Was very curious about ESPN’s take about the draft choices having hurt the Mets but was not going to pay $3.33 a month to find out something when I can get all I need to know reading MMO. That, and having to still pay off the bills for the holidays.

And this is not the first time I’ve seen this analysis and conclusion spelled out. There are several others who have more or less stated the same.

My opinion is that they spent the money where they wouldn’t/couldn’t be criticized and took away from where it would do the most good in order to do so.

They never had a huge problem with adding payroll to the Major League team because they could make a business case for it, hence adding Putz’ 5 M plus buyout yet when it fell apart what did they do? They had Omar sell Wagner to avoid having to pay the two signing bonuses the two draft picks would have required.

They’d take on the 5 M for a likely immediate return on investment but they wouldn’t pay 5 M for the 20th and 39th best prospects in the 2010 draft.

Basically they used the two signing bonuses they avoided paying to pay for Putz.

What other explanation could there be? That Omar preferred Chris Carter and Eddie Lora over the 20th and 39th best prospects in the entire draft? Impossible.

Why would we need yet another LH DH in our system? For that matter why would we need a 20 1B who couldn’t even hit in the rookie league.

The reality is Chris Carter was going to be dumped from the 40 come December and Lora had no future what so ever. Not even the worst GM of all time would have considered these two players over the two draft picks and Omar was far from the worst GM of all time.

One month of Wagner saved 2 M, his buyout saved another M and the two draft picks bonus saved another 3 M, total savings 6 M. Total cost for putz 5 M plus 1 M buyout. Selling Wagner for nothing paid for Putz.

The Wilpon’s will put the money into the Major league team because of the possibility of quick return on investment but they don’t want to put it into the farm because of uncertainity of return and the time value of money.

Because the Wilpon’s had secretly promised Wagner not to offer arb so he could get a better payday from his next team and then shipped him off to someone who did offer arb? Impossible again.

I think the better answer is that Omar just couldn’t multi-task. He spent like a drunken sailor before 2005 and it worked and he lost sight of the draft. With drafts in 2005 and 2006, why was Murphy and a rushed Fern the only injury replacements from the farm? Why was Cora and Pagan and Sullivan and Reed, etc. all there? Three and four years after a draft and Murphy was the only “ready” kid to come on up? Why did he have to buy two closers during his tenure?

After the “dream” season in 2006, his 2007 draft was not good. Duda would have to absolutely rake to overcome his defensive shortcomings, and who else might make an impact? Gee cold be a cheap option for hte back of the rotation, but is that the most success we’ll see from that draft? After the collpase, it’s like Omar woke up and had a good draft, even though there’s only one guy you can call an “impact” player. After another missed post-season, he bought yet another closer and made the Heilman/Putz trade, which I liked even though Putz was a waste because at least it got Heilman off the team. He then followed that up with a pitiful 2009 draft.

It was either one or the other for Minaya. He never seemed to have the aptitude for helping the major league team win now and helping the farm win in the future.

Fred Jeff and Saul by anyone’s standards are pretty wealthy people but by MLB standards are/were about 30th out of 30 before recent events hit. Their also very sensitive to public criticism and the whole coupon thing probably bothered them beyond belief.

One thing a large payroll can do is provide an owner with a built in alibi if things don’t go well. “How can you say we’re not committed when we have the largest payroll in the league every year?”

Well if your not AS well off you might want to skimp where the skimping isn’t as noticeable and if you have a built in excuse to hold the line on draft bonuses you might be inclined to trim the scouting dept too, after all…….

Business wise a 2 M dollar signing bonus that may or may not ever payoff, and if it does won’t be for 5 years or more compared to a 10-15 M dollar annual committment (back loaded) that creates excitement at ticket selling time among the customer base is guaranteed to garner loads of free publicity and start paying dividends even before the first check gets written and with the money rolling right into an attractive investment vehicle is almost a sure bet. It’s only when four or five of these moves go south all at the same time and the fan base starts getting sick to it’s stomach that the cash flow starts getting chocked off.

The Wilpon’s never gave a GM an acceptable draft budget and I am quite sure that was the difference in “skill sets” that removed the last draft oriented GM from his office in favor of the wheeler dealer type who’s success was built completely upon his predocessors abilty to produce prospects and free agency and salary dumps which take no skill what so ever, just a big checkbook and a whole bunch of free publicity right at ticket selling time.

When Phillips ran out of guys other GM’s had provided to trade like Izzy, Nelson Cruz, Melvin Mora, Jay Payton, Terrence Long, Alex Escobar, Benny Agbayani, AJ Burnett, Pulsipher, Preston Wilson, Paul Wilson, Endy Chavez, ect ect ect he started looking at trading the few guys he developed, Wright and Reyes, but they were too young (thank God) so he commenced trading away the guys he spent our #1 and #2 picks on like Weathers, Appier, Cedeno, Ventura and Zeile and that’s how we crashed for a 2nd time during the Wilpon era.

If the philosophy had been just about winning it would have changed right then and there. Any objective individual would understand that you cannot subtract all the talent from the farm while not replacing any of it and avoid crashing. It simply cannot happen.

The Wilpon’s responded by now paying a decent bonus in the first round but only very very rarely going over in any of the later one’s where you can get first round talent for first round money in rounds 5-50. Really more shielding themselves of criticism than attempting to get this thing turned around.

IMO it hasn’t been about winning, it’s been about return on investment and covering one’s a** from criticism.

As much as I loved watching guys like Pedro, Seaver, Gibson I somehow get a big kick out of the Maddox Rick Reed type as well and while most of those guys you always have the sense that one pitch can undo them, with Maddox it was as if he was dominating every bit as much as Gibson ever did.

Chinese water torture as opposed to a beheading.

Thanks for the link.

He didn’t need a fastball, curveball, sinker, Slide or change that made people go AHHH GREAT STUFF!

In fact part of his success was that he always seemed hittable to the batter but just when you thought you had him he would throw you something you never expected in a location you couldn’t hit and out thought, out manuvered, and out smarting his opponent!

Lots of Pitchers had better pitches than greg Maddox!
None of them knew how to use what they had!
Maddox knew what to use what he had and even what he did NOT have!
His brain was his most potent weapon not his Physical ability to throw nor his pitch technique and spin mechanics!

He beat you in the only place you could not protect with a bat!

Your HEAD!

Phillips busted completely on 14 out of 17 first, second and third round picks and one of his “hits” was Aaron Heilman.

The really sad thing about Phillips drafts is he always went for the safe “high floor, medium ceiling” type guy and still busted at a far higher percentage than almost anyone else.

Even one of his only two real hits, Kazmir was selected #15 in one of the deepest drafts ever and included players taken afterward in the first round like Swisher, Hamels, Span, Guthrie, Blanton, Francouer and Matt Cain. Now that was a deep draft.

Wright was the only guy he ever drafted that one could say he did a better job than any other GM in the 6 years of drafts during his tenure and he even selected Heilman 20 spots earlier.

When he took over for Mcilvaine he didn’t even bother trying to sign any of Mcilvaines last draft class and consequently David De Jesus, Garrett Atkins and Jeremy Guthrie weren’t signed.

Outside of the first, second and third rounds his draft were equally horrendous. Ty Wiggenton, Jaime Cerda, Angel pagan, Mike Jacobs, Daniel Garcia, Matt Lindstrom and Brian Bannister are the only guys to have ever done anything in the Majors, and most of them did exceedingly little in six years of drafts.

Basically when he ran out of players Harazin and Mcilvaine produced he had nothing left to trade and had to start trading free agents he gave up #1 and #2 picks for. Guys like Ventura, Zeile, Weathers, Cedeno, and Appier and turned them into guys like Estes, D’Amico and Mo Vaughn.

Your right, Steve Phillips drafts weren’t bad, they were historically awful.

The whole time he was out there he was just f***ing with people, inducing weak contact and fielding his position better than anyone else ever had.

His mind and body were in perfect harmony and he was as bullet proof in the regular season as anyone with twice his stuff had any right to be.

Maddux is probably the smartest man to ever step on a mound.

Very nice work and quite a bit of effort Nick. I believe that any draft retrospective should include all players drafted after all the intent at the time of the selection is to simply make the best pick based on who is on the board without deciding ahead of time who’s going to be traded, signed or unsigned but I applaud your effort here and it’s a very relevant topic considering where we find ourselves right now.

To really get a clear understanding of what is working well and what isn’t (in order to correct things, not assign blame) this study should include total WAR (for lack of a better alternative) of ALL players drafted, since that’s the only thing that can be measured going forward.

Two seperate categories would then deal with unsigned players and players traded. Only then can one start to zero in on what has worked and what hasn’t.

For example Humber and Mulvey (along with Gomez and Deolis) in essence became part of Santana’s production. Butera became Castillo so in essence Butera’s 5th round selection should reflect whatever Castillo did but under a seperate heading labeled trades from the farm.

WAR shipped out vs. WAR received. This incidentally is one area where we have excelled through the years as a big market team should by taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves like Piazza, Leiter (although it’s closer than you might think) Hampton, Delgado ect.

Martinez and Beato’s WAR should be credited under the heading of players drafted/not signed to see if that’s an issue. It certainly was back in the middle 80′s-mid 90′s when we drafted guys like Rafeal Palmeiro, Matt Williams, John Olerud, John Wetland, Darin Erstadt, Roger Clemens, Garrett Atkins, David De Jesus, Scott Ericson, ect and then didn’t sign them. That right there would indicate the draft budget should have been enlarged and might have made a big difference in some of the disatrous FA signings we suffered through.

I have no problem with the selection of Pelfrey. He was drafted out of high school and went onto have a tremendous college career. Big and durable he commanded a mid 90′s sinking FB and a hammer curve at Wichita State and the true ACE is the hardest position to fill on a MLB team. Take one when you have the chance, cause you won’t always be drafting in the top 10. In a different year Lincecum and Bumgarner would have been sitting there at #9 for us.

I will always believe it was poor development that caused us to get less than full value out of Pelfrey. Whatever happened to his curve anyway? 2010 saw a nice split finger in the first half, where’d that go?

Pitching in the Majors in his first professional season was completely idiotic and had nothing what so ever to do with Borass’ insistence on Pelfrey signing a Major league contract. We didn’t have to have any 40 man roster complications in those days. Our best prospects weren’t in danger of being nabbed in the rule 5 because they hadn’t been signed within the last 4-5 years.

It’s not unusual at all for an accomplished college pitcher to dominate in the Fl. St. League and what can be discerned from 4 starts there anyway? Twelve more in AA , two in AAA and right on up to the Majors to make his debut two months after throwing his first professional pitch. How incredibly stupid. What did they think? That he was a finished product after 2 months in the minors?

The fact is Pelfrey hasn’t dominated at any level since his first professional season. Not in the Majors and not when he went back to the minors in 2007. He’s never had a solution against LH hitters, the location of his slider is always the same and it’s flat, he never throws inside and now he’s lost sink and run on his two seam.

The farm is where a player is taught how to play Major league baseball, the Majors is where he executes that knowledge. The Mets once again zoomed a guy up here simply because we had no one else. Having no one else wound up costing us a guy we had as well.

As for Niese, great pick. Parnell the same but he was zoomed up here as well. A good comp for Parnell is Johnny Venters 30th round out of HS spent 5 years in the minors before coming up. Parnell got 2 1/2. One difference is that Venters was a HS kid, 3 years younger so therefore more time to develop the prospect which goes back to the budget as well as need. Are we selecting guys out of college because their less expensive to sign and then compounding the problem by rushing them up here before their ready to actually make a difference? I think that’s the case. We’re not getting their best when they get up here and we’re not getting their best afterward either because at the Major league level it’s all about performance, not development. I don’t care how great your draft may be the day after it’s held if you don’t develop correctly the best draft in the world isn’t going to pay any dividends.

Same can be said throughout the IFA’s. Would anyone here prefer to have received Mejia and Tejada’s age 20 season or would you prefer their 26 year old season? And just how much good did we receive out of their 20 yr old season? Same can be said for Gomez, Milledge and Fern.

As for Thole he was the 4th of 4 catchers selected in the first 13 rounds as Omar correctly identified this as a problem area. Butera 5th rnd college, McGraw 8th college, Martinez 11th JC, and Thole 13th HS. Three were signed, 1 busted, 1 was traded, two have made it to the bigs but he was hardly groomed either. He spent more time learning 1B than catcher. His first 3 years as a professional 2005, 2006, 2007 saw him play 26 games behind the plate and 143 at 1B. The next two years saw him catch 164 games and then he was brought up here but only given the soft tossers to catch. Figgy and Misch, and always pinch hit for before K-Rod came into the game. Now what does that tell you? Is it really hard to understand how his defensive skills are so poor?

Our 4th rounder in 2005 Hector Pellot HS, filled a need that Omar correctly identified as critical going forward but one has to question the wisdom of drafting a 2nd basemen with a top pick since a 2B man who doesn’t make it defensively has nowhere else to go. 99.9% of the time that bat won’t play elsewhere.

Any draft retrospective of Omar’s regime (Phillips, Duquette and Harazin as well) must take into account the possibility that picks are influenced not only by need and speed but also by budget. That and poor development then causes us to receive much less than we could other wise expect when we do hit and any discussion of the 2005 Met draft should include the fact that the guy who ran the draft for Omar, Russ Bove, was replaced with Rudy Terrases for the remainder of Omar’s tenure here.

Cheaping out behind the scenes has been a constant hall mark of the Wilpon era not only in the draft, but also in the IFA arena, scouting and development as well. It has been widely reported that the Mets employed one scout for the entire NL in 2010. That would be an advance scout to put eyes on the up coming opponents. If we were doing nothing more than advanced scouting in the NL then realistically how much scouting can you reasonably believe was being done in regard to looking at other teams for potential trades in either league or more importantly in the minors and even more importantly than that in amateur areas. Probably well below the bare minimum if even that.

When people talk about NY being a big market they should demand nothing less than the best of the best scouting dept, draft and IFA budget and elite prospect development because one thing we have proven through the last 20 years over and over again is that relying on other teams washed up retreads to do the heavy lifting for us is never ever going to work, in fact that’s the philosophy that has led to us having twelve losing seasons in the last 21 years, with the largest payroll in the entire NL.

Mostly because your head is stuck up your SPREAD (sheet) Ass and don’t really see the actual plays that contribute to the Stats!

You think Pitchers with good stats MUST have good STUFF but hardly any clue as to what STUFF actually is!

But I digress because it is pointless to argue with a crazy man who thinks anytime he loses an argument it must be portrayed as someone else’s insanity for not buying into his bull!

Care to answer the questions I posed to Fonzie?
Did Maddox throw the most impressive Change, Cutter Splitter Curve and Fastball ever seen in the game of baseball?

Was his Fastball even as good as Pelfrey’s?

Or was it that he knew HOW and WHEN to throw them with a bit of accuracy that allowed his Average or slightly above average but not OVERPOWERING stuff to get guys out?