14
2012
If Citi Field Is The Morgue, Is Sandy Alderson The Funeral Home Director?
An article by 
CBS New York has some quotes form Nationals manager Davey Johnson who appeared on ESPN Radio and said the following about Citi Field:
“Citi Field is like a morgue.”
“I remember when I was here we had 50,000 packed in Shea.”
After all these years I still love Davey because he’s always in your face and always brutally honest.
Of course back then, the Mets not only ruled the NL East, but they were even outdrawing the New York Yankees.
The team was full of popular players who were productive and also won a championship. It always comes down to the product on the field.
Mike Silva, who I like to chat with on occasion via Twitter, told me we only had just one impact player on this team, a reference I suppose to not laying the blame of this season at the feet of Sandy Alderson.
But I countered that by saying that he inherited a team with three impact players when he arrived, a fact that cannot be disputed.
Impact players sell tickets – they always have, they always will.
Even as Frank Cashen began to lay the groundwork for what would become the 1986 Mets, he was smart enough to know that it could take 5-6 years before it all came together. To that end he traded for (and then signed) former NL MVP George Foster to the largest mega-deal of that era. The move backfired, but the intent was unmistakable. He wanted a draw and in large part he got one despite the fact he floundered.
For a short time George Foster was the highest paid player in the major leagues thanks to Frank Cashen, oh and Nelson Doubleday owned over 90% of the team back then. Fred Wilpon mostly tended to cofee and donuts at staff meetings.
The point here is, you could blame the attendance on the team which was presented to us by it’s architect, Sandy Alderson. He was the one who told us this team was going to surprise a lot of people, and that they would be fun to watch.
Sorry Mr. Alderson. Wrong on both counts.
The team is going to finish exactly where most thought they would finish… And aside from a dozen or so games in a 162 game season, it really hasn’t been all that fun to watch.
Unless you consider watching your team fall into the abyss and setting new historical records for sucking, as your kind of fun.
Do me a favor…
Would you make a damned decision already and either rebuild or compete? Can you make up your mind already, please?
You’ve wasted two years and all you’ve managed to do is create more concerns than we’ve ever had before. Omar Minaya may have left you a bad team, but you’ve managed to make it even worse. You use albatrosses like Jason Bay as an excuse for having your hands tied, but worse players with worse contracts have been shuffled around in the last two years.
What have you done with that bullpen? In two years what exactly have you accomplished? In two seasons plus commitments for 2013, you have invested over $25 million dollars in that bullpen. And for what exactly?
R.A. Dickey has saved your ass in 2012 otherwise attendance would be even worse. Even the crickets refuse to go to Citi Field.
You’ve let the team’s best player David Wright flop around in the wind for over a year now, answering endless questions about his future, because you have a problem with him being the face of this franchise.
Sorry Sandy, the gloves are off. It’s been two years and now it’s time for some results… real results, not all those hollow words and empty promises that never come to pass.
It’s football season now and you’ve punted two years in a row when you promised you wouldn’t. I know we should take everything you say with a grain of salt, but for crying out loud throw us a bone every once in a while. Better yet, throw the hard working players on your team a bone once in a while instead… Either a bone or a life preserver…
I’ll give you credit for one thing though…
A captain should always go down with his ship…
At least you nailed that part right…
About the Author: Joe DeCaro
I'm a lifelong Mets fan who loves writing and talking about the Amazins' 24/7. From the Miracle in 1969 to the magic of 1986, and even the near misses in '73 and '00, I've experienced it all - the highs and the lows. I started Mets Merized Online in 2005 to feed my addiction. Follow me on Twitter @metsmerized.
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NL East Standings
| Team | W | L | Pct. | GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Braves | 23 | 18 | .561 | - |
| Nationals | 23 | 19 | .548 | 0.5 |
| Phillies | 20 | 22 | .476 | 3.5 |
| Mets | 16 | 23 | .410 | 6.0 |
| Marlins | 11 | 31 | .262 | 12.5 |
Last updated: 05/18/2013
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Steve Phillips came right in and immediately made trades which helped turned this team into a contender. Sandy Alderson can’t even make a damned trade – IN TWO YEARS! He made one by throwing in the white towel – after an offseason that saw other teams sign good players that were affordable even for the Mets but instead he gives a 2 year deal to D.J. Carrasco.
And the other trade, which i liked, backfired. TWO YEARS. Forget about Omar – look what Steve Phillips did when he was hired as GM:
August 8, 1997
Traded Lance Johnson and PTBNL’s Mark Clark and Manny Alexander to the Chicago Cubs for Brian McRae, Mel Rojas, and Turk Wendell
December 18, 1997
Traded Fletcher Bates and Scott Comer to the Florida Marlins for Dennis Cook
December 22, 1997
Traded Carl Everett to the Houston Astros for John Hudek (not a great trade but alleviated some of that by turning John Hudek into Lanny Harris)
February 6, 1998
Traded A.J. Burnett, Jesus Sanchez, and Robert Stratton to the Florida Marlins for Al Leiter and Ralph Millard
Then things get better on the field, there’s hope so let’s keep it going:
May 22, 1998
Traded Preston Wilson, Ed Yarnall, and Geoff Goetz to the Florida Marlins for Mike Piazza
Meanwhile Sandy Alderson has not shown ONE OUNCE of creativity, no balls – NOTHING in 2 years except waving the white flag in order to get a good pitching prospect.
NOTHING. Oh and he has help because he has 2 other GMs with him – Ricciardi & Depo.
NOTHING.
You have to be KIDDING ME. And in New York? With the team he inherited he let this team drop dead all for the sake of getting draft picks.
Come talk to me the day Sandy can match Omar Minaya’s and Steve Phillips accomplishments as GM of this team.
Until then his supporters have NOTHING TO SAY!
Cue the slur…errr, the Sandy apologists take over this thread to try and prove you wrong as if somehow it’s not his fault what’s happening… Blame minaya, blame the wilpons, ETC. everything and everybody except SA.
BTW Joe D, you condemn me the other that for blasting alderson and even accused me of hating the man for doing the same thing you’ve been doing the past 2 days. Other than you being the owner of the site, what gives?
Are you seriously asking me this question? For one I didn’t personally insult Sandy Alderson or his race or refer to him as POS. Number two, I don’t hate him, I simply expect more from him.
I want him to be more like Frank Cashen and not be afraid to bring in a name and that it might actually appease the fans and get them excited to come out to the park until our prospects are ready.
I want him to treat his star players better or at least as good as other teams treat their faces of the franchise.
My rant expresses frustration with his results and a desire for him to to make me a believer again this offseason. He said things that did not ring true, I want him to stand behind his words this offseason. I want him to stand behind what he said in the Francesa interview.
What you do here almost daily, is hate the man and all those who still have 100% confidence in him, and point out what he’s done wrong without ever mentioning what he’s done right.
That’s what gives.
when have i insulted alderson’s race? what i do here is hate the man??? Based on what?? I am just like you expressing my frustration, yet my take somehow is different than you because why? We both say and are saying the same thing about him, yet somehow you’d still find people defending him because they don’t wanna admit how SA has lied about pretty much everything he said he’d do, and most of them are the same group, the one’s who were quoted here writing articles about him being a blessing in disguised, having a good day, making a mockery of omar minaya just to put this guy as some sort of GOD, however, reality has settle in and some people have accepted the man for what he is, a guy who’s here to help solve the financial situation of the wilpons, nothing more, nothing less, but there’s still a few WHO STILL love and defend this guy at all cost. i don’t hate the man, I hate SA the GM of the NY METS. who, imo has been the WORST GM IN THE HISTORY OF THE FRANCHISE, and whether you admit it or not, he has been. And don’t give me how Donald was worst, we won a ring with him and all those guys we love growing up, yea, that was him too….
Some people decided they would gave Sandy Alderson 2 years before they started to criticize him, I was one of them. Some people are going to give him 3 years or even 4 years. That’s their right and it doesn’t make them wrong. Some people decided to give him 5 minutes before they judged him, can you guess who?
If you cant tell that you are insulting people by using words like slurp and wonder bread, than I dont really know what to tell you. Name calling of any kind is uncalled for and you do it quite often.
Why cant you just post your opinion in a civilized way and move on? Why cant you reach a point after a long debate to just agree to disagree without calling that person some name or insulting them and ending the debate your way?
Why must you make our readers feel uncomfortable and unwelcome just because you know them from other Mets sites?
These are the issues I have with you.
Well said Joe D.
As i told you, you didn’t want us using the word fine, i respect your desicion. i won’t use it anymore, but what about when some of us get offended? even with Ra-cial remarks and insultS? What’s been done about that?
Also, it’s fine if they wanna wait 10 years for their lord, but one thing is for sure, that doesn’t make the METS situation right, and no matter how they try to spin it, for 2 years, they’ve been WRONG, and everyone else has been right..
And the only time we debate with them is when they try to shove SA down our throats by making idiotics comments or article… Kinda like “he had a good day” Or yea, “we’re going in the right direction” come on… even a stupid person cannot be THAT STUPID!
Yes Joe D. He’s the Mortician. He doesn’t own the Funeral home though…
I, personally, don’t see how a small market mentality plays well in a big market. Lets face it, the Mets are a top 5 team in revenue..Yet they are what middle of the pack in salary?
Anyone who can’t see that the Wilpon’s truly overextended themselves in buying out Doubleday, building Citi and starting SNY are lying to themselves…
This philosophy and the hiring of Alderson, was a sham unto itself. This hiring was imposed by Bud Selig with the expressed purpose of saving Fred and Saul’s ownership…
Getting back on point however, with the changes to the CBA, Alderson’s whole philosophy behind building the team from the minors up through overslot draft spending and overpaying I’ntl FA’s is no longer attainable due to the impediments placed there by the consequences of the new CBA.
Even trading away players in the final year of there contracts for ‘prospects’ will be impeded by the new CBA…as we have seen…Special players will still be dealt, but only to teams whom have the financial wherewithal to resign those players when they attain FA, and their prospects may not be as good as smaller market teams with no hope of resigning the player…hence they will not trade upper tier prospects for available talent because when they walk they won’t be compensated as they used to be…(picks)
Alderson, now has to do something this winter while keeping to SELIG’s and the WILPON’s
payroll edicts.
I’d love to be able to think he’ll be successful, however, I just don’t see how a philosophy can change mid-tenure with success, it seems to me the financial constraints and financial committments as well as the new CBA have conspired against the present regime.
For someone who has had the genuis label applied to him, it must be galling to find himself (Alderson) in this predicament. He should resign while he has his reputation somewhat intact.
He won’t be able to be successful if it’s dealing talent for talent, because the man’s playing hold ‘em with a pair of 7′s and everyone else in the hand has face cards in theirs…
His tenure has been a disaster…
Whether you like Omar, he left some talent, but he also spent, I’ll take his won loss record right now, because at least we were in it, heartbreak or not…Phillips took advantage of smaller market teams with financial problems and brought about a NL champion squad…I’ll take that anytime for what we have now…
Wow!
Welcome back! Where have you been the last two years!?!?!
lol, quite the contrast from metsblog take on the Davey Johnson quotes!
I think that Davy forgot that when he joined the Nats, they were playing in front of really quiet crickets too.
Met’s fans shouldn’t have to even have these types of discussions . Isn’t New York the center of the universe ? The greatest city in the world ? The Wilpons have raped and pillaged Mets fans long enough. It really sickens me how bad this has gotten. I’ve been a Mets fan since I was 6 years old and am now 49. I was actually day dreaming the other day about how ethical it would be to route for another team. This team simply is not going anywhere as long as the same losers in the big office are calling the shots. I really hope they go bankrupt. I want my team back !!!
Ethical? How ethical is it for the Wilpons to rip off their customers and lie constantly? George Carlin once said that sports should cause enjoyment. When your team is bad, put them away. That’s what I have done. The Wilpons have turned the Mets into the Islanders and/or Nets. Irrelevant in their own market.
I agree with your take JoeD.
Enough with the promises and hope and change.
He was brought here to save Wilpons from themselves plus Madoff case had not been settltes.
SA has to set a direction as any franchise GM would when inheriting the mess in Queens.
I remember the dark years after M. Donald Grant gutted this team thinking it was some Mindanao Wall Stree firm.
Whether he was a good GM is debatable cause Joan Layton was influential as was Gil Hodges unfilled his untimely passing away.
Cashen had a plan + he executed it probably because Doubleday was in charge so Wilpon could not step in and muck up the team.
2 years is enough. Give fans a plan and do it and don’t make excuses.
“Impact players sell tickets – they always have, they always will.”
No, winning sells tickets. Impact players can sell tickets early on, bt if al lyou got is a big name, you will find an empty ballpark down the road.
And, you’re trying to sell us George Foster as a successful deal. And you ignroed that fact that he also traded a very popular outfielder to acquire a young pitcher and another piece to be traded off.
As suceeded in what the signingmeant to do…SOLD TICKETS!
Bait and switch. How many tickets did it sell the following year?
Just like when you admitted the Rangers ticket sales went down when it became obvious that Alex Rodriguez didn’t help them win.
Plenty Attendance went up ever year until 2010!
Actually, attendance declined in 2010, even with the big signing that offseason.
Yes precisely whatI said didn’t I?
Why did it go down?
Becaue they knew Beltran and Delgado wouldn’t be playing that year!
No one ever said Bay was supposed to be an Impact player!
No because you can win all you wat but they won’t sell the season tickets in the season you won in!
Getting impact players sells tickets before the first game is even played!
And you want examples of that look no further than 2005!
Besides you can’t win enough to draw teams WITHOUT having an impact player a point seemingly lost on MR Moneyball Sheap Stiff!
You are advocating a bait and switch. Selling us an impact player on a team that can’t win would be seen as dishonest.
While yes, winning takes longer to sell tickets, the sales also last longer because it is real.
No I’m advocating a FULL YEAR of increased attendance and your method doesn’t work for more than 2 or 3 months unless they make the playoffs and it carries over to the next year!
Yes, my plan works for several years, because if you build a legit playoff team, they will last for several years.
you propose telling us Jason Bay is going to save the team.
From bait and switch to chicken and egg…
Can’t build a legit playoff team without Impact players!
Hi Donal,
The Wilpons did this in 2005 when they signed Pedro Martinez to a four year contract, with Omar having a good idea that the former Red Sox ace might have two good years left or at the most, three. It worked somewhat because the Mets had their first winning season since 2001.
But I agree, an impact player just to generate interest until a team itself can do that on it’s own would yield limited results – initially an increase in sales followed by the expected drop off.
But the positive thing it does is renew interest, even in a limited way, by publicly showing some sort of effort. I don’t think it would work this time around because the fans would sense it to be a publicity stunt which I don’t think we were wise enough to see with Martinez.
Hi Joey D,
I copied this from Wikipedia: It shows that Pefro made the Mets credible withLatin Americans:
In Minaya’s first offseason he made two significant free agent signings, adding pitcher Pedro Martínez and outfielder Carlos Beltran. Signing Martinez helped raise the awareness of the Mets in Latin America, leading Minaya to remark that Martinez was “a guy that makes the brand.”
No Joe what it makes him is the UNDER Taker!
He has taken us UNDER the record we were and pretty much buried us by throwing dirt on us even when there were some signs of life in the team in two consecutive July’s!
Kind of like asking someone to start a fire and at the first sign of a spark blasting them with a Fire Extinguisher them blaming them for failing to build a sustained fire!
I’d hate to break the news to Davey but
In 1984 the average attendance for the Mets was 22,749.
Which is just under 6,000 LESS per game than the “morgue”
In 1986 the average attendance was just over 34,000.
I think its safe to say comparing the talent to the 2012 mets and 1986 mets is a bit unfair. But I’d also say its safe to say if THIS team can average 28k, than imagine what a contender could do.
By the way can we please (you know who you are) get off Steve Phillips’ shadow please? My god, its over. The sooner you realize this isn’t the late 90′s and people don’t give away superstar catchers anymore – the better you’ll be at understanding what is going on.
Uhhhh he is more like the “Tall Man!”
Jeeze, this is like the third jab Johnson has taken at the Mets in the past week or so.
What gives? What reason could he possibly be caring about the NY Mets now, let alone lobbing snarky remarks at their expense?
Maybe I’m not remembering it all that well but the only thing i can think of is the Mets and Johson did not end on good terms way back when.
Joe D:
I can’t bring myself to blame anyone other than ownership. Under normal big market circumstances, when you lose fifty million in salary from exiting free agents, it would almost always be reinvested back into the payroll. Imagine what even the worst GM could do with fifty million in one offseason? If Sandy had just 30 or 35 million more to spend last offseason, we probably wouldn’t be playing for fourth place right now. That investment would have brought payroll to about 135 million which wouldn’t have been bad for a Huge market like NY and it would have also been a drop in payroll. This is the Wilpon’s financial issues and their tight connection with the commissioner of baseball that is holding our team hostage.
Yes, sandy screwed the pooch on the bullpen, but they still spent less on that then the Marlins did on Heath Bell. Pitching is expensive and you can’t buy a great bullpen with pennies unless you’re really lucky…the Mets are not lucky.
Furthermore, this is not a “stop bashing Sandy” post. I just don’t understand what you want him to do if he isn’t given the funds to field a competitive team. Does he have to, as a disciple of Moneyball, field a cheap winner by finding castoffs who’ve fallen through the cracks? Honestly, how would you build the 2012 mets without any money to spend? Trading Bay gets you zilch, not even salary relief. Reyes would’ve used up every available dollar. Once the payroll dropped to 75 million and the Mets had only two impact players left( wright, dickey), the 15 or 20 million he had to spend could never have made this team a contender.
The stupidest part of this entire process is the fact that because the Wilpons are so desperate for attendance, we all must ride out this horror show. Alderson has to continue to tell us lies about the baseball operations actually trying to build a winning team; even though him and every fan and media outlet knows they’re just waiting till 2014 when even more salary relief is coming. This is the problem…Fred, Jeff, and Saul. Can’t you see that under normal circumstances, a big market team should never have to operate at a ninety million payroll? It’s the OWNERSHIP.
Well said.
What I’ve been saying all along as well. It’s about the Wipons and the money and nothing but.
Hi SRT,
And if the end result wasn’t so painful, I’m sure a lot of us would be shouting I told you so’s to those who were in denial and accused many of us of having an agenda.
Which is kind of sad. In twenty two months Sandy Alderson has gone from a man of vision and the architect of championship clubs to that of a funeral director. He can’t blame this on the players since he is the one who put together this team and said that even if 2011 was going to be a transition year due to finances it didn’t mean that the Mets wouldn’t field a competitive team.
In fact, so many praised Sandy as a man of vision and a money ball genius those first few months. Typical is the attached.
http://www.northjersey.com/sports/pro_sports/baseball/mets/114703029_Mets__winter_work_is_done.html
I think SA is still that type or architect more or less.
His primary agenda was to save the team for the Wilpons while fielding some type of ML team.
His secondary agenda behind that was to elevate the farm system from the bottom ranked one it was, to a top ranked one. Then pass the torch when his contract is up.
How different this season could have been of they even had 15-20 million more to spend.
While I have no problem with Johan’s contract, Bay’s is really an albatross. If he was producing we might be in this. If we didn’t have to pay him for non producing and had that money to spend, we might be in this. Heck, even have an additional 5-7 million to spend on the BP might have been a difference maker. How many games did they blow in the first half?
Expecting the 2012 Mets to compete with an historical 50 million slash in payroll was just unrealistic. And if Rubin is correct, the Wilpons Mets are still broke so don’t expect much more than a reshuffling of deck chairs next season.
Hi SRT,
The reference to Sandy being an architect by elevating the farm system is where we have a friendly point of contention. I will not refer to any economic moves but to that attribution in general.
If we start from the beginning, we deal with draft selections, to which one can’t use anything but the traditional tools of scouting which deal with observation and not conclusions based on statistical analysis.
Then we go toward the minor league system itself. That is where players are taught, the raw talent is nurtured and possible major league potential begins to sprout and take shape. That is a teaching and learning area handled by former professional players.
So how does Sandy become an architect? One way has been putting his stamp on teaching a hitting discipline with a high emphasis on OBP and working the count, concluding this enables a hitter to be more selective and wait for the right pitch or work out a walk. His conclusions, of course, are based on a saber metric analysis of what has resulted in the past, the fault with that having been explained on numerous occasions by Bobby Ojeda,. Opposing pitchers catch on quickly to that mindset and can use that to their advantage, placing hitters in an early hole knowing they are not going to be as aggressive and thus getting ahead of them on pitches they now know they will hold up on. He says working the count should be something dependent upon the situation, the pitcher and the batter. There are times to be aggressive and times not to be, but if a pitcher knows this is the general thinking of the club, he is going to exploit that.
Those who look at the data do not take into account the individual circumstances that lead up to those results and that has all the makings of a bad architect.
We have also learned that reliance on statistical comparisons in minor league player development through a complex series of growth charts and graphs is not as reliable as human observation. Take for example Lastings Miledge. All the sabermetric analysis indicated he was ready for the majors and predicted a good and productive career. What that failed to take into account was his attitude – his inability and immaturity to listen to advice and thinking he knew everything. So that’s why many were skeptical about him developing into a productive major league player – a waste of talent based on his own human faults. That cannot be taken into account by feeding numbers into a computer. That’s why Omar traded him so quickly.
We also know that relying on draft picks is more a crap shoot than a vision of any baseball architect. Phillip Humber was a first round pick and number three in the nation while Jose Reyes was signed as an amateur free agent. Another case in point is Zack Wheeler. He still has to learn how to control his pitches for no matter how great his stuff is, he is not going to fool major league hitters as he does the less disciplined ones on the minor league level. No computer analysis is necessary to see this.
Bill James has often cautioned about the over-use of his statistical analysis and many lose sight of the fact that besides being a statistician he is also an acute baseball mind with an eye for talent and understanding of how the game is played along with being a tremendous baseball historian. He did not derive his extensive baseball knowledge from the study of stats, rather he created a whole new way of explaining why things happened that the professionals already understood.
Sandy is a astute lawyer and financial businessperson and has made many a contribution to baseball but not in the area of how the game is played, the discovering of raw talent and creating a major league roster. Yes, all clubs today have advanced statisticians on board in this computer age but they are not general managers calling the shots
Again, as Keith said, the game is played by humans and not by computers. And that applies to the front office as well. Somebody with a strong baseball background needs to put in the position of a team architect, not one with an analytical minds for deciphering facts under a controlled condition.
And that is why Sandy was hired not to be build the club but to save it economically for the Wilpons.
Wow! A Huge Mountain of misinformation from someone who probably can’t run off 10 minor leaguers in our system off the top of his head. So many wrong points made it’s not even worth discussing.
Davey Johnson and Steve Phillips who are 2 of the brightest ambassadors of Mets history, 2 men who deserve Mets fans appreciation forever now both being dissed in favor of Sandy Alderson.
Believe it.
Only Scientologists have them beat on the loyalty front!
Sandy can’t build a team in 22,000 months! He doesn’t have to assets for it. It’s denied to him from ownership. Forget what he’s said, it’s all orphans a designed to get as much attendance as possible. He’s hoping players like Duda, Santana, Bay, and Thoke all play up to beat case scenarios. In the first half, guess what, got lucky. Lately…it’s the morgue. With these players, that payroll, and that minor league system, unless you trade the farm and every last prospect with a high ceiling, you will never compete in October. You need to pick your poison. Trade them all and compete or sit and wait while smiling for the cameras and preaching hope when there’s none. This ownership group is the death of this franchise since the Madoff scandal.