All those other guys got their full salaries guaranteed. No matter what. Plus they got paid their base throughout the first half and then started adding to it which helped with making payroll.

I know it’s a small thing but when your watching nickles everything matters.

But I know your smart enough to understand the difference and how that affects your ability to get the better player that actually has solid options elsewhere.

If your question is could Alderson have done better with the 13M he had. Sure he could have. Could Cashman, Riggleman, Epstein, Wren, Dombroski or anyone else. Hell yeah. All of them could have done better.

Personally I would liked to have seen what Alderson could have done with Perez, Castillo’s, GMJ’s, Igarachi’s and Bay’s salary.

I think he could have done a hell of a lot better. Santana’s too. He had an awful lot of money already spent for 2011 before he even walked in the door, much of which he never got a single AB or out from. Probably about 55M dollars.

So yeah I’m curious to see how he can do when he does have a few bucks to spend and not so many “holes to fill.”

The new GM only spent 7.5% of the entire budget. The rest of it was spent for him beforehand and your saying “he could have done better?”

I would bet anything that if he had 75M to spend it wouldn’t look anything like the 2010 off season.

None of the players I listed cost more than Capuano – If we could afford him, then we could afford the players I listed.

Harang didn’t have to take a contract with incentives.

What it says is that 25 years after becoming a full 50% partner the Wilpon simply cannot, any longer get **** play for guaranteed dollars.

That’s not the kind of situation Minaya walked into in 2005.

None of those players cost more than what we had to pay Cap.

If the Mets didn’t have to money to pay the guys I was talking about, then how are they able to pay Capuano 4 million???

I think Alderson could have done better myself but then when I think of 2010 and Mike Jacobs, Gary Matthewa Jr., Alex Cora (and vesting option), Frank Catolonotto, Fernando Tatis, Ryota Igarashi, Rod Barajas and Jason Bay I realize it could have been much worse too.

That was with about 75 M to spend.

So I think all in all the last off season was moving in a better direction, by a lot.

The last several posts are you trying to get the guy to understand a simple point. I know you’re just trying to convey a general idea and it’s not a “right or wrong” issue.

He’s just cannot grasp the essence of what you’re trying to say.

He’ll respond with a 567 paragraph manifesto but not even attempt to consider a general point someone is trying to make. Or he can’t.

….and there was a few of them that signed minor league contracts.

Not the same thing at all.

At extra M shouldn’t be the breaking point for us granted but your talking an extra M for 10-13 guys. That represents the entire budget alone.

I would find it a little hard to believe that Minaya was totally unaware of the slotting guidelines in place for the draft when he got the GM job. Granted his end of the amateur scouting was international where there are no slotting guidelines but he was still on the scene right? He was also a GM in the same division while he was gone right? OK. How would it really be possible for him not to at least have heard a casual rumour about slotting guidelines? I mean he was a young talent evaluator being charged with the task of rebuilding this team from the ground up with a consecutive decade of experience in the NL East right? Again how could he not know?

Secondly where was the pressure to make the World Series in his second year? No one was demanding that he win right off the bat. We had just been severely burned by going for it with the Zambranno deal and the back three years of the Phillips era. People knew it was going to take time.

I don’t blame him for putting his stamp on the team with Beltran and Martinez. That did a lot for us off the field as well as on and cost a #2 and #3 pick. Delgado was a salary dump, Wagner I wasn’t really excited about but OK. Then it just became a whole slew of guys he went after. Zito, Alou, Schowenweiss, Mota, Castillo, Santana, K-Rod, Bay. That’s no way to build a team from the ground up.

You never have enough at the ML level and you never have enough at the minor league level.

What I thought Minaya would do is make some trades of older guys he inherited, or picked up, not for right now guys but for guys in A+ and AA to form the beachhead. Make the sorts of trades that say Washington made with Minnesota for Wilson Ramos for a relief pitcher (Matt Capps) BAM. Catcher taken care of for 6 years. Sign guys in the off season with the intention of trading them at the deadline for higher ceiling guys 2-3 years away. Sell high and buy low using his evaluation skills to win the trade. This really was his forte and he did find some vets who gave him their last gasp as well so he was good at that too. What he was bad at was the free agent signing and he did way too much of that.

Making those moves that would have put young guys on the field here from 2007-2012 extracted from other teams systems, then backing them up with his IFA’s and mixing in a few type A free agents would have been a perfectly reasonable way to rebuild the whole thing up, and keep it going.

I don’t really think Minaya ever truly put a good scouting program together here. He seemed to rely on getting a lot of guys he knew from before. Guys that he was familiar with from his Montreal or Texas days. Not very much of under the radar type 2B in AA or live arms in A+, the sort of guys a good scouting dept comes up with.

Tatis, Schneider, Church, Endy, Bay, Livan, Caludio Vargas, Luis Ayala, Val Pascucci, Tony Armas, Mike O’conner were with him in the Montreal system. Oliver, Sele and Dickey were with him while he was in Texas.

All GM’s to some extent (and all people in general) probably think of people they know when they have a spot in mind but this really just reeks of “who can I get” rather than an organized approach to building a team from a scouting model and he should have known better than anyone! He was a scout.

There is no question that his scouts did a damn fine job on the international front in Venezuela, Panama and the DR and I would have to believe he did some of that himself and most of his trades, at least from a talent perspective were wins at the Major League level but where was the domestic scouting of other teams Minor League systems? A GM can’t do everything. Did he not have anyone that he trusted? Didn’t build up or even care that much about making a deadline deal as a seller in 2005 or 2009 to set himself up with a solution down the road?

He picked up a few guys like Turner, Pridie, Sullivan, Hessman, Dusty Owens, Luis Hernandez ect but they were all waiver wire deals, not trades.

I’ll always contend that Omar could have peaked into anyone’s system, figured out what they needed and extracted 10-12 guys in A- and A+ and even AA that would have come up here and played great. Much better than many of the free agents he signed and they would have been here a lot longer too and prevented the need to go out and sign so many retreads.

Having saved a lot of money by not trying to solve every need by going type A free agent, perhaps he would have been able to go over slot on 5-10 guys like Alderson did this year and with his eye…….

At the very least you would think that he could have waited to sign a couple guys until the non tender lists and rule 5′s came out before making his decision. Alou and Castillo were both signed a week or two before he even knew who was going to be available.

So there were many ways he could have gone about building the minors and the Majors without taking from one to give to the other.

Regardless, lack of available starting pitching didn’t sink us and maybe even helped us with Gee making so many starts and Schwinden getting his feet wet. Either way not signing Millwood didn’t cause us to miss out on the post season.

As for Taka we didn’t sign him because he wanted a two year deal, so we certainly weren’t going to give a 2 year deal to someone who got 1.5 M more.

As for Capuano (and Young) it’s not about what they earned in incentives, it’s about what the team was contractually committed to when the contract was signed.

That’s the most glaring look in at the Wilpon’s financial situation. Where at one time money was no object, just get the guy and give him a vesting option, no trade, promise to not offer arb, anything. Now it’s we can commit to a certain amount, if he does better theoretically so will attendance and we’ll gladly pay for that and hopefully most will and the combined effect will make it really pay off.

The flip side to that is Chris Young. He went down right away. If he wasn’t on an incentive laden deal he would have sunk the payroll.

Like it or not this is the new reality here and the type of player you can get under that arrangement is not of the same quality as the guy who gets a fully guaranteed deal.

That’s where we are. Players who have options want things like guaranteed deals, multi year contracts, playing near home (which for a lot of guys means California, the south East and Texas, not Queens) and most importantly a good chance of making the post season. These were all things that we couldn’t offer this year and they are all things that we probably won’t be able to offer next off season and the one after after that as well.

Hate to break the news but players weren’t exactly tripping over themselves to come here when the money was flowing. Beltran would have taken 20 M less to play in the same city. Delgado did sign elsewhere, so did Zito. Bay hemmed and hawed as well. K-Rod was really the only guy who jumped at the chance. Maybe Pedro too although I wouldn’t say jumped in his case, perhaps Wagner as well but even with huge money being offered plenty of guys looked elsewhere first and then signed, so without the big money and without being favorites in our own division it’s only going to be that much more the case.

Plus with all the money we have parked on the DL over the last 5 years how could you even blame the owners to some extent. I mean think about the return on investment here. You think we’re sick to our stomaches? Pedro 4/54 M, got one and a half years. Alou 2/15M got 100 games. Beltran returned more than equal value but even he lost one of his 7 years and that affected attendance over two separate seasons. Delgado lost almost a whole year and had two, for him, mediocre seasons. Wagner 4/44 two and a half years, Schowenweiss 3/10 M, Perez 3/36 M, Bay 4/66 M, Castillo 4/25 M.

Even when they made money off those big money deals they lost it on the Ponzi scheme and immediately thereafter attendance tanked. Right away. Just as the stadium bonds had to be paid. Right when their principle business started tanking. Right after they were threatend with a billion dollar lawsuit which happened right after they lost 500-700 M they thought they had.

After 25 years of just throwing money at every need and essentially getting no return on it they simply don’t have the money to prop up the team anymore. The team has to start breaking even at least on it’s own and that hasn’t even started to happen. Not even close.

What money is available is going to have to be spent propping up the guys who’ll be here in 2014 which is what should have been done along. If it had been we wouldn’t have the need to sign 13 guys off the scrap heap every year.

They won’t come out and say it because that would make things even worse, but they are saying it with their actions. People just don’t want to believe what their eyes are telling them.

Like it or not 2012 and 2013 are going to be similar. 2014 should be the start of a year similar to 1984 and kick of some purely good baseball signings but even that won’t happen unless this new administration can produce talent equal or above to what we already have.

Few business could survive the confluence of events that hit the Wilpon’s without lessening overhead in any industry, let alone a business that has such volatility between performance and pay as the baseball business.

It’s like the real estate market right now. All you can do is ride out the storm and try to keep your head above water.

And if he didn’t come here, there was still other guys I would have liked better. Here’s how I ranked them:

Harang
Vazquez
Correia
Penny
Young
Bedard
Capuano
Millwood(remember, he was just for depth)

And don’t forget that Capunao went up to four million…..so 14.2 million wouldn’t cost that much more money that what we really spent anyway.

Millwood didn’t make the MAJOR LEAGUE field untill August – he started 16 games in the minors. Think of him like Miguel Batista(but I think Millwood is better). He’s just for depth.

When Taka’s contract was due with the Mets he told them he wanted to be a starter, remember? So lets just say for arguments sake the Mets signed him under that premise…so now you have Pelf-Niese-Dickey-Taka and “maybe” Johan.

Then you want Aaron Harang? Again ignoring the fact Harang said he wanted to play near his home in San Diego, which agan is on the other side of the country. It’s not like the Mets are such an attractive place to come play that you’d give up your wants.

So okay you wanted Harang, nice. So you sign Harang, now what? No Dillon Gee. Forget about Dillon Gee who I am sure you love right? You sign both Taka and Harang, you don’t lock up a rotation spot with a young arm, you continue to fill it with old players.

Then you wanted Millwood which I don’t even know where you’d put him? The way to sign Taka was to tell him he could start here. Once the Mets said no he took his est offer which was in LAA. But even if you re-neg on your agreement… now you put Millwood in the rotation and again no Dillon Gee.

Would you trade Harang+Taka+Millwood for Cap+Gee? I wouldn’t. But you’re using hindsight so why can’t I?

I AGREE on Choate, I don’t know what he wanted from the Mets. Do we assume every free agents wants to come here? they offered him 1.4mil for 1 year right? And then signed Byrdak to 900k for 1 year because the Marlins guaranteed Choate a 2nd year.

I don’t BLAME the Mets for not guaranteeing a 36 year old LOOGY a 2d year for more money and oh by the way, he is having issues in his lefty throwing elbow.

I’m not sure why Blanco is even in the mix here? Blanco played in 37 games in 2011. He’s 40 years old and signing him is saying we have confidence in Thole as a starter which they don’t. So they signed a guy who COULD be the starter if need be.

I think people don’t give enough credit for the year Capuano had, and forget that adding more SP’s would have eliminated Dillon Gee from the picture in 2011.

Rarely are you going to find guys proficient at all aspects of the game on the non type A and type B free agent lists. That’s a good reason not to have so many from there every year.

How could Millwood have been AAA depth? He didn’t even make it onto the field until mid August. At the most you can could say he could have been a no harm signing, but hardly something to gripe about.

Fuentes a back up plan? At 10.5 M for two years? Now I know your kidding us. At some point you simply have to take the economic realities into consideration. Alderson committed 13 M to 13 guys. You wanted us to pay extra to Harang who got 4.3 M (say 5.5 M) and sign Fuentes for the same. That’s 11 M on just two guys.

It’s hard to disagree on Choate and I know you were high on him in the off season but your just not going to get every guy you want, every off season, especially when you have so many spots on the 40 to fill.

Francouer wouldn’t have been tendered a contract here in 2011 because his best role is as a platooned RFer, getting 1/3rd of the AB’s at most and as a late inning defensive replacement. With a 2010 base of 5 M he would have gotten at least 6 as a part time player with a returning Beltran not needing to be in a platoon so he was a good guy to trade, wish we had traded him for someone in A ball who had a bit of upside and was still with our organization though.

Arias did play in the Royals system in the PCL this past year. He played mostly 3B and is now organization filler, emergency AAA depth.