Mets Could Have Largest Payroll Cut in MLB History

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• FL Met Fan Rich January 28, 2012 at 6:55 pm

  I bet the Mets will let you sit in the dugout this year if you show up without a bag on your head!
  • 86mets January 28, 2012 at 7:23 pm

    Sit in the dugout? No way. You don’t even get to do that if you buy a share for $20 million! All you get for that is 24/7 access to Mr Met and “owner” business cards, but not the privilege of sitting in the dugout! And besides, who says the players won’t have bags on THEIR heads come June 1st! LOL
• 86mets January 28, 2012 at 7:25 pm

  Well, say this much for Wilpon and Co., at least their setting a new MLB record this year. Just not one to be proud of.

  Thanks a lot Fred, Jeff, and Saul.
• any January 28, 2012 at 7:35 pm

  well, they really cut 18mill of it last year (castillo and perez). It just is dropping off the books now.

  and they won 77/78 games the last few years, so they sure as hell weren’t a 140mill team. Might as well pay for what you get!
  • Bayonne Mets Fan January 28, 2012 at 10:36 pm

    Actually no,

    When major starters like Reyes, Beltran, Santana, Wright, & Ike Davis, etc. nobody can recover from that. So it’s not a case of you get what you pay for. If you buy an expensive car and you get into an accident or it gets damaged while parked is that a case of you get what you pay for?

    No.

    If you were fair in your analysis you would not have said that. But you’re not fair. You may express yourself in a very benign manner but you favor Sandy and are unfair to Omar.
    • Bayonne Mets Fan January 28, 2012 at 10:39 pm

      I forgot to add when those major starters get injured for months at a time, no team can recover. No team can recover when they lose 2, 3, or 4 of their major contributors all the time.

      We’ve already gone over that a million times. No matter if it was Omar OR Sandy, major injuries to major stars will ruin your season. Under Sandy if Ike Davis did not get hurt things may have been a WHOLE lot different last year. That was the injury that did the Mets in.
      • Joey D. January 28, 2012 at 11:20 pm

        And it is also true that nobody can stay in contention after losing their best hitter and star closer with nearly a third of the season still to go.

        And as we all know, we didn’t lose them due to injury….
        • JoeD1966 January 29, 2012 at 4:10 pm

          Actually JoeyD, Duda put up better numbers than Beltran after the trade. He had 2 more 2B’s,2 more HR’s and 15 more RBI’s than Beltran did with SF. And Beltran missed a few weeks with a bad wrist.Even with K-Rod we still blew 17 leads from the 6th inning on. So while K-Rod would’ve held onto a few more of those 9th inning leads.Getting to K-Rod was still an even bigger issue.We were never making the playoffs even if they kept both beltran and K-Rod.
          • Joey D. January 29, 2012 at 6:59 pm

            Hi Joe D (if I didn’t use Joey it would make others think one of us would be having a debate with ourselves),

            I agree with you that the Mets would most likely not have made the post-season even if the trades and injuries didn’t befell us. But I think that looks at the season in black and white and not in terms of kodachrome if all importance is placed solely on an all or nothing at all basis (that being a post-season berth).

            Had Krod and Beltran remained and the injuries didn’t occur, with the way they were playing the team most likely would have stayed close enough to make it interesting in August and early September. Now, even if they began to fade away after labor day, the young core of talent would have still gathered experience of being in a post-season race which would be of immense benefit in terms of their growth and learning maturity. Not only would they get to feel the pressure of playing meaningful games but the momentum of that positive experience would have carried over into the 2012 season and beyond.

            In the long-term, this is truly building toward the future much more than the acquisition of a promising prospect in Zach Wheeler who, while being promising, is still only a prospect.

            That is how a franchise that is serious in building for the future operates. 1969 would never had happened had 1968 not been used as a stepping stone (while they still finished a half game out of the cellar all saw that the team had made tremendous strides and was definitely on the way up)

            What we saw last summer was nothing more than the Wilpons concerned with their own future as owners and nothing more. No other franchise would pull the rug out from under it’s players – even acknowledging the end result would not be a post-season berth – when seeing how such an experience would help a young club in the long term.

            I anticipate a counterpoint would be what good would that experience have been with the knowledge that our top hitter and closer were NOT going to be a part of the team the following season and was just delaying creating the holes that plagued us in 2011. Well, the answer would be that Davis coming back would off-set Beltran and the few relievers Sandy acquired would have offset KRod. Yes, more is needed, especially with starting pitching, but some of that could have been remedied by trades or free agent signings.

            And the point about Duda having better stats than Beltran doesn’t take into consideration what it would have meant to the Mets still having BOTH (not just one) of those bats going into August. Davis was lost for the year and Duda would have remained at first. The only benefit we got was seeing how much work Lucas needs in the outfield.

            Yes, our entire outlook would have been different had the organization been concentrating on baseball instead of keeping the owners in business. I’m not in disagreement with anyone accepting what happened as an unpleasant fact of life due to the Wilpons wanting to retain ownership. Who I’m in disagreement with are those who approve of those moves instead. As mentioned, any other franchise would have looked at what was happening as a positive stepping stone to the future and would have let the season play out.
• Pedro January 28, 2012 at 9:43 pm

  “…the Mets appear poised to have the biggest one-year payroll drop in MLB history — roughly $52 million. That would surpass the former record: $48.4 million by the Texas Rangers from 2003 to 2004,…”

  Texas had a Super Star SS in 2003 that won the MVP and went 71-91.
  They traded that MVP SS, cut payroll by $48.4 mm and went 91-71 in 2004.

  The Mets had a star SS win the batting title in 2011 and went 77-85.
  They let that star SS walk in free agency, cut payroll by $52 mm (+ or -) and will go…hmm…this could be interesting…90-72? 89-73? 88-74?

  The common denominator? R. A. Dickey pitched/pitches for both teams.
  I’m just sayin’!
  • JoeD1966 January 28, 2012 at 9:59 pm

    Texas did get back Soriano in that A-Rod deal.We got nothing back for Reyes.That’s a big difference.
    • metsaddict77 January 28, 2012 at 10:26 pm

      and anazingly people are for this crap.
  • Joey D. January 28, 2012 at 11:58 pm

    Pedro,

    The reason Texas went from 71-91 with the league’s MVP to 89-73 the following year without him had nothing to do with Arod. It was because they went from having the worst ERA in the league at 5.76 to the fifth best at 4.53. Just shows that a team with lousy pitching goes nowhere no matter how many runs it can score in return.

    Spending that money to improve their pitching would have been a more prudent move baseball wise but the signing of ARod to that ridiculous contract was made to put more fans in the seats, so while the team didn’t suffer at the box office, it did on the field.
    • Pedro January 29, 2012 at 9:38 pm

      True enough. I’m not saying the Mets are going to be a winning team this season. I thought the parallels where interesting, that’s all.

      JoeD1966 is correct. Soriano was a big deal for TX. It remains to be seen what the Mets will net for Reyes. However Reyes on his best day is no A-Rod.
      • Joey D. January 29, 2012 at 11:29 pm

        Not re-signing Jose would not have been the worst thing in the world had the Wipons been thinking in terms of baseball instead of in terms of holding onto the team (which is their right but might cost them even more financially in the long term with fan backlash).

        I think we all could have even lived with an offer not being made to Jose an if the feeling was that Tejada would be adequate enough to take over at short and the money could be used to fill other holes. This would not only offset the loss of Jose but actually strengthen the team by using the freed-up money for some starting pitching. Also, considering Jose’s recent injury history, we would not have the daily worry of our shortstop either going back and forth on the disabled list or playing at long stretches at a time not at full capacity.

        But as we know, that was not the case. The Mets didn’t want Jose back because the Wilpons want to save every dollar they can in hopes of making it through the storm and retaining ownership despite the fan backlash working against them in the short-term. Sandy could have even made an offer he knew Jose’s agent would refuse just for the sake of public relations — he probably didn’t just on the outside chance that Jose would accept it.
• srt January 29, 2012 at 9:22 am

  This really isn’t news, is it? I thought most realized this when SA said payroll going into the season was likely to be under 100 MIL. Doing the math, that sounded like at least a 45 MIL reduction to me….

  It’s so basic but you have to wonder if Fred gets it.
  The only way fans are coming out to the stadium is if you put a team out there the casual fan wants to come see – as I believe most of the die hards will still be there.
  And ‘fun to watch’ probably doesn’t qualify if they’re struggling to stay out of last place.

  Also, while it’s true even with Reyes last year having his best season to date, it still wasn’t enough to draw crowds, letting him walk represented in a nutshell what’s going on here. It’s about the money and nothing but the money. It’s about the immediate goal of saving the franchise for the ‘Wilpon legacy’ – with the secondary goal of building a perennial contender.
  I have to believe if the Wilpon’s Mets weren’t so broke there would have been a serious effort to have resigned Reyes along with spending $$ to strengthen the SP.
  • any January 29, 2012 at 9:45 am

    Even if the wilpons were OK personally financially, payroll would still be getting cut, since the team itself (or sterling mets, whatever entity is actually the “team”) was running such a deficit.

    Not many owners are so rich (and devoted!) that they will personally fund huge losses For ST issues, that’s what borrowing is for, but at some point, the team has to at least break even.

    IMO, they need a few young guys making a splash to get the fans interested again, even if the record isn’t great, to build up the base as they start to compete.

    Also, for all the crying about spending, the Mets are still spending as much in 2012 as every team in the division except for the Phils (who are already over 170mill and smack up in Yankee territory against the luxury tax).

    The nats and marlins might have inked more off season contracts, but the mets payroll (IOW, what they will actually “spend” this year) is right up there with them and the Braves.

    Interesting fact (in a “sign of the apocalypse” way) is that the division with the biggest spread between the top spending and #2 team? The NL East.
    • srt January 29, 2012 at 10:04 am

      I had no problem with cutting payroll. That $142 million certainly didn’t get us anywhere.

      But it appears to me it was slashed to bare bones, at the expense of trying to improve – even somewhat – areas of need such as SP. Not that I expect the Mets to be winning anything this year but w/o SP there’s no chance they finish at .500 – IMO.
• theonlymaskman January 29, 2012 at 9:38 am

  Nice photo of Fred receiving his just reward. It appears that Fred is truly clueless. Saying that it’s necessary to get the fans back and cutting the team beyond any semblance of competitiveness is completely inconsistent. He doesn’t seem to realize that performance and star presence is essential to grow the gate. The emphasis is on cutting costs to stay alive, but reducing performance in the process assures failure. How can an “astute businessman” and long-term fan of the game not understand that? Totally incongruous, but then it’s Fred and all I can conclude is that he’s clueless.
  • any January 29, 2012 at 9:48 am

    Clueless, as in you can’t have a payroll that the team can’t cover? And bouncing checks is bad?

    Fred gets that part.
    • srt January 29, 2012 at 10:08 am

      No doubt. And that just tells you how bad of a position $$-wise the Wilpons are in.
      The Angels owner wrote that check for Pujols out of his pocket fully expecting to recoup it with that huge TV deal they signed.
      The Wilpons just don’t have the spare funds, nor a projection of increased revenues, anytime in the future. As long as they insist on hanging on, the payroll is likely to be reduced even further next year.
      • any January 29, 2012 at 11:19 am

        the future revenue stream is the key. Not like Pujols is getting paid all that money in one year.
    • theonlymaskman January 29, 2012 at 4:02 pm

      If he gets the part about not bouncing checks and not being able to cover the payroll, what doesn’t he get about selling the team? If you can’t get the job done and can’t afford what you own, then it’s time to SELL it! Why can’t he figure that out? I guess he would just like to keep on digging the hole deeper for himself. I’d like to have a couple Rolls in the garage, but it’s not feasible for me, so I don’t. If you can’ afford a ML BB team, then don’t try to own one. Let someone else who CAN afford take over and do it right. But nooooo, Fred would rather hang on to his little toy team until he chokes on it. Spoiled hard head, Testa dura in Italian,
• Brian January 29, 2012 at 11:16 am

  There aren’t scary times. A cancer diagnosis is a scary time. This is just a time to put the Mets away for a while like a game or show that just is getting boring.

  Sports are supposed to be diversionary. They are not supposed to remind us that billionaire owners are faring worse than the shlubs trundling into the stadium. That said, I’ll put the Mets away for a while because as an educated person, I cannot separate that the sewage being presented to us on the field is at best the consequence of what constitutes blind allegiance to a criminal bilker and at worst, potentially complicit and criminal behavior by the owners. And that is not supposed to be what sports are about.