I just read Dave Dombrowski explain in an article by Gordon Edes of ESPN, his version of events on how the Yoenis Cespedes deal between the Tigers and the Mets went down.
I was very curious to see what Dombrowski had to say, mainly because Sandy Alderson was gracious enough to give MMO’s John Bernhardt an exclusive interview a week after he made the deal to explain how it all fell into place and how Cespedes became a Met.
Here is how Sandy explained the deal to us:
John: At the trade deadline you decided to go big and make several moves to bolster the New York Mets roster for the home stretch of what’s turning out to be an incredibly exciting pennant race. Those moves have been symbolic and strategic and have really charged up the players and the fans alike. Explain for us how all of that happened.
Sandy: You’re right, John. I think those moves were both symbolic and strategic. I think at that point of the season we acknowledged that we had some great pitching, that we were in a race, and that we clearly had some deficiencies and parts of our roster that we needed to improve. You can’t do that without having access to players outside of the organization, especially when you approach the trade deadline.
We acquired Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe a week or so before the deadline and that was really intended to upgrade the overall offense and give Terry Collins some more options and a little more depth on the bench.
We felt it was very important to add some veteran experience and both those players have been very good and have made an immediate impact. And a nice thing especially is that Kelly Johnson can play so many different positions and Juan Uribe has always been a very clutch player and is terrific in the clubhouse. We’ve seen that in the last few games.
We also felt we needed to improve the bullpen, especially with the loss of Jenrry Mejia. We thought we needed to provide some additional experience for the bullpen and we added Tyler Clippard who has been an excellent setup man. We knew that he could play in this environment and that he could exceed in that role as he did when he was with the Washington Nationals. Interestingly, he’s the only bullpen arm we have with any playoff experience, and I think that Bartolo Colon is the only other pitcher we have who’s been in the postseason. We felt that that was also important.
It’s still left us with a need to provide the team with some quality offense. We spent a lot of time for the three days leading up to the trade deadline and exploring many different possibilities. Everybody is now aware of the ill-fated Carlos Gomez trade, but we are very happy that we ended up with Cespedes and that Wilmer Flores is still with us. So all in all everything worked out pretty well.
So far all of those guys have really done well, and they’ve been a big boost for us. It also freed the rest of the roster to do what they do. Rather than having only three or four guys who we could count on to produce in the lineup we now have tremendous depth and solid options up and down the lineup.
We shouldn’t overlook the fact that we also called up Michael Conforto as well and traded for Eric O’Flaherty to give us another left-handed reliever. We’ve made a lot of different and significant roster changes over the last couple of weeks that we are very pleased with.
John: And the energy level surrounding this team has just been so astounding since those moves. The dramatic change and positive energy, not just with the players and the team but also the fans and the city, has been so incredible to see. People all over the town are now wearing Mets stuff and talking about Mets stuff it’s pretty amazing.
Sandy: That’s been very exciting and rewarding. We had a rough 4-5 days there where we lost a pitcher to a full year suspension, and then we had that Gomez thing which was very public and negative. Then we lost a very tough game on the Thursday following that aborted trade, so by the time we got to the trade deadline, things had gotten a little exhausting. So you make the trades hoping that things will improve but you never really know.
At the point we made the Cespedes trade we were three games out for the division lead and even more than that for the wild-card spot. But you do what you have to do and hope that things will improve and luckily they have. It ended up costing us some young players that we liked and one of them has been pitching very well and was very prominent in Michael Fulmer. But sometimes you have to do what you gotta do.
John: I’m a gigantic Michael Fulmer fan, I’ve watched him pitch six times this season. I have to ask you, please tell me just how difficult it is to trade a guy like that? It seems to me like you were holding off until the last possible second of the trade deadline before you actually pulled the trigger on that deal.
Sandy: It’s very true, we spent the whole day Friday trying to keep Michael Fulmer out of the deal. Then we looked at the clock and we only had 15 minutes left until the deadline and we realized that the Tigers were not going to budge. We even offered them more players just so we could hang on to him.
But at the end of the day, they just sat firm the whole time and they basically got exactly what they wanted. In retrospect we’re very happy that we did it, and we know Michael is going to be an outstanding pitcher.
John: Sounds like both teams got what they wanted. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Yoenis Cespedes.
Sandy: We’ve been very fortunate that he’s been able to play some centerfield for us. Originally one of the reasons we went after Carlos Gomez was because he could play centerfield and give us some flexibility at the corners.
But Cespedes has allowed us to do the same thing. Plus I think Juan Lagares has responded positively in what’s now a part-time role. He has been able to focus and work on some things without worrying about his results on a day to day basis. It looks like some of those things he’s applied immediately and it has already paid some dividends. So having Cespedes available to play centerfield has been a real plus for us.
What’s really amazing to me about how Dombrowski explained his version of events was how strikingly similar everything was down to the last detail of what Sandy told us.
I expected to see some variations but there really weren’t any, it was almost an exact recounting of the Mets’ version of events.
“We were talking with other clubs, but the Mets, we always felt they were the best fit because they had good pitching and we felt they might give up a guy like Fulmer, who we really liked,” Dombrowski said. “They had so many starting pitchers, he was the one guy we identified from other clubs we liked the most.”
That’s pretty much what Sandy said to us, “They liked Fulmer a lot and they weren’t budging from him.”
One thing I learned that I didn’t know was that Jim Leyland, the former Tigers manager now a special assistant with the team, made a call to Mets manager Terry Collins, a good friend. “Jim said, ‘Terry, get him — he’s going to help you guys,'” Dombrowski said.
Both general managers explained how it went down to the wire. Dombrowski had advised Alderson that if they were going to make a deal, it had to be struck 10 minutes before the deadline, because there was a loan provision in Cespedes’ contract that would require approval by the commissioner’s office.
“Sandy said he would call back with an answer by quarter of four,” Dombrowski said. “And he did.”
“If we hadn’t gotten what we wanted,” Dombrowski said, “we would have kept him.” Again, exactly how Sandy portrayed it to us.
It’s fascinating.
The rest as they say is history. Pay the man. 🙂
