24
2011
A Look Back At Minaya As He Readies To Interview For Angels GM Job
An article by Craig Lerner
Good read by Marc Normandiny of Baseball Prospectus who looks back at how much things have changed in just one year since Omar Minaya was replaced.
If you had to script an end to the Omar Minaya era in Queens, you couldn’t have outdone reality: Oliver Perez, the $12 million-a-year albatross in the Mets’ rotation, pitching for the first time in a month on the last day of the season, promptly walked three straight batters to send the Mets home losers in extra innings. A sarcastic chant of “M-V-P” followed the first out that Perez recorded during the debacle, and illustrated how fed up the fanbase was—not just with Perez, but with everything the pitcher and his contract represented.
Perez embodies so much that was wrong with the mindset of the Mets’ previous administration under general manager Minaya. The Mets gave Minaya his first genuine GM job, since his mandate as the league-appointed guardian of the dying Montreal Expos had included overseeing a form of organizational euthanasia, as opposed to the involuntary manslaughter he could be convicted of for bringing the Mets’ roster to its knees. While he had his successes in New York, there were far more misses, and they all came back to one fundamental and repeated problem.
He also points out the main problem with Minaya who loved to shop and spend, but never wisely.
What Minaya could not do was shop intelligently at a store like Target, where someone who is wise with his money can come away with a lot of valuable items on the cheap. Minaya never got a handle on putting the finishing touches on his roster. Instead, he was more likely to come home with a $300 Margaritaville Mixer that the Mets didn’t really need, blowing his remaining budget and leaving his to-do list undone
Credit is given to Omar for some of the useful pieces he found when he went “dumpster diving” like R.A. Dickey and Jose Valentin.
Minaya could be interviewing for the third GM job of his career this week, and if he gets the Angels’ GM job, I wonder if he’ll have learned from all of his past mistakes?
Some have said that Minaya has no chance to get the Angels gig and that they are only interviewing him to comply with MLB rules to interview at least one minority candidate for and manager or general manager vacancy.
We’ll see.
Original Post 10/22
Over the weekend, Adam Rubin of ESPN posted a quote from the Los Angeles Times that suggests Minaya MAY be a potential candidate for the Angels GM position:
Add Omar Minaya’s name to the growing list of candidates who will interview for the Angels’ vacant general manager post. Minaya, the former GM of the Montreal Expos, held the same post with the New York Mets from 2005 to 2010. The Dominican-born Minaya was baseball’s first Latino general manager, and Angels owner Arte Moreno was baseball’s first Latino owner. An Angels spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the team’s interest in Minaya.
If they do hire him, they should do it and send a press release at 3:00 AM for old times sake.
About the Author: Craig Lerner
I'm a data analyst and researcher for a leading news agency who loves life and is hooked on the Mets. I love following the Amateur Draft and have a particular fondness for the Mets Minor Leagues who I follow each day. Give me a cold beer, a summer day, and a Mets game, and I'm good to go.
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Who cares?
Exactly!
He’ll just trade Mike Trout for Barry Zito at the deadline if he gets the job.
I’ll give him Bay and Johan for Trout!
Hey Joe, Trout is exactly the type of young guy we need to start doing more drafting of. 1st rnd #25 or so top shelf talent straight out of HS.
A guy like that is going to give you 10 times what K-Rod did at 1/100th of the salary you just gotta wait, be patient and get him ready to contribute up here.
I know your kidding but a guy like that’s not going to be available at almost any price until he’s approaching his decline. I can see it now in 10-12 years the Mets are all over this guy. Big contract, press conference, photo ops, big splashy back page all designed to excite a gullible fan base into splurging on tickets in March.
The time to have been in on Trout was in 2009 when he was playing HS ball in Jersey but we were too focused on how to turn yet another #1 draft choice into salary relief instead of attempting to develop our own future All Stars.
I know agee,that was tongue in cheek. He’s the top hitting prospect in all of MLB even ahead of Harper. follow the drft clsely as well.Hopefully we can draft Victor Roache at 12.
Draft closely I meant
Joe Diaz, Victor Roache in corner OF in 2017 sounds good to me. Wouldn’t mind a catcher one of these days either!
I don’t think Zunnino will be around by the time we pick at 12.A few more losses wouldn’t have been so bad.
These postings are ridiculous. While it is great to have “news” sources besides the ones we might read in a newspaper, there are far too many less than reliable sources that throw stuff out there that are not reliable at all. More accurately, they may be total b.s.!
First of all, Omar Minaya is gone. While I personally think he did some very good things when he was in NY, most would disagree and only look at the negatives. To post news of Omar’s current status is only leaving “fodder for the haters” to jump on and that is a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME.
And for the record….when Omar took over for Steve Phillips the Mets were in shambles as an organization. Free agents didn’t want to play for the Mets and their agents were wary too. With a golden opportunity, Omar brought Pedro Martinez here who immediately changed the culture at Shea. His signing brought Carlos Beltran and others. Despite only one pennant for the Eastern Division in 2006, the team won a lot of ballgames but injuries accounted for major collapses in the closing month in both 2007 and 2008. Unfortunately, the haters chose to turn their bigoted side towards Omar bringing in too many Latin players who took the money and ran. Seems to me that Omar made only 2 bad choices in Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo but even “Ollie” had an upside that was better than the free agent’s available at the time…..Could anyone in their right mind have imagined that Ollie would have regressed as far back as he did?
It’s all a crap shoot fellas!
“fodder for the haters” to jump on and that is a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME.
….or the fan come to post selective memories and make his tenure seem far better then it really was.
He did indeed make some very good signings early on, changed the atmosphere for the better, but lets be honest Perez and Castillo were not his only bad choices….
“Unfortunately, the haters chose to turn their bigoted side towards Omar bringing in too many Latin players who took the money and ran” absolutely, some people are short sided, but don’t paint a broad stroke think that anyone that are members of the fan club are actually bigoted.
absolutely, some people are short sided, but don’t paint a broad stroke think that anyone that are members of the fan club are actually bigoted.”
don’t paint with a broad stroke and think all people that are not big fans of Omar are bigoted.
I don’t buy the FAs wouldn’t sign, or their agents were wary. The only thing that changed was the owner opened up the check book. Pedro came because no one else offered the years, and Beltran came because they offered the biggest deals. And agents, particularly Beltran’s , are all about the money.
trying to remember off the top of my head, but the only other big time FAs Omar signed were Glavine and Bay (not counting resigning his current players). Bay seemed to have no options, not for 4 years, and who knows about Glavine.
Glavine was originally signed by Steve Phillips in 2003. I guess you could attribute the re-signing of Glavine to Omar but in fairness, that wasn’t an Omar signing.
But yeah, I agree with the rest of what you said here.
thanks. I was thinking glavine wasn’t Omar, but I had forgotten he was around for so long.
Beltran did go to the Yankees after the Mets offer and said he would come to the Yanks for 6 years and 100 million so that says to me Beltran was more about winning than the actual dollar amount of his contract.He was willing to go to the Yanks for 19 million and 1 year less.
but, higher annual value and hit FA again 1 year sooner.
Your right Any
Which begs the question…
Why is Omar painted as the patron saint of spending money?
Always looking backwards. Maybe this is why the Mets never seem to have any success.
not sure if you mean about this post? because it certainly seems that remaking your entire front office qualifies as looking forward.
I meant fans (and bloggers) of the Mets. All people want to talk about is Omar Vs Sandy. Or the what if’s of 2006-2008. Omar is gone, who cares if he is interviewing anywhere? What if Beltran would have swung at that Wainright pitch…who cares…it’s in the past, everyone needs to move on.
Those who do not learn from history…
I learned. I learned that Omar is no longer here, so whatever he is doing now is none of my concern and it shouldn’t be any Met fans concern either. And, with Beltran not swinging at that pitch, I learned that even if he did, he probably would have missed it anyway because it was nasty and even without swinging at it, Beltran will go down as one of the greatest players to ever wear the blue and orange…not to mention I also learned that minus that 1 AB, Beltran batted .308 in that series including 3 HR and accounted for 9 runs in the 7 games, including a 2 run HR in game 1 which the Mets won 2-0!
Amen Matt! Gotta look towards the future!
people just wanna crap on minaya’s parade as much as they can, never wanting to give him his credit, he signed pedro and beltran because no one else would’ve offered the same, i mean, really? give the man his due, i was in the bandwagon to get him out of here because he was way in over his head with the signing of castillo and perez proved my point, but again, this team was all injuries, is one thing to predict a player is not gonna be as good, but when that player is injured how do you even rate the player? and for those who LOVE TO SECOND GUESS about the draft picks we could’ve, should’ve or would’ve had, are you confident that our GENIOUS sandy and his goon depodesta are gonna draft studs based on their past history??
again, draft picks are not a guarantee. Some bust, even ones from the top rounds, but quite a few from the 1st and 2nd rounds become very good players, and sometimes stars.
the only thing guaranteed is that if you don’t have a pick at all, you can’t draft someone good. So consider every skipped pick to be an automatic bust, without the upside potential.
remember to old NY lotto commercials (you have to be in it to win it?) Same deal.
Funny, every post I read here, and many other places DO give him credit for what he did early on especially with Pedro and Beltran, so what are YOU talking about?
How comical is it when someone calls Sandy a genius and spells genius wrong? Sandy the GENIUS drafted 3 straight rookie of the years.How many did Minaya and his goon Bernazard draft. NADA! Minaya didn’t even sign any of these IFA’s.It was Juan Mercado. I hear Minaya signs a helluva check though.
every Gm makes some good moves, and some bad ones. And Omar certainly made some good ones.
But, the nature of MLB (hell, every pro sport) is that it is a results business, and guys get fired all the time the did not “deserve” it. Sometimes they get scape goated, othertimes it just reflects the record.
Also a fine line usually. 2 more wins in 2007 and 2008, and he is probably still here after 3 straight years in the playoffs. So maybe that 1 move made (or not made) was all the difference.
No GM anywhere is going to survive 2 straight september folds, followed by a totally lost season. hell, Epstein couldn’t survive 1 collapse!
anyway, I think that just as big a part of Omar getting bounced was the apparent organizational disarray (Tony B, etc.). that is a huge part of the GMs job, building a solid foundation (organization), and even if you love Omar, as fans it is hard to say that was one of his strengths.
It is almost too bad that Omar did not stay on as an assistant GM. Sandy cold have beenthe organizational builder (detail guy) and omar could have freelanced on player moves, then worked together to blend the 2.