30
2012
Wall St. Weighs In On Mets’ Bright Future And Doesn’t Like What They See
An article by 
One of our longtime readers, tlagee, shared a link to an article in the New York Times last evening, reporting that Standard Poors had lowered the bonds issued to Citi Field from a BB+ rating to BB.
The downgrade by S&P is unlikely to affect the Mets much in the short-term unless they issue new debt, but the move does speak volumes.
You see, as I’ve been saying for quite some time now on this site, it takes a lot more than cutting expenses and slashing payroll to increase profitability. What the Mets need more than anything else is a team that is good enough to draw fans back to Citi Field in droves. Unfortunately, all the front office has done instead is shed the team’s best players and downgraded at various positions rather than doing the inverse.
You might point to the David Wright contract and say “a-ha, the Wilpons are spending again.” Not really. Wright will get paid $8 million less in 2013 than if he had merely kept his 2013 team option intact. He got played for a sucker.
Alderson is still charged with reducing payroll at massive amounts. Some of you still don’t buy the fact that payroll will be near $85 million this season as I’ve maintained, although for the life of me I still cant understand why. Do I have to physically draw you to the well myself?
Even with all the huge payroll slashing during Alderson’s first two years at the helm, $49.5 million dollars to be exact, the Mets still lost $20 million dollars in 2012 – a number which can be mostly attributed to three straight decreases in attendance.
The banks and bond issuers applaud the Mets for drastically reducing payroll at such historic levels, but they’re not idiots. They are not fools. It will take more than that to appease those stuffed suits sitting in their multi-million dollar homes while the maid brings them a Lobster Ceviche and a magnum of Dom Perignon for brunch. They need to see a winning product on the field because only that will generate the revenue to make the Mets viable and profitable again.
This new era of management has given rise to a fanbase that has embraced penny-pinching and the front office’s low-market mentality. This shift was a major coup for the Wilpons who now have a mandate from those fans to never eclipse the $100 million dollar payroll threshold again. But those same fans would rather sit at home and root from their living rooms, than make the trek to Flushing to see the team that is supposedly now moving toward a new and bright direction.
Why is that? Because new and bright directions don’t put dollars in the coffers. All 30 MLB teams think they’re moving in a new and bright direction, it means nothing in the grand scheme of things. It’s just something that sounds good and that teams can market, but in the end the bottom line always comes down to attendance and the only way to fix that is with a winning ballclub.
I shockingly wrote this a few weeks ago and it bears repeating, the Mets are the only team that has yet to sign a major league free agent this off-season. This while shedding two of the team’s most productive players with no return at the major league level. Volumes… It speaks volumes…
You see, I’m not the only one watching this offseason play out… The banks and the mighty silk-clad warriors of Wall Street are watching too. Watching and seeing a disturbing pattern in the force. A pattern so disturbing they needed to downgrade the outlook on the Mets situation – much as I have been doing this Winter as well.
Cash flow volatility was cited as the number one reason for S&P’s actions. The kind of cash flow that is only generated by winning and drawing crowds. The kind of cash flow that comes from a product on the field that is worthy of paying those new high ticket prices in 2013. The kind of cash flow that comes from a fan base bursting at the seams with enthusiasm and excitement as well as fists full of dollars.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out, however the Mets needed a genius to turn things around on the field, and not just by slashing salary.
You could have gotten any monkey in a suit to cut payroll if that is all you wanted or all you required. The real genius is to do that while maintaining a competitive team on the field and having fans buy into your philosophy not just with their mouths, but with their wallets as well.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
Happy New Years everybody.
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 | 26 | 18 | .591 | - |
| Nationals | 23 | 22 | .511 | 3.5 |
| Phillies | 21 | 24 | .467 | 5.5 |
| Mets | 17 | 25 | .405 | 8.0 |
| Marlins | 13 | 32 | .289 | 13.5 |
Last updated: 05/21/2013
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They should have signed Aaron Laffey to a major league deal. Then they would no longer SHOCKINGLY SHOCKINGLY be the only team not to sign a major league FA,. Or if only they re-signed Andres Torres
I feel your frustration..Nobody is asking for Josh Hamilton but would it have killed us to sign Ludwick or Ross..Yes they are not worth the money but 20 or so million for next 2-3 yrs is not going to kill us. Especially when we have 30M guaranteed in payroll of next year and lack of OFs in our minors. I know we are not the only major league club that notices the great crop of FAs for next yr. The one thing that this organization hates is a bidding war because we will lose every battle. It is never our strength, so forget the Elsburys and Canos or whoever else we have in mind. This is why I was rooting for Sandy to part with Flores, and whoever else for Upton; but its not going to happen. I have been supportive of this regime but freakin sign somebody of worth for gods sake. Its NYE and what happened to wholesale changes or anything positive. This team is a lot worse then last yr and bringing in Chris Young and Rick Ankiel is not going to change our fortunes.
so they should sign a guy that is not very good, and will not make any appreciable difference in the next couple of years, just to prove then can piss away some money?
Sadly Cody Ross and Ryan Ludwick would be the best OFs we had on our team since Beltran and I cant remember anyone else..its sad but our OFs are Duda, Baxter and Kirk? You can name Pagan but we traded him for a bag of balls and he just signed a 40M contract. Any OF is an upgrade..How are these players solid additions to smaller markets but not the Mets? Its 7M per yr and it would be worth it.
are you looking for marginal improvement (say, being happy going from 74 to 77 wins) or would you only be satisfied if they were making the playoffs? If the latter, than ludwick or ross is not going to help you.
3-4 pieces of marginal improvement is the difference between a 79 win team and a 89 win team
no cody ross / ludwick will be mistaken for pujols/hamilton…but adding one of them, plus a michael bourn, plus trading Duda and a prospect for a better OF would exponentially help out this club
“3-4 pieces of marginal improvement is the difference between a 79 win team and a 89 win team”
Sorry JDD but I don’t really buy that….
It takes a major positional improvement to get that big a jump. A power RH Hitting OFer could….Marginal would only turn around maybe 3 or 4 games at best.
The issue seemingly lost on these folks is that if you get 3 Marginal players (not scrap heap scubs as we seem to target) combined you might get 7-9 more wins making the Impact guy you get give you much more and put you in the playoffs….
So while I have no issues with us getting Ross he was never going to put us into the 80 Win Category….Maybe an Upton if he could do in Citifield what he does in Chase field could….
But then again maybe a Lucas Duda hitting the way he is capable of and adding 30 HRs could too….
Then the Ross signing isn’t a waste nor is it not enough because it allows you to fill one OF position that letsyou focus on finding a good defensive CF to help Duda and his slow feet troll the OF so getting those runs don’t cost you runs in the field.
You are an idiot or Alderson’s jockstrap, which one is it? Of course there’s nothing tio spend on now you nut job. He’s had three years to add someone that would have helped the team and didn’t. Dont be such an asswipe.
You say that as if they are not going to sign someone like that in the end anyway….
The difference is the guy we passed on MIGHT have been a good signing and the guy you WILL sign is guaranteed to suck!
Amen, couldn’t agree more, signing guys who will handcuff you in the future makes no sense, and for Mr Business man who wrote blog , first you slash and cut then you build back up it doesn’t happen over night. The Red Sox freed up all that money, you really think they invested it wisely by over paying Victorino and Napoli, they still have no pitching. We will see
There is a store near you that doesn’t have the product you want to buy…
It loses money….
Will he get you in the store by reducing the products?
NOPE! You didn’t go because he didn’t have whatyou wanted and now he has even LESS!
This system you guys profess as the key to success does not work!
It only leads to bankruptcy or to reduce revenues to proportions that are so bad you can’t ever get out of the hole your in with all the money in the world….
the problem is….why would anyone want to come to this 3-ring circus ?
ludwick and ross both went to better teams with more friendlier hitting parks. Both teams have great managers, quiet owners.
The best way for us to acquire some outfielders was to trade Wright.
But we have action figures to sell…
Trading a top level 3b for an outfielder in most cases is dumb. OFers (despite the Mets issues) are generally much easier to acquire. And even assuming the OFers they’d get for Wright were as good as Wright..that’d just be pushing the problem around…we might have a good OFer, but we wouldn’t have a good 3b., And even our infield as a whole that people like to talk up so much would no longer be all that good. I am not ready to pretend Flores would be our savior (and if he’s so good maybe HE can be traded for OFers) and I certainly don’t want Turner playing regularly to fill the 3b spot.
ur talking in general…
in reality…we have 2 other people that can play 3B…..Murphy and Flores
in reality, the free-agent market for outfielders is really empty for the next few years…if we were going to sign some outfielders, this would be the year to do it…
In reality, that top level 3B has had frightening 2nd half numbers for 4 seasons straight…and that was from age 26-30….why on gods green earth do u think those numbers are going to improve from age 31-39 ?
Everyone who loves this small market BS deserves the product they have on the field. The owners are a joke, the management is a joke, the team is a joke, the fanbase is a joke.
I am totally going to enjoy the end game on this. Call it schadenfreude, but I hope it gets uglier for the owners in the media….
This must be killing poor Jeffy who is probably in David Howard’s office daily stomping his feet wondering why daddy can’t make people buy tickets.
Paris: But You said that if we resigned David Wright to a team-friendly contract, fans would pack Citifield, buy David Wright action figures and extra hot-dogs…WHY IS MY STADIUM EMPTY…WHY ARE THEY BOOING David Wright and not buying his dolls…Do you know how many dolls I have to buy to make it look like somebody wants them, Now I have to hire someone to sell them for 50 cents on EBAY.
Dave Howard: These recommendations came from well known sources familar with Mets thinking.
Paris: I told you that is the response you give to everyone asking questions about the mets…that does NOT include me you numbnut
Dave: We have no further comment on this issue.
Paris: Why are you talking to me like I am a member of the press.
Dave: Your dad said to not tell u anything. You are on timeout
Paris: Daaaaaaaaaad
I will be enjoying it too. The fall of the house of Usher.
The owners can’t afford to maintain this team. Bud Selig gave interest free loans and all star game to help them survive. Yet it is Aldreson’s fault he cut payroll which he was hired to do. He reduced annual losses from 70 M to 20 M. Since the bond rating is contingent upon expected attendance and 2013 is a punt year the rating dropped. The Met debt is the Wilpons fault. As to your point if Alderson put a winning team on the field people will come. Alderson was hired to keep the Wilpons as owners and you ignore that fact. He was not hired to put a winning team together. If no Wilpons then no Alderson. Should Alderson have a 130 M payroll for 2013 and return losses to 70 M. Most investors would shy away. You can’t wait until 2014. Alderson did obtain good prospects which you ignore. I am not an Alderon apologist. I care about wins and losses on the field and not the Met’s P&L statement just like you. Please criticize the source of the problem the Wilpons.
‘The owners can’t afford to maintain this team. Bud Selig gave interest free loans and all star game to help them survive’
Ding, Ding, Ding. In a nutshell.
If not for Selig, we very possibly have new owners and a different FO.
Bond ratings are based on gazing intently in the rear view mirror, as are ‘outlooks’ by the various rating agencies. A 1-notch downgrade from the higher levels of the Junk (Speculative) Rating Scale (BB from BB+) is very minor. S&P’s action(s) have zero predictive implications for CitiField’s longer-term rating trends. S&P’s action is ‘closing the barn door after the horses are gone’ mentality.
As Joe says, cash flow levels hinge totally on fielding a competitive / contending team. The Mets’ ‘credit rating’ was far worse when the team was saddled with a $140mm Payroll and a series of 4th Place finishes.
This team AND it’s credit rating(s) will rebound sharply once it fields an exciting / winning team. Period.
agreed. Look at it like accident triage. First you have to stop the bleeding before you can decide if you can save the leg. Then you can worry about if you can fix it to be better than new!
Key word is winning.
Nothing exciting about a team that wins 79 games.
I can sum up the NY sports fan in 4 words.
You win, we come
You dont, we wont
Wright did not get played for a “sucker”. He locked up a huge contract for effectively the rest of his career. In essence he bought an insurance policy so it no longer matters what happens to him in 2013. He could have an entire year like the 2nd half. Or get hurt. And he will still be getting almost 140mill. And you have no clue what the infamous plan he was shown said, so you can’t claim he was sold a bill of goods unless he comes out and says it.
And it does take a while to turn around an ocean liner, or rebuild a team. And not just try to grab some FAs for a 1 year or so splash (which often turns into a belly flop anyway). If you want to build a foundation, it takes longer. So in the very ST, only payroll (expenses) is really fungible. And fixed. Attendance (via winning) is the LT solution, but the 1st job was to stabilize the balance sheet (and cover operating costs and debt payments), and that had to be done through lowering payroll to match the team on the field.
And I think the only “volumes” that trading Dickey and beltran said was that the team is rebuilding. Since that was not money related. And other than that, the best player (Wright) they retained, and they decided to let Reyes go when he got an offer well above what they felt he was worth. Oh, they also locked up Neise LT. And beyond that, they had not top players to worry about.
This.
It does not that long to change a team around. The 2004 mets sucked gorilla donkey dic, the 2006 mets were at the tipping point of a WS ring…and to be honest…had the team continued to invest in the 06-07 off-season as they did in the 04-05 off-season, we most def make the playoffs 3 years in a row…they did NOTHING to address the lack of bullpen depth…when it came to the bullpen ( nothing marketable about middle relief ) the wilpons cried broke. Unless your name can go on a billboard…the wilpons dont see as much value in u…
Now look at the yankees …
in 1992, they finished with 76 wins…here is how they responded…
November 3, 1992: Roberto Kelly was traded by the Yankees to the Cincinnati Reds for Paul O’Neill
December 6, 1992: J.T. Snow, Jerry Nielsen, and Russ Springer were traded by the Yankees to the California Angels for Jim Abbott.[5]
December 10, 1992: Jimmy Key was signed as a free agent by the Yankees.[7]
December 15, 1992: Wade Boggs was signed as a free agent by the Yankees.[8]
( they also drafted Jeter this year )
then during the season
August 31, 1993: Rich Batchelor was traded by the Yankees to the St. Louis Cardinals for Lee Smith.
they also got Jeff Reardon
in 1993, they finished with 88 wins….no jeter…no pettite…no posada….
In 1993′s off-season all they do is add Luis Polonia and Kevin Elster ( yes OUR K.E. )
In 1994, almost the same exact team led the AL in wins before the season was cut short…again…NO CORE
In 3 seasons, the Yanks went from bottom of the basement to leading the AL in WIns….and they did that through ADDING TALENT
GTFOHWTBS
You seem to forget that Mike Stanley, the FA signing Catcher of 1992 had an injury filled year that season but bounced back to hit 26 hrs in 1993. Plus, a guy named Bernie Williams took over CF, a position he would hold for the next decade plus. Oh, there was also a rookie named Wickman who won 14 games. And we cannot forget a guy name Mattingly who was manning 1b at that time.
Did the Yankees add some FAs? Yes. But they also traded Roberto Kelly for O’Neill…who do the Mets have that is anywhere near comparable to Roberto Kelly at the time of the trade who would net a top player like O’Neill? Duda? Kirk? Baxter? Not in a million years. You also mention the Abbot trade….same question? Is there anything on the Mets roster who would net a solid pitcher like that?
The bottom line is going into the off season, the Mets had very little talent at the ML level and even less on the farm. Other than Ike and Wright, is there anyone who compares to the likes of O’Neill, Mattingly, Tartabull, Stanley, Kelly, or Snow? We know the only two prospects that anyone would have an interest in is Wheeler and Flores and I am not sure how much Flores would bring back. And that is the essence of the Mets problem…a total lack of talent.
List of Yankee Free agents the year you are talking about…
Joe Girardi
Mariano Duncan
Wade Boggs
Paul O’Neil
Tim Raines
Darryl Strawberry
Kenny Rodgers
Dwight Gooden
Jimmy Key
David Cone
Nah that was an entirely homegrown team they only played TWO or THREE guys in the field that year!
Please….
And they maintained it with some of these names over the past 20 years….
David Wells
Roger Clemons
Randy Johnson
Denny Neagle
Orlando Hernandez
CC Sabathia
Mark Texiera
Alex Rodriguez
Johnny Damon
Hidecki Matsui
Sorry but to think Jeter and Williams is what got them the World Series is just a very bad attempt at selling your Kool Aid…
They bagged him and tagged him. He’s a sucker because he gives Alderson $8million interest free to buy players this offseason and he stuck the dough in Fred’s pocket. He’s an idiot. And you are an idiot too if you give loans at zero interest in return for something you never receive.
I agree to an extent. I don’t think he’s a “sucker”….I think he could have got more money if he waited until free agency. But especially if he wanted to stay,,,he got a good deal now and doesn’t have to worry about the risk of something happening in his walk year. He took a paycut for this coming season…but big deal…I am sure the guy can live off 8 mil for a year.
And its not impossible by any stretch for the Mets to be good again. They have some good major league players and finally have some good young players in the minors as well. Teams can have a pretty quick turn around….look at the A’s and Orioles (the latter of which also has an idiot owner nobody likes) this past year. Two years ago both the Orioles and the Nats lost 90-something games, while the Twins won 90-something. Teams can go from bad to good.
“Teams can go from bad to good…”
But only if they have been bad for a good long while….
Orioles – Hadn’t had a winning season since 1997!
A’s have been a below .500 since 2007, Thats half a decade! And they been trying to win with Kids since 1995 and have never won a thing.
The last time the Nats had a season above .500 was 10 Years ago, they played in Canada, and were Managed by Omar Minaya….
Ummm. Ok.
Wright is not a sucker if it is only about money for him. Congrats you get your $140MM. But if it was about winning or building a winner, or playing for a perpetual winner…then yes, he is indeed a sucker. He gets to be Mr. Met for the new generation, so that’s cool. The team might be in 4th place for the near future and may compete for third in the promising future. Not good for us. But hey, he still gets his $140MM.
The Mets ownership has done a great job of conning many Mets fans into believing that there is some sort of sound baseball strategy into Sandy Alderson’s doings as Mets GM. Alderson was brought in here for several reasons… first and foremost was to cut payroll and buy time for the Wilpon’s to exit the financial mess they are in. The second reason was to keep an eye out on the franchise for Bud Selig. It’s all about the money, folks. And it’s going to last a long time. Stop kidding yourself. The Mets will not be competitive for years. Being competitive puts upward pressure on payroll.
S&P lowers it, Moody’s raises it. Take your pick.
In it’s simplest form I see a team who at least from the outward appearance would have you believe they had a payroll that was higher than the revenue the team was bringing in that also happened to coincide during the Madoff fiasco. It seems for 2 years so far there has been an attempt to bring payroll down to a point that doesn’t exceed the team’s incoming revenue.
Could they then, now or in the future actually increase payroll higher than what it has been? I don’t know. There is a lot of discussion about this but I personally try to refrain from trying to speculate on this because unless the Mets open up their books there is now way to ever truly know.
I know the Wilpons up until the recent Madoff situation often were amongst the highest in team payroll and over the last 22 years combined only The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox have spent more on payroll while the Mets have 3 post season appearances and no ring to show for it. Yet from the 29 MLB teams (Royals have not made 1 appearance) to make the post season the last 22 years only 4 have had less appearances (Brewers, Nationals, Marlins, Pirates) and the Marlins 2 trips resulted in 2 Rings. Also 16 teams have made it to the post season more times than the Mets over that stretch.
There is spending, spending more and spending wisely. I would argue that a better job needs to be done of spending wisely of what little has been spent so far of free agent dollars by the current FO but when and if they ever do take what some would consider a huge free agent plunge that the return on the investment pay off much better than it did with other past free agents.
That should of read “Also 16 teams (not counting the Yankees and Red Sox) have made it to”
I couldn’t agree more: ‘Spending wisely’ THE key to winning, all else (scouting, coaching, player development, farm system structure / facilities) equal.
And the Mets have had a lousy record at doing that over the past dozen years at least. This is why, despite the frustrations of being budget constrained’ and ‘passive’ in seeking players to improve the team NOW, i am supportive of the F/O’s template. IF 2014 comes & goes and we still languish with 70+ odd wins & a 4th Place Finish–i’ll get a Bullhorn and denounce the F/O’s strategy. Until then, the jury is out…
Last time I checked S&P = Wall St., Moodys = investment service company.
I couldn’t care less if the 2013 payroll is 85 or 95 million $.
And while it’d be nice to have a competitive team while rebuilding – you can’t expect to keep giving up veteran star players for prospects and cut payroll and contend at the same time while also not rushing your prospects.
Eventually fans will come again if & when the team wins.
And whether they do will depend on how good Harvey, Wheeler, D’Arnaud, Mejia and others will end up being besides Wright, Ike, Niese and Co.
Besides if & how the 40+ million coming off the books next fall are re- invested.
the mets will be spending close to 61-65 million on the team this year…
they negotiated bay’s contract, then kept his numbers on the books to artifically inflate their 2013 payroll ….
u can play with numbers all you want, at the end of the day, this is a results oriented town.
the only number we care about is the scoreboard
And yet there seems to be endless complaining about the Mets spending and we are still months away from seeing any results on the scoreboard.
It has been more than obvious where the Mets were headed for the last couple years. I’m no fan of the Wilpons but they happen to own the team and it appears they will be for the foreseeable future. But the only way that happens is for them to get their finances in order and the only way that happens is for them to cut the payroll to a sustainable level. What is the point of endlessly complaining about the Wilpons instead of focusing on the players who will be wearing the uniform this year? They have the makings of one of the best young infields in the game and young arms that could be the foundation of the staff for the next decade. That is a hell of lot more important to me than which tier 2 FA outfielder they will sign.
I keep hearing that if only the Mets would sign a Cody Ross, THE Cody Ross, or some other middle of the pack FA for an outrageous amount that would solve everything. Yes, I know that I make my ticket purchase plans around whether or not Cody Ross is in the lineup. And with or without Cody Ross the Mets aren’t going to rock the world this year. What’s the point of adding another FA contract the team can’t afford?
The Mets tried the high priced free agent route and it didn’t work. Beltran, Delgado, Bay, K-Rod and a litany of other players have come and gone and the results on the scoreboard and at the gate have not been successful. Those days are over.
But we did get a bunch of young players as a result of those days and that is the future of this franchise, at least in the short term. They won’t all pan out and I’m not expecting a parade down the Canyon of Champions this year. But I am very excited to see what the young talent on this team can do.
“the only way that happens is for them to cut the payroll to a sustainable level”
Thats the ONLY way?
What about generating Revenue?
You think that wouldn’t work?
“And yet there seems to be endless complaining about the Mets spending and we are still months away from seeing any results on the scoreboard.”
If it’s too early to complain then why isn’t it also too early to applaud moves that won’t show up on the scoreboard as well? At least not until 2015 or 2016 as most suggest it will?
How do you come up with 61 to 65 ?
Even with what’s supposedly deferred for Santana, Wright and Bay in 2013 ( a total of roughly 28 million $), the ” cash flow oriented” payroll as of today is already well over 70 million $ – even by filling out rotation, bullpen, outfield and bench strictly with players making the minimum but counting reasonable arbitration figures for Ike Davis, Bobby Parnell and Daniel Murphy ( I have them at a total in the 7.5 million $ range combined).
Add to that whatever money from the past got deferred to 2013 ( Bonilla, Beltran, etc.) and add a couple of likely additions for the bullpen, maybe back of rotation and possibly outfield or backup infielder and the ” cash flow” payroll figures to end up in the 80 to 85 million $ range.
The ” official” payroll will be in the 108 to 110 million range accordingly.
Looking ahead to next winter, the Mets, as of today, enter 2013/2014 with a “cash-flow” payroll of about 55 to 60 million, depending on arbitration results and without Santana, Buck and Francisco. The ” official” payroll will actually be a bit less as it won’t include the 7.5 million deferred to Bay.
That should easily allow them to spend 30+ million $ on shortterm help for 2014 – be it via free agency or more likely trades an still only have a payroll in the 85 to 90 million range.
Depending on how promising the 2013 results are, it may make sense to spend up to 40+ million to ” generate excitement” and thus boost ticket sales.
If Harvey, Wheeler, Familia, D’ Arnaud & others don’t develop as quickly as hoped, you hold off for another year and only add to the payroll in a big way for 2015.
If you don’t care about 2013, and choose to keep ignoring the first two losing seasons under Alderson, please stop defending the Wright signing. If we were really rebuilding, you trade that guy for more lotto tickets (prospects) and we all jump on the hope for the best gravy train.
“This new era of management has given rise to a fanbase that has embraced penny-pinching and the front office’s low-market mentality. This shift was a major coup for the Wilpons who now have a mandate from those fans to never eclipse the $100 million dollar payroll threshold again.”
I’m not seeing such embracing. Nor am I aware of any mandate. If anything, I’m hearing the opposite of this.
Please explain. This seems like hyperbole.
I would say the majority of fans on this site evaluate players by how much they want. It wasn’t always that way in New York, but it is now. MetsBlog evaluates everything by spending now. “He’s cheap and will be a nice fit.” or “He’s too costly and wouldn’t fit the plan.” That’s where all Met fans get their mojo.
I’m tired of the losing and the waiting. Who still thinks 2014 will be championship caliber as was stated in Sandy’s opening press conference? Do we have any takers?
Haha. I’m with you Hodges14. Seriously though, maybe 2024 though. I mean, in 2024, we should have just as much a chance as anybody else.
Great post. Nobody needs to give a GM $20 million for four years who cant work on more than one thing at the same time. He was absolutely cripple all offseason because he could only focus on Dickey. He cant shave payroll and stay competitive, that is too big a dynamic for him to wrap his big brain around. He’ll go down as the losingest GM in Mets history and MLB history after his contract runs out.
You get what you pay for does not apply here. I had no idea he was getting paid so much. I guess Moneyball principles doesn’t apply to GMs only players.
I keep thinking about the day Selig must have approached SA about taking over the GM spot for this team.
First…wonder what he was making at MLB?
Second…why on this green earth would Sandy come here at this point in his career when he could have stayed with Selig’s office? Less hours, less stress and he’d already ‘been there, done that’ with being a GM.
He had to have asked ‘what’s in it for me’?
Was it the money? Was it the promise of something better at MLB when this gig ends?
This is precisely why anyone who thinks Sandy is getting our Financial house in order, or that these cuts are PRODUCTIVE from a business standpoint are dead wrong and are clueless on what a business REALLY must do to stay in business….
We started off with the entity known as “The Mets” losing money due to a lack of attendance to pay for the investments they made to bring us winning seasons in 2005-2008.
All because Injuries hit the team all at once in 2009 much like they did to the Phillies last year. I wonder if the Phillies fans will abandon them as quickly? (bet they don’t!)
So a new Thrifty GM was brought in to get spending under control and make the team profitable. A mission he has so far after two years and three offseasons of cuts has FAILED to accomplish.
As JoeD states the reason he has failed is because the idea that you could cut enough and maintain Attendance was pure folly! For every cut made attendance has gone down.
We lost 70Mil in 2011 with 151.8Mil in payroll. We cut 60Mil in 2012 to get to a 91.6Mil Payroll and we still lost 23Mil because of lowered Attendance. 60 + 23 = 83! 83-70=13
That means 13 Million worth of Attendance we lost last year!
Thats the price you paid for the combination of letting Reyes walk and not doing anything to try and salvage a season in July! Maybe the loss of Beltran and K-Rod contributed some to that attendance loss, who can say. But as they say in business the BOTTOMLINE is key and the bottomline is we lost 13 Million worth of paying customers and that WITH a Cy Young Pitcher drawing people out to the park.
Now he is gone too!
What is the end result here?
Our attempt to make the team less of a money loser has cost the stadium to be in financial difficulty it was not in before we started cutting salary to save the team for what many believe is to save the Wilpons….
Are they REALLY being saved? They went from losing some control over the team to possibly losing control over the stadium as well….
And what happens then?
ALL that money everyone expects we are socking away for a rainy Free agent Spending spree day is going to go towards paying off the stadium money…NOT THE TEAM!
And Attendance will continue to decline to rock bottom levels.
We will have lots of Kids in 3-4 years just as we had lots of kids come up and fail in the late 70′s because there wasn’t a good enough team around them to succeed with even if they were any good.
Guys like
Doug Flynn
John Stearns
Steve Henderson
Lee Mazzilli
Kelvin Chapman
Tim Foli
Craig Swan
Pat Zachry
Thats what we are going to see in 4 years not SOMETHING SPECIAL….
The way to fix the finances of this team is not to SAVE money it is to GENERATE more money!
And no store on the planet that is losing money ever saved themselves by stocking FEWER products to buy!
But thats exactly what is happening here…
It is doomed to failure and not only as far as the Met finances are concerned but now it’s starting to hurt the other related businesses as well!
They better start booking a lot more Music Events at CitiField or they will lose the stadium control and that means they won’t be able to get the same sweetheart deals they can give the METS now and all the dominos tumble.
And if this thing really collapses to that point you may not have to worry about supporting the team or ticket prices….
Because the New Owners may just say Why compete with the Yankees when I can take this team with a 70 Million dollar payroll and move it someplace where there IS no team to compete with and make some money!
Like Vegas just a few miles south of thier AAA Affiliate!
The way I understand a revenue bond works is that if revenues are not enough to pay off the bonds on schedule or if there is a default then the bond holders are out of luck. The Citi Field bonds are not backed by the Wilpon’s other investments including Sterling Enterprise’s (SE) owners of the Mets. When that happens bondholders would have to write off a loss. The stockholders of SE the Met’s parent company would not lose a penny.
Well Hotstreak no one is saying the bondholders could force the Wilpon to take Met Money to pay off the debt…
But if they default the loan they could be forced to lose or sell off shares of the stadium to pay off the debt.
There is no bond that says Pay if you can but if not don’t worry about it….
There is some collateral as far as the bond is concerned and it is most likely the stadium not the Mets or any other sterling holdings.
Since this seems to be a municipal bond you know who makes the payment if the Mets can’t?
ME AND YOU via our Tax dollars!
I bet if they default the City winds up owning pieces of the Stadium and we all know how well that worked out when it was Shea Stadium that needed maintenance….
But in essence I agree with yu that they can’t force the Wilpons to take Met Money to pay off those bonds….
Just that the Wilpons have a damn good reason to do so to keep thier credit rating on future real estate ventures they need to get funding for and to keep control of what could be a cash cow once the bonds are fully paid.
Agreeed Metsie.
Yes, that’s right. If the specified Revenue stream isn’t sufficient to pay off Interest Payments & Debt Service (Mandatory Redemption Payments) then bondholders would be ‘short’ whatever that deficit gap is and, i believe, have recourse to restructure the payment streams in Bankruptcy–but NOT direct control / ownership of the Asset. Which is why Revenue Bonds are often carry lower ratings than G.O. that have the full faith & credit of the Municipality (taxing power) behind them.
Hence, a BB rating for a Stadium Revenue bond isn’t all that bad. And future ratings will hinge on the Revenue Generating capability of that Facility in coming years…so the more a team is competitive & wins, the greater the revenue stream supporting the bonds will be.
OMG if Zack Wheeler flops this will go down as the most colossal experiment in baseball history. If that kid doesn’t burst out of the gate like Tom Seaver, what a great giant farce this has all been. Hey kid, 20 wins, Cy Young, or bust!
What are you talking about? This isnt just about him, we are building a team. He’ll be part of great young rotation. No need to make more out of it.
It doesn’t have to be Wheeler.
However, the Mets do need at least one of the young righties to step up in a big big way. Be it Harvey or Wheeler or even Mejia or – another year or two down the road Syndergaard, Fulmer or Tapia.
If a couple of them do, this has the potential for a SF Giants type homegrown rotation like Cain, Bumgarner and Lincecum in varying order along with Niese.
Or what thev” Moneyball” A’s used to have in Hudson – Zito – Mulder or, heck, the mid 80s Mets with Gooden – Darling – Fernandez or the early 90s Braves in Glavine – Smoltz – Avery.
There’s no better way to turn around the fortunes of a franchise than having multiple young high-end starting pitchers emerge in your rotation.
Due to both mishandling and bad luck – plus no backup plan in place – this didn’t work with much hyped ” Generation K” in New York and permanently discouraged a majority of Mets fans in believing in the generally sound concept of ” building from within “.
Let’s hope for better luck ( and handling) this time. And – unlike in the mid 90s when there was no depth behind that trio beyond Octavio Dotel and Grant Roberts in the organization, this time there’s a ton of depth with upside for the 2015 & beyond window…
Yup. i’m amazed at the depth of stud / high / solid SP Prospects in our system. Can’t recall when we had such a herd of potential quality guys prepping for the Bigs.
1983, maybe.
And basically the plan is to have a costantly flowing pitching pipeline – both for the rotation & bullpen.
By July 2013, Harvey & Wheeler should be in the rotation, maybe Mejia or McHugh as well.
Familia, Gorski, Edgin and either McHugh or Mejia again should be in the bullpen. That’s basically half of the pitching staff possessing nice upside and making the minimum,
And unlike 1996 for example when it was ” Generation K” or bust, this time there’ s another big wave of promising young pitchers behind them, likely to reach the majors in late 2014 or early 2015 – or serve as trade bait for OF help in case the first wave has a low attrition rate and does well.
Name a team who has done that…
Here is a hint…They play in NY and they Start with a Y…
The issue you have is they didn’t do it via minors they went and bought it.
Not even the Braves or Phillies have done what you believe we are trying to do…NO TEAM has…
The Braves recent kids that came up were after a long pitching drought by them that started after Maddox Left and Smoltz got hurt.
It´s pretty much how the Braves sustained their success over 15 years from 1991 on.
# 1 Build a strong young core (Glavine, Smoltz, Avery, Mercker, Justice, Gant and others)
# 2 Add to it when the time is right to turn a good team into a very good team
# 3 Trade away prospects to keep things flowing. You may not be aware of of it, but several pretty solid pitchers or highly touted prospects of recent times hail from the Braves organization originally before being “cashed” in. Pitchers such as Adam Wainwright, Jason Marquis, Bruce Chen, Odalis Perez, Matt Belisle, Horacio Ramirez, Terrel Wade (the latter three all highly rated prospects who failed to realize their potential) were mostly used in trades for major league ready talent before or very early into their major league careers, same for Neftali Feliz & Matt Harrison when the run was already close to the end…while
# 4 Other top prospects such as Kevin Millwood, Chipper Jones, Ryan Klesko, Andruw Jones or Rafael Furcal were kept – however none of these had anything to do with the early 90s success but rather helped them sustain it – and over the years, the Braves strength turned from strong young pitching surrounded by a patchwork offense to strong veteran pitching surrounded by a mostly young offense before it fell apart in the mid 2000s when age took over and the farm pipeline dried up
# 5 Please note that except for Greg Maddux after 1992, the Braves rarely “won” off-seasons by signing big ticket free agents. What they did was add complementary pieces when needed that didn´t come from within, though there were several of them provided by the system – remember the Kerry Lightenbergs and Mark Lemkes of the world who kept on pestering us on & on…
The Braves were a laughingstock in the late 1980s, of course, though their sub .500 1989 & 1990 teams already featured strong pitching by Smoltz, Glavine, Mercker, Lilliquist and offense by Gant, Justice and Lemke, plus a bunch of fringe players who then got help by Terry Pendleton & Co in 1991 to go “worst to first”.
So this very much can be done.
Wrong because what the Braves did was NOT successful!
They won only ONE World Series….
The rest of the time they were not much better than that team Omar Built you!
I’d much rather see my team have a run of 15 straight years in the playoffs with only 1 WS title instead of lucking into winning 2 WS in 2 tries over 7 years like the Marlin and nothing before after or in between.
A season is success if you get to the playoffs. Once you’re there, it comes down who is hot and lucky. While blown calls and lucky bounces tend to even out over the course of a 162 game season and quality prevails, anthing can happen in a short playoff series.
If you’d tell me the Mets make the playoffs for the next 15 years and win 1 WS, I’d certainky sign up for that.
Definition of ‘Revenue Bond’
A municipal bond supported by the revenue from a specific project, such as a toll bridge, highway or local stadium. Revenue bonds are municipal bonds that finance income-producing projects and are secured by a specified revenue source.
Typically, revenue bonds can be issued by any government agency or fund that is run in the manner of a business – those entities having both operating revenues and expenses. Revenue bonds differ from general obligation bonds (GO bonds) that can be repaid through a variety of tax sources. Also called a municipal revenue bond.
Investopedia Says
Investopedia explains ‘Revenue Bond’
For example, if a revenue bond is issued to build a new toll road, the tolls that are collected from motorists who drive on the road would be used to pay off the bond (after the building expenses had been paid). A primary reason for using revenue bonds is that they allow the municipality to avoid reaching legislated debt limits. An agency that is run solely on tax dollars, such as a public school, cannot issue revenue bonds, since these entities would be unable to pay off the bond using revenues from the specific project.
Generally, revenue bonds mature in 20 to 30 years and are issued in $5,000 units. Some revenue bonds have staggered maturity dates and do not mature at the same time (these are known as serial bonds). Unlike general obligation bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the municipality, revenue bonds carry a higher risk of default.
Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/revenuebond.asp#ixzz2GYu6qREL
If the Mets don’t plan to ever spend again, they probably won’t win a lot or need to get extremely lucky.
However, before you start spending (again) – be it on a Zach Greinke type star or a Cody Ross type filler, you need a foundation in place. All that’s left from the more recent foundation is David Wright and one more year of Santana. The rest of the previous core is gone.
Once a new core is in place, Wright, Niese, Ike, Harvey, Wheeler, D’ Arnaud, maybe Mejia or Familia in a year or two, you start spending again and cash in some of the prospects you’re currently hoarding for impact shortterm help.
Any significant shortterm moves you make before are purely lipstick on a pig sort of moves. Like signing 31-year old Cody Ross to a 3-year deal now or veteran lefty reliever Jeremy Affeldt.
These moves may make a lot of sense in 2015 and I’ll be rightfully upset if they don’t happen then. However right now, they’re a waste of money.
Sure get Austin Kearns and Chris Young 3.0 again on the cheap to avoid having to rush prospects. But once these fillers aren’t needed anymore you can just dispose them.
It’s stunning how few people seem to realize the obvious strategy here.
Now, sure you may question the talents of Harvey, Wheeler or D’Arnaud and thus whether this strategy will work with this set of players. However, criticising the Mets for not going harder after Cody Ross or Shaun Marcum this winter seems rather short-sighted….
“All that’s left from the more recent foundation is David Wright and one more year of Santana. The rest of the previous core is gone.”
And who made that happen?
Alderson – basically without any alterntives with the team not good enough to play at a playoff caliber level over a full season. There was neither good enough young & homegrown major league help available nor anywhere near enough money to buy the missing pieces instead.
Alderson over the first two years on the job has been Chief Restructuring officer ( financially) as he has been GM – with a financially enforced goal of building for 2014 & beyond while trying to camouflage it to the mainstream public for as long as possible.
Again, on a 140 million $ budget for 2011 ( and starting with 130 already tied up) and a 95 million budget for 2012, what would have been the alternative ???
Except for using some charms to undo the Madoff fraud discovery and keep the Wilpon their nice 500 million $ fake bank account or convince them to sell to an ownership group without grave cash flow problems.
Hi Joe,
Know I posted this on another thread but think it is appropriate to repeat since it deals directly with the question at hand.
– - – - – - -
Winning might not always bring all the fans back if the cost of the ticket is out of reach for so many. That, I think, is the core of the issue.
It’s not just the roster payroll that is dependent upon increased attendance but the operation of the entire organization – a huge undertaking. In order to continue doing that moving into a smaller ball park capacity, ticket prices have to go up tremendously. And that is what happened in 2009 – less fans but way more revenue. The Mets drew over 4 million their last two seasons at Shea – but look at how much more revenue they made in 2009 at a Citi Field with approximately 13,000 less seats:
2007: $139.2 million
2008: $151.7 million
2009: $263.4 million
2010: $189.2 million
2011: $142.7 million
And note they wound up netting $112 million more in revenue while drawing nearly 900,000 less fans than they did in 2008:
2007: 3,853,955 fans, 85.3% of capacity
2008: 4,042,045 fans, 89.5% of capacity
2009: 3,168,571 fans, 93.6% of capacity
2010: 2,559,738 fans, 75.6% of capacity
2011: 2,352,596 fans, 69.5% of capacity
The problem, as brought out in the attached study, is that the Mets windfall came with the cost of premium seating and season ticket plans with a hefty price tag plus concessions and parking. Many fans who came that initial season admitted they could not come as often as they would want to because the high cost precluded them from doing so.
So, if the team begins to win again, how many would be able to afford to go and see them? A lot more if the ticket prices alone remained what they were in 2012 – which included many discounts and free bees. But one can do the math and see that 93.6 percent capacity in 2012 at 2012 prices could not have yielded anything near the revenue they achieved in 2009 – when it was estimated that an estimated daily capacity of 95 percent would enable the organization to break even fiscally.
The Mets already raised ticket prices in 2013. Dynamic pricing will allow them to raise the cost even more if the demand is there. But for them to generate enough revenue to field a competitive team and not lose money, most of us will then need to spend per game close to the equivalent of what the Mets were asking (“squeezing” in my book) of us back in 2009.
41% of the seats were designated “premium,” with an average price of $149.52 back in 2009.
How many would be willing to pay that much for the privilege of not being turned away from those exclusive entrances?
– - – - – -
Jeff really put not just his father but future owners in a bind by building such a smaller capacity stadium. Not exactly thinking in the long-term, as Sandy might say.
So the problem is not just re-investing more in the team to produce a better product that will increase attendance in my opinion. The problem is how can the Mets sustain operating as a competitive franchise without the cost of tickets reflecting something close to 2009 prices.
It comes down to how much people are willing to shell out for a cost of a ball game. That’s a problem created not just by the Mets but by baseball in general by both the owners and the players. They let their reach exceed their grasp. Not all the owners are responsible for this out of control spiral – but I can name two organizations guilty of this and both happen to operate in New York.
http://patrickfloodblog.com/2011/10/02/the-problem-of-attendance/
Well the cost of a ticket is out of reach to many but then again we are still cheaper to go see than the Yankees and they seem to have no issues selling tickets….
I know they may have priced you out Joey and they probably priced a lot of people out of the Market
Maybe in 20 years when all the loans on the Stadium are paid off they can reduce ticket prices to get some more people to come but the truth is Ticket Prices are about where they are everywhere else and they are not going to go down in price, only up.
If the less affluent fans can’t afford to go now then they will never go see a baseball game….
Compared to the other sports franchises in the city the Mets are the best bargain provided your not interested in seeing an Cy Young Pitchers and prefer to see a bunch of unknown kids…
Hi Metsie,
But at the same time, the Yankees have a stadium with maybe 8,000 more seats which means more “non-premium” priced tickets as well . The new stadium has a capacity of just below 50,300 so they too could still draw a lot more fans.
And notice the cost of 2012 Yankee tickets for the same equivalent vantage point than that of Citi Field. And last I read, the additional processing fees were also less than what the Mets were demanding. And they specify there is a small section of bleacher seats that have obstructed views – more severe than what we have with left field at Citi Field, yes, but again a small percentage of seats – nothing like the entire left side of the outfield promenade.
So perhaps going to a Yankee game can be slightly less expensive than going to a Met one – especially going through the secondary market which I’ve read the Yankees are trying to stonewall with restrictions on season ticket holders wanting to sell them.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/attend.shtml
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/yankees/2011/11/yankees-release-2012-ticket-information
And even with ther ability to sell more tickets Their cheapest ticket is still more money than our cheapest ticket….
And thier food is nearly a dollar more overall than ours as well….
Hi Metsie,
Actually, wouldn’t that depend upon “dynamic pricing”? The Yankees don’t incorporate that nor do they charge more to see the Red Sox as opposed to the Mariners.
Who knows, of course, if that is subject to change in the seasons to come.
Dynamic pricing isn’t needed if ALL your tickets are more than the other guys PREMIUM pricing games is it?
I mean what we charge for a Yankee game is probably STILL cheaper than the Yankees would charge to see anyone!
But Mets have dynamic ticket pricing. In the end as demand goes up so do prices, but if not prices come down.
I don’t know Harry, Thats how it is supposed to work the problem is Demand went down lst year yet Ticket prices went up anyway!
The problem here is Ticket Prices only stay static when the costs of doing business are static and there is still meat on the ticket selling bone to make more money off of.
What has happened here is they are losing money and one of the few ways to guarantee taking more in is to get more per ticket and hope they don’t lose enough sales to offset the gain.
If they charge 10% more per ticket but only lose 5% of thier sales they are essentially up by 5%
They raised prices because they had to….
And I called it awile ago….
They cut 60M off payroll from year that lost 70 MIl….And it resulted in a 23 Mil loss instead….
They have run out of Salary to cut and are foced to raise ticket prices to make up the difference.
Can’t say I agree about the Yankees having no problem selling tickets.
They didn’t sell out one post season game this past October.
Did they lose Money?
They have been to the playoffs so many times in the last 20 years people take them for granted…..If Jeter didn’t get hurt and they advanced I bet you they would have sold out then….
This is absolutely nuts!!! It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It appears to me that the Wilpons’ empire was never anything more than a paper one. Going all the way back to when to how they acquired the team, it was always a creative accounting proccess that got them their “Fortunes”. Think about it the Bobby Bo pay off, their dependence on Madoff and now they are doing it all again, deffering Wright’s money, same for Bay. This is scary! I for one believe the Wilpons are not financially stable enough to own an MLB franchise, unfortunately I do not have a say in the matter. Selig did and his solution was to bring in SA and slash costs and hopefully stabilize the situation. Weather I’m right or wrong, Met fans are the ones feeling the sting.
Here is the thing about RICH people Sloat….
Most are only Paper Rich!
Look at Bill Gates fortune…99% of it is Microsoft stock. It’s not actual money until he sells it which he has done in the past whever he needed real money and wanted to diversify his investments to protect some of his wealth.
If Microsoft stock tanked tomorrow Gates would be very poor relative to where he is considered now….I’m sure he has other investments to carry him through but most of his money could disappear in a day!
The Wilpons are rich based on their holdings as well…Which is not really Stocks but in Real Estate they own. You can’t buy a car with a building…They are worth what thier assets are worth and much of those assets were bought via getting a loan and paying it off with the revenues they collected from Commerical Renters of those properties.
They bought the Mets in much the same way! Got a loan, Paid it off with profits the Mets earned since they bought it and now own it.
Rich is a relative term. I have had meetings with guys who were worth 16 Billion when the meeting started and were worth 10 Billion when the meeting ended all because of something that happened in the stock market….
You know what he said? Hey I started off with a 10 Million dollar loan I have since paid off and I’m still WAY ahead of the game!
Being Rich doesn’t mean you HAVE a lot of money…It merely means you COULD have if you sold everything you own at it’s current value!
Trump has been broke how many times already yet he still doesn’t seem to have problems living the high life or making deals.
Wilpons could too if they wanted to but someone on the baseball side needs to push them to do it. And thats not happening right now.
EVERY rich person is a PAPER KING…And hardly any of that paper is Green with a presidents face on it.
Most of the Wilpons money is in Commercial Real Estate. The Cash flow they get is from Rent of those properties minus whatever maintenance and overhead those properties have.
As long as they have collateral to borrow against they could spend on this team if they really wanted to and someone from thier baseball side told them to do it…
But Sandy is not the guy who will ever do that!
All your points are correct and well taken Metsie. That being said, the Wilpon’s fortune seems to be a bit more volatile than most other fortunes. More of a house of cards, so to speak.
BTW, being someone in the wine business and a bit of a “foodie” I love the Lobster Ceviche reference but I think the Dom P mention was a bit cliche. I would have went with Krug or Salon.
Hi Metsie and Sloatsburg,
Your conversation makes me feel a whole lot better about my own fiscal worth. LOL After all, I don’t have to worry about losing ten billion dollars in a matter of a hour or so.
I will sleep much better tonight!
Well what I was getting at was it’s not thier fortune but thier cash flow that is volitile…
Not normally an issue for anyone unless they are not generating enough revenue to cover the overhead.
And cutting Salary is not helping them at all in that regard because all of the Salary they cut was revenue generating salary.
If they had found a way to get rid of Bay and Santana when Sandy got here they would not have lost as much money as they have because they would not have lost any of the revenue that Beltran, Reyes (and to a smaller extent) K-Rod was bringing in….They might have won more games with those guys increasing it further and they would have turned a profit.
Cutting out product and Salary that isn’t productive is fine…
But all we have done is cut the Salary that was productive…
And thats a recipie for disaster.
Rest Assured the WIlpons are financially sound…The Mets and as a result the Stadium are not and it all is because of that Attendance that keeps dropping year after year!
I HATE THE LOW PAYROLL…
But because the Wilpons can’t or won’t increase it to a very reasonable 125/135 million, The front office is doing its job by trying to build a sustainable winner at the minuscule price that the Wilpons are offering.
A lot of fans understand that, and yet smarty pants can’t seem to get it… Thank Goodness they are dramatically making the future better by getting the team younger and cheaper. Because the Wilpons won’t give the team the resources a big market team with their own regional sports network should have!!!!!
Wilpons are not giving Alderson any less than 19 other teams are getting. I thought Alderson was supposed to be a master at this? Are you related to him or something? You defend him like the Pope defended Hitler in 1939.
I already explained this on another thread, but everybody missed It I guess… When you add up the money already factored into the payroll from the minaya era what’s left over is about 45 mil. That’s what sandy’s working with, 10 million less than the second lowest payroll in the game (padres).
You havent explained anything. Wright got a lot more than anyone ever did in the Minaya era. He squandered and did the same thing. Plus he did not reinvest one cent of the stars he got rid of. He spent $16 million of Rauch and Francisco who gave us nothing. He does not know what he’s doing. The team sucks. You can sugarcoat is all you want but he’s made the team a lot worse than what he was left. He’s done a terrible job. I’m from 62 so please dont bring up untested prospects as evidence of anything going on. All teams have prospects. .
Does the name Johan Santana ring a bell?
Johan didn’t get 8 years and his total package is less than Wrights….
Correct. He got 7, Wright got 8 with much of it deferred. Beltran got $119, Wright got $139. Beltran’s contract was signed in 2005 and based on inflation the numbers are very close. And Beltran was getting his money on a shorter term.
So no, I don’t agree that the contracts aren’t comparable. They are.
I’m not gonna look it up but awhile ago I wrote an extremely elaborate post with all the details…
It might’ve been on another site. Oh well.
“You can sugarcoat is all you want but he’s made the team a lot worse than what he was left.”
This is absolute hogwash backed up by the simple fact that in the two years Alderson has been here the Mets have won more games than the previous two years under Omar. Just because you like the players that he got rid of more than the players he has gotten, doesn’t mean its a worse team. Someone above talked about the scoreboard being all that matters to NY fans.
well there’s your scoreboard. More wins in two years than in Omar’s last two years.
Go ahead, talk about the ’09 injuries. and then I will talk about the Red Sox.
Hi CB,
Let’s ignore the financial situation and look at the Mets on the day Sandy was announced as GM.
This wasn’t a team on a severe downhill slide with just a few good players in which to salary dump. It had been injury riddled. They had an infield which included Davis, Reyes, and Wright. An outfield that included Pagan and Beltran. The hope that 2010 was just an off-year for Bay. At the time, a young catcher who showed he had the potential to hit for average. They had a bullpen that included a closer – overpaid maybe – but a closer nonetheless and a pitching staff that finished sixth in the league in ERA and a defense that finished fifth in the league in fielding. The pitching was no doubt helped by Citi Field as well as the run scoring (13th in the league) was hindered by it.
With all that going for them, rebuilding for the future could have gone hand and hand with building up what they already had – the best of two worlds. When the best Sandy could do was the likes of Capuano, Young and company, that already doomed us for the upcoming season instead.
It’s handy to disregard the financial situation but not really very helpful. I don’t know why this is so hard for some people to get but the Mets have been hemorrhaging money for the last couple years.
Some of it is because of off field issues but some of it is because of on field issues, specifically the bet that by signing or trading for high priced talent the Mets would 1) win and 2) increase revenue. Neither of those things happened. We can blame Omar or the Wilpons or bad luck or all of the above but the reality is Alderson was brought in to right a sinking ship and to do it with a substantially smaller budget.
I keep hearing that Alderson got rid of some big name players but didn’t then reinvest that money in new players. Hello? That’s the entire point. His job wasn’t to get into bidding wars for high and often overpriced players it was to cut salary and build with young players.
We are right in the middle of this process, way to early to make an assessment of the success or failure of the plan but this is the plan and its not unprecedented at all. In fact, Alderson helped create what is now routinely (and wrongly) called moneyball in the early 80′s in Oakland. He started looking at new ways of evaluating players and bringing in guys who were being overlooked by most of MLB.
That’s why he’s here. He’s done this before. It won’t happen overnight but it is happening. And when the core of the team is established and finances are more healthy the Mets can then supplement the roster with more high profile FAs.
Crazy coherent thinking.
I’m having a hard time talking about this without just calling every one of these guys retarted dip***** so I’ll just stop commenting and come back in 2014
/bye
“signing or trading for high priced talent the Mets would 1) win and 2) increase revenue. Neither of those things happened….”
Are you serious they made a KILLING from 2006-2009!
And made it to the Playoffs, and were in the hunt every year three years straight….
So this is just bull…
Yes but it wasn´t sustainable and led to the bloated payroll for 2009 through 2011, having to pay the mortage for 2005 to 2008 success.
Spending only works if you can sustain a winning team and keep drawing 3+ million people (to Citifield in the Mets case).
Unfortunately the 2009 Mets got hit hard by injuries and lacked the depth in the upper minors to make up for those injuries via promotions or trades.
The 2010 Mets were healthier but also lacked the upper minors depth to make significant moves – and money started to run out, so besides getting Bay, Minaya wasn´t able to afford Jason Marquis or Joel Pineiro to fill out the rotation.
Minaya´s plan essentially had been:
Step 1: “Buy” a contender and surround budding young stars Wright & Reyes with a veteran core.
Step 2: Rebuild the poor farm system he inherited and create a pipeline of young talent, mostly from Latin America to take over once the expensive aging veterans decline and keep the team in contention. Minaya´s target year for that was the Opening of Citifield in 2009.
Step 1 worked out alright and led to three fun seasons from 2006 through 2008.
Step 2 only “worked” in terms of the veteran core indeed getting old – but failed in terms of enough young pieces ready to take over. Minaya seriously underestimated how long it´d take that Latin American talent pipeline to flow to really help the major league team. And of course he couldn´t foresee the Madoff debacle and ownership getting into grave financial problems so spending on more veteran talent wasn´t an option anymore as long as the previous one was still on the books.
Minaya (and Mets fans) can take solace that the “Latin American” talent pipeline now seems to be working. Tejada is already established. Mejia, Familia and maybe Valdespin should get established during the upcoming 2013 season. Flores, Tovar, Robles, Tapia, Ad.Rodriguez, Puello, Montero and Mateo (though the latter two technically were signed by the new FO) could all reach the majors at some point in 2014 or 2015 and following them is another group of promising kids like Lupo, Ynoa, Lara, Diaz, Rosario and others that may be helpful from 2016 on and beyond. So, while Minaya did run the franchise into the ground financially after some good early work (with a big assist by Bernie Madoff), his longterm legacy will be building up an impressive player procurement and development program in Latin American – that´ll help Sandy Alderson & Co. a lot going forward.
The biggest problem the team has (leading to the payroll crunch) is that the cash flow model is based on nearly filling the stadium (probably about 3mill or so break even) in order to cover all the debt piled on, along with the “big market” (145-150mill) payroll.
when the team tanked, the payroll was still there, but the ticket sales weren’t. And of course, the fallback of Uncle bernie left at the same time.
so, since payroll is real $ to pay (checks being cut) it had to come down (along with other expenses) to balance out against revenue. And with like just about every other team, it is not going up until after attendance rebounds (meaning they built the new foundation and the team starts winning, with exciting young players to attract attention).
If the bank account is empty, and they are already levereged up the wing wang, they are not in a position to spend a lot of money on payroll, hoping it leads to wins and enough ticket sales to pay for it all. Since there certainly is no guarantee that happens.
and like it or not, the owners are not going “all in” with their current hand, knowing if they bust they will lose the team. And really, no business owner is going to (nor shoudl they) do that.
Sure was sustinable….Yankees proved even a 200Mil payroll is sutainable for 10-15 years!
You want to say it was mortgaging the future and prefer to do LAYAWAY….
I might lose and have some issues later if I’m not smart and MAYBE I go through a 2009 and 2010 (note only 2010 lost money!)….But there is no guarantee that happens…..
You are SURE three years are wasted under your method and there is no guarantee you will ever get that winning you think your going to get!
And if you fall short all those years you put into the layaway were for NOTHING!
Hi Boomer,
I wanted to take the financial picture out of the equation so we could concentrate on the baseball matters at hand to discuss the merits of the moves under normal financial circumstances. By taking away that element, I think it is valid to contest that the team that Sandy inherited had more than enough good talent on it to make a run for post-season with some positive tweaks instead of the “inexpensive” players he went after.
That the Mets had a high priced payroll had little to do with their financial distress. If it was only a matter of reducing payroll, then why the need for CRG Deloitte to come in for organizational re-structuring? Why would Sandy need to cut ten percent of the non-baseball related task force?
We get so many conflicting reports about how much the Mets actually made or lost that we really don’t know what’s fact and fiction. I had read that the Mets had been losing money each year since Citi Field opened, however, according to Forbes, in 2008 the Mets made $33 million before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (at Shea) and in 2009 that figure was $24 million. According to Forbes, in 2010 they still made $26 million It was in 2011 that they lost $6 million. the payroll was in the same neighborhood give or take a few million in 2009 and 2010 (see charts below).
Would one year losing $6 million following four years of $107 million profit suddenly cause the team to not even be able to even meet it’s monthly expenses if it wasn’t for the help of MLB? Even if those Forbes figures aren’t all that Kosher combined with my layman understanding of finance, the math shows it wasn’t the payroll that had anything to do with the Mets financial problem – but it’s being used as a great excuse.
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/33/baseball-valuations-11_New-York-Mets_334564.html
http://www.stevetheump.com/Payrolls.htm#2009payroll
Joey, expenses all hit the bottom line. payroll is just one of them (though of coruse a big one, and certainly the most visible one to the fans).
So, if the experts can come in and find ways to streamline the organization and say save $10mill/year, that money is now available to use elsewhere (payroll, debt repay, helicoptor rides, etc.). The leaner the operation, the healthier the balance sheet.
Boomer I guess we are from the same planet. I will go a step further. It’ s because of our leader, Alderson the Mets survived the Madoff and the Minaya calendar. But meanwhile those funny creatures here who are mesmerized Earthlings think were still doomed because of our fearless leader. Yes we soon will trade Wright after he leads the NL in RBI’s in 2013 because that is the way our esteemed leader does things. Earthlings seem so attached to their players. They are weird.
Hi Hotstreak,
Hey, you starting your new years eve celebrating 24 hours early?
Actually, Omar isn’t the Darth Vader type as you from outer space contend – with Fred’s earthling friends like Madoff and Selig, who needs enemies? LOL.
All teasing aside, if we don’t touch base tomorrow, happy and healthy new year to you and yours.
Hi Joey:
You are the Man. Thanks!
To you and your family a Healthy, Happy New Year.
Hi Hotstreak,
Back at ya with that one too!
I really do appreciate the nice words especially since we see a few things differently. There is another who disagrees with me and he’s always accusing me of being a liar, pathetic, misleading and about a half a dozen other things just as nice.
May the force be with you always!
By how many? One more game?
Compared to a team that half of the starters were injured?
Hold On I’ll Check….
Oh ok so Sandy’s team won TWO MORE games than a team where half of it was hurt, and Didn’t have CLOSE to a Cy Young winner and a 32 HR hitting 1B…
You know why? Because he traded all the guys who were hurt those two years!
LOL But he is Improving us you know….
Guess what though…he hasn’t won more games than the 2010 Mets which was bad enough to get the GM fired for being that bad!
This something special you guys keep talking about better happen soon because if they don’t win 80 games…BYE BYE MONEYBALL and I’m will buy stock in Kleenex to cash in on your misery…
If the Mets weren´t rebuilding, it´d be bye bye. However they very much are whether you agree with it or not. And it´s a longterm project. If the Mets are still winning 75 games in 2014 and 2015 – when this will finally be “Alderson´s” team and there´s little progress, then sure he will be on the hot seat.
Minaya was fired after six seasons because he had spent over 250 million $ combined in 2009 and 2010 on a team expected to contend that finished below .500 in back-to-back seasons and already had commitments of 130+ million locked up for 2011 – without a better outlook, considering the staff ace had just undergone shoulder surgery.
And since while you´re comparing 2010 and 2011 (and 2012), you are aware that our 20+ million per year nominal ace, Johan Santana provided 365.2 strong innings in 2009 & 2010 overall with an ERA around 3.00, going 24-18 in the process – and then a combined 117.0 IP for 2011 and 2012 COMBINED with a 6-9 record.
Hey Dooby what was Cashen’s Record in his 4th year?
You guys seem to think we are following that chain of events so did Cashen win 70 games in his 4th year?
If Sandy wins 70 next year he is gone!
And I don’t see his Strawberry, Gooden, and Hernandez coming anytime soon…
At best you got a Darling and maybe a Fernandez in Harvey and Wheeler….
Cashen was taking a lot of heat in the press until he traded for Hernandez…That 90 Win season in year 4 saved him.
Sandy has already started taking heat, Mostly for not doing much of anything, Cashen at least made moves every year. He made the Mazzillie trade halfway through his second season. Was picking top 5 in the draft giving greater hope to fans who would wait to see them….
I don’t know anyone waiting with baited breath to see Nimmo or Checcinni….
So his clock is quickly running out of time…
He has AT BEST till the end of next year to get to 85+ wins or he will be sent packing…
Cause there is one thing the Wilpons have ALWAYS been consistent with…
When the Press asks for heads to roll and constantly harp about how bad the team is, the Wilpons give them a head to placate them for another 4 years that the Wait and See crowd can come up with excuses for until the press gets on them again.
Oh please take your head out of Alderson’s butt for just a second and smell what it is your selling here….
First off you say he is DRAMATICALLY making the future better….You have PROOF of this do you? Did your LOOPER come back and instead of shooting him you coaxed out the Baseball standings for 2014 and beyond in exchange for his life?
You say the Wilpons don’t give him resources…Yet here stands Wright signed till 2020 at roughly 18M per on average….
Do you think that was Sandy’s idea? Did Sandy really want him?
Or did he want to trade him away, save the money and get something later like he did with Dickey who the Wilpons did NOT INSIST he resign?
You keep believing and blaming the Wilpons for the lack of money to spend…Yet they are the ONLY ones who insisted on spending with this team.
Without their interference Wright is gone too for more of those guys you keep saying is going to have a DRAMATIC SUCCESS in a future despite the fact time machines haven’t been invented yet….
Enough with the blame the Wilpons for Sandy’s cheapness because it’s proved to be complete BULL at this point!
Sandy isn’t spending because Sandy doesn’t like to spend!
And the only time he DID it got him the World Series!
Everywhere else he has been he didn’t spend and won nothing…
There was NO DRAMATICLY BETTER FUTURE anywhere else he has plied his philosophy…
You only think that because ou WANT to believe it will be better….Cause it mkes you feel better and by the time you figure out how big a failure it will be you will hope no one will remember all these promises you keep making but can’t pay up on!
I cant get my mind off of this post. I read it went it first went on my Kindle and I’ve just read it again. I’m starting to think this is worse than the M.Donald Grant era. Mostly because Grant was just plain ignorant and he was vehemently opposed to players making more than GMs and Managers. He hated free agency and after the Flood decision he swore he’d never sign a free agent. I think it’s worse now because Alderson pretends to have a plan when in fact he and Wilpon are in it together. Grant was honest and in your face. He was a vile person and he didn’t care what the fans thought. Alderson cloaks himself in lies. That’s worse than Grant. He lied last offseason, he lied all through the first three months of the 2012 season saying he was a buyer but waiting until the last day to opt out. He lied after the season ended promising a team we could all be proud of and significant changes that would let the Mets contend for the postseason. How can you lie like that? Does the Nats, Phils or Braves GM lie like that to fans? If they do please show me where. I thank the good Lord for the wonderful times I have experienced as a Met fan of 51 years. What’s happening now is a lie of hope built on a foundation of more lies and mud. Nothing good ever comes from lying. It’s scary how easily he does it. Scarier more how easily many are seduced by his lies. But isn’t that the way it all began in the Garden? Alderson hast a pleasing shape.
Please give me the link where Alderson promised any sort of shortterm winning in the 2011 through 2013 time frame or changes that’d lead to a shortterm championship.
Did he openly state: ” Be patient. Our owners are basically broke, so we were forced to rebuild and it’s the smarter strategy longterm anyway. Come back in 2014 and see what we have because somewhere between 2014 and 2016 we’ll be good again and have a sustainable playoff contender in place” ?
No. He has wiggled around this subject and has kept up the lawyer phrase of ” looking to compete” in the meantime ( whatever that means anyway).
However, would you feel better if he did ?
Dickey, Reyes and Beltran are gone. 2013 will probably be the 5th straight losing season. The future rests on the shoulders of a bunch of talented young righties and Travis D’ Arnaud.
Agree.
SA is only the messenger. Between the FO and ownership they did a lot of skirting around the being broke issue,if not out and out lying at times.
If I remember correctly, coming into 2012 SA said something like ‘I’m not going to promise you a post season team, but they’ll be fun to watch’.
All designed of course, to keep fans interested and spending money.
Hi srt,
The Mets did say 2011 was going to be a “transition Year” and that Sandy would have more flexibility in signing free agents by no longer being hampered by expiring contracts.
Anyone who has a doubt need only read the attached from their own website (Mets.com) to see the word “transition” applied to 2011.
http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20110923&content_id=25125666&c_id=nym
The Mets brought the competitive status of the team onto themselves. And for one to have doubts about Fred, Jeff, Sandy or even Dave Howard regarding the honesty with that tell us, it is because they lost the trust of most of the fans with the spin, deception and empty words given to us before (i.e., how does evaluating the talent on hand when Sandy took over and deciding the team needed to be rebuilt can be taken with any sense of honesty in lieu of just salary dumping as was signing Jose being a top priority when never conducting any business negotiations?)
Sandy knew what he was getting into – there was no way one with his executive background would have taken the job blind-sighted and not demand seeing the Mets financial records if not from the Wilpons, then in general from the Commissioner. This, because it wasn’t that was simply urged by the Commissioner to TAKE the job but was urged to TAKE AN INITIAL INTEREST IN IT as well.
“Absent [MLB commissioner Bud Selig] asking [me] to go ahead and pursue this, and to some degree urging me to pursue it, I’d still be in Santo Domingo studying Spanish.”
The full article with that quote is also attached if interested. But I also wish to point out the misinformation by the author that substantially challenges the credibility of at least two portions of the story and how knowledgeable he was on the topic at hand – especially because it comes from New York Magazine. Regarding the above quote he wrote:
“Alderson said this shortly after the Madoff-Wilpons story had broken, and some took it as an expression of regret, the words of a man who thought he would have millions to spend on free agents and realized, too late, that he didn’t.”.
He then went on to ask:
“Did Alderson get baited and switched?”
Sandy took the job on October 29, 2010. The Madoff news broke nearly two years earlier, December 2008. Reports speculated Wilpon had lost about $700 million in which Fred said the losses were substantially less.
He also concluded Sandy was going to follow the “Red Sox” model of money ball. Wonder if he got that reference to Boston from the movie?
This type of reporting paints a picture of Sandy being more a victim who did not know the extent of the financial problems he was being asked to resolve.
http://nymag.com/news/sports/games/sandy-alderson-2011-4/
I believe SA more or less knew what he was getting into.
I also believe when Selig approached him about taking this GM job he asked ‘what’s in it for me?’
Whatever that ‘it’ is, it had to be good enough to leave that cushy job at MLB to come join this circus in NY, probably with the stipulation he’ll be a one and done type GM, handing over the reigns when his contract ends.
Hi DrD.,
The same point about Sandy technically not being a liar but an expert in the art of spin.
That’s why many of us take his “re-building” plan to get us back in the hunt with a grain of salt for his moves (or lack of) only resulted in taking us out of the hunt. He didn’t inherit a team the likes of the Astros or Cubs who only had a few star players to begin with.
“When asked to define 2012 progress, Alderson says his goals are the playoffs regardless of how futile that may seem to the outside world.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/mets/glare_on_mets_gm_about_to_intensify_8zBBxgyMwGDVOUIo7NHqTI
But I can assure you that even the Manager of the Houston Astros or Miami Marlins in 2013 will tell their players “it´s our goal to reach the World Series this year and stun the Baseball world”. EVERY manager and GM says it in spring training. “Ya never know. Gotta play 162 games. Yada, yada, yada”.
It´s one thing stating the obvious goal (of all 30 teams, as terrible as they may be) and another actually expecting something or making the fans rightfully “expect” something. Which Alderson for all his spinning & twisting around remaining “competitive” while evaluating and building never did.
And yes, things did change along the way. When Alderson & Co. took over in late 2010, it was expected that once the 50+ million come off the books after 2011, he´d have the flexibility to make Baseball moves on a 110 to 120 million $ budget (instead of the 140 to 150 he inherited). While the loss of fake Madoff money was a well known fact when he took over, the opreating losses weren´t as huge, cash flow wasn´t a problem and ownership hadn´t been sued for 1 billion $ recovery sums by Picard. So no longer this was “Moneyball with money” as initially claimed but instead “Moneyball with the added pressure of cutting costs” (which the Oakland version never had to do as costs had been low anyway).
And only during the course of the 2nd half of 2011 did the 2012 budget suddenly drop below 100 million – basically eliminating Reyes for financial reasons.
And I can assureyou he MEANT it because he paid Francisco 6 Mil per year on a two year deal thinking he solved the problem!
If he had just been giving a PLATITUDE and really felt what you think, he would not have spent that kind of money on Francisco and used an internal option instead.
In any case…you asked for a quote and there it is….
Lol. He signed a 2nd tier closer to 2nd tier closer money. The key was having a placeholder with closing experience that’s off the books again by 2014 for less than half the price of KRod. Since FF was never 100 % in 2012 this didn’t work out all.
Hi DrD,
If when Sandy took over it wasn’t a matter of cash flow, then that offsets the flexibility issue he claimed would hinder him in just 2011. According to Forbes, the Mets still made money in 2010. Yet Sandy went onto sign the most inexpensive free agents he could get, released two relievers because they wanted two year contracts and then rid us of KRod and Beltran mid-season.
Sandy knew the real situation that Forbes and others obviously hadn’t yet to uncover. And he knew that before even coming onto the job. His actions from day one show it. And that the same actions are still being taken today shows that apprehension from the civil suit was not a reason but more of a public relations excuse, as was the payroll issue. And even if Forbes was correct that the Mets made money in 2009 and 2010, the actions taken by Sandy, Selig and the Wilpons shows those on the inside knew the damn was already bursting.
BTW – great summary about the Braves and their ability to sustain the production of championship competitive clubs for two decades – building from within, well thought out free agent signings and trades that often included prospects that went on to have fine careers with other teams (the advantage being their farm system being so well stocked, of course).
Happy New Year
Hi Mookie,
Correct on all points, though I don’t think Sandy thinks of himself as a liar as he probably excuses it as simple, ordinary Madison Avenue pubic-relations-type hype and spin. It’s a different set of rules for those in the executive offices and often they abide by a different set of standards than we would.
But I think this discussion of finance is enabling all of us to learn more about the world of business and that when it comes to baseball it’s not WAR or money ball but the complex principles of investment.
And money ball is not a revelation or original financial concept either. The Yankees inadvertently proved that point a few seasons ago when they couldn’t get Cliff Lee.
When they lost one of their starters, one thing I recall clearly was Michael Kay before a game telling fans why it was then important for the Yankees to have tried to go after Lee – nobody ever has enough pitching because one never knows when an injury will come up.
Well, the Yankees didn’t have Lee and had to depend upon much less expensive components the rest of the season. If I recall, they were never in danger of making the post-season with less expensive quality players. They did not need Lee to make up for the slack. Brian Cashman knew that and so did all twenty-nine other general managers as well.
There are only a few teams like the Yankees that want a marquee star at every position and willing to spend to get it. Most teams go with the idea of why assemble a winning club for $125 million if they could do the same at $100 million. They don’t need the financial resources of the Yankees to compete with others – just enough resources to allow them to do so. Also, there is also the problem of competing with other teams for one’s services – and the player’s agents as well. As we see with Sandy, a waiting game does little but dwindle down the resources out there.
It’s not a matter of spending or not spending, it’s a matter of seeing how one could get the most for the least investment. Hasn’t that been a basic business principle way before Billy Beane?
How many people are thinking it is time for the Wilpons to look at selling the Mets to a group with money like happened with the Dodgers. Give them a new and fresh blood transfusion.
Would it not be awsome if the NY Mets were the talk of New York. not the big joke Show the Mets some respect. I would love that the Mets were relevent team in NY. Who is the bigger joke Mets or Jets?
It´d be great if the Wilpons were (forced ?) to sell.
However, I don´t see that happening, unfortunately.
that is everyone’s dream. Does not look like they will be forced to sell anytime soon, but there is still a chance that in the big picture of the rest of their financial “empire”, they will want to take advantage of a windfall and unload the team, etc. to use the $ for other purposes.
And the solution is what….sign Delmon Young? Juan Rivera? Jeremy Reed?
Victorino would have been a good signing o may levels….
#1 he could let us in on how the Philies steal signs so we could stop them…LOL
But he could be the leadoff hitter we need. Play CF so that Guys like Kirk and Valdespin don’t have to be thrown out there….
13 Mil per is not a lot of money especially since Wright and Bay’s deferred money covers it all and when Bay comes off the books you basically replace him with a 5 Mil Discount and get a better OFer and leadoff hitter…
Victorino would have been a great platoon partner for Nieuwenhuis in CF – though Nieuwenhuis getting the majority of playing time.
Not sure it would have made too much sense for a 75-win caliber win team though to possibly get to 77 wins and hand out a longterm commitment to a 33-year-old who doesn´t hit RHP anymore.
victorino was really bad last year. Even with the phils in a hitters paradise, he was tailing way off. and once he got to the Dodgers, his numbers looked like Jason Bay. at his age, after years of playing with reckless abandon, not someone I want to go near on a LT deal like that.
And how much of that was because a majority of thier best hitters were not even inthe lineup before he got traded?
Dooby, How can you on one hand say 2014 (or have we kicked the can to 2015 already) is going to be the year we are ready and then use 2013 chances to justify not getting a guy who would solve THREE key issues (Leadoff, HR, CF) for the next three years?
Do you really think the way to go is wait until ALL of these Prospects are here before you build around them?
Is that what the Braves and Yankees did?
I suggest you look and see those teams didn’t stop getting good players until those kids came up they got them so they were already here to help WHEN those kids came up…
Hi Metsie,
That’s the point. The kids being brought up will not fix the holes in the outfield and certainly will need time to develop. By going after certain free agents or trading for them, the outfield would have been mostly set for 2013 and 2014 when the kids come up.
But – since it would take two to three seasons for the kids to really make their marks (the last time two rookies came up the same season making such impact for instant success was 1975 with Lynn and Rice in Boston) that also means 2015 or 2016. Why spend the money now (sic)? If the kids don’t pan out, then we would be stuck with long-term contracts in the same situation we find ourselves now.
I don’t believe Sandy is just playing it cautious to see how the club jells with the prospects anymore than he needed more time to evaluate the team in 2011 and 2012 to decide what to do. He’s simply not spending the money.
Yes it does take 2-3 years for Kids to be all they can be but it also takes teamates around them to be sure they don’t look bad because they can’t make up for the players around them.
a CF allows you to play a Kirk in RF without having to worry about his ability to cover more ground because you don’t have a good Vet CF to cover it…
A good CF also gives you a way to take more time with a Duda who could be a great HR hitter if you can play him in LF and have a CF to allow you to shade him to the line to negate his lack of speed.
All these positions are inter-related….
Wright has had fewer throwing errors lately…Is that due to Wright or Due to Ike’s Glove?
There are a few position that have the greatest impact on others and it all exists in the middle!
Pitchers make catchers look like good callers
2Bs and SS’ make each other look good and look better based on how they work together…
And the CF is what makes the corner OFs better because they help those guys cover ground allowing you to cheat on the range to get more bat.
And THATS why getting a Victorino would be a huge help for the next three years and if it all these kids don’t make it pay off we wouldn’t know that until the time the contract on Victorino expires anyway! And maybe by then if you found a solution or didn’t you can trade him to someone who needs an adequate CF to make thier playoff run and get more kids.
The real test will be the offseason of 2014. Two years from now, Niese, Harvey, Wheeler and either Fulmer, Syndergaard or Montero will give us a great foundation. I think our bullpen will be good as well considering all the young bullpen pieces we have in Edgin, Carson, Gorski, Mejia, Tapia and Familia. Lus Mateo should be up as well. The pitching is going to be a strength…that is clear as day.
The test will be can the front office add the necessary pieces of the offensive side of the ball? Its so far away that its almost impossiboe to envision who would be available….but say a team had a player like a Matt Kemp type…that caliber. Can the Mets take on the huge salary and add a legitimate stud bat? If they can, by 2015 were going to have something cooking.
Absolutely. That is the plan – or better be the plan.
The Mets won´t get to 90+ wins again solely from within or trading for other prospects.
Eventually, they´ll have to cash in on some of the impressive prospect depth to speed up the process. Whether it´s after 2013 for 2014 or after 2014 for 2015 remains to be seen. That largely depends on how good the young pitching is and how quickly.
If either Harvey or Wheeler becomes an ace, followed by Jon Niese and then either Wheeler or Harvey again or Mejia or in time Montero emerges as a dependable middle of the rotation SP followed by Gee and shortterm signings at the back-end and some of the young pitching such as Familia, DeGrom, Mazzoni, Edgin, Gorski, Leathersich or Goeddel provides half of a nice homegrown bullpen, the Mets will need to strike on the trade or free agent market – either in time for the 2014 or 2015 season.
However, with a projected payroll of merely 55 to 60 million $ in 2014 and 65 to 70 million in $ in 2015 (counting arbitration), there should be plenty of room to add expensive talent from the outside to take this team from 70 to 75 (in 2013) to eventually 80 to 85 win levels (in 2014) up to 90+ wins (in 2015 – or maybe already 2014 in a best case scenario). That´ll only work via trading for proven major league talent.
And it´s a big reason why clogging the payroll now with veteran talent that´ll regress for 2014 and 2015 makes no sense. If someone is willing to sign a 1-year deal to make 2013 more interesting – sure, do it.
And waiting on Nimmo, Cecchini, Lupo, Evans, Syndergaard, Fulmer, Tapia, Mateo, Matz and others to be helpful by 2015 or 2016 and doing nothing else certainly won´t work either. Maybe some of them will help eventually sustain success and a manageable payroll going forward – but others will need to be “cashed” in as trade bait along the way.
ok….but u act as if a trade market has to be there just because…
who do u trade for in 2013-2014? u dont know because you have no idea who is available….its just the hope that the right deal will be available at the right time…that you have the exact pieces that a team is looking for, and they have the player you want…
and we have already made a trade that relegated Kevin Pawlecki to Omir Santos status…
lets make sure we dont do that with our cant-hi…I mean cant miss top prospect Brandon Nimmo!
Who was drafted in 2011, we would think a great prospect like that should be ready by 2015 !
as a matter of fact, since Sandy Alderson, the great sabermetric wizard that he is, is so great at spotting talent, I am sure the kids he drafted in 2011 should be ready to play on the MLB level in 4 years, that would include at least 2 OF !
Hi DrD.
Way too many “ifs” involved to be a thought out plan.
But you’re forgetting one thing. Yes, the payroll goes down in 2014 but by 2016 it again reaches close to what we have now. What does Sandy do – sign some more stop-gap players for just two seasons? Even if that results in two Carlos Beltran-types, what does that say for 2016 when the kids are no longer wet behind the ears? The outfield problem all over again?
But the payroll also moves upwards as the team is winning again.
Basically the plan is to have revenue and payroll relate to each other.
If revenue is low, so is the payroll.
And with rising revenue – because of a winning team – so does the payroll.
You can make money with a NY franchise on a 150 million payroll if you field a winning team that draws 3+ million fans and thus creates revenue.
If your team wins 78 games with a 140 million $ payroll, eventually you lose money.
So you either need rich owners or cut costs.
Hi DrD,
You just made the point about Sandy’s decisions based on finances, not baseball, by saying “Basically the plan is to have revenue and payroll relate to each other”. That, however, from a business standpoint is not sound thinking for long-term profitability. Doesn’t that imply that if attendance goes down, one then does not make the financial investment (in players) to bring it back up?
Though you are right in saying “If your team wins 78 games with a 140 million $ payroll, eventually you lose money. So you either need rich owners or cut costs.” remember to add that in 2009 and 2010 one did make money with a NY franchise on a $135 million payroll fielding losing teams.
So what caused the Mets to cut the payroll so drastically in such a short time instead of re-investing in it since they were not losing money? MLB teams can sustain a few seasons with losses at the gate unless they are really in bad financial shape. Being that the team is in New York, it was making money and the owners were also rich it is not a matter of a temporary set back in revenue as it a more serious set-back in debt and lost capital from non-attendance sources of investment.
Hey, happy new year to you and yours, always.
In 2009 – the first Citifield season – the Mets made a money in spite of losing based on the novelty factor. After finishing below .500 again, people – rightfully so – stopped believing that the Mets were a legit playoff contender. The Mets in 2010 didn´t lose a lot of money as their payroll was lower and attendance was higher than in 2011. And as they entered 2011 – with essentially the 2009 and 2010 team returning again – just at higher salaries with deals to Santana, Bay, KRod and Beltran all being significantly back-loaded contracts, ticket sales collapsed and so did revenue.
Sure, rebuilding also is a financially motivated decision. You have to weigh your options and decide whether what you have is good enough to win – short- & longterm in your financial environment.
There was NO alternative to rebuilding in this case due to finances. Somewhat similar to Steinbrenner being suspended in the early 90s when the Yankees were forced to stop their inefficient high spending ways of the late 1980s.
Hi DrD and happy new year.
In 2011 we agree Sandy did not have had the financial means to build up on what we had on the major league level but that didn’t in turn mean having to dismantle a team in mid season that was playing so well, either. Who could have simply kept the team intact and show the team he had faith in in it – the point R.A. was making about the players believing in themselves.
After that awful start they were playing .575 ball for more than half the season despite the burden of so many inexpensive players that were indeed producing only fifty percent. That’s why I suggested we might have been doomed that prior winter for that lack of depth in the pitching department put together by Sandy – for whatever reason – was going to catch up on us.
I also think Sandy seriously damaged team morale the past two years with his attitude – telling the media he needed more time to see what this team was made of when they were playing so hard and well in 2011 which carried through to this past season when the team felt it was kicked in the stomach. Though that is not going to have any effect on the young players being brought up, who knows how much that will be on the mind of the players who went through it if they make a surprise run this year and look to the front office for support once again?
“the Mets made a money in spite of losing based on the novelty factor”
Thats right and they made it before they lost or played a single game!
Many people bought season tickets that year to lock in the best seats in hopes that without injury they would pick up where they left off in 2008 and maybe win something.
Unfortunatly the Injuries did happen and ruined the season but the attendance stayed high because those tickets were already sold and it’s far more a waste to not go see a game you have tickets for than it is to stay home and not use them at all…..
http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/alderson-dismisses-full-autonomy-with-mets-1.2411913
The above link is about Sandy Alderson’s press conference about lack of full autonomy.
If you look at possible managers to be hired Terry Collins name isn’t even there. It is known that Fred Wilpon’s high school classmate Sandy Koufax strongly recommended TC be the next “middle” manager.
It is hard to believe that the Wilpon’s DO NOT control payroll :Sandy Alderson a Money Ball guy was hired to reduce payroll. Jeff Wilpon recently said in 2014 payroll will be increased. Is Sandy a puppet? Well lets say the Wilpons pull the purse strings as they did with DW. The Mets mess is the responsibility of the Wilpons.
Well sure the Wilpons have control over the purse strings….
Does that mean they have forced Sandy to not spend or is it that he really didn’t WANT to spend and they simply didn’t overrule him?
UNTIL WRIGHT!
Now ask yourself this…What would have happend with Wright if the Wilpons did not step in and say pay him?
If you need a hint look no further than Dickey who was far cheaper and National Star….
The ask yourself who is stopping Sandy from spending that money he had at the deadline lastyear to make the team better or this year now that he got Bay and Wright to defer money?
Is it really the Wilpons?
I know enough people hate them to make it an easy sell but the truth of the matter is the one case where we KNOW they have interfered was when they SPENT on Wright!
Sandy says he has money but he doesn’t want to spend it and it’s just convenient to blame Wilpon for that 100M payroll when Sandy can’t even bring himself to spend THAT much!
Maybe, just maybe, Sandy is onto something here.
The Braves’ great run was built on the backs of three pitchers- Glavine, a draft pick; Smoltz- acquired from Detroit for an aging starter down the stretch (Doyle Alexander), and when they were ready to win, they made the big free agent signing in Maddux. One can only hope that this is what we have in Harvey and Wheeler, but the odds of that are miniscule- we are talking about 3 hall of famers who spent 10 years together in the same rotation and in the case of Smoltz and Glavine, about 15.
Years of being bad- 1985-1990 allowed the Braves to draft guys like Glavine, Gant, Jeff Blauser, David Justice, Tommy Greene, Mike Stanton, Steve Avery, and Chipper Jones, Mark Lemke, Kent Mercker, Ryan Klesko, Pete Smith, Mark Wohlers, and on and on. They signed some middling free agents that turned into nice players for them- Terry Pendleton, Lonnie Smith, and Sid Bream. There were only a handful of players on their 1991 NL West winning roster who were there opening day 1989 for a team that would win 63 games.
Later, they would trade for Fred McGriff, Marquis Grissom, Kenny Lofton, and others using a farm system strengthened as much by reputation if not actual talent.
Yet while they were winning, they didn’t neglect the farm system.
The Mets of the early 80s built a farm system that way too, but after 1986,and once Lou Gorman left for Boston, the farm system fell into disrepair in such a manner that in many ways is still hasn’t recovered.
That’s pretty much the idea behind this.
Of course there’s no guarantee it’ll work.
But with the financial flexibility of a large market team in a couple of years again, the combination of tremendous young pitching depth and payroll flexibility is quite promising.
You forget tat there is no large market flexability if you build your team the way a small market does….
If you insist winning drives attendance and deny that having stars drives it then you never get the attendance back until you go off budget in a big way the way we did in 2005 to get them back.
And despite your idea that the Yankees did it with thier 4 or 5 kids the truth is those kids do nothing if the Yankees had scrubs around them instead of
Joe Girardi
Mariano Duncan
Wade Boggs
Paul O’Neil
Tim Raines
Darryl Strawberry
Kenny Rodgers
Dwight Gooden
Jimmy Key
David Cone
Kids without Vet leadership and experience never succeeds….
Frank Cashen’s year 4 team won 68 games but he was able to bring out Darryl Strawberry, Terrell, Darling, Jose Oquendo, see continued development by Mookie Wilson, Hubie Brooks, and Jesse Orosco. He was able to get Tom Seaver back from the Reds and fleece Keith Hernandez from the Cards in June.
He got lucky that it all came together for him a year later when he lost Seaver and Doc Gooden emerged.
Sorry but thier record in 1984 was 90-72…Cashen’s first year was 1980.
Seaver was a shadow of himself in 1983 and went 9-14
Happy New Year JDD
“”3-4 pieces of marginal improvement is the difference between a 79 win team and a 89 win team”
I have to agree that is often the case, though not always. But in terms of the team Sandy inherited in 2010, so many point out that it was indeed only a 79 win team (though it is left out that was due in part to injuries) so could he have also not found that marginal improvement in some outside players to make up for those ten wins?
Sandy got rid of Takahashi and Feliciano in the bullpen but did not replace them with ones that could have yielded marginal improvement over them. He released Maine (a good move) but replaced him with one who had been injured for four years (Young) which due to that injury many of us thought would also not be a marginal improvement over Maine.
Omar should not be left off the hook on this for he didn’t do well improving us at first base, center field and at catcher during his last season either. I think that reflects either that the money wasn’t there or wasn’t being allowed to be spent on acquiring those bit more costly improvements.
Yes and by any mathematical measure, if your first season is starting in 1980, your fourth is 1983.
So you see 90 wins in 2014…
Good Luck with that!
No- not 90 wins. Not even close. Because basically, this isn’t 1983, and we now know why Keith Hernandez was available back then for so cheap. Also, sorry, Zach and Matt, and Jeurys and Jennry, and Noah- but there is no Dwight Gooden, and I would venture to say a Ron Darling in this group. Also, not sure that there is a Darryl Strawberry to bring up on May 6….or a Lenny Dykstra, Wally Backman
Frank Cashen was able to fill a rotation with Doc Gooden, Ron Darling, Walt Terrell, Rick Aguilera and Sid Fernandez and then go onto add pieces like Bruce Berenyi, Bob Ojeda, David Cone and Frank Viola- all while dealing from the strength of the farm system. He was then able to flip the serviceable Terrell into Howard Johnson-
The Mets were able to trade the likes of Rick Ownbey, Bill Latham, Kevin Tapani, Wes Gardner, Calvin Schiraldi, and Floyd Youmans for big pieces- these were surplus parts in Frank Cashen and Lou Gorman’s minor league system.
I don’t love the job Sandy Alderson is doing, but what would most of this crowd would not understand the tactic of not signing another team’s free agents- After Frank Cashen went all in on Dave Winfield after the 1980 season and he signed with the Yankees, the Mets didn’t sign another major league free agent (other than Mike Cubbage) until Vincent Coleman after the 1990 season.
“but there is no Dwight Gooden, and I would venture to say a Ron Darling in this group. Also, not sure that there is a Darryl Strawberry to bring up on May 6….or a Lenny Dykstra, Wally Backman”
Well isn’t that my point?
Cashen had all of them by now, and got a Hernandez that is not likely to happen again as you so eloquently put it….
Cashen had 12 First rounders and 5 Top 10 picks to get all his kids….
So anyone who thinks this is going according to the same schedule as what Cashen did is fooling themselves…
2015 sould have 90 wins if that were true….
At this rate we won’t get to 90 Wins until 2017 the latest and that if we become the worst team in the league this year and start collecting top 5 First rounders and somewhere along the way find a stupid GM to give away a Hernandez…
Otherwise it isn’t going to happen at all and Sandy isn’t going to be here past 2014 if they don’t win between now and then…..
Hi Metsie,
I’m sure you will agree that Cashen didn’t know he had a Gooden, a Strawberry, a Darling, etc. until they actually became Gooden, Strawberry, Darling, etc. The point we’ve both been making about prospects still being a hope. The same that held true for Cashen holds true for whoever is calling the shots for the Mets today.
That’s why we each have our favorite prospects but many still have to understand not to call Wheeler a Wheeler and d’Arnaurd a d’Arnaud until they actually become a Wheeler and a d’Araurd.
What Cashen did, as we point out, was to also obtain players during his rebuilding process and even in 1982 we had dreams of Foster/Kingman/Valentine/Wilson/Brooks/Stearns and Staub plus others providing us just enough scoring power to overcome our pitching deficiencies to create some noise that summer – maybe not a champion as much as a good team only to get better.
Well Straw was a top overall pick…He had Better have known he had a quality guy….
Gooden Top 5 Overall…
Wheeler was 6th Overall…
Harvey 7th overall.
d’Arnaud was picked 37th, When was Snydergard taken?
These are not Strawberrys or Goodens…
Yet these are the guys we call TOP PROSPECTS….
You have to actually go out of your way and be an idiot to screw up a top10 Pick.
Cashen blew 3 of his 5 and Got only Gooden and Strawberry to show for it.
As for Darling he should have known he gave away a lot to get him….
Did we get as good back for an above average fielder as we did from a Cy Young Pitcher?
I can’t say we did….What we got was a guy we could have drafted ourselves at some point but didn’t think enough of him to want him then…
And great he’s better than Thole but then again YOUR probably an improvement over Thole and you wouldn’t cost us a Cy Young Pitcher….
Bottomline is even if d’Arnaud and Wheeler are our next Gooden and Strawberry the issue still remains…
Who is our Mookie, Who is our Dykstra, Who is our Backman, Who will we trade and who will be dumb enough to give us our Hernandez and Carter?
We are so far behind the Cashen curve if people think thats what we are shooting for that Sandy won’t live to see it.
Truth is Sandy will need 8 years because he has spent the first three doing what Grant did in one and only THEN will he be able to draft and trade enough to get all that Cashen did in the 5 years he did it in.
Sandy at best has two years before he wears out his welcome….
If we are lucky then maybe his replacement comes the say way Grants did, Someone else buys the team and brings in thier own guy!
Start the rebuild clock 5 years from THAT point not when Sandy took over.