14
2011
Where’s Omar Minaya? I Want Him Back.
An article by XtreemIcon
In November, Andy Martino wrote this article for the Daily News, saying that Omar had received a job offer from Arizona and will discuss a potential opening with Alderson. About six weeks ago, Ian Begley wrote this, quoting Fred Wilpon as saying he personally wishes Minaya return to the organization in an advisory or scouting role, possibly in the international department. But that was six weeks ago. Has anyone heard anything new?
Wilpon echoes my sentiments, one which I have been saying since Omar was still officially a GM. Omar is without a doubt one of the best talent evaluators and scouts in recent Mets memory. While right now all we can “thank” him for is the Castillo and Perez contracts and the spectacular lack of foresight when signing old, injured players and not planning for the inevitable injuries, that’s all in the past. We’ll all have to wait a few years to see where his contributions really mattered – his drafts. Ike Davis had a rookie year that really excites Mets fans, and aside from Pelfrey, who’s now a veteran if you can believe it, there’s some very promising young arms on the horizon. Havens, Flores, Captain Kirk, Duda, I can go on. None of these prospects really project to be an elite or even MVP-caliber player, but it’s very possible the lack of top prospects in the Mets farm since Darryl and Doc have been the organization’s complete unwillingness to go over slot in the draft. But Alderson and Depodesta have a history of going over slot and Alderson has already been quoted as saying, in regards to the Mets, “I don’t think we can be left behind in that regard.” While this by no means guarantees anything, it’s obviously a decided advantage of not going over slot.
Omar had the business acumen of an over-ripe casaba melon, that much is painfully true, but what he can add to a scouting department can only be measured in talent, not in dollars. I hope the Mets make the right decision and offer him a role in scouting. Maybe they already have and are just waiting on Minaya’s answer. And if so, I hope Omar accepts the offer. I think he, Alderson and Depodesta would make a tremendous team.
About the Author: Jesse Elgarten
152 Comments + Add Comment
NL East Standings
| Team | W | L | Pct. | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Braves | 42 | 30 | .583 | - |
| Phillies | 35 | 37 | .486 | 7.0 |
| Nationals | 34 | 36 | .486 | 7.0 |
| Mets | 27 | 40 | .403 | 12.5 |
| Marlins | 22 | 48 | .314 | 19.0 |
Last updated: 06/19/2013
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“We’ll all have to wait a few years to see where his contributions really mattered – his drafts.”
You hit the nail on the head.
Minaya coming back so long as he is no longer the GM is fine by me. He would just as welcome as Ricciardi and DePodesta are.
I really believe a clean break with Omar is in order here. Yes has has some talent but its more important the both he and the organization move on. Both need clean starts.
t, BABY & BATH WATER, JUST BECAUSE A GUY GETS PROMOTED TO A JOB HE’S ILLSUITED FOR SHOULDN’T MEAN U DISCARD HIM TOTALLY ESP AS YOU’RE PAYING HIM 1M+ ANYWAY, ALL IN ALL I’D PREFER;
WHILE THIS REFERENCED PIRCE ISN’T A RECENT ARTICLE BY ANY MEANS IT DOES REFLECT SOME OF FRED’S OPINIONS Re OMAR WE HAVEN’T SEEN YET.
PERSONALLY, I’D LOVE TO SEE OMAR RETURN AS SAY “DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL SCOUTING” HEADQUARTERED @ METCAMP IN DR, FAR ENOUGH REMOVED FROM NYC AS TO MINIMIZE DISTRACTION TO THE PRESS. I FOR ONE WOULD TRULY LOVE TO HAVE NIXON-LIKE RECORDINGS OF THE GOINGS ON BEHIND DECISIONS MADE DURING HIS TENURE AS GM ESP MEETINGS WITH HHIS BOSS, JEFF.
That was TL Agee ’62. I think your idea is a great one. I not only wouldn’t be opposed to it, I like it.
I too also think Omar was sabotaged by a dysfunctional organizational philosophy. I mean what restaurant could stay in business by spending 10 times the price for their ingredients and the half of them that aren’t rotten when they buy them, rot soon afterwards.
Omar has a pretty damn good book in him, I doubt if Adam Rubin will be writing it but I would love to read it when it comes out.
I fault Omar for not taking the fight (if he ever did fight it) over slotting guidelines to the hilt if need be. I mean at some point he knew he was going to run out of players. He knew better and still tried to do it the Wilpon way which will at best work once every 20 years and then crash. He knew bettter but settled for trying to work around a broken and misguided infastructure.
He had to work with one arm tied behind his back. He was the expert. He should have insisted. What talent evaluator would stand for drafting the lessor talented players? The guys who were lower on his list? Why would the Wilpon even hire a talent evaluator if their not going to let him draft the best players? Why not just higher a guy who can properly value ML talent as opposed to projecting talent going forward.
Why hire a guy if you won’t let him do what he does best?
u guys need a better distinction than a lousy ‘l’ try t-1agee & t-2agee so as to not give me such a headache, until then stop complaining. LMAO!
I also think his drafts were where he will shine.
None of these prospects really project to be an elite or even MVP-caliber player, but it’s very possible the lack of top prospects in the Mets farm since Darryl and Doc have been the organization’s complete unwillingness to go over slot in the draft. But Alderson and Depodesta have a history of going over slot and Alderson has already been quoted as saying, in regards to the Mets, “I don’t think we can be left behind in that regard.”
*************
Here’s what bothers me about this mindset. Who’s decision was it not to go over slot? Minaya’s? By ‘organization’ are we saying the FO or did the Wilpons have a say in this? If the latter, here’s hoping Alderson can make a good case for going over slot where warranted.
It was the Wilponzi’s. They are/were buddies with Selig so they followed his slotting recommendations. I’m going to assume/hope Sandy & Co will have as much free reign as possible to go over slot so the Mets can build from within and not be forcedto sign huge contracts or sign over the hill players to fill holes.
SRT, I can’t put it on Minaya because it’s been the Mets way long before he was here. It’s not new, unfortunately.
so whose decision was it not to draft over slot? who do u put the fault on? who is responsible for this decision? drafting over slot…does that require more monies being spent? please answer this burning question.
Baby, as this has been a major complaint from me for some time, I’ll do me best to supply u with answers/expainations. First a mocicum of history to establish our understanding;
Since the JD Drew holdout thwarting Phl more agents have become “advisors” to the top projected drasft amateurs & as such signing demands have swung 180 degrees from team dictates to player demands these are not all $$$ driven with some demands involving immediate Roster inclusion to accelerate there F/A qualification period. As the smaller market clubs typically are the ones in the premier picking positions & their budgets are tightly constrained. They typically choose to bypass these “prodigies” moving to the next on their list with realiastic demands as these top selections get bypassed downward their demands don’t lessen despite their selection slot drop & since loss of draft selection became a consequence to signing top F/As those big matket, high budget teams most often at a loss of first round selections are “vulturing” these top talents by meeting their top money, top pick demands despite their late first or second round selection position. Selig attempted to thwart this defrauding the process aimed at funneling the top young talent to the most needy teams by recommending a range of “allowable” signing inducements that can be offerred by a selecting MLB team based upon where in the draft the amateur player was selected, known as slotting, as these measures were not voted upon by the 30 teams & are implemented under the powers of “best interest of the game” bestowed upon the Commissioner’s office, they could not be made “law”; but remain suggestions(guidelines of behavior) Voluntary adhereance to these guifdelines means that if a selection demands conditions in excess of the guideline determination for that drafting position, a team must either bypass selecting that player or risk either exceeding the guidelines or losing that pick with the player returning to the pool of talent eligible the following year while the player is banned from participating in approved baseball retlated competition, relegated, like Drew, to independent league play, risking uncompensatable injury.
Adhereance to slots does not necessarily translate into actual cash savings per se since your replacement selection is likely to negotiate up to the slot limit for that spot; however, it does indicate the selection of less desireable talents and as such hinders the adhereing club while leaving the violating/ignoring club free to select whomever they choose.
Baby, as far as I know it was none other than Fred Wilpon, himself, who publicly proclaimed the Mets support for the Commisioner’s(Fred’s BFF) guifdelines shortly after their publication. the GM advising him is unclear as to either Phillips or Duquette; but my understanding is that whomever it was indicated to Fred a lack of negative consequence to the NYM franchise. It has been revealed in a column written by Bill Madden in ’05 that Omar Minaya was unaware of this Met resolution/proclaimation/.policy while he was navigating through his hunts for Pedro, Beltran & Delgado as in amorning interview in the DR bet Minaya & Madden, Madden asked how Omar planned to navigate the next draft having surrendered his premier picks. Omar’s response, as I recall was to state his intention to “vulture” as best he could just as other big market teams (NYY & BOSOX) had been doing in prior drafts. Madden recorded Minaya’s shock & suprise at being informed of Fred’s on records proclaimation of SLOT SUPPORT with Minaya’s only retort being a quiet, reflective, “I need to look into that, we’ll have to see about changing that”
One can conclude that this “looking into” resulted in Omar’s first lesson in how lttle autonomy he actually was given! I don’t believe Omar ever recovered from the disillusioned shock!(one can only imagine Duquette & Phillips chuckling to themselves)
Baby, I hope this clears up this key issue for youe AND ON THE + SIDE ALDERSON HAS ALREADY BEEN QUOTED AS IMPLYING THAT PERHAPS SLOT ADHEREANCE ISN’T IN THEIR BEST INTEREST FOR THE FUTURE(nb THIS IS INTERESTING INASMUCH AS HE WAS SELIG’S RECOMMENDATION)! HOORAH!!!!!LGM!!
Yet to be determined is whether or not Selig still considers us “big market enough” to really make a case about should we exceed guidelines on someone.
My guess, is Alderson doesn’t make that implication without a decision already “in the bag” “an unspoken accomodation by Selig”
We’ll need to await the results of this year’s draft selections to truly determine Sandy’s power & planned exercution.
Baby, I hope this all helps; but it’s the best I could recall as much isn’t punblidsjhed on it & I’ve needed to rely upon persional recollections a bit here, a piece there, etc.
NB Nats exceeded slot to ink both of their last 2 top picks!Straussberg & Harper.
Not being allowed to go over slot is like being in a fist fight with one arm. For the team with the highest payroll in the NL to cheap out this way is just beyond incredibly short sighted and I don’t believe that it is all about “supporting the Commissioner” either.
I think it’s a very self serving way of not spending on the draft that was in place BEFORE these “guidelines” were “suggested.”
Since the Wilpon bought into the Mets we have drafted and not signed the following players: – (Cashen) – Roger Clemmons, Gerald Young, Rafeal Palmero, Matt Williams, John Wettland, John Olerud, Todd Jones, Dan Wilson, Mark Grudzielanek, Darren Dreifort, Rick Helling, – (Hunnsiker) – Darin Erstadt, – (Mcilvaine) – Aaron Rowand, Garrett Atkins, Jeremy Guthrie and David DeJesus.
There were no future Major Leaguers drafted by Phillips or Duquette that we failed to sign.
I strongly believe the “skill sets” reason for dismissing Joe Mcilvaine had everything to do with him seeking to draft the best players and the Wilpon not signing them and that Phillips then made a calculated decision to only draft players the Wilpon would allocate the funds to sign. ie the less sought after lower ceiling type prospect which in some ways would explain the poor results of his drafts.
Omar was clearly hampered by this Organizational doctrine hence the higher number of one dimensional types other than a couple of guys here and there as well as the incredible number of early round washouts.
It is probably a moot point now as there is bound to be a CBA revision on the draft and as usual we are last on the curve on this issue but there is no question this has seriously affected our ability to compete with our competitors in the NL and cost us an untold of number of regular season wins, post season appearances and possibly World Series Championships and undoubtably would have erased the need for so many of the complete bust free agent signings we have made through the years.
Imagine how different 1993 (the worst team money could buy) would have looked if we had Rafeal Palmero, Matt Williams, John Olerud and Mark Grudzielanek in the line up and John Wettland in the pen.
Imagine how different our fortunes might have been in 1999 and 2000 with Darin Erstadt joining Alfonzo, Olerud, Piazza and Ventura. Check out Erstadt’s 2000 stats and tell me that wouldn’t have fit in great anywhere.
62,thanks for the info. i kind of figured ownership was behind not drafting over slot.my real question is why would geniusalderson NOW after being sent to this job BY selig go against selig and draft over slot? my assumption is geniusalderson won’t draft over slot.when the draft comes he will cover his lies by saying he really didn’t think enough of any prospect enough to draft that way.it’s sort of like when geniusaldeson got here he said it’s great to be working for a team with RESOURCES. we just WON’T be spending them this year!eventually the lies look the same …like they are coming from the wilponzie mob.this despite WHO the gm is.
Baby, I believe Alderson’s rationale for straying would be we’re no longer going to be top payroll perenial contenders with a powerfull, big market edge over the field of midmarkets. Therefore we need as much of an edge as he can squeeze out. I’ve a feeling he’s already rec’d a dispensation from his former boss, Selig as a consideration for the troubles Selig’s longtime friends, Wilpons, are experiencing. Certainly I wouldn’t go ALL NEGATIVE as u’ve indicated is your preference. I’m sorry, who the hell is vetting non-player employment candidates for this team? First, the groundscrew is stright out of a Sopranos’ script, then roids are being sold out of the clubhouse’ backdoor, then the clubhouse boss is packing crates worth of dirty laundry(unis) after getting them signed first. Is it any wonder we can’t figure out a draft strategy that works?
62 time will tell about how free geniusalderson is to make any moves. what i would suggest is that the mets,
under the wilponzie mob, has become a manager and gm’s graveyard.u don’t leave this organization and have other clubs breaking down your door offering you the same position you had here.either the hires were unqualified or their reps were destroyed by the fact that they had to lie for the wilponzies in a way that made them look like FOOLS(minaya).the smooth geniusalderson has had to back track on some of his earlier statements and the season hasn’t even started yet! food for thought:the soprano script,the roids,the dirty unis and MUCH,MUCH more were all under the wilponzie mob stewardship.the soprano script at least was fiction… the wilponzie mob and it’s futility is all too real!
Baby, I love that term, “wilponzie” & will steal it for my private missives; however, I certainly believe Alderson’s so called “back tracking” would have to be a credit to his veracity by any fair minded individual inasmuch as the entire NYM universe changed when Picard through down his $1B gauntlet after Alderson’s hiring. Certainly we can ascertain what Sandy’s vision was by his early proclaimations as well as size up the internal ramifications by measuruing the delta between his wants & his gets. Persionally, I believe in Sandy for exactly one simple reason, the lunchpail quality of the selections he did make ultimately: Young,Capuano,Carrasco,Tankersly,Byrdak,etc.
While many of us tend to forget, we’ve followed this team microscopically for years with virtual complete understanding of them down to the dirt under the nails of the true grinder5 & forget that for the most part excluding TC, this entire new regime likely has paid no more attention to this franchise & it’s assets(players) than to any of the other 29(excl the team they’d been last hired by SD or Tor) Alderson, Ricciardi, DiPodesta have ALL had less than enough time to become nearly as immersed as we fans have been & minus the Wilpon effect, the entire troika deserves the benefit of the doubt understanding the steep learning curve they’ve needed. They’re going to make mistakes, miscalculations and with the liklihood of losing at least one out of MURPHY,EVANS,HERNADEZ,EMAUS due to either no options or Rule 5 considerations, a % of fans are going to be unhappy.
Based upon recent revelations I’m changing my initial prognostication of a 2B platoon bet Emaus & Murphy to Luis Hernandez as reg 2B with Murphy as utility reserve, Emaus offerred back to Toronto for the 25K refund & Evans departing off waivers. Either way, Castillo earns his release increasing 2B expenditure from $6.0M to $6.75M
Another potential future consideration, may be the need for Wright to shift to his old high school position @ SS should Reyes again be injured on a roadtrip before Tejada can arrive from recall as Murphy would need to cover 3B in case of that level emergency since unlike past utilities(Easley,Cora) Murphy shouldn’t get anywhere near SS. I’m confident TC is aware of that. I’m enthused @ the absence of names like LIMA,LIVAN,DUQUE,TATIS,FRANCO from the list of considerations as should IZZY make the cut he will surplant RA as Sr. aged rostered Met.
I agree with your assesment X so lets get that out of the way…LOL
What I find odd (and not what you wrote) is how much difference an offseason makes eh?
Last year some people couldn’t wait to get rid of Omar claiming how incapable he was of bringing talent in here yet the guys everyone wants to see make the team are mostly guys Omar brought in!
Davis Evans Murphy Duda Tejada Kirk etc…
As I have said time and again people knock Omar for not having a long term view but the truth is that WE are the ones who change what we like and don’t like as if it was yesterday’s underwear and maybe if we were to show the patience to see the LONG TERM play out we might see what the long term plan WAS instead of assuming one was never there.
Yes he bought some old and injury suspect players in to hold him while he went and aquired his youth and the fact that most of those contracts expire this year PRECISELY at the time these kids seem poised to get promoted seems to suggest to me that he DID have a plan and the timing was almost perfect with the exception of those HOLD ME FOR NOW vets couldn’t stay healthy long enough and we had to endure two bad years as a result.
If Beltran can play and hit and Santana can come in mid season and give the rotation a boost we might even get to see what it was Omar planned all along.
And we will have got rid of something good to satisfy our immediate needs instead of being patient enough to let the long term plan pay off.
After 2007, 2008 , 2009 and 2010 it was time to go. His plan had run of track and the farm did not show promise early enough to save his job.
Minaya lie HoJo was not solely to blame bot no GM or hitting coach ever is. It’s just something that comes with the job. Taking the fall when things go wrong.
like not lie sorry.
I agree with most of that, except for the fact if it was his plan, it wasn’t very well thought out. What I mean is, he signed old, injured players in 2007, then drafted guys to take their place in 2011 or 2012? Where was the backup and depth at the time? If he thought Castillo and Alou and El Duque, etc. etc. were going to stay the picture of health and productivity throughout their entire contracts, then he was clearly on something. Omar needed someone that could fill in at the time.
His first draft was in 2005, and aside from Pelfrey, it took till 2010 for anyone to even sniff anything close to the majors, and that was only Davis and to a lesser degree Murphy. No one else is ready. With all the rule 5′s and free agents available, it took five years for a “plan” to finally start looking ready. That’s too long. No one would have an issue about Havens and Tejada not being ready if there was a capable backup in 2008 for Castillo. No one would have an issue with Duda, F-Mart and Kirk not being ready if Chavez wasn’t traded for a busted elbow.
But you only get so much to work with each year dude.
If Rollins goes down do the Phillies have a guy who can replace him without losing anything?
If Howard gets hurt do they have an adequate replacement that will drive in all those runs for them?
And remember Chazez was traded due to some other injury in a year we were actually IN competition for something.
2006, 2007 and 2008 were all years we were a competitive team!
They fell short in 2007 and 2008 but only because the starting pitching was not as good as it could have been.
And I know everyone thinks Trachsel sucks but he was one of the best pitchers available in FA that year!
The Phills withstood injuries to Rollins and Howard BECAUSE of their great pitching staff. We couldn’t cause our staff was nothing like theirs.
Chavez wasn’t traded because of an injury in a year we were in it. Maybe your thinking of Nady. Understandable, but Chavez was one of 7 guys we traded for an injured JJ Putz (Who we didn’t give a physical to but did allow to play in the preseason WBC) Jeremy Reed and Sean Green (both downgrades from Chavez and Joe Smith.
It seems to me like the Met FO was in such a hurry to consumate this deal that they just agreed to anything Seattle and Cleveland wanted and didn’t even bother to check on the condition of a pitcher who was known to be injured.
Chavez was a very necessary part of the team considering we were trying a rookie infielder in LF and Vargas would have been a big help in the rotation this year and last.
Seattle’s main target was Guttierez from Clevelend but we wound up shipping out Heilmann, Cleto, Vargas, Chavez, Smith, Carerra and Carp (who would have been Delgado’s emergency AAA backup WITH a future still intact.
Assuming Putz’s 5M + buyout in my opinion is what caused the FO to give away the two 1st round picks we could have gotten for “losing” Wagner in exchange for a DH Boston was going to lose in the rule 5 draft anyway in a couple of months.
Basically we turned those 7 players into 29 bad innings and a buyout. That hurt us in 2009 and on into the future.
It’s backward thinking moves like this that keep us dependent on free agency because we always have so many holes to fill.
Last year, Howard and Rollins played 169 more games than Delgado and Reyes did for us in 2009. So it’s really unfair to compare the injuries they had to the injuries we had in 09. yes their pitching was better and that helped, but the injuries we had were way worse than what we had to deal with.
and if you look at it our replacements for Reyes and Delgado they were about they same, and maybe be better than what they had to replace howard and Rollins. They had Valdez and Juan Castro backup Rollins, we had Cora, and Valdez backup Reyes. They had Mike Sweeeny backup howard, while we had Murphy backup Delgado.
What holes do we have to fill? If Murphy or Tejada win the 2B job, our entire infield would have came up through our minor leagues. How is that being dependent on free agency?
“What holes do we have to fill? If Murphy or Tejada win the 2B job, our entire infield would have came up through our minor leagues.”
At this time Tejada is out of the mix, having been sent to the minor league camp. Reese Havens is now turning heads with his batting, soft fielding hands, and his strong throwing arm.
If Murphy or Havens win the 2B job, our entire infield would have came up through our minor leagues.
Let’s allow six weeks before saying that Havens isn’t the everyday 2011 Mets second baseman. He’s really dynamite.
Havens coming up here and playing great would really be a Godsend.
This is a post I stuck in:
Emaus Might Hit .210 With Poor Defense – Oh No He Won’t!
Written by Hojo’s Mojo on March 9, 2011
From the New York Times, an article by David Waldstein on March 9, 2011, with excerpts regarding Reese Havens:
“The simplest way to put it is this,” Collins said. “If he hadn’t been injured, he would be in this camp right now. He’s a talented guy and he has the tools to be really, really good.”
Brad Emaus, Daniel Murphy, Justin Turner and Castillo are competing …. But if the 24-year-old Reese Havens had not been felled by so many injuries in his brief professional career, he would be right there with the second-base contenders — perhaps even with the edge because of his much higher ceiling.
Defensively, Havens has a strong arm and the hands of a shortstop. He was converted to second base during the Arizona Fall League in 2009, and has only played 29 games there. Still, he said that he felt comfortable with the transition and that former Mets second basemen like Tim Teufel and Wally Backman, both minor league managers, had helped him.”
Well for one thing we haven’t had a good RFer since Strawberry. 2B is very questionable to say the least as it has been since Alfonzo. Left Field is questionable as far as I’m concerned although we’ll probably have to live with it. CF has Harris and Pridie backing it up and catcher isn’t exactly guaranteed to be even league average. The rotation has a couple of question marks as well.
This team has question marks all over it, in fact you could easily say that 70% of the payroll is questionable.
Agee, every team has question marks.
Bay is a good hitter, he has always been a good hitter, he should be fine. Everyone forgets he hit 36HR and 119 RBI just the other year. He also missed the final two months of the year. And it’s not like he’s the only hitter to struggle in his 1st year at Citi Field – look at David Wright.
What do you mean by “catcher isn’t exactly league average.”? Thole looks like he’s going to be a nice player, he’s probably not going to an allstar or anything like that, but he could be a good player for us. And if he struggles against lefties, he can platoon with Paulino who hit almost .360 against LHP last year.
Yes, the rotation does have some question marks, but I’m sure if you looked around the league, most teams will have a couple of question marks as well. Oh and last year we ranked 7th in the MLB in ERA. Now that’s probably not going to happen again, but I like the pitchers that we have, so I think it’s possible that we could come close to something like that, and if we do, I think we will make the postseason.
Vinny, I like our guys that we brought up or will be bringing up I just wish that we had a few bigger guns coming up with them and we could have, very easily. The kinds of guys that our direct competitors get, and not by paying them 5/80 either.
Bay may rebound nicely but his days of 30/100 + are over. Thole/Pauline is well conceived and could be a net positive or just merely average. We’ll see.
I’d feel so much better about our chances if we were bring up a Mike Stanton (2nd round) or Jason Heyward (#14 1st round)for RF and a Kyle Drabek (#18 1st round) or bringing Thole up with a McCann (2nd round) already here and a Pedroia (2nd round) and trying a Brandon Belt (9th round) in LF and having them for the next 6 years but we’re not. We have some decent young players but their are real difference makers we either pass on or take older players like David Weathers (McCann), Alou (Stanton), Wagner (Drabek), Peterson (Pedroia). These players are out there. Our competitors are getting them and we still have the same weak spots as before.
Could we do it? Sure but having the best players (in their primes) makes it much more likely and a lot less questionable.
Why are Jason Bay’s days of 30 HR/100 RBI over?
agee, just looking at last years crop, Ike and Neise were a pretty good pair to bring up. Ike put up comparable numbers to the batters, and neise did more than Drabek. especially through his first 23 games (3.66 ERA, 110Ks).
What about Davis? Why can’t he be right up there with Stanton and Heyward? He had a VERY impressive season last year. He has tremendous power, and is an excellent fielding 1B. I think he could easily be a 30-40 HR guy, and play gold glove defense. I see no reason why he can’t be just as good as those guys – We’ll find out in a couple of years.
also what’s the deal with you and the Mets and RF?
How many RFers have the Yankees or Red Sox developed in 50 years? I know the Red Sox had Dwight Evans for awhile, we had Strawberry & The Yankees had Roger Maris.
How many RFers are supposed to be developed by teams? Maybe it’s not that common?
..whoops….i goofed on Maris, i just assumed he came up with Yanks but he didn’t. So what RFer have the Yankees developed on their own in 50 years?
I don’t make any apologies for wanting us to have a good RFer. RF is an enormously important offensive position and we haven’t had a good offensive player at that position since 1990.
Bell in 2000 as I recall was not as bad as most and maybe Bonilla had a year or two that wasn’t awful but other than those two guys, for a period of about 2 years, we have gotten the absolute worst offensive production of any team in the League over a TWENTY YEAR PERIOD.
Your offense doesn’t function correctly when your getting the worst offensive production from an offensive oriented position every single year. Combine that with the Majors worst production at 2B (which we have been numerous times), catcher (sometimes) and it’s no wonder this team doesn’t score runs.
A team that has led the NL in payroll over 20 years has 18 years out of 20 with the lowest offensive production of any team in the Majors. I don’t see how anyone can find this acceptable.
Bonilla, Burnitz, Cedeno, Bell, Hildago, Green, Church and Francouer have all had good years but not in our uniform.
What do you think we should do? Just pick up whoever just so happens to be available every year, plug him in and we’re good to go? That’s what we’ve been doing for 20 years now. If you don’t think our having the worst offensive RFer in the Majors over the last 20 years has anything to do with us having 11 losing seasons over that period you don’t understand how taking a bat out of the line up affects everyone else.
It’s absurd to counter that arguement with “how many RFers have the Yankees developed.” The Yankees have gotten good, sometimes the best offensive contribution from RF. We’ve gotten the WORST. The Yankees have had O’Neil (who they got by trading a ML ready prospect) Sheffield, Abreu (trade) and Swisher (trade) and that not only gives them one more good hitter in the line up, it helps make everybody else more effective.
Their farm system is HOW they got O’Neil, Abreu and Swisher. Swisher incidentally makes the same money as Castillo.
The teams in our Division have had numerous good RFers during this time frame and are now reloading new one’s and our best hope is in low A and we should all keep in mind how iffy prospects can be and not be content to have one maybe 2-3 years away.
Abreu-Werth-Brown—Jordon-Francouer-Heyward—Kotsay-Cabrera-Encarnation-Hermedia-Ross-Stanton—-Guerrrero-Guillen-Kearns-Werth.
Every single one of these guys outplayed our FRer, most by a HUGE margin and two of them are the most financially challenged teams in the Majors while we have spent more than anyone else and we have (by far) gotten the worst offensive production of any team in the Majors and with Stanton, Heyward, Brown and Werth (for a while) it doesn’t show any signs of changing.
That’s my preoccupation with this position.
I’m not comparing our 1B to the Marlins/Phillies/Nats/Braves RFer. Ike overall can hold his own against Sanchez, Howard, La Roche and Freeman. But the combination of 1B/RF is slanted WAY towards our division rivals (unless Beltran has a good year, is here for the whole year and what about next year?)
Sanchez/Stanton, Howard/Brown, LaRoche/Werth and Freeman/Heyward not only is going to out produce Davis/? by a large margin in 2012 but is going to be together for a long time and Stanton, Brown and Heyward are going to be making 400K while doing it which allows our division rivals to spend elsewhere.
Our Division rivals got their current RFer from the draft Stanton (2nd round #76) Brown (20th round), Heyward (1st round #14) and Werth was a non tender when Philly picked him up, got 3 excellent years and picked up two high draft choices (in a deep draft) when he left.
Anyone could have gotten Stanton, Werth and Brown. We had three chances at drafting Mike Stanton in 2007.
First we gave away our 1st round pick by signing Alou BEFORE SF even had to offer arbitration to him. What was the rush? The guy was 40 years old and had rarely played a full season even when he was in his 20′s. We could have at the very least waited to see if SF would offer arb so we could KEEP our pick. Second, it’s stupid to give away a #1 draft choice for a 40 year old LFer anyway but if your that stupid at least wait to sign him and see if you can keep your pick. Don’t voluntarily just give it away.
Even though we just gift wrapped our 1st round draft choice to SF we still had TWO more chances at addressing a position of need that we had not brought a credible prospect up since Strawberry/Ochoa/Everett/Burnitz and had not received good play at since 1990.
We selected Eddie Kunz a college RELIEF pitcher and followed that selection with Nate Vinyard who was so enthused about baseball he quit after pitching 30 minor league innings (cashing the slot guideline bonus check of course)
If the thinking behind voluntarily giving away a #1 draft choice and not drafting a power hitting oufielder with the two picks we couldn’t give away was because we had Fern than that is just even more stupid. Incredibly stupid. You don’t count on just 1 prospect coming through for you at every position, you get three or four of them. Especially if you can get 2 guys who hit from different sides (like Fern and Stanton do) Even if neither fully develops at least you might be able to put together an effective platoon or have a guy or two that can at least man the position better than worst in the Majors for a year or two. You could also have a player interesting to other teams that could help bring in a frontline starter.
Giving away your draft choices because you can’t develop your own LFer and then drafting washout after washout with the picks you do keep is the reason we haven’t been able to fill these positions with even close to average offensive production.
The prospect the Angels have thanks to us signing K-Rod is steaming towards the Majors and will probably get a taste in September. We could have so easily been pairing him (Mike Trout) next to Stanton for the next 5 years at least and gotten All Star play out of both of them.
Maybe Puello and Vaughn will do the same for us but they have a long way to go.
This cycle of dependence on the free agent market has repeatedly killed our future and quite frankly hasn’t done much for our present either.
Why does it have to be a combination of 1B/RF? Why don’t you compare our 3B/SS to the other teams in our division?
And anyway, Davis/Beltran would probably be better than the other teams 1B/RF in our division. Maybe next we we get Duda to play RF? That’s two potential 30 HR guys from 1B and RF – that seems alright to me.
Just a quick comment because I don’t want to break the informative dialog you’re having.
In my view Strawberry was at best a good RFer, maybe just mediocre. He seemed to have trouble with balls hit in front of him and low balls in the alleys. I remember seeing him once or twice let a grounder to RF go through his legs. Maybe it was just one of those days following one of those nights.
At bat, he was incredibly powerful but with a swing that was too long so that he was often fooled on pitches from lefties. When he connected, it was often, “bye bye baby.” Though better than most, he never reached what he could have been.
I agree Des. That sums up Straw for me. Real good, could have been real great.
Wasn’t he touted as the next Ted Williams at one point.
I like Omar and have liked him for years. He is purely a baseball man – doesn’t even
want an office, just likes to be with the players. He has a lifelong history of helping the players – no matter what level they are at. I’ve never heard a bad word said about him and that’s rare.
He lives in the NY area, so if he’s not around, he’s gone to a place where his knowledge and history is appreciated. He took a hit from the Mets, so I’m not sure if he’d return although I know that Sandy offered to discuss that issue with him.
So Omar, where ever you are, it’s Spring and time for baseball again and I hope you are involved in baseball at some level. It’s in your heart.
Met fans are always thinking, we have this guy coming up and that guy coming up but they never put it into context. They never realize that other teams have guys coming up too. Many more than we do and much more highly regarded than ours.
Pelfrey #9, Davis #18 (comp for Glavine) and Havens #22 were 1st round draft choices no different than Lincecum #10, Cain #25, Heyward #14, McCutchin #11, Bruce #12, Garza #25, Drabek #18 to name just a couple.
Minaya also spent Supp choices on Kunz and Vinyard who were spectacular busts and gave away #1 picks for Wagner, Alou and K-Rod, #2 picks for Pedro and Bay and a #3 pick for Beltran and failed to take back picks when he could have with Wagner, Perez, Castillo and Alou. So if your point is he is a good talent evaluator and poor at properly valuing players that ANYONE could see the talent in, then why wasn’t he doing what he was good at instead of doing what he wasn’t good at?
This is my biggest criticism of the Minaya regime. I fully realize that he had NOTHING to work with when he got here. Humber and Milledge, that’s it. 1 bad contract (Matsui) and Glavine, Trachsel, Floyd, Wright and Reyes.
He did have bad luck too, I’ll give you that. Seo-Sanchez and Milledge-Schneider/Church should have provided MUCH MUCH more than it did. Fern, Pena, Marte, Gomez and Guerra never fulfilled their promise (not yet anyway)
When Omar arrived he wasn’t under any illusions about the farm system here. He had worked as an Asst. GM and director of international scouting just a few years before and was a rival GM in the very same division when he took the Met job. He knew just how barren it was. He had to provide the pieces to acquire Johan himself (except Humber) and that was 3 years after he got here. The absolute last thing he should have been doing was giving away 1st round draft picks especially when he didn’t even have to for a 40 year old LFer, a 34 year old closer and K-Rod because our present and our future would be so much brighter today if instead of Alou we had drafted Mike Stanton #76, Kyle Drabek #18, or Mike Trout (#2 rated prospect in the minors) #25.
Forget entirely the big impact prospects plucked from only the 2nd round where we have continually drafted bust after bust after bust while other teams pick up future All Stars time and time again. And you wonder why we have drafted only 10 guys who made the All Star team in 50 years?
This constant cycle of depending on free agency to fix the mistakes of the last 4-5 years is what leads to reaches, hopes, guesses, and in the end up poor performance, stints on the DL and increases the need to go free agent and risk more of the same down the road.
RA Dickey himself recently said that when a large percentage of your roster is “comfortable contractually” each AB is not as do or die as it is when when that percentage is smaller.
The shame of the whole thing is that Omar knew the position he was in. He had the ability to do things the long term patient way that would withstand subtraction from the ML roster but instead devoted all his time, energy and resources to this year at the expense of next year, the year after and the year after that.
I have no doubt that he was only doing what the Wilpon wanted but he did know better and like all the rest that came before him, let us down and into our 3rd death spiral of the Wilpon error.
And all so we could support the Commissioner’s “slotting guidelines” because after all, that’s what we’re in business to do. Winning 90+ games every year is far far down the list of priorities for this Organization than supporting our Bud.
The book on Omar will be open for another decade and it’s bound to bring some guys we’re glad to have up here. He’s brought us back from having nothing down below to having lots of depth and some high quality and provided HUGE ticket sales and interest in the Team over a 4 year period but then spent that money on the short term fix instead of spending it on the very thing he was good at. That would have become self sustaining.
Congratulation t agee on writing a book to say nothing but garbage.
Had he used the same amount of words to support your views and opinions I wonder if you would be saying encore encore?
I can’t blame you Iz for feeling this way. The material is clearly WAY over you head. WAY over your pay grade.
In order to best understand and enjoy baseball I would limit my thoughts, opinions and comments to something much more understandable for you like Mascots for instance.
The Phille Phanatic, the San Diego Chicken, Chief Nokahoma, the Pittsburgh Pirate, or even the Milwaukee Keilbasa would be much more on the level of your understanding of the game.
The Pittsburgh mascot is actually the Parrot, that pirate guy only raises the jolly roger at a home win (about 4x a year), but I think he may be one of their 25 now, he is supposed to be slated to start by the all-star break. It’s taken that fine team this long to replace Paulino.
Ok name all the guys the Phillies are bringing up this year.
Dominick Brown. Lose a RFer, bring one up. Unlike us wh have had one very good RFer in 50 years.
Halliday, Oswalt and Blaton were acquired BECAUSE of their farm and they STILL have a few high ceiling postion players and pitchers in the system.
So basically the answer to your question is Brown (out with a broken hand) Francisco to platoon with Ibanez and 3/5th’s of the best rotation in the Division/League/Majors. Take your pick.
I think our farm is pretty good. If Murphy or Tejada win the 2B job our entire infield would have came up through our minor leagues. And our opening day starter came up through our minor leagues. We also have Niese and Parnell both of them will play big roles on the team. And maybe we see Duda, Mejia, and Gee this year too.
that sounds like a good minor league system to me….
Pelfrey SHOULD be a good Major Leaguer, He was drafted 9th in the first round. You can’t miss on every single pitcher you draft can you? Whoopie, One guy who didn’t bust. Let’s throw a ticker tape parade. Declare our scouts and development personal the greatest of all time. Murphy AND Tejada combined equal a good player but the reality is you can’t play them both at the same time. Niese looks like a very good 5th round choice. Duda could be a good Major Leaguer but you couldn’t compare him to Jason Heyward, nor Gee to Minor or Parnell to Kimbrell and as it stands now Teheran is much more highly regarded than Mejia and has ALL of his years of team control ahead of him which is important because getting inexpensive production in one area allows you to get more expensive production elsewhere.
Yeah Omar did a good job starting from scratch in getting us SOME guys but we have no where near the number or quality of our competitors. Not even close.
I said GOOD not great. Big difference.
Possibly Having you’re whole infield come through you’re system is good. You don’t think so?
Yeah but just the mere fact that their homegrown isn’t the whole thing. It’s about having real difference makers that help with the heavy lifting, like Ike did to some extent last year, like Reyes and Wright did when they came up.
Not every prospect that makes it up here needs to become an All Star but they need to be competent. Be able to field their position, stretch the line up, not just play part of the game well.
Farm system wise the first thing Omar had to do was get some depth. He did. We finally have some options both near and far at some of our long term needs but getting good, very good or great production from them all at the same time is another matter. It may come but prospects are very iffy. None of those guys are a can’t miss and other teams have quite a few can’t miss prospects.
Two All stars and a near ROY guy who fields better than Strawberry and has as much power aren’t good enough for you?
I mean comon dude.
You make it sound like we got make do scrubs there!
And all of them were guys Omar found as our scouting guru!
He was the one making all those evaluations that make you think McIlvane had a clue and also the one who told McIlvane who to draft that McIlvane didn’t bother to sign!
Metsie, Omar wasn’t even with the Mets when Mcilvaine was here.
No what is absurd is you think that a guy who was the assitant GM AFTER being promoted from director of ALL SCOUTING had nothing to do with it!
The burden of proof is on you to prove Minaya didn’t want them!
As for your above assertion Minaya wasn’t here when McIlvane was you couldn’t be MORE wrong!
McIlvane is the guy who brought Minaya here!
McIlvane was GM until 1997 and Minaya came to us around 95 or 96!
Wrong Metsie. Omar got here when Phillips was the GM. 1998. Under Mcilvaine it was Barr, Duquette and Jack Z as the Scouting directors. Sorry.
Phillips was GM in 1997…Sorry to burst your 20 Year bubble there dude!
“He rose to become the Rangers’ head of pro scouting, and in 1997, the Mets’ new general manager, Steve Phillips, brought Minaya home to Queens.”
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sports/features/11260/index3.html
Wrong again Metsie. You wrote that Mcilvaine hired Minaya in ’95 or ’96 and that Minaya was even responsible for the scouting of Mcilvaine’s drafts and as proof of this you provide a link to an article showing Minaya was hired by someone else (Phillips) who became GM mid July 1997.
Perhaps the first move made by new GM Steve Phillips was to hire Omar Minaya or more likely he hired him in the off season after the 1997 season. Scouts and Scouting Directors rarely leave an organization in the middle of the baseball season.
I had no idea that when and who hired Omar was going to be in dispute but since you wrongly asserted that it was Mcilvaine who hired Minaya I simply pointed out that you were wrong. The link you provided proves you were wrong and I guess bursts YOUR 20 year bubble.
As you put it Mcilvaine was the GM until 1997 and Minaya came to us in ’95 or ’96. That is factually untrue. Minaya was working for the Texas Rangers during those years.
Your other assertions that Minaya had something to do with our drafting of AJ Burnett is also incorrect as Minaya wouldn’t even be hired by the Mets for another 2 1/2 years. Don’t just make stuff up Metsie.
Your assertion that Wright and Reyes were because of Minaya even though Phillips was the GM is going out on a ledge but it is very possible that Minaya recommended Wright. I don’t doubt that at all. Reyes however is pretty clearly a low signing bonus guy who only the Mets principal scout in the DR (a guy Bernazard had Omar get rid of) scouted and signed. He just needed authorization from Omar to go above what organizational signing guidelines were. Reyes got 15 Grand. Very small for a signing bonus back in 1999. In any event Reyes and Wright get filed under Phillips.
Another factually untrue assertion of yours is that Nick Evans was drafted by Omar. He was not. He was drafted by Jim Duquette while Omar was the GM in Montreal.
Minaya COULD have been in on Kazmir as you say but how do you know this? Your other “facts” are mostly all wrong Metsie. As much as Kazmir was discussed after the trade no one ever claimed that anyone was more responsible for drafting Kazmir than anyone else. Personally I wish that someone from the Mets would have been in on Hamels, Cain or Josh Johnson who all came from the same draft. At the time we drafted Kazmir Omar was the Montreal GM for a few months already, in fact he would soon consummate the trade he is best known for. The Cliff Lee, Grady Sizemore and Brandon Phillips for Bartolo Colon.
Phillips drafted Pagan in ’99. Perhaps Omar scouted him. If he did, good job. Pagan certainly has the talent. Whoever scouted him was dead on. I tend to doubt though that Omar was the scout on Pagan simply for the fact that he later sold Pagan to the Cubs for 50 Grand. GM’s always believe in guys they scouted and rarely sell them for cash.
Ike Davis and Mike Pelfrey were hardly “finds” and the sheer # of early round busts is staggering as is trading away 2 # 1 draft choices for designated hitter and another #1 draft choice for a 40 year old outfielder.
Historically speaking I believe that Omar WAS involved in one of the best trades not just we made, but anyone made. Mike Piazza. It goes under the Phillips ledger but I’ve read Omar credited on the deal as well.
Omar has made many fine moves. Plenty of blunders as well but there is still no need to erronously credit all the successful goings on to Omar during the Phillips regime because there were plenty of bad ones during that time period too. Phillips record in the draft is staggeringly unsuccessful. Among the worst of all time. Being Phillips Scouting Director is not really something you would want too many people to know about.
Lastly Minaya was with the Texas Rangers until AFTER Joe Mcilvaine was fired (with a winning record)
Your assertion that Mcilvaine hired Minaya is untrue.
I’ll leave everything else to the both of you, as this is a fun debate to read. I’ll just add that when Phillips was doing his weekly spot with Francessa last season, Phillips admitted it was Omar who created the structure of the deal for Piazza. Phillips went to Dombrowski with three columns of players, and told DD to pick one player from each column. What players ended up in what column was Phillips final word (no mention of what input Omar had in that case), but it was Minaya who came up with that structure.
As you were.
Yes Tag I was wrong about McIlvane hiring Minaya…
And you were wrong that Wright and reyes were not products of Minaya and were inherited!
So Yes I was wrong on a point of history and you were wrong about who brought who to the NY Mets.
Since your main argument is that Minaya and Phillps were the ones who ruined this franchise and McIlvane was the genius (despite the fact HE is the one who drafted players he didn’t sign which you say is the reason our farm sucked) I guess I am man enough to admit I was wrong about Minaya’s hiring!
Are you man enough to admit you were wrong about who actually brought all the players we like to the team?
Or do we go back to something about RF because we all know without a RFer you can’t win anything as it is WAY more important than
3B SS 1B P and CF!
I don’t know what the hell happened to you, maybe your account got hijacked in the last 6 months but ever since you got published on your 20 year thread that I had already disproved was an unfair data snapshot because you compared the team that was dominant and declined against the two teams who took over after that but I remember many a post 6 Months ago where you and me BOTH agreed that Minaya and Manuel didn’t do a bad job it’s just that the players got hurt and didn’t performed.
You agreed with me until you came up with this 20 year Lack of RFer tact you have had of late!
My feeling about Omar is that he got bit by the same bug that got Mcilvaine and Phillips. The reckless short term view. Mcilvaine wouldn’t do it that way and was canned after 3 1/2 years. Phillips rode what Mcilvaine grew and added to it by exploiting the Marlins fire sales until he too was bit by the impatient bug. Duquette then cleared the landscape, foolishly bought at the trading deadline and cost us Kazmir.
Omar came here with a compete now and build at the same time (same as Mcilvaine did) but after coming so close, redoubled his efforts on the 25 at the expense of the farm.
Sound familiar?
My gripe with Minaya is that he was the best talent evaluator and had he looked at the team with a broader view could have gotten better production at NO COST to the future instead of trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
Minaya knew better, had the ability to do better but got bit by the same old impatient Wilpon bug that got everyone else causing us to crash yet again.
I also would have bet everything I have AND everything I would ever acquire that Minaya would have our farm system brimming over with talented young prospects by now. Not guys that can either hit OR field, need platoon partners or have only one developed pitch. I firmly believed that a long neglected source of player acquisition around here would lead to a Vladimir Guerrero or a Miguel Cabrerra in blue and orange. That hasn’t happened.
Wright and Reyes are on Phillips resume. You have provided ZERO proof that Omar was responsible for drafting Wright and it has already been disproven that Omar had ANYTHING whatsoever to do with scouting Reyes other than OKing a signing bonus (15 G’s) over and above what that scout was authorized to offer. Omar might very well have made the final decision on Wright but we don’t know that. For all we know Omar could have made the final decision on Tyner, Strange, Musser, Josephs, Traber Keppel, Peterson, Turay and Rangsdale all 1st or 2nd round selections from 1998-2001 as well.
My point has never been that Phillips and Minaya wrecked the franchise. My point has always been the direction ownership has always taken, and that everyone (even when they know better) always takes that direction and it’s always the short term fix. The only one that didn’t was Mcilvaine and he got short circuited by “skill sets” because he wouldn’t do it that way.
Now your blaming Mcilvaine for not signing players he drafted, as if he drafted them with the intention of not signing them. Perhaps he just wanted to show what a great judge of talent he was and just drafted these guys as a lark. Much more likely Ownership (constantly conscious of cash flow) didn’t want to allocate the funds to sign guys 4-5 years away. This is something that has manifested itself over and over throughout different GM’s until Phillips got here and just de emphasized the whole scouting operation because as he said “prospects will get you fired.”
Darrin Erstadt, Aaron Rowand, Garrett Atkins, Jeremy Guthrie and David DeJesus combined would have cost less than we paid Mo Vaughn and a forward thinking ownership (not just thinking about this years ticket sales) would have allocated the funds to sign theses guys. They didn’t.
Lastly you have NOT PROVEN that the 20 year snapshot Hojo put up for me contained unfair data. The only way you could prove that would be to disprove the data. You haven’t and you cant. If you would like you could do a 7 year snapshot of the years 1984-1990, proclaim us to be the most efficient and well managed franchise in MLB and we can all toast ourselves over our favorite teams vast superiority over everyone else. That would be cherry picking though.
The facts are very clear that over our entire history we have qualified for the post season seven times in 49 years. As an expansion team, starting from scratch, it would be understandable that we would get off to a slow start but the fact is that we have maintained that same pace since our initial success which as you now doubt are aware was fueled primarily by young prospects who came up through the farm and then was supplemented by younger veteran types and a handful of older pitchers and platooned position players.
I don’t think a well run organization that plans ahead for future years and actively seeks to provide solutions to upcoming areas of need AHEAD of time would have the worst production in the entire Major Leagues over a 20 year period of time at even one position, let alone two. And there is absolutely no way this could happen to the team that has outspent every other team in the league over that 20 year period.
Perhaps you, Bayonne and Maniac would prefer to continue to get the ML’s worst play from RF and second base but I am sick of it and I put the blame squarely on the short sighted limited vision approach of ownership and their self serving reluctance to draft the best players, instead settling for the cheapest one’s or even worse, spending those draft choices on 40 year old outfielders, DH’s and players on their last legs.
What exactly did McIlvane gotrw pray tell?
It wasn’t JUST Mcilvaine. It was also Hunsikker (Alfonzo, Bobby Jones, Isringhausen and Preston Wilson) Harazin (Ordonez)
Mcillvaine provided Reed, Wendell, Olerud, Pratt, John Franco, Matt Franco, Terrence Long, Jay Payton, Paul Wilson, McMichael, Rojas, Carl Everett (who was one of Phillps first trades for John Hudek) the pieces for Leiter, Cook and Piazza, Milicki, Clark, Byrd,and Harnish after generation K started to disintegrate and he drafted Long, Payton, Rowand, Atkins, Guthrie, Dejesus, Figeroa and Burnett, got good years (without costing draft choices) from Gilkey, Lance Johnson and Brogna. Traded Bonilla for Ochoa (who had a great chance) and Buford. Traded Vince Coleman for Kevin McReynolds.
Basically Mcilvaine had to clean up from the tail end of the “worst team money could buy” in 1993 which went 59-103 and between trades, non comp free agent signings and the draft got us to 88-74 in 1997 the year he was canned and he did it without hamstringing future payrolls or costing any draft choices. Had the Wilpon signed guys he drafted his results would have been more impressive.
He had 3 1/2 years to take us from the demorilizing Bonilla, Coleman, Saberhagen, O’Brien days to 88 wins and he also had to deal with Generation K falling apart, Doc Gooden’s final drug suspension and the strike season of 1994 and delayed start of 1995.
His trade of Robert Person for John Olerud not only got us great play but also two #1 picks (blown by Phillips)
His trade of Bonilla for two good prospects didn’t work out but if Bonilla hadn’t been reacquired wouldn’t be costing a mil a year now
Getting anything for Vince Coleman was miraculous.
The one (and only) regrettable trade he made was the Kent, Vizcaino – Baerga, Espinosa deal and his thought process on that one cannot be totally called into question. Kent BEGAN his run of 8 straight .500 + SLG% years two years after the trade at age 30 in SF. Unusual to say the least. Baerga BEGAN his sub .400 SLG% run at 27 when players are usually just hitting their prime.
I also saw Baerga in 2004 in both PR and the DR and he was exactly the same player as we had in 1998. No change due to age, still couldn’t hit the ball out of the infield. For a guy who’s last good year was at 26 it makes you wonder.
Mcilvaine should have been given more than 3 1/2 years especially with the strike affecting parts of two seasons and an entire off season, Gooden’s problems, Generation K falling apart and the fact that he had to clean up from the Bonilla-Coleman mess of 59-103 and got us to 88-74 without costing a thing from the future was a shame.
And another thing Metsie. How can you blame Mcilvaine for not signing prospects he drafted when he was fired a month after the draft? If anything it was Phillips who decided not to sign the guys Mcilvaine drafted in 1997.
Garrett Atkins, Jeremy Guthrie and David DeJesus may not make the hall of fame but they certainly played a lot better than Roberto Alomar or Bruce Chen/Jeff D’Amico or Timo/Shinjo.
And IF Omar was in charge of all of Phillip’s drafts then he made his own bed with 1st and 2nd round picks of guys no one has ever heard of like Tyner, Strange, Musser, Josephs, Traber, Keppel, Peterson, Turay and Rangsdale.
The only Phillips era draftees who did anything at all in SIX YEARS of drafts were Wright, Heilman and Pagan and Phillips wasn’t shorted any high draft choices, in fact he got 3 EXTRA picks from Mcilvaine. One for Reynosa and two from Olerud and could have gotten 2 more from Alfonzo.
In case your wondering why the farm system was so barren when Omar took over, this is the reason. This and the lack of scouting and signing IFA’s during Phillips tenure. The very thing you pointed out Omar was in charge of.
And if your wondering how Omar’s drafts in Montreal were I’ll save you the trouble.
Three drafts, one player. Chad Cordero. That’s it. Out of 150 guys Omar drafted in Montreal one did something in the Majors, the rest didn’t.
Wrong again Metsie. Mcillvaine took over a 59 win team and 4 years later was on a pace to win 93 games through 2/3rds of the season. Omar took over a 71 win team and BOUGHT players which subsequently COST him players in future years.
Of Course Mcilvaine never actually had a 90 win season. He took over a 59 win team and didn’t go out and run up the payroll with ageing, soon to be on the disabled list former All Stars. He also only got 4 years and two of them were interupted by the strike. Phillips and Minaya got 6 years.
Mcilvaine would have had players in the farm system to work with if the Wilpon had allocated the funds to sign players Cashen drafted. Only two of Omar’s picks weren’t signed, although he probably wasn’t allowed to draft the guys he may have really wanted too. Phillips picks didn’t matter, almost none of them made it to the Majors anyway.
Among the players Mcilvaine scouted for Cashen that we drafted and DID NOT SIGN that would have been in their years of team control in 1993 were Matt Williams, John Wetland, John Olerud, Scott Erickson, Todd Jones, Dan Wilson, Mark Grudzielanek and Darren Dreifort.
All these players were drafted between the years of 1983-1990. Precisely when Shea Stadium was packed every single night and the money was just flowing into the Met coffers. Why no reinvestment into the team by the Wilpon? Bigger investment results elsewhere?
If we had signed those guys we wouldn’t have had any need for most of the “worst team money can buy.”
Payton was ever bit the cant miss player Davis is and finished 3rd in the ROY. He could not stay healthy in the minors. It happens.
Leiter and Piazza were obtained with the pieces Mcilvaine procured and did have a cost to the future in Burnett but Mcilvaine (and Minaya) didn’t have any of those pieces to work with, and if your plan as GM is take advantage of a division rival dismantling their World Championship team in a salary dump to provide players for your team, well that’s just a very fortunate situation to be in but hardly something a GM could count on.
True Phillips took advantage and did a good job with it but Mcilvaine could easily have done the same and Mcilvaine did provide the credible parts for the trades.
Robin Ventura was a very good free agent acquisition. Smart move but again, came with a cost to the future. A #1 draft choice. Traded for Justice.
Rickey Henderson (40) played well for the most part but was hardly a good example and was only available because no one else wanted him. We finally had enough of him early in year 2 paying the remainder of his 2 M dollar salary of course. Good example of rottesirie baseball that worked…for the most part. Left behind nothing.
Orel Hershheiser(40) was another who can we get for _____ type move. Released by Cleveland he got 2.5 M from us to pitch like s**t. Good example of rottesrie baseball that didn’t work. Left behind nothing.
Todd Zeile (34) cost us a #1 draft choice and 11 M dollars. Played well his first year, not so well his 2nd. Brought D’Amico back when he left
Pedro Martinez (34) Cost a #2 pick and 54 M over four years. Only pitched 1 1/2 years of the four but did help usher in a new era and make the Mets relevant again. Can’t complain I always loved watching Pedro pitch. Left behind nothing when he left.
Carlos Beltran (28) cost 119 M over 7 years and a #3 pick. Best all around position player we have ever had. Good sign despite only getting four years his injury was unforeseeable and it was a joy to have one of the best CFers of all time on our team. Probably will leave nothing behind when he goes.
Johan Santana (29) 6/138 M cost 4 prospects only one of whom is serviceable (Gomez) Great trade, huge dollars. Definitely won’t get 6 years out of him and maybe only 3.
Billy Wagner (34) 4/44 M and a # 1 pick. Pitched great for the 1 1/2 years he was healthy. Wasn’t available for game 7 of the NLCS or either pennant race that our bullpen seemingly blew a save every other day. Also blew a 4-0 lead to the NYY because he “wasn’t prepared to come into a non save situation.” Helped Philly obtain Halliday and Boston add a starting pitching and 2B prospect. Left behind a DH for 1 year.
K-Rod (28) cost either 3/36 or 4/54 and a #1 draft choice. Pitched well despite the high wire act.
Paul Loduca (34) 2/13 M good trade of yet another Marlin salary dump. Played well his first year, not so well his 2nd. Was let go leaving nothing behind.
Jose Valentin (36) 2/5 M. Good pick up, played great for 3/4 of one season. Wise back up to Matsui but still just another who can we get for______ type of move. Left behind nothing. His injury in 2007 led to Castillo.
These are all huge money for ageing players or scrap heap deals. They can work for a time but cannot stand up to it. Ultimately these moves produced one World Series appearance and two franchise collapses.
None of these guys left anything behind when they left and all told they cost four #1 draft choices (as did Alou) a #2 (as did Bay), a #3 and about 450 Million dollars.
Wilson(1), Long(20) and Payton(29) was a Mcilvaine draft not a Harazin one. Your defending Phillips and Minaya’s drafts and complaining about Mcilvaine hitting on 3 future Major Leaguers in the first round? You’ve got to be kidding me right?
Every team in the Majors would have taken Wilson #1. He got injured and that was that. Happens to every team. That’s a good reason to have more prospects, not less.
Long and Payton went on to have the best careers by far of anyone else taken after #14 of the first round.
Omar never had 3 shots at the first round because he never lets anyone go or has anyone who’s not on their last contract. Mcilvaine saw he could get something going forward for Sid Fernandez so he let him go. Got two extra picks, they turned out to both be credible pieces which Phillips used to get to the Series and in trades. Payton also hit a 3 run HR for us off Mariano Rivera in the World Series. Not that one AB makes a whole career or anything but that’s not insignificant. He was also a very good defensive CFer.
Omar didn’t only hand over numerous #1 and #2 draft choices, he also failed to take any back when he had a chance. Alou, Valentin, El-Duque, Castillo, Wagner and Perez all would have left behind at least a supplemental draft choice. If Omar ever had a single thought in his head about building a team for the long haul he would have been all over this and SAVED a fortune too.
I have to ask, What “talent evaluator” in his right mind would turn down the chance to pick up SEVEN # 1 picks to beef up his team down the road?
2007 Omar had the 42nd and 47th pick. Your right. That’s cause he VOLUNTARILY handed over the #1 pick. BEFORE SF had to decide on offering Alou arbitration. That’s right. He just handed it over. For a 40 year old LFer who couldn’t even stay on the field when he was in his 20′s. Some forward thinking there. And your defending this? I suppose he was so sure he would get Zito he was already resigned to losing the pick anyway.
2008. Davis and Havens were both real good picks. With any luck they’ll both become All Stars.
I have a very strong feeling that giving up that #1 pick for K-Rod is going to cost a lot of angst around here once Mike Trout (the #1 rated prospect in the minors) hits Anaheim. If any of Phillips or Minaya’s disciples are around they’ll probably be handing over a #1 pick and wheelbarrows full of cash for Trout when HE’s 34.
Ultimately both of these guys are one trick ponies. Great with the owners checkbook, one lucked out with being the beneficiary of a divison rivals fire sale that someone else provided the parts for and both of them hit on some of the scrap heap pickups they made. One of them got to a World Series and crashed, one of them got close to a World Series and crashed. One of them left the farm in much better shape than it was and one of them left it in much worse shape than it was.
Anyone, even guys on MMO could play checkbook baseball and probably have better results than these two guys. It takes a REAL GM to build from nothing while not handing over draft choice after draft choice and barrel fulls of cash only to crash after the party ends.
On a Pace? Really you said that?
2/3rds of a season?
Omar was on a pace for 97 wins 3/3rds of the season through!
I would say that is better!
Metsie you apparently don’t understand cause and effect, not to mention context.
Minaya did win 97 games in a full season.
Mcilvaine was only “on pace” to win 93 games (through 2/3rds of the season.
Now, lets look at how they got there. Minaya took over a 71 win team and won 97 in two years. Pretty impressive. Less impressive though when you take into account that he spent a first, second and third round draft choice AND financially committed 250 Million dollars.
Mcilvaine took over a 59 win team and 4 years latter was on a pace (through July 20) to win 93 games without giving up any draft choices or committing financially to any expensive long term contracts.
Minaya had to get rid of 1/2 season of one bad contract (Matsui) and got nothing except salary relief.
Mcilvaine got rid of a year and a half of Bobby Bonilla and got two (one very good) prospects for him and got rid of a year of Vince Coleman for a useful player at an area of need (McReynolds)
The two Mcilvaine moves saved 7M (1995) dollars and at least got us something.
Minaya got 2 of the parts from yet another Florida Marlin salary dump for his 97 win team.
Mcilvaine’s “on pace to win 93 through July 20th” team came in a year the Marlins WON the World series.
Big difference competing against a team in your own division who WINS the World Series as opposed to a team that gives you two of your starting position players because their not going for it that year.
Minaya’s ’97 win team also had the luck of Atlanta having their first losing season in 16 years.
Mcilvaine’s “on pace” team had a 101 win Atlanta team to compete against.
The marlins were 14 games worse and the Braves 22 games worse in 2006 than they were in 1997.
In fact the ENTIRE NL was worse in 2006 than 1997.
In 1997 2 NL teams won 90 and one, won 100, of those three, two were in OUR division. In 2006 no teams (other than us) won 90. StL won a division with 83 wins and SD with 88 which really begs the question just how good was the ’97 win 2006 Met Team? Considering the 250 Million dollar commitment and the sacrifice of 3 high draft choices and the easier competition (especially inside our own division) it makes you wonder.
Another thing that makes you wonder is WHY would the Wilpon have gotten rid of Mcilvaine at the time they did? We were 6.5 out near the end of July. We played well against our division rivals (Atl 5-2 & FL 4-3 who were both very good as opposed to in 2006 when they weren’t) had some good prospects brewing in the farm, all our draft picks intact and hadn’t blown up the payroll one iota?
In fact if we had maintained the pace we were on we would have won the Wild Card without costing one single thing from the future.
Once the change took effect we went 32-32 the rest of the way missing out on the Wild Card by four games (IN a tough division)
The following year (1998) Phillips started wheeling and dealing Mcilvaine’s prospects and spending draft choices and blowing up the payroll and our win totals went like this: 88, 97, 94, 82, 75, 66. Considering FL not only gave up but also gave us a few of their great players our win totals would have had to go up by a couple anyway.
FL WON THIRTY EIGHT LESS GAMES in 1998 then 1997 and didn’t climb above .500 until 2002 when they won it again.
Montreal won THIRTEEN LESS GAMES and remained in the mid to high 60′s.
Philly went 75, 77, 65, 86, 80 and 86.
Only Atlanta maintained, everyone else in our division tanked starting in Phillips FIRST YEAR.
To say that Phillips had an easier route to the playoffs than Mcilvaine would be the understatement of all eternity plus he wasn’t taking over a 59 win team, he was taking over a team on pace to win 93 and don’t go blaming the unbalanced schedule either. That didn’t take effect until 2001.
So how much value did we actually get by Phillips blowing up the payroll, trading the farm and not signing Mcilvaines last draft class?
Well we had an exciting run of 3 years, saw some great players put on some incredible moments, got to a World Series but at the end, just like Minaya it could have worked but didn’t.
They both handed over draft choices like crazy, they blew up the payroll quite a bit. Minaya got some talent out of the draft, Phillips really only got one outstanding player (Wright), two good one’s (Kazmir and Pagan) and one semi serviceable relief pitcher. Minaya got some high ceiling prospects out of the IFA market, Phillips got Reyes. Every single on of Phillips first picks busted and he had a few extras coutesey of Mcilvaine.
The spending of all those draft choices really hurt the farm going forward and when Phillips left we were in exactly the same position we were when Mcilvaine took over.
Things are no where near as bad now as they were then but the checkbook is locked away, probably for good and the work that took Mcilvaine 3 years to accomplish will have to be done once again. Hopefully Alderson will do it as skilfully as Mcilvaine did.
This whole saga reminds me of a Greek Tragedy.
Omar is Icarus, Mcilvaine is Prometheus and Phillips is the siren who sweet talked the Wilpon into crashing the boat on the rocks.
Oh I most definitly do understand cause and affect I tried to drill it into you in our OBP RS discussions.
What you don’t understand is you are not mentioning ALL THE GUYS MCILVANE bought either on purpose or simply oversight to get what he did…
What you think McIlvane did and what REALLY happened was they BOTH went and bought a team.
McIlvane didn’t home grow crap!
He bought Olerud and ventura and all those other guys!
Either with money or farm!
Omar didn’t use farm to get it. That is the only difference in fact McIlvane did more what you accuse Omar of doing than OMAR did!
Cause all Omar did was buy FA!
He didn’t wreck the farm!
Stop trying to make McIlvane sound great for doing what you say Omar did but not mentioning it when McIlvane is concerned!
I’m done with this…really. No point!
Point is McIlvane didn’t do squat! Omar did more!
And as for who left the next guy in a better position the fact that most of our Infield and a good part of our 2012 OF will be guys Omar found and made it to the bigs your whole concept of blaming Omar is really just a load of crap that doesn’t even REALLY merit responding to!
Wrong again Metsie. Mcilvaine traded Robert Person from the 40 for Olerud, got 3 great seasons out of him and then he was turned into 2 #1 draft choices (which Phillips blew) Turning a non-entity into a great 3 years and then 2 highly regarded 1st round draft choices is exactly how you compete today and build for tomorrow. Not giving away your #1 draft choices for a 40 year old LFer or a DH.
Your also wrong about Ventura. Phillips signed him. Cost us a #1 pick but he played really well on both sides of the ball.
Dude all those names you listed and only one maybe two were actually home grown.
Metsie, Starting from scratch at the tail end of 1993 (“the worst team money could buy.”) with no one IN the farm how exactly was he going to A) Field a team and B) Build a champion?
He got us from 59-103 and nothing in the minors to 88-74 in four years without spending ANY draft choices on free agents.
In 4 years of drafts he drafted Paul Wilson, Terrence long, Jay Payton, AJ Burnett, Nelson Figueroa, AAron Rowand, Garrett Atkins Jeremy Guthrie and David Dejesus. Traded for Carl Everett, Bernard Gilkey, John Olerud, Brian Mcrae, Mel Rojas, Turk Wendell, Vizcaino, Matt Franco, Byrd, Milicki, Clark, Dipoto, Harnish, Rick Reed, Tony Fernandez and Brogna He also signed Lance Johnson as a type B (non comp) free agent, got Brett Butler, Orsulak, Remlinger and Todd Pratt off waivers He also developed and then worked in the two prospects he did inherit, Alfonzo and Ordonez, added them to the one young decent player he had (Hundley),dumped Bonilla for two credible prospects AND Coleman for Mcreynolds and actually GOT something other than just salary relief.
That’s 33 credible Major League players he brought in or drafted in 4 years without signing one single type A free agent or trading prospects for help now and almost every single trade was a win. The guys he brought over were almost exclusively “younger veteran” types, ages 25-29 so they would have some life here and bring something back later either through trades or draft picks when they left via free agency.
He also hired Bobby Valentine.
Wasn’t it you who who said it would take too long to build through the farm? Well here was a guy who wasn’t giving up his #1 and #2 picks in order to build through the farm and was in fact drafting very well as you can see. Not only that but he was also putting together a competitive team on the field after taking over a 100 loss team.
In other words he was getting us competitive on the field WHILE building up the farm. Remember he only had 3 1/2 years here. Too short a time for any of his draft choices to contribute to HIS Teams.
Taking a team from 59 wins up to 88 wins with ZERO type A free agents and no trades of prospects for immediate help and only a couple of prospects in the farm to start with in 4 years is pretty damn good wouldn’t you say?
Keep in mind that he was competing against TWO teams in the Division that won World Series Championships during his run here, Atlanta and Florida compared to Phillips tenure when the Marlins shipped all their good players to other teams (including us) and went into full salary dump mode.
He also went through the unfortunate disintegration of Generation K, Doc Gooden’s drug related difficulties and Harnishe’s mysterious ailments which seriously effected the pitching staff.
He also lost a season in 1994 (55-58), that off season and the beginning of the next season to the strike and had the ’97 team 56-42 (.571) on pace to win 93 games at the time he was fired. The Mets wound up 88-74.
He had gotten this team competitive without taking a single thing from the future in just 3 1/2 years and should have been allowed to continue what he had started.
Failing that Phillips could have at least signed the guys Mcilvaine drafted and spared himself the embarrassment of 2003 by having Atkins for 3B, leaving Fonzie at 2B, not trading for Alomar, putting DeJesus in CF instead of Jeff Duncan, Guthrie in the rotation instead of Griffiths and Astacio saved money, prospects and his undeserved legacy.
Taking over a .364 team and borrowing absolutely nothing from the future Mcillvaine went .487, .479, .438, and .571.
Taking over a team on a .571 pace Phillips went .500 the rest of ’97, .595, .580, .506, .466 and .410 and did so by borrowing heavily against the future with both trading away prospects and forfeiting draft choices. He also left the farm system in ruins (Duqquette made things even worse then they were) which led to Omar having nothing to work with when he got here.
Phillips made some very wise moves with the Marlins fire sales. No complaints. But he had the pieces to work with when he got the job. That’s something neither Mcilvaine nor Minaya had and the reason Minaya didn’t have anything is because of Phillips horrendous drafts and disdain for the IFA market because as he used to say “prospects will get you fired.” Yeah, so will Roberto, Jeremy and Mo.
Dude the only difference between what Minaya and McIlvane did was that McIlvane didn’t win 90 games at any point in his tenure!
He left in 90 to join the padres and came back a mere 3 years later and there was NO ONE in the farm?!??!??!
Well what happened to all those guys he told us to get before 1990? We sure didn’t trade them away since we went and BOUGHT the worst team money could BUY!
Was it that as an Assitant GM (who was largely all about aquisition and eval, as Harazin did contracts and money but not much else.) failed miserably to make good choices and left Harazin no choice but to go out and BUY the worst team money could buy?
That means if we TRULY had no one that it should be attributed to HIM!
And the names you listed? I mean really the only difference is that you KNOW what they did in hindsight and have already decided that Davis, Thole, Havens, Murphy, Tejada, Mejia, Gee, Duda, Evans, Flores and I’m sure I’m leaving names out are ALL FAILURES despite one being near ROY!
Jay Payton isn’t even HALF the can’t miss player Davis is!
And when you include Reyes and Wright who are both ALL STARS…ACTUAL ALL STARS! how you can think McIlvane did anything better bthan Omar is really and truly beyond me!
Do I really have to go down the names of Free Agents that Minaya was involved in?
Why don’t you match McIlvanes FA Aquisitions and trades to the following list.
Mike Piazza
Al Leiter
Robin Ventura
Ricky Henderson
Orel Hershiser
Todd Ziele
Pedro Martinez
Carlos Beltran
Johan Santana
Billy Wagner
Francisco Rodriguez
Paul LoDuca
Jose Valentin
Yes a few of those were under Phillips but as Assistant GM he had to be a part of those decisions. And as Phillips has said time and again, anythime he was hesitant to make a deal Omar was the one who would push him to make some of the best deals he DID make such as Piazza!
We have had 5 First overall picks in the draft which ties us for most in the MLB.
The years? 66, 68,80,84, and 94.
Onlt two of those 5 actually never saw a ML roster spot.
Note the two first rounders in 66 and 68 and the two in 80 and 84 and note WHY were we able to HOME GROW two WS winners!
Compare that to the Phillies and the Braves if you like you will see the pattern in your 20 year assesment!
Harazin had three 1st rounders (1st, 20th and 29th) that year and all he came out with were Wilson, Long and Payton?
Thats a good record?
If you think those guys were good well it had a hell of a lot more to do with 3 shots at success, something Omar has NEVER had EVER!
Pelfrey taken 9th by Omar is twice amybe THREE TIMES the pitcher Wilson was!
We gave up our 1st rounder for signing Wagner. We were a COMPETING TEAM in 2006 and got way more than any rookie would have done. We traded a UNKNOWN quantity, unproven pick for a PROVEN and DOMINANT closer!
2007 Omar had the 42nd and 47th pick!
2008 with the 18th and 22nd pick we got BOTH Davis (can’t miss obviously he is here just 2 years later! and Havens who seems can’t miss and is likely to be our starting 2B before this season is over! and if not Next season definitly!
We gave up our 2009 1st rounder for the samne reason we did it for Wagner! A KNOWN probable HOF closer instead of an unknown and unproven player who wouldn’t have helped Omar keep his job even if he took one!
We took Matt Harvey as his final act, unless you simply want to ASSuME that he is already a bust a year into development you really have no legs to stand on when comparing what Omar brought in compared to McIlvane!
And as for your assertion that McIlvane went from 59 wins to 88 in four years I would remind you that Omar took a 66 Win club and turned it into a 97 win club in the same 4 years!
About the same win tick up but Omar made the Playoffs and got to the WS.
Something McIlvane failed to do!
Unless you want to give him credit for Cashen’s work.
He gets some but not as much as Omar gets for Phillips’
And Brown is a can’t miss guy? Really?
What makes him can’t miss?
You give Omar too much credit. Sure the minor league was barren at the time but he inherited two of the best infielders in baseball in their prime years in Reyes and Wright but failed miserably to put the other pieces around them during those years. Even if you look at 2006 the starting pitching was awful, it was the offense and bullpen that carried that team to the playoffs. I agree that he did a horrible job on giving away draft picks, but Beltran was a great signing. It’s just they’ve done a bad job of keeping him healthy as he was often playing injured.
Uh you need to do some research on our History…Wright and Reyes are as much Omar Accomplishments as anyones!
Omar was working for us first as scouting director and then Assitant GM from the Mid 90′s to 2002 when he left to GM the Expos. He came back in 2005!
David Wright was drafted 2001! So was Heilman
Jose Reyes was signed (not drafted) in 1999
Kazmir was also drafted largely on Minaya’s scouting despite his leaving before the draft to take the Expo gig.
Pelfrey and Davis are also both his picks. Add Niese for good measure!
Lets see thats 3/4th of an infield and our #1 Pitcher and #3 until Santana gets back!
Thole, Duda, Evans, Murphy…All Minaya!
Havens (another Minaya pick) is almost ready to become the next big ML call up if he shows enough bat in the Minors this year.
And that resurgent guy over on the other side of town Aj Burnett also was a Minaya pick!
Angel Pagan was also a Omar 4th round draft pick in 1999.
So Pretty much everyone anyone LIKES on this team is a guy Minaya found and had something to do with Aquiring!
That’s absurd. Minaya was the Asst GM when Kazmir Wright and Heilman were drafted. Kazmir has been discussed over and over again and no one has ever said he was an Omar pick. Not even once. Which would have been a plausable cover given for trading him but not once did anyone ever say Kazmir was Omar’s choice and if he was what does that say about Hamels, Cain or Josh Johnson who went later in the same draft?
Pelfrey was a big time, well scouted Scott Borass client who had been drafted three years before. He went #9 in the first round. Hardly a “find.”
Davis was a very highly regarded amateur from a huge baseball school and on the US Olympic Team. Well known to all the scouts and GM’s. Also a first rounder #18. Again, hardly a “find.”
Niese was a good find.
Gee was a real good pick.
Thole was a failed first basemen who has made good at catcher and came from the 13th round. If he hadn’t made it we’d probably still have Omir Santos here.
Duda was a decent pick. College Sr. which means he wasn’t enticed with a couple extra buck to come out early but has put himself into contention.
Evans was drafted when Omar was in Montreal.
Murphy was a good 13th round choice but terribly mishandled both from a projection and from a development standpoint. Should probably have been turned into a catcher after his first season or traded for a 2B prospect.
Havens was pure bad luck but every team experiences that and he might still come on strong.
AJ Burnett was a Joe Mcillvaine pick (8th round) Nothing to do with Minaya. Minaya was working with Texas when this pick was made.
Minaya could have scouted Angel Pagan but Phillips was the GM at the time. Omar also sold Angel for 50 grand. Usually a GM doesn’t sell a guy he liked enough to draft for 50 grand. Luckily he traded to get him back.
If you want to credit Omar with all of the very few decent draft choices the Mets have made while he was here (1998-2000, 2005-2010) that’s OK with me but you should at least mention all the early round busts we’ve had during those time frames too because as soon as Phillips assumed the GM position (and Omar was hired) we immediately went from drafting 3 future ML players every year down to one every other year and had almost exclusively first pick washouts.
Two of our three notable IFA’s (Alfonzo and Ordonez) were acquired prior to Omar’s arrival here in 1998 and we haven’t really recieved anything of value (yet)during his reign as GM here either. It has been reported that Omar received a call from scout Eddy Toledo that he wanted to sign a guy but that he wanted 15 Grand. Omar laughingly told him go ahead. I think that was the extent of Omar’s involvement in signing Reyes.
Omar also ditched that scout at Bernazard’s request as he did the Director of the Minor Leagues and then fired the two guys who took their place when Bernazard was canned. I doubt all this upheavel was good for the team in the long or short run.
I like how Omar makes a great trade to get Pagan back, and you say “luckily he traded to ge him back.” It wasn’t luck, it was a great move!
If it was a great move to get him back then it was a bad move to trade him in the first place. Especially when the original trade was to get back cash and the 2nd trade cost prospects.
All you Omar sycophants are all the same. Everything he did was great, everything the new regime does is horrible.
The funniest thing about it is that all of you were screaming to get him out of here but once he was canned you all want him back.
I never said everything he did was great. I always said he was an average GM. He made a lot bad moves, and he made a lot of good moves. And the Angel Pagan trades fits my argument perfectly: it was a bad moving trading him in the first place, and it was a great move getting him back.
Even with Oliver Perez, it was a bad move signing him, but it was a good move to trade for him. He gave us two good years, and started game 7 of the NLCS for us – he pitched good in that game.
Now, with Sandy Alderson, it’s too early to tell if he’s a good GM, a bad GM, or an average GM – we haven’t played one game yet – we’ll find out in a few years. I really didn’t like the offseason we had, so I guess that’s why you’re saying i think “everything the new regime does is horrible.” That’s not true at all. I just thought there was other players availble that we could have signed that would have been better fits for our team than the guys we got – what’s wrong with that? You do that all the time when you’re talking about Omar.
Fair enough Vinny. I see your point but at the same time a lot of Omar’s decisions had big repurcussions down the road. The loss of numerous #1 and #2 picks, including flat out giving THREE #1 picks away for nothing, COMBINED with not getting some back when he had a chance and then busting on so many picks he did keep has serious repercussions for the next 5-10 years.
If, and it’s a big IF some of his high ceiling IFA talent pans out that damage to the future can be mitigated possibly in full but that’s not even close to being a sure thing.
None of the decisions the new front office has made have cost one single thing from the future except perhaps Dickey’s deal (only 4M) which personally I think was a great move and I like the Felciano move because it gets us one more potential option and Feliciano can’t last forever anyway.
What down the road? What do you base this on, not having a #1 or #2 pick for a year?
Well Metsie if you can’t see a “correlation” between giving up so many #1 and #2 draft choices and the fact that we always have so many “holes to fill” I don’t know what to say.
The players we give those picks up for almost exclusively leave nothing behind when they retire (Pedro, Alou), are waived, not resigned (Floyd) or dumped to save salary (Wagner)
Next up to leave behind nothing is probably Beltran, K-Rod and Bay. Add in Castillo and Perez who both could have left picks for the future and all the other guys we obtained through the years who left nothing behind when they left (El-Duque, Green, Delgado, Schneider, Castro) and it becomes obvious why we always have so many “holes to fill.”
Amazingly Glavine DID leave something behind and because of that we have Ike at 1B (and Holt in the minors) What if he hadn’t, what would we be doing for 1B right now?
What would we have been doing at 3B if Hampton hadn’t left behind Wright?
The “value chain” of all our players ends because we’re acquiring them too late in their career.
Now if we were drafting well we could overcome this but we’re really not. Sure we got Pelfrey and Niese, maybe Gee but look where we went for starting pitcher, the boneyard. Hey it worked last year and maybe it will this year too but that can’t be your plan every year.
Look at 2B.
Look at RF. Beltran’s a maybe this year and a definite not next year. What then? Just cause we have a guy who’s bat COULD play there doesn’t mean his glove or arm will.
If it wasn’t for Thole looking decent – good at catcher who would we have? No one. That’s why we have no one at 2B. The only guy we really had got hurt every year.
Firstbase we had one guy. He came through thank God, but what if he hadn’t? Would we be looking at Delgado again?
We haven’t had to find a guy for SS and 3B for 7 years. We imported a guy for CF for 7 years. That left 5 other positions to get settled. LF, RF, 1B, 2B and C.
LF we spent a #1 and a #2 95M and even tried a rookie third basemen. We haven’t even come close to getting full value for what we paid and obviously missed out on the chance of getting a longer term solution by giving up those picks, plus the injuries cost us in years we lost the post season by 1 and 2 games.
RF We never fixed well and now our best hope is a rookie FIRST basemen.
1B, Like I said, Thank God.
2B, ughh forget it.
C, a very good 1/2 of a platoon or a decent to good everyday backstop.
And now we might have to start over at SS again and CF in a year and possibly 3rd in two years and we STILL have at best maybe’s at RF and 2B.
What kind of a plan is this?
What kind?
One that had better results than McIlvanes!
Until you conceed that point you will never get the correct answer!
A better plan? You must be crazy Metsie. Mcilvaine took us from 59-103 (dead last) with the 7th largest payroll to 88-74 in his last year with a payroll progression of 18th, 28th, 17th and 17th without spending any #1 or #2 picks.
Phillips zoomed the payroll from 18th to 7th, 8th, 5th, 4th, 6th and 2nd and spent 3 #1 draft choices. Won two wild cards (one barely) in a two team division and made it to a World Series.
He was a one trick pony. He had the owners check book and future years draft picks and the good fortune that not only were last years World Champions (Marlins) not going to be competing, they would be giving us some of their best players as well.
He couldn’t build a team if his life depended on it.
He couldn’t draft for s**t.
He hit on Pagan 1999 4th round, In 2001 he hit on Heilman 1/18 and Wright 1/38 and in 2002 hit on Kazmir 1/17 (with Hamels, Cain and Josh Johnson on the board) and nothing else in 6 years of drafts and only one IFA during that time (Reyes) with Omar here.
That’s why Omar had nothing to work with (except the checkbook and draft picks) when he took over.
Oh so the best plan is about how frugal you are now?
Everyone else judges success by wins!
Omar won more!
McIlvane was a great about as much as Oakland was great using moneyball!
Looks good to the accountant but can’t win!
Well Vinny, If you want to point out that Boston got great years out of a non tender at DH, a catcher acquired with 3 minor league prospects at 30 who played great for a year and a half and then left behind two #1 draft choices(in a talented draft), and a plan B (non comp) free agent they signed at 30 for one year who played great and then also left behind two #1 draft choices (in a talented draft), I would agree with you. But I would also point out that those things don’t just happen, they get planned for.
Big difference between that and giving away your draft choices on guys who can’t make it through their contract, let alone merit consideration beyond it.
I’m not talking about that. What I’m saying is they still had very good hitters in their lineup, who were their starters on opening day and that’s why they finished with 89 wins.
Now if you want to argue that the 2010 Redsox were better HEALTHY than the 2009 Mets HEALTHY, then go right ahead. But that has nothing to do with my point.
Vinny, Those position players who hit well in 2010 for Boston hit well (and stayed healthy) at 30, not 35 or 40. The fact that they were acquired before their last contract and without costing draft choices meant other prospects came into their system, not someone else’s.
Martinez cost 3 B prospects, played great for a year and a half and returned 2 possibly A prospects after he left. This provides for that kind of depth that prevents you from crashing.
When you look at the age of the 2006 team you know it not sustainable. When they started to fall we had no one to back them up with. Boston did. They’ve been recycling their players since 2004. When the injuries hit they had people. When our injuries hit we didn’t.
The fact that their starters were younger also meant less injuries, not more.
The Redsox’s survived the injuries better than we did because the had a better team than we did. Yeah 89 wins is good but how good would their record be if they were all healthy? Not all of their good hitters got hurt so that’s why they still had a good record – the injuries hurt the Redsox, but not as it hurt us because they had a better team.
Now if Beltre or Martinez got hurt, they wouldn’t have scored many runs – i don’t care how much depth they had.
I don’t get your point here. You think if the Mets had better backups to Beltran and Reyes they would have done something? we did have a good backup to Beltran. Angel Pagan did a good job, right?
I don’t care who we had as backups or how much depth we had that year. we were going to bad. We lost three of our best hitters, and the only guy left was Wright, who had the worst year of his career.
And if we had someone like Angel to step in for Reyes. Take over for Church in RF, Delgado at 1B or Murphy in LF and Schneider at C that would have been huge.
As it was Cora took over for Reyes, Sullivan in LF, Murphy went to 1B and Santos caught and Church was traded for Francouer. No matter how well Pagan did he wasn’t going to make up for a lineup of Cora, Murphy, Sullivan, Francouer, and Santos. In addition Parnell showed he wasn’t ready, Redding couldn’t keep us close, Reed never got on the field.
Beltran to me was the least likely guy of the one’s who got hurt and he was the only one to have a credible back up. That’s a function of the farm as well as the bench. Now maybe it’s unfair to expect those positions to all have capable backups from your own draft and IFA’s in your fifth year but if you have a team considered World Series ready you have to back a 35 year old first basemen with SOMEONE, provide a solution if your rookie 3B man doesn’t make it in LF, Schnieder repeats his bad 2008 (why’d we cut Castro anyway?) Church doesn’t put it together. At least get a platoon mate for him.
This whole combination of stars and scrubs never works.
Of course. it would be great to have a bench with players as good as Angel Pagan, but that’s not realistic.
Cora, Murphy, Sullivan, and Santos are backups. What do you expect bakcups to look like? Sullivan didn’t do that bad for us anyway. Murphy was okay i guess. and what’s funny is, Cora was the backup for the Redsox’s before he was on the mets.
And there’s a reason why these guys are backups. because they aren’t good, If they were any good they would be starting!!!!!!!!!!.
I’ll give you Cora in 2009 but how about the idea of resigning him in 2010? With a likely to vest option for 2011? At 2 M per?
Murphy was not a back up. He was a starter. Santos and Sullivan weren’t back ups, they were organizational players. Minor leaguers.
Really after Schneider’s 2008 dumping Castro with only Santos, Cancel and Casanova in the farm for a team expecting to contend is lunacy.
It really didn’t matter who got hurt. The only player we had to back up anyone at all was Pagan and no one even knew how good he could be or if HE could even stay healthy.
By year 4 there should have been a credible bench of guys who could step in and contribute something. Non tenders, itching for a chance, a Plan B free agent who could cover both corner infield spots and wanted the chance to win a ring. A RH hitting corner outfielder to come in for Murphy in the 8th and platoon with Church but the money was all spent. Believe it or not 30M of it went to Wagner, Putz and K-Rod. Thirty friggen’ million and our starters were really nothing more than backups themselves. Church/Francouer – Schneider/Santos – Castillo – Murphy.
Is this what you get for 150 M?
Tell you the truth Vinny, even with no injuries this team doesn’t make the post season. Maine, Livan, Redding, Figgy, Nieve and Ollie starting 93 games? and please don’t give me the injury excuse here because Livan and Redding were DFA’d cause they were terrible and everyone knows (or should know) your going to need to have 5 extra starters either in the pen or stashed in AAA.
This team was put together miserably. You had 4 great hitting position players, one established starting pitcher, 2 closers, a rookie set up guy with one pitch, a rookie third basemen in LF and no credible bench players save for Pagan who hadn’t even established himself to that point.
Bad job. With or without injuries we were going to be league worst offensively at 4 positions and don’t tell me about Castillo’s BA or OB. He can’t do anything when someone is already OB so what he does do is far less significant and of those 4 league worst offensive players 2 sucked at Defense.
Injuries are just a convienent excuse but in Omar’s defense I will say that I thought Schneider and Church really let him down.
No. Its has nothing to do with frugality. I wouldn’t care if the Mets had no budget but they do.
In 1997 we won 88 games with the 17th highest payroll and hadn’t surrendered a high draft choice in years.
In 1998 we won 88 games with the 7th highest payroll and we did it in a division in which one Florida lost 38 more than the year before, Montreal 14 more.
The following two years we also cashed in a #1 pick (where the highest quality players are found) and just kept on adding payroll and subtracting first round picks until we crashed all over again in 2003 with the 2nd highest payroll and a 66-95 record.
Same plan, same result as 1993. Jack up the payroll, spend draft choices, bottom out, rebuild, add a couple of pieces, start doing the same thing all over. It just isn’t going to work.
Get a team together THEN add to it here and there. Don’t assemble a large group of expensive free agents and some more older players on their last contract around a few younger players and a few young prospects and zoom up the payroll and lose your draft picks or your gonna crash.
Be creative. Jason Werth was a non tender, anyone could have signed him. He didn’t cost any picks, he left two behind, after playing great for 3 years.
Marcus Giles was a 53 round draft choice. Not a hall of famer maybe but did a good job at 2B for the Braves. So did Martin Prado. Anyone could have signed him. He didn’t cost any picks.
These guys all played much better than the guys we had playing 2B and RF and Werth and Giles allowed their team to reload when they left.
A few years after we’ve spent multiple #1 draft picks is when we have crashed the hardest. Coincidence?….
The way we played the last two years had nothing to do with losing picks. It was mainly because Beltran and reyes wern’t healthy. How can you win when your best players aren’t playing?
Really Jason Werth? Come on. Ok if at the time when he was available you were saying we should get him, then you have a point, but after he hits 95 homeruns for the phillies you say “we should of signed him instead.” Of course, AFTER he does great you say that, but I don’t think you were when he was availible!!!!
Omar won one division title and crashed. The one division title he won had more to do with Atlanta having their first losing season in 16 years and Florida trading off their best players….again.
The same thing that allowed Phillips to get a couple of Wild Cards. Florida dismantling their World Series Championship team.
Is that your plan for success? Wait till your competitors in the NL East crash or give away their best players?
If it is your going to be waiting a while because Atlanta’s back again, got some talented young guys up here at 1B and RF, arms in the pen, 2 young arms in the rotation and four more where they came from plus they still have McCann, Prado, Jurgens, Chipper and now Uggla.
They been to the playoffs 15 times in 20 years and last year they spent 97 M, we spent 150.
I wasn’t Vinny. Tell you the truth I don’t recall even hearing his name. I’m just using him as an example. Minaya only looked at type A free agents, yet here was a guy who was non tendered. Not only didn’t cost a pick, he actually left two behind when he left.
Just like when Mcilvaine traded Person for Olerud. Got 3 great years and then Olerud left behind two #1′s.
And the loss of your best draft choices does hurt because it costs you your best prospects who might have been able to step in and stop the bleeding when Carlos and Jose went down like the way Boston’s did last year.
Maybe they didn’t get to the post season but 89 wins in the AL east sure isn’t crashing.
Prospects can be used to get frontline aces like Lee and Halliday and provide you with multiple options so your not stuck with having to give up a pick and too much money over too many years for the wrong guy.
I’m not saying never spend a pick, just take some back when you get a chance. Reload. Lose a pick on Wagner and Pedro, keep the two when Wagner goes, don’t give them away.
Don’t spend one on a 40 year old outfielder. Not sure about Perez or Castillo, let ‘em go. Take the pick and give the contract to someone you are sure about. If it’s not this year then get a stop gap.
Or they could be used in a trade for a Cliff Lee or Doc Holliday
Come on now. We won the division because we had a very good team. You realize that don’t you? Just look at our roster that year – that team was a VERY good team. I can’t believe that now were are saying we were good that year because the others teams weren’t good. NOBODY is going to look at that lineup and say that it wasn’t a REAL GOOD lineup – the Braves lineup now doesn’t even come close to our lineup that year.
I haven’t really looked at all the teams lineups yet, but I’ll bet that our lineup in 06, is better than all the lineups in the league right now.
What good are all these 1st rounders you keep flapping about when he got NOTHING with them?
NOTHING!
JAY PAYTON?!??!?!
PAUL WILSON!?!??!??!
At least Omar got two potential HOF guys for his 1st rounder!
McIlvane won NONE!
I just want to add this about the red sox’s injuries last year.
They still had Beltre in their lineup who had a HUGE year, they still had one of the best hitting catchers in the league, and still had their big slugging DH – that’s why they still managed to win 89 games. And if we had hitters like that healthy in 09, I’m sure we would have been good too even with all the injuries we had.
Who are these potential HOFers? Ike and Pelfrey? Metsie their good players but HOFers? I don’t know.
Bottom line is you tried to say that Wright and Reyes were inherited. They were not they were his guys!
His scouting department found them!
And everyone knew about all of McIlvanes picks too but he failed to sign them!
Which makes him dumber than anything Phillips and Omar did!
Oh he blew a first rounder too! Notice no mention of that from you?
Seems you leave out the bits that are the same for both and try to attribute accomplishments of Omar/Phillips to McIlvane.
There is a REASON McIlvane got fired after 3 years!
HE SUCKED!
First of all Metsie your trying to say that Omar was responsible for drafting AJ Burnett, Scott Kazmir, even Nick Evans when he wasn’t even working for the Mets at that time. Your erronously trying to credit your guru with someone elses’ accomplishment. That’s low.
Considering you were SO sure that Omar drafted Burnett, Kazmir and Evans when he wasn’t even working for the Mets how can you be so sure that Omar was the one who drafted David Wright or Angel Pagan?
He may have but how do you KNOW? Phillips was the GM not Omar. Omar was the Asst. GM in 1998. He became the Asst GM AND International Scouting Director in 1999. Perhaps that’s why the scout that found Jose Reyes called him to OK the 15K signing bonus. A scout hired by Frank Cashen by the way. That would make sense. If you want to glom the credit for Minaya for “discovering Jose Reyes” under these circumstances, go ahead.
Personally I wish you could have credited Omar with more than just one good international free agent signing in four years.
In 1998 the Director of Scouting (ALL SCOUTING as you put it) was Gary LaRouque. From 1999-2001 it was Carmen Fusco.
Omar was exclusively on the IFA end and other than Reyes the results speak for themselves.
Personally If your intention is to artificially inflate Omar’s resume citing him as being the Director of Amateur Scouting for Steve Phillips would be the wrong way to go about it.
Sure, there was Wright, but why take Heilman first? Kazmir with Hamels, Cain and Josh Johnson on the board? Pagan in round four? and that’s all she wrote in six years.
Tyner, Strange, Musser, Josephs, Traber, Keppel, Peterson, Turay and Ransdale were other notable first and 2nd round picks Phillips made from 1998-2001. I doubt very much Omar would appreciate your “crediting” him with Phillips drafting prowess.
The least Phillips could have done was sign the future Major Leaguers Mcilvaine drafted, Lord knows he wasn’t going to provide many himself.
Phillips also gave away #1′s for Ventura (good), Zeile (OK) and Appier (OK-which he then turned into Mo Vaughn – not OK)
And if you want to credit the Asst GM with making Phillps draft picks why not credit Bove or Worthon for Omar’s picks?
The facts here are pretty clear. Omar OK’d a signing bonus of 15 Grand to a 16 year old amateur Dominican named Jose Reyes. He had nothing to do on the domestic front with Wright , could possibly have had someone under his supervision scout Pagan but as for the regular draft, Omar did as much with that as he did in six years with 2B. Nothing.
Wright and Reyes go under Phillips ledger. Pelfrey, Niese and Davis go under Minaya’s ledger that’s the way it works. Omar inherited them, Mcilvaine inherited Bonilla and Coleman.
Omar did inherit Wright and Reyes. Bottom line. Phillips drafted one and signed one.
Omar was an Asst. GM and INTERNATIONAL scouting director. He had a minor role in signing Reyes in that he OK’d a 15 Grand signing bonus that a scout hired by Cashen requested of him. He most likely had as much to do with Pagan, Heilman, Wright or Kazmir as he did with all of Phillips draft choices, which is to Omar’s credit because Phillip’s draft are among the worst draft results of all time.
Despite giving away 3 #1 picks during his 6 years he recouped those 3 by getting a supp pick for Reynosa and a supp and a #1 for Olerud, both curtousy of Mcilvaine and still only came up with a couple of guys. He was very lucky with Wright too, taking Heilman at #18 and then getting Wright at #38. Trust me that was more luck than anything else.
Omar inherited Wright and Reyes just like Mcilvaine inherited Bonilla and Coleman and Alderson inherited Castillo and Perez.
He was the SCOUTING DIRECTOR!
Thats about as close to picks being his as anyone gets!
If he doesn’t identify them then Phillips never even knows who they are!
Metsie, I have already told you He was NOT the Scouting Director. He was the Asst GM and The INTERNATIONAL Scouting Director. Nothing to do with the draft at all.
The Scouting Director in 1998 was Gary LaRoque.
The Scouting Director 1n 1999-2001 was Carmen Fusco.
Omar was on the International side of things where there is no draft. Could he have had someone scout in PR where players are subject to the draft because of proximity and language? Possible, but that would also require that his scouts in the DR and Venezuela all get Visas.
Highly unlikely to go through all that when their are already scouts in PR that reported to Fred Wright, Omar’s contemporary on the domestic side.
The chances of the INTERNATIONAL Scouting Cooridinator having anything to do with the Met draft is as good as the chances of the Texas Rangers scouting cooridinator or Expos GM having anything to do with it.
Stop smearing Minaya’s legacy by falsely placing him in charge of some of the worst drafts in MLB history.
Asst GM has nothing to do with the draft…
Yeah that makes about as much sense as Harry C!
So I guess if we manage to make great draft picks this year DiPoto and Ricciardi will have nothing to do with that!
It will be all Alderson who by his own admission isn’t really a baseball guy as far as evaluating and scouting talent.
You go right on believing that dude!
It is your beliefs that are clouding your judgement and leading you to the WRONG answer!
No Metsie your just trying to find a way to credit Omar with everyone he could plausably have had any say in scouting or drafting but his area of the operation was all INTERNATIONAL. Players not subject to the draft.
Phillips had other people (I’ve already given you their names) that scouted domestically and ran the draft.
I don’t understand why your trying to insist that Omar scouted and drafted what few players Phillips plucked from the draft when your obviously just guessing. Just like you did when you claimed Omar drafted AJ Burnett when he was working in Texas or Nick Evans when he was working in Montreal or the Mets went on his word for Kazmir 6 months after he left.
Omar’s side of things was in Latin America and the Orient. That’s the way the FO was (and is) structured. Omar was in charge of INTERNATIONAL Scouting. If he was in charge of ALL SCOUTING then his title would have been Director of Amateur Scouting. It Wasn’t.
In 1998 he was ASST GM Period. In 1999 he became SR. Asst GM and INTERNATIONAL Scouting Coordinator.
Your trying to credit (discredit?) him with something he deserves no blame from, Steve Phillips rotten drafts.
If there was any truth to your claims you would have backed them up with something more substantial than just your insistence that it’s true.
Considering that out of 300 or so draft choices Phillips was able to produce only Heilman, Wright, Kazmir and Pagan (9 years later) and not even a so much as a pinch hitter after those four it makes one wonder just exactly what is your objective here?
His draft in Texas, while not hideous were nothing special and his drafts in Montreal produced only 1 player in 3 years.
If you for some reason are so hot to credit Omar with every prospect under the sun BEFORE he became a GM why aren’t you now crediting Riccio with Pelfrey? Sandy Johnson with Niese? Krivsky with Davis? Bove with Thole? After all he ran the 2005 draft. Omar then replaced Bove with Terrasas who blew the 2006 and 2007 draft.
Not sure what your motivation is here Metsie but whatever it is your all wrong on this subject.
You just don’t want to admit it Tag because then that also puts McIlvane’s pre SD draft into the picture as well!
You basically want to cut out all of MciLL’s bad, All of Omar’s Good and call one better than the other!
It’s called CHERRY PICKING and I thought you were above such debating tactics but I guess not!
ASSISTANT GM is not just INTERNATIONAL!
Where are McIlvanes?
You said CAN’T MISS!
Well Ike Davis is a hell of a lot more CAN’T MISS than Jay Payton!
And Wright and Reyes who you don’t want to credit because it screws up your McIlvane pedestal bull are BOTH potential HOF!
They have been to the All Star game twice each!
I’ve already given you the names of Mcilvaine’s Met draftees. 9 credible decent major leaguers in 4 years. I would imagine, but am not trying to credit him, that he did plenty of amatuer scouting during Cashen’s regime as well.
Here. If you want to credit Omar with a good IFA signing here’s one. 1998, Nelson Cruz. Phillips traded him in 2000 for Jorge Velandia. Had he not we might very well finally have a RFer.
How many years was McIlvane employed by us?
Just 4? Is that your answer?
How about all those guys he was responsible for us drafting BEFORE he left for SD to GM and 3 years later constituted the “NO FARM” (your words not mine) he had when he eventually replaced Harazin?
How convenient to leave out all those failures on his resume!
You do realize your the only one drinking this McIlvane kool aid?
If he was so spectacular then why hasn’t he done it somewhere else?
Is it because everyone knew McIlvane didn’t really have a clue as to what was good and at best drafted MEDIOCRE which you now are trying to sell as credible!
Well you want Credible how about Two “REPEAT” All stars, a near ROY, not to mention the guy who brought Pedro Martinez, and many other TOP STARS on the MLB into the league?
McIlvane would have a hard time picking a HOF player even if he was standing IN cooperstown!
I’m done with your fantasy. If you think McIlvane was a good GM then your credibility has taken a hit.
Well Metsie, as opposed to your fantasy world where all 4 of the players Phillips acquired in 6 years were “from Omar.” Mcilvaine actually was the Scouting director for our NY Mets. 1981-1986. He ran the draft that selected Lenny Dykstra, Roger Clemmons, Mark Carreon, Dwight Gooden, Floyd Youmans, Roger McDowell, Gerald Young, Greg Olson, Rafeal Palmerio, Calvin Schraldi, Dave Magadan, Rick Aguilara, David West, Jeff Innis, Matt Williams, Rich Rodriguez, John Wettland, Greg Jeffries and Scott Servais, John Olerud, Scott Erickson and Todd Jones.
Keep in mind this is not fantasy. Mcilvaine WAS the guy that ran the draft for Cashen, I’m sure Cashen had a large say but Mcilvaine was the actual guy who ran Cashen’s drafts.
Now why weren’t more (all) of Mcilvaines picks signed by the Wilpon?….Hard to say but all a scouting Director can do is identify the talent, he cannot allocate the funds to sign it.
He also in three years in SD drafted Todd Helton and Derek Lee among others.
That’s right Metsie. Mcilvaine was the Scouting Director when a large part of the 1986 team was acquired.
Pretty impressive list of talent selected by Mcilvaine wouldn’t you say?
Easy to do (I noted this to you already but it was lost on you)
When you have 10 years of losing horribly and get the top overall pick in 80 and 84 you come up with a couple of good players
Omar didn’t have any top overall picks
We were winning from the get go of his GMing because he did well with 9th 20th picks in the first.
Wrong again Metsie. You asked me who Mcilvaine drafted when he was the Met Scouting Director. I gave you a long list of top quality players, some of whom have already merited consideration for the HOF, others who played big roles in our only sustained period of success we have ever had and were key figures on one of only two world championship teams we have ever had and all you can say is he did it with all early first round picks?
Why do you just say things that aren’t true? A few of his picks were in the first round, 8th round, many were in the teens, twenty’s, all over. You refuse to acknowledge that Mcilvaine had great drafts while grasping for the straw of early first round picks. This is no more true and just as easily disproven as your other false assertions.
You and you alone are always right, even if you have to make it all up to be right. The search for the truth falls by the wayside, people’s good work gets assigned to others even on that one and only time you stated you were wrong about something in the same sentence you immediately claimed I was wrong about something because you said so. Some proof, some debate, some objectivity.
It takes a tender chicken to never even once acknowledge that another person has a valid point.
The fact is one year of Mcilvaine’s draft (one that we indisputably know he had huge input into and impact on as opposed to guessing if someone was involved) is better than all of your swami’s drafts put together, either as a GM or Asst GM, or Scouting Director.
Thank you for never admitting that anyone else ever has a valid point.
Yawn….
You are the only one who thinks Jay Payton and Paul Wilson are quality players. Thats the problem here!
Compared to Wright and Reyes they are both scrubs!
You know this or you wouldn’t have tried to argue so much that the ASSISTANT GM had nothing to do with picking them!
Mcilvaine in 6 years of drafts pulled out many many very good players for the Mets in many many different rounds.
In the interest of fairness, something you are not even remotely acquainted with, Mcilvaine did have the 4th, 5th, 4th 1st, 20th and 21st pick when running Cashen’s drafts but also in the interest of fairness that in no way accounts for having the difference between Phillps coming up with a total of 4 Major leaguers (that you somehow claim was because of Omar) in 6 years while Mcilvaine came up with 22 including 5 of whom merit HOF consideration as do 2 other Mcilvaine picks from his drafts in SD.
The book on Omar’s draft will be open for another decade (as with his IFA signings) His Met legacy will rest on those results. Only the 2005, 2006, 2007 draft class could have reasonably be expected to have produced anything at the ML level by now but already one of his draftees from ’08 has looked good up here. 2005 produced Pelfrey (1/9) Niese (5), Parnell (9) and Thole (13) A few more good solid drafts like this one would have kept us from running out of players and making some of the bad free agent signings we did. 2006 only produced Dan Murphy, 2007 was a complete bust that Duda, Lutz and Gee could make up for to some extent but the real shame of that draft is the (2) 1st round busts, the (2) 2nd round busts and the (2) 3rd round busts and the flat out handing over of our # 1 draft choice for a 40 year old LFer when we almost certainly could have had both!
Time will tell on Omar’s 6 drafts here but if you think they’ll be producing 5 players worthy of HOF consideration I’d have to say I disagree. If you add to that Omar’s IFA’s all I can say is I hope so! Time will tell. What we do know is Mcillvaine produced plenty for us in his time here and wears a big ring on his hand partly because of it.
His trading prowess is what fueled our rise under him from 59 wins to 88 and he didn’t get there with the quick fix and crash plan of Phillips and Minaya. There is also nothing to suggest that he wouldn’t have been able to benefit just as well as Phillips did from the Marlins fire sales and every reason in the world to believe that his drafts would have been ten times as productive as Phillips’.
If he hadn’t been let go he probably adds another ring to his collection, at least, and no way he crashes like Phillips did in 2003 or Omar in 2009 and ’10 because he would have had depth AND quality and had it here when he needed it, not 3 years down the road cause he gave away 7 early round picks and failed to get back 7 more when they were right there to be had.
He also would have made sure we had a RFer and a second basemen by now.
What proof do you offer that Omar selected Wright and Reyes? I’ve already offered proof that all Minaya had to do with Reyes was OK a 15K signing bonus a scout hired by Frank Cashen requested of Omar.
Spending 15K for Omar was nothing. He didn’t bat an eye over spending 36 M for Perez or 24 M for Castillo. OKing a 15 K signing bonus for a guy he never saw is not as huge a deal as you like to make it out to be.
Anyone at all could have done that.
Omar was the Sr. Asst GM and International Scouting Cooridinator. His focus would have been on the 25, 40 and outside the country in that order. How does that make him responsible for drafting Wright?
Chances are Minaya had as much to to with drafting Wright as he did with other guys you claim he was responsible for drafting when he wasn’t even working for the Mets. Guys like Kazmir, Evans and Burnett.
Omar’s drafts as Scouting Director in Texas weren’t very good and his drafts in Montreal produced only one Major Leaguer in 3 years. He flat out blew 2006 and 2007 and immediately got rid of the guy (Bove) who ran the 2005 draft and replaced him with the guy (Terasses) who blew 2006 and 2007.
Your a child Metsie, making it up as you go in the face of all available facts and trying to assign credit from one person to someone you like better.
Tag this conversation is over…
You reach for any straw to attribute to McIlvane and try to nullify anthing Omar did.
I’m done trying to convince you your in fantasy land!
What proof do I have that Wright and Reyes belong to Omar?
MORE PROOF than you have to say they weren’t and much more proof than you have that ANY of McIlvane’s draft picks were attributable to him than if I used your criteria and said they were all cashen!
None of those HOFers you speak of played a single game for the Mets…remember he failed to sign them!
This is done, any further discussion on your part will be ignored because I don’t really see a point in trying to make one FAILURE 10 years ago looking better than one recent one!
They BOTH failed and it is pointless to talk about 1990′s when it is currently 2011!
All I know is if McIlvane was so great then why did he get fired and why isn;t he still running a ML team?
Omar is in a good place. He just came back from traveling – Was in Haiti assisting with relief efforts ( no news cameras needed ) and then with his family in D.R. He’s taking his time to make a ” smart ” decision re: his next move. At 51, he doesnt have the time to invest that he had with Texas and Montreal..especially with 2 kids growing up fast. Yes, he has sat with Alderson and phone is always ringing with Fred’s calls…but he’s in no need to rush..he has several options on the table. If he did return, he would be reporting to F.Wilpon directly , not Alderson- so it may makes thins easier . But..he still has to decide…
Whatever he decides I wish him well. He always came off as a good person to me and I wish him the best of luck in whatever he does.
If Omar is smart he will relax for this season and wait to see what HIS team (and lets face it other than Carasco and Young the starters will largely be his guys, and if they do well will translate that to a nice big fat paycheck as the GM for some other team.
And if they don’t do well he will simply take the job he loves more than anything and go back to scouting where he can spend plenty of time with his family, have none of the headaches of dealing with a fickle and impatient press and still earn a healthy living!
And in 20 Years Tag will be screaming what a mistake we made in letting him go! LOL
This is crazy. Minaya ran this org into he ground. The Mets minor league system needs to be rebuilt. Omar’s Guys and their approach of rushing players, mismanaging young talent and lack of development will cost the Mets for years. The Wilpons don’t know how to cut their losses and they are aplying the same inability with Omar. Cut ties and move on. The Mets hype their prospect and many buy into it out of hope. If I recall, the Mets farm system is bottom third of the league. Alot of that is due to lost high draft picks from free agent signings. That is part of the low money put into the draft. Best of luck Omar, I hope thing work out well for you somewhere other than with the NY Mets.
You know why it needs to be rebuilt?
Cause most of it is about to make the ML Roster!
T, this comment, too long to fuly copy here; but starts as;”t agee says:
March 13, 2011 at 1:52 pm
My feeling about Omar is that he got bit by the same bug that got Mcilvaine and Phillips. The reckless short term view. Mcilvaine wouldn’t do it that way and was canned after 3 1/2 years. Phillips rode what Mcilvaine grew and added to it by exploiting the Marlins fire sales until he too was bit by the impatient bug. Duquette then cleared the landscape, foolishly bought at the trading deadline and cost us Kazmir.
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Is wotrthy of this observation, when a pattern of behavior is followed by a number of diverse individuals, typically that pattern is dictated by influential powers(Wilpozies) beyond their control…
Perhaps your ire should be more properly aimed.
Yes like at the Press who have constantly put every GM we have had UNDER CONSTANT FIRE fr not going and signing the “FA FLAVOR OF THE YEAR”
Anyone remember the stories when Omar first got here?
Anyone remember the headlines the year after Pedro and Beltran were signed?
Anyone remember the main storyline of every article before Jason Bay was signed?
Can anyone remember when the Sandy sucks articles started?
About 20 seconds after he was quoted as saying we will only spend 5 Mil in FA this year!
We have met the enemy who have forced every GM since Cashen into a short term view on team building…
And that enemy is US!
WE are the ones who have forced them into doing what was good for now but not for later!
All these attempts at blaming the GMs and Owners is nothing more than scapegoating for people doing what the FANS and MEDIA wanted!
Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt!
It is the one thing fans have done whenever their monday morning GMing has resulted in something they despise!
We basically got what we asked for!
And we haven’t learned!
Its true that a lot of what was done seems to have been to satisfy a zealous media. But, why were those men in that position if they couldn’t handle pressure? Why couldn’t one of them say “there is a reason I sit in the executive chair and you sit in the folding chair” in responce to a stupid question? The Donald Rumsfeld approach to press conferences.
Well for the same reasons why pop singers put out happy poppy songs.
Not because they think it is great music or because they are pushing the boundaries of musical creativity.
Because they want people to come see their product and if the Wilpons have any influence at all in this area it is because people haven’t been going to see the team and feel they need to sign these guys to get fannies in the seats!
Bottom line is you do what you need to do to stay alive even if it means doing the wrong thing!
If you were hanging off a cliff by a thread and your friend was holding onto you well sure you will try to do whatever you can (the RIGHT THING) to save both you and your friend.
But if you want to live and survive another day you will be faced with the choice of doing the wrong thing and letting your friend go so you can pull yourself up!
You will feel like crap doing it but at least you can still feel better than a corpse can!
They want to keep their jobs.
Every GM who has EVER lost his job was due to media and fan pressure.
So owners be damned if the media/fans hate you the owner will be forced to get rid of you.
But shouldn’t owners, generally guys who are running billion dollar organizations when not at baseball games, understand patience and adhering to a system?
Don’t most GMs go into a situation and say “here is what I want to change and here is how long it will take to see results”?
How much better would the Mets be if after 2006 ended, Minaya held a press conference and said “you guys all know that was a fluke, right? That we were extemely lucky most of the NL, especially the East, were flat all year? There is no way we can reasonably expect that kind of eyar again with our current starting rotation. We have some good pieces here, potential super stars. but I’m going to need time to surround them with good pieces and not resort to rental players that will blow up the payroll based on being good a few years ago. Please be patient for another 2 years or so, and I’ll build a team of home grown players with some big time free agents filling in a few holes.”
“Otherwise, we might end up with a bunch of bloated contracts for players past their prime who either can’t stay healthy, aren’t very good, or both. Then, I’ll have to sacrifice more prospects and draft picks to get big money players and inflate the payroll in a desperate bid for relevance. And taking what few valuable prospects still on the farm and rushing them through the system before they have time to refine their skills, putting them in positions they aren’t ready for and possibly screwing up their careers.”
“And we don’t want that, do we?”
Yep they should!
But the prospect of having to borrow money because people don’t go to see the team or threaten that they won’t go unless change is made you do whatever it takes to make them happy ticket buying folk!
But selling tickets in October should be a lot more appealing than selling tickets in April.
and again, it comes down to this stupid country club mentality dominating MLB.
Donal, #1 I totally disagree with this current “flavor of the month”
conjecture that the ’06 team wasn’t good enough. that’s BS, the only reason we lost in the ’06 playoffs was injury related in a number of key irreplacable areas such as our two most effective SP & our premere setup pitcher’s absence. Had we the ability to have competed in the posrseason with the team that brung us there, most certainly the outcome would’ve been altered, No Pedro, No Duque, No Duanner Sanchez and we still got within 1 strike! Not good enough? are u kidding me? forget this crap about Fl & Atl mailing it in, that’s just supportive made up conjecture to support some people’s limited perspective. Were the ’06ers as good as the 86ers? of course not! They still wiped out the Dodgers 3 strauight in the first round with a rotation thet listed Glavine & Trachsel as 1,2.
#2, As for BRUTAL HONESTY in dealing with pressers, how’d it work across town when Cashman tried explaing a 40+ yr old SS was not likely? As far as prospects developing. Don’t be ludicrous unless you can point to one so called prospect whose career was thwarted by playing an aged overbloated F/A, it’s again a non issue. Alou replacing Floyd? who was that “ready for the Majors” option that waned on the farm in ’07? Milledge? Try a where is he now sequay.
There was no viable Farm System in ’05! those drafted in ’05 would be ready when, if no setbacks & no derailments?
I’m tired of this shoulda,coulda,woulda retrospective. While no one noticed for ALl the pissing & moaning, we’ve held open rotational pitching auditions without any Limas, Livans,Duques,Ericksons within miles of PSL while Colon battles in Tampa. There’s also been a 2B battles with an overpriced,overaged incumbant challenged by potential new bloods & we’re disappointed the cripple, Castillo, is holding his own.
We’ve hear incessantly how Murphy was someday going to be an answer to a problem; unfortunately that problem doesn’t deem to exist at present, as he most likely has his brightest future ahead as a MiLB hitting coach. Finally, we seem to have a man with a plan sitting in the corner office as Tejada & Mejia have both been altered from “emergency patches” to “future considerations” and still we have bellyaching All things considered, the alterations, to me, are positive course changes.
When your “key irreplacable personell” includes two guys past their prime, you have a problem. Can you honestly tell me it was reasonable to expect those two to lead us to a World Series? It is not a secret that Pedro’s signing was for publicity. That he was being brought here for off the field stuff as much as on the field.
He was good, don’t get me wrong, and it is truly remarkable how he was able to reinvent himself as a pitcher, but he’s not the front man for a World Series team. He hasn’t been for years. He may be the best pitcher of his generation, but that generation was retiring by 2006.
The injuries were not unpredictable. Every team gets them, but the Mets had guys that were almost guaranteed to miss significant time in important roles.
” As for BRUTAL HONESTY in dealing with pressers, how’d it work across town when Cashman tried explaing a 40+ yr old SS was not likely? ”
Thats the point. Who cares what they say that day? What will they say when the team is still a dominant force in the league 2 or 3 years down the line? You think they won’t write hit pieces about Cahsman if Jeter is still playing SS 3 years from now and can’t cover the hole? If you can hear his knees creek from the bleachers?
A GM should not be worried about making his team successful over the long run, not appeasing the media morons that get paid to create outrage and controversy. Look at how Gene Michaels is fondly remembered now. What were they saying when he took the reigns in the early 90s?
The Wilpon should stop being so insecure and reactionary to what everyone thinks, get out of the way and let someone build a competitive team for a SUSTAINED period of time and while that team is winning, CONTINUE building for the next SUSTAINED period of time.
After all if they had signed the players Cashen drafted in the late 80′s we never would have crashed in the first place.
Instead of Coleman, Saberhagen and Bonilla we would have had Olerud, Palmerio John Wettland and Matt Williams, in their primes. The “worst team money could buy” part one never would have happened.
’62, Atlanta having their first losing season in 16 years didn’t help us win the Division?
Florida not only giving away their starting catcher and first basemen didn’t hurt them? Didn’t help us?
Get real man.
Losing El-Duque and Pedro really hurt but unforseeable? 30% of starting pitcher not between the ages of 35-? go down every year.
Sanchez was a tough blow, but Omar recovered nicely with Hernandez. Wish he had stopped there.
It also would have been nice to have Chavez in RF instead of Green who turned Spezio’s deep fly into a 3 run triple.
It really would have been nice if the 44 M dollar man could have been on the mound in Game 7 too but he was so spent from blowing game 6 that he couldn’t make it.
Yeah we blew through the 88 win LA Dodgers, then fell in 7 to the 83 win Cardinals. You don’t need Mike Soccia to tell you how much of a crap shoot a short series’ can be.
The whole thing is about getting there. Then anything can happen. Getting there is the hard part. Having all four teams in your division win a combined 28 less games while won 14 more shows the strength of the division went down and how could it not? FL gave us two of their starting position players.
St.L won 17 less games. The West was better. It took only 88 games to win it as opposed to 82 the year before.
Face it ’62, our rise DID coincide with a downturn amongst our NL competitors.
You know what helped us win the division? having Reyes, LoDuca, Beltran, Delgado, and Wrigth hitting 1-5 in our linep. Yeah if you have two .300 hitters at the top of the lineup followed by two hitters who hit 41 and 38 homeruns, and after them you have another .300 hitter with almost 30 HR’s – yeah your going to win a lot of game with that lineup – that’s why we won.
even though Pedro, Glavine, and Hernandez were old, they still were good pitchers that year. We also Maine, who pitched good for us towards the end. and Billy Wangner was a the closer, and then you have that lineup – you really don’t think that’s a good team?
Those are all big reasons why we won in 2006 but having the way cleared for us by Atlanta falling to under .500 for the first time in 16 years helped too, as did Florida giving us two of those first 5 hitters in our line up.
So what if Folrida gave us two of the first five hitters in the lineup? Why does that matter? In 06 they were in OUR lineup, so who cares what team they played for before coming here?
and so what if Atlanta had a bad year? We were the better team, so we win the division.
There is no way anybody can look at our lineup that year and say it wasn’t any good. EVERBODY who looks at that lineup would agree that it is a great lineup. And yes, Pedro Glavine and Hernandez were old but were still good pitchers – That was a VERY good team.
Just forget all the other teams that year – just focus on our team in 06. You don’t think that was a very good team? and if you think it wasn’t, why wasn’t it very good?
yes the pitching was old, but you don’t think they were still good? and you don’t think our lineup was very good?
T, WHAT’S YOUR POINT AND WHY SHOULD I CARE WHY WE WON THE DIVISION 5 YEARS AGO UNDER A GM WHO’S GONE, A MNGR WHO’S GONE, A PC, GONE, A SETR OF PLAYERS MOSTLY GONE OR DEPARTING?
AS TO WHAT ATL & FL DID OR DIDN’T DO IN ’06, I BELIEVE THAT FALLS UNDER THE VAGARIES OF BASEBALL COMPETITION AS EVERY TEAM SUPPOSEDLY IS AIMING FOR A CHAMPIONSHIP FOLLOWING THEIR OWN CUSTOMIZED SCRIPT! DIDN’T BOTH OF THEM SUPPOSEDLY BREAK CAMP TARGETING THE SAME GOAL WE WERE? JUST BECAUSE U DON’T BELIEVE IN THEIR CHOICES DOESN’T LESSEN THE ACCMPLISHMENTS OF OUR CHOICES.
T, DO U SIMILARLY LIE AWAKE NIGHTS AND WONDER WHAT LIFE WOULD’VE BEEN LIKE HAD LINCOLN NEVER BEEN ELECTED OR BEING ELECTED NOT ASSASSINATED? OR JFK FOR THAT MATTER? WHAT IF CHURCHILL HAD BEEN PM IN THE LATE 30s INSTEAD OF CHAMBERLAIN?
ARE U KIDDING ME WITH THIS ALTERNATIVE HISTORRY CRAPOLA? HOW ABOUT THIS PRESENT TEAM? T, LEAVE THE PAST ALONE, ALL THOSE HISTORICAL REFERENCES U’VE OBVIOUSLY COMMITTED TO MEMORY ARE JUST THAT HISTORICAL REFERENCES FOR DECISIONS MADE BY PEOPLE NO LONGER IN THOSE POSITIONS & AS SUCH MEANINGLESS. TRY GIVING A FRESH START TO THIS NEW REGIME & FORGET YOUR PAST HEARTACHES. I KNEW YOU’D MISS OMAR IF FOR NOTHING ELSE YOUR PERSONAL WHIPPING BOY.
’62. Leadership and direction get passed down from the top. Every employee know instinctively their bosses preferred path, but that path has been tried and tried and tried to death and it just leads us deeper and deeper away from the World Series. Many fans have been conditioned by the Wilpon into being a trained seal and scurrying down to the box office as soon as we get ink another dinosauer.
Their too stupid to figure it out. The reason we have not been able to get competent players for certain positions is because we give away our draft choices and then draft poorly when we keep them. We’re also not signing enough top shelf IFA’s.
These are insignificant financial reinvestments in their own business which will save lot’s of money, lots of heartbreak and make them lots of money, year after year.
Every business has to examine how they’re doing, since the Wilpon wont the fan has to interceed and point it out for them.
At the most it was a very good team for ONE year, aided in part by all other teams in the NL East trending down and a weaker than average rest of the NL.
I mean come on. No other 90+ win team in the entire league?
The average NL has over 3 90+ win teams. 2006 had only one. Us.
The bottom line is it was unsustainable. We did everything we could. Threw money at it, traded prospects for it, gave away draft choices, rushed up anyone who might be able to do something but it was no longer salvageable.
The parts just didn’t work anymore. By the time we got them they only had a couple of years in them. We’d fix one leak and find two more, fix those and discover a few more. We couldn’t get replacements up here quick enough and the one’s that didn’t come in the early rounds are just as questionable as the one’s who had little shelf life to start with when they got here.
We might be OK with a little tinkering here and there but is OK really what you want when you spend more than everyone else?
You nailed it Donal. And the real shame of it is Omar had the ability to look into other teams farm systems and extract a few prospects to provide a beach head. Gone plan B, non tender even rule 5. He built a lot of momentum here very quickly. He could have let some of the guys he acquired leave. Delgado played very well but if he turned down the option, offered arb he would have been no worse off than he was by picking up the option and almost guranteed would have collected two #1 picks. Castillo and Perez would have left behind a #1, Wagner TWO #1′s. He should never have spent a #1 on Alou.
That’s (7) #1 draft choices ( maybe a couple could have become a 2 or even a 3)
The first round is where you can find the Hamels, Cain’s, Heywards, Utley’s and Wrights.
The 2nd round is where you find the Rollins’, McCann’s, Freeman’s, Stanton’s and Pedoria’s.
You simply cannot give away the opportunity of drafting one of these guys for a 40 year old LFer or DH Boston is going to take off their 40 in a couple of months.
This is the primary reason we always have so many “holes to fill.”
The bottom line is that two of the best position players we have ever developed were followed in the line up with the likes of Shawn Green, Ryan Church, and Jeff Francouer in RF. Kaz Matsui, Luis Castillo and Anderson Hernandez at 2B and 100 M for Floyd, Alou and Bay in LF and La Duca, Schneider, Santos and now finally Thole at catcher. That’s unacceptable.
We couldn’t draft Brian McCann in the 2nd round 2002 because we spent the pick on David Weathers.
We couldn’t draft Mike Stanton in the 2nd round 2007 for RF because we spent the pick on Moises Alou.
We couldn’t draft Dustin Pedroia in the 2nd round 2004 for 2B because we drafted Mathew Peterson, one more in a long long line of 1st and 2nd round slot selection busts of pitchers we have made through the years.
Obviously we cannot address 2B through free agency having spent 45 M over 7 years to get the worst production in the Majors.
RF has never been properly addressed since Mcilvaine traded for Carl Everett and Alex Ochoa. Bell and Hildago were just stop gaps as was Green. Church was a disapointment, Francouer a long shot.
Going all the way back to Mcilvaines last draft in 1997 (which Phillips never bothered to sign any of) followed by Phillips 6 drafts producing only 2 good players, one of which Duquette foolishly traded for nothing and his own poor draft in 2004 all we’ve gotten from the draft is Wright and Pagan between the years 1997-2004. An organization cannot survive an entire baseball generation with just two players (one of whom took 9 years to blossom) and one IFA and then continue to hand over draft choice after draft for guys who’s best years are already past.
That’s putting the cart before the horse.
The stories were all good when Omar got here. NY kid makes good, younger and more athletic, More of an international presence on the field.
The stories got even better when Pedro and Carlos arrived.
2009 was about the injuries and lack of HR’s.
Sandy sucks stories are here, not so much in the press. Most of that is about the Wilpon, Madoff, Roster ect.
The worst press of all time was in 1993 with “the worst team money could buy.” That was when the press was at their worst. Mcilvaine had the credibility and the expertise and the background to build it back up again. Same as he had with Cashen. The press left him alone, he had no problems and had the team competing for a Wild Card in four years without spending draft picks and any money to speak of. He even got something FOR Bonilla and Coleman.
Phillips took what Mcilvaine built, added to it with a few big time players from the Marlins and some expensive free agents and other trade acquisitions and with decreased competition inside the NL East, won a couple of Wild Cards (one on a wild pitch walk off) and even got to a World Series.
If his draft hadn’t been so over the top awful we might have been able to sustain that success but quickly the whole thing started to crumble, he went back to the plan in place before Mcilvaine took over and built “the worst team money could buy #2″
Enter Omar.
Exit Omar.
After both of the “Worst teams money could buy” and Omar’s latest effort the Wilpon made references to how spending money doesn’t guarantee success. Twice they went right back to that same old tired failure of a plan. This time I don’t think they have that option. I hope not anyway.
Now that our expectations have been raised so many times only to dissapoint time and time again, people became unable to see the forest through the trees.
How and Why do we keep spending the most and getting the least? Hmmmm. Not hard to figure out when step back and take a look at the whole picture.
’62. I have repeatedly put this as the desired course of action by the Wilpon. They don’t WANT to invest in their business until the last second. (Better results elsewhere?) The fact that every GM has knuckled under (except Mcilvaine who was short circuited) IS telling. I do blame the Wilpon for this stupid way of conducting business and while I feel Phillips was unable to tell the difference, Omar KNEW the difference. Omar knew he was going to run out of players adhearing to the Wilpon business model and STILL tried to work around it.
Maybe he told them, asked them, tried to explain it I don’t know but he should have insisted. He was the expert. He knew the business. He needed to sell them on the long range plan. He spoke about it, just didn’t follow up on it.
You can’t both build for now and later when your borrowing from tomorrow at the same time.
T, while u state the following as a sort of condemnation of Omar; “Omar knew he was going to run out of players adhearing to the Wilpon business model and STILL tried to work around it” u raise a very interesting question,, WHAT DO U TYPICALLY DO WHEN YOUR BOSS TELLS U WHAT H/SHEE WANTS U TO DO & U BELIEVE ANOTHER COURSE OF ACTION IS PREFERABLE?”(probably u discuss/debate & attempt to cajole to get your eway, don’t presume Minaya didn’t attempt those ploys; but u need receptive bosses for that to work) Do u quit, ignore his/her instructions? become insubordinate? What? I really hope u’ve the gumption to reply truthfully. in Omar’s case he’s faced with owners who look across the River(s)longingly & see what they discern is contempt for playing youth over experience in most cases & shopping off of top shelves, disregarding the official industry guidelines & SUCCESS. How are you going to convince the likes of Jeff Wilpon that he can’t follow that model & investing considerable cash in kids, no one in NY cares about, until they fail & only then to scoff at him(NYM) is the correct path to follow when your former boss & his baseball mentor, Phillips, had nothing but derision for developmenmt esp in NYC, where unlike All but Boston pays such “never-mind” to the Minors?(ever notice as u talk ‘kids’ face to face with other fans in NY, how their eyes glaze over?)
T, it’s apparent that your entire focus is draft oriented as you speak in terms of lost picks, other’s picks so often it’s like your only consideration, I noted while you were waxing on so endlessly about past GM regimes, u failed to mention the miserable trackrecord this Franchise has had with draft picks over it’s 50 yr history, esp positional picks. Over 50 drafts(3 owners,13 GMs,30 mngrs) our only Premiere positionally developed player has been Daryl Strawberry, in my opinion, though Wright, Reyes, Davis all appear promising;(do not bust my chops that Reyes was IFA, not pick) that’s not pertinent to my point. the issue is that the era you complain most vociferously about appears to be our Golden Age in positional development. While earlier eras were much more Pitching-phenomcentric.Even the lunchpailers Tejada, Murphy, Evans, Thole though not notably star destined are certainly a tick above any featured since ’80s generation of Backman,Dykstra,Wilson,Elster,even Jeffries. There’s obviously a relatively consistant hole in the history of this Franchise, it’s source has yet to be actually determined; but we can venture a guess it’s SCOUTING oriented
Other than a balls-2-the Wall owner in Steinbrenner what has the NYY have over the past 50 years that we haven’t? I’ll offer it’s loyal,legacies one time fired execs,key employees asren’t ALL DISCARDED Gene Michaels, Billy Connors aren’t lost assets they were toiling behind scenes with special & immediate Boss access; contrarily u have Joe McUlvane whispering in the ears in Minnesota, Omar Minaya, out on some neverending 3hr tour while Dave Wallace is no where to be found, sure they ALL failed under “THE PETER PRINCIPLE”(rose to their highest level of incompetancy) which should not mean they have no value in any capacity. Hell, when dismissals are handled properly, u can create an untethered asset, Leo Mazzone, though Allowed to follow another path in Baltimore, chose to retire back in Atlanta as a Radio Analyst, most assuredly he was a Cox undisclosed, undercover, unofficial advisor, Rtired former GM, Fld Mngr Cox is still retained by Braves.
While these operations seem to strive to keep contact with former execs, It most certainly begs the question as to why, over the past 20yrs, Davey Johnson, Frank Cashen haven’t been noted on a Wilpon speed-dial? Unfortunately, I believe the Wilpons are too petty to retain those they’ve disagreed with preferring a scortched Earth practice that typically burns every accessible bridge.
62, You’ve boiled it all down the way it should be. Is the problem an owner driven one or is it poor scouting? I think it’s probably both. Because the owner has a disdain for the 4-5 year wait and never fixes his gaze beyond “Who can we get to play _____ this year,” the scouting Dept takes a lessor place of importance in the Organization. The best one’s probably feel undervalued and go elsewhere. A great Scouting Director wouldn’t stay with an Organization that gives away it’s 1st or 2nd pick almost every single year, and then on top of that, makes him sort potential draftees by talent, position AND signability.
The Best want to be in a position where their able to make their mark on the Organization. Our owners are too willy nilly. They listen to everyone and change course on a whim because there’s no clear and coherent long term business practice laid out. Frequently decisions have to be made out of weakness. That’s what led to the “hopeings” of Castillo, Perez, Alou and Bay.
We have to hope that theses guys can still do it or put it all together because their are no other options. The combination of giving up a #1 or #2 every year, not taking some back when the opportunity arises, and then drafting for cost first and on top of that either rushing or changing a prospects position when he arrives in Queens is quite a toxic cocktail of incompetence.
Adding a couple of type A free agents AND a couple of type B’s (non comp) to a solid nucleus (at least 5) of talented pre prime players ensures the best result, allows you to spread out the cost across the board and add to the team from within.
Omar was hired to do what the Wilpon’s couldn’t. If they could do what he did they wouldn’t have needed him. Jeff would have run the show. They listened to Phillips and changed course, crashed, had Duquette clean up, sign Kaz but then jumped the gun on Kazmir because they are so impatient, so gullible, so willing to believe they can make their mark on the team. That’s why they didn’t give Zambranno or Putz a physical. The move seemed too good they didn’t want to jepordize the deal. Their more concerned with how things look then how things turn out.
As the expert, Omar may have cajoled and done what he could but he got beaten down and settled for what he knew they wanted. He has stated that “in NY you need big stars.” Bullshit. What you need is stability, seemless transition, pieces in place ahead of time, a coherent long term plan that you can adept to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity. Think Patriots getting Moss for nothing, stretching the D for 3 years, angling for a new deal, starting to become a problem and NE gets off him AND gets something for him. That’s an organization with a plan in place that can accomodate (but is not beholden to) opportunity.
All business owners listen to the people they hire to run their business. Omar is a very good salesman, a very personable guy, well known to the Wilpon since 1998. He could have made them understand the last 5 years of an All Star players career is both the most expensive and at the same time the least productive. It also comes with diminishing skills, more chance of being on the DL, lessor defense, baserunning ect. He could have easily made that case. He could have made that sale.
Lets build around “Reyes and Wright.” “They’ll be our stars.” Alright, Beltran’s a once in a lifetime and Delgado didn’t cost much and you can’t give it away in the 9th….but once he started down that path it just gathered momentum. Maybe he thought he would never get another chance.
’62, I have been in that situation and when I feel very very strongly someone is about to make a big mistake I do speak up. I never offer my unsolicited opinions about little things or stuff that’s none of my business but to people I’ve worked for I have had to make that sale and I’ve been able to because I was working for people who’s over riding concern was getting the best result, not feeling relevant for the moment and then letting everyone down latter. Process in business is the most important thing. Having the right process ensures your not leaving opportunity on the table.
T, DO U REREAD WHAT U WRITE? FOR INSTANCE…
U WROTE;”As the expert, Omar may have cajoled and done what he could but he got beaten down and settled for what he knew they wanted. He has stated that “in NY you need big stars.” Bullshit. What you need is stability, seemless transition, pieces in place ahead of time, a coherent long term plan that you can adept to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity. Think Patriots getting Moss for nothing, stretching the D for 3 years, angling for a new deal, starting to become a problem and NE gets off him AND gets something for him. That’s an organization with a plan in place that can accomodate (but is not beholden to) opportunity.”
T, HOW’S THAT WOTKING FOR ALDERSON? HOW’S THE PRESS RESPONDING TO THIS PAST OFFSEASON’S NO-NAME ACQUISITIONS? BTW IT’S THE PRESS THAT GETS THE CASUALS’ FANNIES INTO THOSE SEATS. NOT ANTONE BLOGGING METS ANYTIME OR ANYWHERE SINCE WE ALL BELIEVE WE KNOW BETTER. THOSE CASUALS OUTNUMBER THE BLOGGERS CONSIDERABLY AS WE’RE UNAB;LE TO CREAT SRO FEVEN 1` GAME LET ALONE ENOUGH TO SUSTAIN A DECENT SCOUTING DEPT SIGNING EVEN A FEW TOP QUALITY PICKS. T, FACE IT THE CASUALS MOST LIKELY CAN’T NAME THE TEAM MiLB AFFILIATES LET ALONE KEY PROSPECTS ON THEM! NYC IS THE BIGGEST MLB MARKET & LIKELY AMONG THE MOST DISINTERESTED MuLB MARKETS SIMULTANEOUSKLY. LONG TERM ROI IS MOST LIKELY NEVER BEEN SUSTAINABLE FOR OWNERS WHO NEEDED TO PASS THE HAT TO BUY OUT THEIR PARTNER JUST 9 YRS AGO.
THINK ABOUT IT, WILPONS ARE NOT BILLIONAIRES PER SE AND AS SUCH RANK AMONG THE POOREST OF THE MAJOR MARKET OWNERS(BOSTON,CHICAGO,NEW YORK)AND THAT WAS BEFORE PICARD ENTERED THE SCENE WHILE THE GENERAL PUBLIC STILL THOUGFHT THEY’D LOST 750M TO MADOFF, THE REMAINING VALUE IN STERLING COFFERS WAS ESTIMATED AT A MERE 500M.
Consistency is a big thing ’62. A consistently good product. Some years your out of it at the end of September, once in a great while you crash in August but for the most part your in it till Oct 1st and go to the post season an average of 5 times a decade.
I don’t feel that’s overly ambitious. But to do that you have to plan ahead. These constant boom and bust roller coasters leave the fans disgusted, pissed off. With big expectations come big dissapointment. That’s what we’ve been handed over and over. If the team wasn’t shooting themselves in the foot so often the press and media wouldn’t be turning us into a laughing stock every year.
People wouldn’t give a 2nd thought to renewing ticket plans cause they’d WANT to be here. We’d be impervious to the Media. You think John Henry and Theo got a hard time in Boston last year? No, because they have credibility because their not pulling a bufoon act with Alomar, Mo, Coleman, Saberhagen, Bonilla, putting rookie infielders in LF, not putting guys on the DL, missing 3B, publically embarrassing players, Bernazard, trading crown jewels for crap, giving away #1 picks for 40 year olds and designated hitters, selling steroids and running gambling dens in the clubhouse, bleach, firecrackers, masturbation, assaulting senior citizens. I mean where does it end?
One imbecillic, bufoon move after another and while we have spent the most of any team in the League we still have no 2B man or RFer. That’s something most baseball teams would try to address.
The Yankees did. Not with Babe Ruth perhaps but at least with a guy that is overall at least average. He makes the same as Castillo. They got their second basemen by signing him for 250,000 5 years before they needed him. That’s nothing remarkable, it’s just competence. Their fans feel that the NYY are competent. Met fans don’t feel this way.
Yeah you can pull the old standby, sign a Jason Bay and watch a few monkeys run to the ticket window but the act has gotten stale, the public’s caught on. They’ve seen the Yankees evolve from a circus act into a buttoned down highly efficient machine. Not that it always works, it’s still sports, anything can happen but it’s not them on Roosevelt Avenue with two foot long explosive shoes and a funny nose on anymore, it’s us, and has been for a while.
It’s time to pay the price and finally get serious. Start looking at every facet of the operation and see where we can improve. Where we’ve done well and should do more of, where we’ve failed and why. Then we’ll be able to put the processes in place that will lead to a consistently good product and avoid the continuinous shooting of ourselves in the foot.