanswered and burning question. Why did they wait so long?
About the Author: Joe DeCaro
I'm a lifelong Mets fan who loves writing and talking about the Amazins' 24/7. From the Miracle in 1969 to the magic of 1986, and even the near misses in '73 and '00, I've experienced it all - the highs and the lows. I started Mets Merized Online in 2005 to feed my addiction. Follow me on Twitter @metsmerized.
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This is just a small piece of a puzzle that the Mets have built that has caused them to lose ticket purchasers. Notice the supposed new ticket packages the Mets are begging us to buy. when they thought that their new park would be an automatci cash cow they took them away from small plan purchaser. Remember when the Mets had Sunday plans, well they shafted the weekend attendee by making us buy a couple week night games on that plan, tickets many couldn’t use. Then when the team turned sour, fans couldn’t even sell tose seats on stub hub for more than a dollar. The Mets lost a lot of ticket holders Now they want us back!!! So they bring back the small plan. What do we say? Thanks but will you shaft us again when you become good!!! No thanks. What will you offer us to see. Stars!!! Nope, Oliver Perez maybe…No thanks…
It all adds up… screw us enough Wilpons and we ain’t biting anymore. We can still go to games… We’ll buy the dollar tickets on Stub hub and we can pick the dates for now on. Or we can take a weekend and spend it in DC and see them there in a much more pleasant atmosphere.
I’m sure the Yankees shaft their fans as well. But there’s one difference. A Yankee fan knows that sooner or later, if the team is faltering, tey are going to make the big deal to get the next star to get to the post season. What do we have? We have Sandy Alderson telling us that since he brought in “stars” like Hairston and Harris they’ll play right if Beltran can’t. So we can’t get top notch guys and he won’t even let us watch kids play. Yeah, its a lot deeper than whether or not Oliver is non the team this year.
We have Sandy Alderson telling us that since he brought in “stars” like Hairston and Harris they’ll play right if Beltran can’t.
Um, no he didn’t. He may have said that Harris and Hairston might be considered along with other names in the case of Beltran starting the season on the DL, but he didn’t go up there Jerry Jones style saying “MY BOY HARRIS IS A STAR, DAMMIT. GONNA SLOT HIM RIGHT IN THERE IN RIGHT FIELD AND START CHILLIN THE CHAMPAGNE.”
A Yankee fan knows that sooner or later, if the team is faltering, tey are going to make the big deal to get the next star to get to the post season.
Like this offseason, when they acquired (DRUMROLLPLEASE) Freddy Garcia once Pettite retired?
Well Berb, if you are naive enough to beleive the Yankees are done making moves this year then ylou are really in a league of your own. Who do you think has more confidence in his team making a major move between now and July to try to make the post season? The Mets or the Yankees. If you say Mets then you have a learning disability.
Granted I went a little overboard with the Yankees thing, but I’m just kinda tired of the done-to-death, uninformed “Sandy thinks the guys he signed are stars!!! His whole long-term plan was to sign Boof Bonser!” schtick.
The Wilpon did expect that the smaller 6 pack type of fan to be trampled and left in the dust in the frenzy of high demand. That’s what all the “Best way to guarantee yourself seats at Citi is to buy season tickets now at Shea.”
Smaller capacity and huge demand would have squeezed everyone without season tickets. If the team was doing well you wouldn’t be able to sniff Citifield, by design.
If the team did well and the economy didn’t take such a hit. They opened that stadium 2 years too late.
Really, parrot… If the team did well !! Wow… a true genius in stating the most obvious. you really need to go to Oz.. There might be another brain there for you. Meanwhile beg for another cracker.
Such a big boy behind a keyboard………….
I agree wi8th you 100%. Another problem is when they bring in Perez the booing will be deafining and the team (players) have to feel demoralized. We have enough problems for the players to play at full potentional, don’t need them to play at 25-50%.
Did keeping Zito hurt the Giants at the gate or on the field?
Think Cain, Lincecum, Sanchez and Bumgarner had something to do with that?
I’ve drawn my line in the sand. As long as Ollie pee is on the team, I am not spending a dime at Citifield.
Yes, Sandy definitely should have cut these guys like day 3 he had the job.
I mean, he never saw them play in person, they were going to be paid $18 million anyway, and he had 10,000 more important things to do, but he totally should have known that John Q. InternetCommenter and Mike Francesa know what’s best for the Mets, and blindly cut them both.
I know it’s obvious to us, we’ve lived with these two for years, but Sandy hasn’t. I mean, could you imagine being hired as an office manager, and day 1 you have people coming up to you and saying “listen, you need to fire Steve and Dana, like, TODAY. They suck. They totally suck and you should fire them now.”
Wouldn’t you at least want to see Steve and Dana in action before saying to them “listen, I know we don’t know each other at all, but word on the street is you suck, so I’m firing you.”
The last FO always made signings to “get butts in the seats” so if Lisa and the like miss that way of doing business, they can always buy Jason Bay and JJ Putz jerseys and think of “better” times.
A good GM should know his market and his fanbase. He’s obviously clueless when it comes to marketing a “new” New York Mets team. Alderson gets an “F” there. You are talking like a fan, and have no business and marketing sense.
Alderson is trying to build a winning franchise. Remember the yankees of the 80s and early 90s? No, no one seems to. As if that never happened. The spent the early 90s trying to shake off the failure of the 80s (big free agent signings that busted) and built up their farm system. And look at the results.
What pariahs did they keep during those lean years? Answer = NONE
You’re missing the point. When people said New Coke sucked, they shit-canned it 3 months later. Alderson is a terrible marketing GM. The guys on the front cover of the 2011 media guide and yearbook are all Omar’s guys.
I’ve heard rumors that New coke was just a marketing scam to breath new life into Coke, which was rebranded as Coca-Cola Classic (Can’t Beat the Real Thing). Also, New Coke didn’t involve a barren farm system, horrendous budget problems and an ownership in a financial crisis. All Coke ended up doing is going back to the old stuff and firing Bill Cosby.
I haven’t seen the new media guide yet, so I can’t comment too deeply except for 2 things:
If Wright and Reyes are on it, they aren’t Minaya’s guys
Who did you expect to be on it? Alderson hasn’t even had a draft yet and free agency was pretty slim, even if he had a big budget.
Alderson is a terrible marketing GM.
That’s like saying someone is a “bad PR shortstop.” His job is to build a winner, not form a team around flex ticket packages.
in my opinion the only thing that will really bring fans back in droves is 1 very very long stretch of winning baseball. even then i think ppl still will need to see them playing well deep into aug b4 you see stadium filled to near capacity and thats if reyes is still with mets.
You cannot correct TWO DECADES of quick fix mistakes in one off season.
You cannot correct TWO DECADES of poor drafts or not signing your draft choices in one off season.
The very best you can do with a roster that’s payroll is up against the ceiling and 2/3rds of is questionable one way or another is to get many cheap players who have demonstrated success in the past to help keep you in it until you can start bringing in players who will be part of the long term picture.
If future teams were ever more than a fleeting thought we wouldn’t be in this position……Again.
TWO DECADES of going for it every year has produced more losing seasons than winning ones. TWO DECADES of depending on free agency, big trades for 35 year old position players and fire sales by division rivals to produce our stars has caused this crash. The third one under the Wilpon in TWO DECADES.
You cannot play fantasy GM every year with a real baseball team. It doesn’t work. It won’t translate. Even if it someday did, it would immediately crash right afterwards.
A GM’s job is to build a team that can compete now WITHOUT borrowing against the future. Joe Mcillvaine is the only GM that gave this his best effort and the Wilpon got rid of him after 3 1/2 years but when you look at the players he brought in here you realize they had a lot to do with the success we had in 1999 and 2000.
He also signed free agents that didn’t cost draft choices like Lance Johnson and Bernard Gilkey. We got good years out of those guys without disturbing the future. He traded for John Olerud when Olerud’s value was low. He traded a well rated prospect (Veras) for another well rated prospect (Carl Everett) who played damn well for a few years after he left here and we have STILL not developed a RFer since Strawberry (or before him either)
For all of you out there who are always after the quick fix, your part of the problem. Probably the biggest part. The quick fix has led to ELEVEN LOSING SEASONS IN 20 YEARS.
You guys are constantly re rocking the ceiling when it’s the roof that needs to be fixed.
Changing the faucet when the pipes burst.
Buying a new lamp when your box is still running on fuses.
Painting the shingles when your foundation is cracked.
Wake up and look at the big picture someday. Demand that Ownership AND the GM address future teams AHEAD of time so we never have to hear “well who else were we going to get to play 2B, LF, RF, C, SP, BP?” to “justify” yet another horrendous trade or free agent signing.
Then grow up. Wake up. Show some maturity and patience or all we’ll ever get is a winning season 45% of the time and a playoff berth 15% of the time followed in short order by a collapse and crash just like our last two playoff berths.
A good GM should know his market and his fanbase.
I agree he should know them, but I’m pretty sure he shouldn’t take orders from them.
Quick decisions have been a staple of the met FO for a solid decade now, usually with disatrous results. If Ollie and Maine couldn’t be provided competiton last year for their spots and Ollie wasn’t cut last year when he refused to go down then what the hell’s the rush?
Wow!!! The guy is adveritsed as this brilliant hunk of a GM and he’s too stupid to take the advice of every baseball person in the world, and he’s too lazy to go to Mwexico to watch him one game, and you defend this!!!!! wow… Met fan IQs reach a new all time low. No wonder we don’;t ever win. This fan base will accept any pathetic excuse for failure.
-sigh
SMH
It’s not even worth it with him. At least some of the other trolls actually try and make arguments and back them up. Harry is just the “happylittlemets” troll, the only difference is…
um…
ok I guess there isn’t really a difference.
Name one baseball person who has come out and said Ollie should be cut!
I am sure Sandy would love to know this so he can steal a couple a draft picks from them for interfering with one of his contract players.
Poor Luis Castillo. To get lumped together with Ollie Perez is worse than getting a lump of coal in your Christmas stocking. Luis is wearing down after a wonderful career while Ollie is just wearing us out.
Big differences exist between the two guys on the bubble.
castillo should never be lumped with perez.u are correct kind sir.perez is a never was while castillo is a has been. the only thing they have in common is they are in the wilponzie if i pay ya i play ya club.castillo is tolerable while perez is a disease to this roster.funny how geniusalderson sees something in perez just as minaya did. i say this with tongue implanted in cheek.thats why to my way of thinking geniusalderson is much more inert then minaya ever was. he just has an ivy league education as he has pointed out many times.what geniusalderson will find out is that in this town lots of people are highly educated both in schooling AND street smarts!this ain’t oakland!
funny how geniusalderson sees something in perez just as minaya did. i say this with tongue implanted in cheek.
You know that “tongue in cheek” means you’re being ironic right?
Cuz this isn’t ironic…it’s just wrong. But good work putting “genius” in front of Sandy’s last name…clever sh&& right there.
I can’t speak for anyone else but if circumstances where different and I was in the position to buy or renew season tickets, Perez still on the roster in Dec would not have stopped me.
Don’t get me wrong. I want Perez, gone..gone…gone, and I fully expect that will happen. It may be because I’ve been a fan since ’68 (thereby giving you a hint as to my age), but I’ve lived through worse teams than this one – and worse GMs, for that matter. If trading Seaver didn’t turn me away, and those god-awful teams of the late 70s and early 80s didn’t, neither will Oliver Perez.
It’s not the only reason sales are down, but its sure one of them. Last year loyal fans watched a squad go 24 & 1 with their roster through most of the summer. I was there at Ollie’s last appearance booing lustily and letting him know I’d be glad never to see him put on Mets colors again. I supported the hiring of Alderson. But he slapped everyone in the face that was ready for a fresh start by talking about giving that selfish bum Ollie another go. I’m not a season ticket guy; I’m a single game guy that’s goes to a lot of games. But I haven’t even looked at the schedule yet for this year. A lot of the lies and mistruths that have come out of Wilpon and Alderson’s mouth have contributed to that. But I know I’m not picking up the schedule until the Mets commit to having the best TEAM by dropping Perez. The Mets could have had a better offseason if they simply didn’t sign anyone but cut him.
i agree with you that if the 1st thing alderson did was cut ollie he would have had a better review from many fans but he then would be like prior gm’s making moves to appease fans.
i don’t want that i want a gm that acts on what he thinks is best for team 1st rather than what fans or media think is best for team .
If Sandy cut Ollie immediately, and Ollie caught lightening elsewhere, Sandy would have been toast. Sandy did the right thing, seeing with Terry just what Ollie can do. We know it’s close to nothing, but Sandy and Terry deserved their time to see it. Also, Sandy had to make the right decision to sell to the owners — otherwise catcalls backing Omar would have been everywhere.
des, sandy is a genius haven’t u been listening to him?if he can evaluate reyes from stats why can’t he do so with perez?des do u really think perez will catch on in another place ,other than babe ruth league, i mean? who do u figure will toast geniusalderson?certainly not the ny daily news!GENIUSALDERSON IS TOO CLEVER TO BE TOASTED.des haven’t u been keeping track of sandy’s mussings?as far as the owners go as long as geniusalderson continues to follow their orders there will be no problem.geniusalderson only has to lie when his lips move…and the wilponzie mob will luv him.
Evaluating Reyes only with stats? Did you pick that one up before or after Alderson said he’d have to see Reyes play first before analyzing him.
this is the same guy (geniusalderson) who said he had no idea canseco and mark m were juicing up.i presume he watched them get bigger before his eyes? geniusalderson has zero cred with me. by the way do u still say freddye wilponzie is not responsible for the met futility over the past 32 years?this since every time he speaks about his honorable family he says they have O w n e d the team for over T H I R T Y years.geniusaldersons evaluation of reyes will consist of whatever the wilponzies tell him to do with jose.jose will be gone this year one way or the other …do you really listen to eddie randall? SO U ARE THE ONE.
baby al, have you never looked the other way in your life? Why should Sandy ostracize him the way Jim Bouton and Jose Canseco did? Give the guy a break. Or do you think his proximity to Fred is a modern day scarlet letter?
des i believe geniusalderson was hired to bring credability to dumping salary,period.i have been spot on when it comes to the wilponzie mob. if geniusalderson weren’t a straw man he would not have been hired on.do u remember at the minaya firing press gathering when the wilponzie mob said minaya never asked to cut perez or castillo? i guess geniusalderson suffers fom the same inexplicable malady. a proximity to freddye is a modern day scarlet letter.the letter is p …u got it …for ponzie!
Baby al, your man Sandy is a very smart guy, as you would probably acknowledge. Should he have made any decision on either Ollie or Jose without seeing them? Really now, should he? And then he’d have to convince the Wilpons or whoever is running the show that he made the right move.
I wouldn’t make a decision without personal evidence, and I don’t think you would either. Baby al, if you wanted to continue on a successful career trajectory like Sandy, you shouldn’t either.
By the way, Sandy needs his job. You, baby al, can always go into standup comedy. You don’t need the Mets. LOL
des these days they have tape,scouts etc.ollie pitched in the winter league too.perhaps geniusalderson could have or did eyeball him there.i am sure terry collins observed him enough last year. how about geniusalderson asking warthen about ollie.i will say one moe time ollie perez is on this squad cause if wilponzie pays ya he plays ya.every day ollie has been on this roster shows what a fraud geniusalderson really is.i feel ollie is so bad freddye will have to cut him anyway ..when and only when freddye wants to.at that time geniusalderson will spin it to show money is no object….SEE.
For those of you constantly ripping the new GM, you’ll want to check out direct quotes from Sandy over on AA during a short interview with Rob Castellano.
These two below in particular should ease the worries of those who’ve dubbed Alderson ‘Saber Sandy’:
# In terms of his preferred player valuation methods, the old standard of on-base ability came up of course, which he pointed out he looks for even over power. In terms of the process, he likes to cast a wide net using a couple of general tools like OBP or WHIP and continue to drill down using more subjective things like scouting reports or power potential to thin the group.
# When asked about more in-depth SABR-metrics Alderson stated that though he certainly keeps tabs on the cutting edge stuff, he doesn’t regularly utilize the newer, extremely high-level statistics stating that sometimes you can ‘lose the forest for the trees.’
You read AA? Blasphemer!
LOL….can’t get enough of the Mets.
Hmm kind of sounds like what I have been saying all along regarding some of the Sabers.
By bottling all that info into a number you lose some of the DETAILS!
But then he says he prefers OBP over power…Ok only if he doesn’t take a .375 singles hitter over a .325 RBI machine I guess.
You mean a .325 power hitter. RBI machines don’t exist without the guys in front of them.
Other than that, yes, you need to balance things and 30+ HRs and even more doubles is easily worth 40-50 OBP points.
except of course a .325 hitter by default is going to have a perfectly fine OBP!
really this debate is why OPS became fashionable. Players need OBP and power in some degree to be valuable. So by combining the 2, you get a snapshot number that shows they are useful, with the underlying #s defining a role (lead off, clean up, etc.).
of course there are extreme outliers (like castillo, with a slugging % well below OBP, or a “power” hitter with a .275 OBP but a .475 slg%) But with few exceptions, most of those outliers are not good enough to be in an everyday lineup.
I think we mean .325 OBP, not batting average.
but yes, a .325 average usually involves a good OBP.
Sure there are! You just choose not to believe that but there are plenty of big RBI guys who don’t need guys on base…they hit HRs instead!
a guy with 50 Hrs gets 50 RBI without a sole on base in front of him!
They get it from the HR alone!
So, there are plenty of 50 HR guys?
Three months ago I wrote time after time on this site that the Mets were doomed for 3-5yrs of being a non-contending team. People wrote back I was nuts. I didn’t kow what I was talking about. I also wrote at that time that the Wilpons did not place a high priority on fielding a contending team over the next 3-5yrs and would use “filler” players such as Daniel Murphy, Josh Thole, etc to round out the roster. I wrote that the Wilpons would do this under the guise of “building from within.” People still don’t get it even now. I was right. Of course. But people please wake up, the Wilpon’s first priority is not the fans it’s retaining majority ownership of the Mets as they rehabilitate their finances. The Wilpon’s could care less about their fan base. It makes no difference to the Wilpons what the Citi Field attendance is this year.
You do understand that a happy fanbase leads to a more profitable team, right?
Unless we are talking about the Marlins or Cubs. But those are very different situations.
So three months ago you made a prediction about the next 3 to 5 years, and now you’re ready to proclaim yourself right?
Kudos.
I’d say it’s more about fielding a team without taking away from subsequent years teams by spending so many draft choices on players who frequently dissapoint and always get hurt.
Come back in Three years and say I told you so…
My guess is you won’t be able to do that!
3 Years things could be very very different.
Even if this year is miserable with all the money that goes off the books and a few smart FA aquisitions 2012 is going to look TOTALLY different than 2011 looks.
And if they win the division or compete till the end for a wildcard will you still be so proud to remind everyone what a pessimist you are before a game has even been played?
of course not. and why do you guys care about ticket sales. i like the game itself.
U KANT POSIBLEE LIKE TEH GAME ITSELLF UR A SABRGUY.
Well he likes the numbers thr game generates! LOL
Martin, you do like to draw attention to yourself, don’t you? LOL.
But remember to not make too many provocative calls. Humor, to derision by others, to anger by the same others, is a slippery slope.
of course i like attention. and i dont understand why we are talking about ticket sales. is this a community college sports marketing class? game is on the field.
Did it ever occur to anyone the reason Perez has not been cut is because they wanted to see if he had had something left.
If he had, the Mets would attempt to trade or at least get him off of payroll or the very least get something of value for him.
Mets are in financial trouble (if you believe the media).
When he is released, the Mets will have to continue paying him.
I fully understand the Mets not cutting him immediately.
I agree with Mr. North Jersey:)
Many people here on this board owe me an apology. The line starts here ——->
I think people are starting to realize what the next 3-5yrs will bring.
In July the Mets will trade Reyes to Boston for Marco Scrutaro and 2 of Boston’s prized prospects. JP Riccardi has a hard on for this guy Scurtaro for some reason and sees him as a marture, solidifying player to lead the Mets. Scruataro plays 2nd base for the Mets by the way.
lol u jokin right?
Mets got rid of Scutero when he was 28 because of Matsio and Reyes expected to play SS and 2B respectively and Garcia, Keppinger and McEwing for MI.
Andy McCullough Sandy Alderson says the team will provide information on Perez at some point today. Don’t worry: It’s bullpen or bust.
http://twitter.com/#!/Ledger_NYMets/statuses/45521995420540928
A Lifelongmetsfan NEVER jokes about the Mets.
actually, most of the ones I know do it all the time!
Cue drumroll…
Mo on this is that no, ollie being around still did not lead to fewer ticket sales by himself. Of course, I doubt anyone said hey, Ollie is still here, buy more either!
at most, it was one of many factors that went into the decision, but I would bet that most people that were bailing would have done it even if the team had released Ollie the week before renewals were due.
Most logical people listened to what the FO said, and used common sense, to realize that Ollie was not likely to be around, but they were going to give him a chance in ST to show he had something left. yes, that could have led to being on the team, but ONLY if he actually was pitching well (not a bad thing). More likely, it would have ended in a trade.
so look at it this way. Tickets (including season plans) are still available. So how many people are going to run out and snap one up if tomorrow the Mets announce they released Castillo and Perez? Any of them?
i think you fanatical fans have a screwy vision of how normal fans operate. ordinary people dont get caught up in weird hate of players and goofy protests. they just think about whether it would be fun to go to games or not.