Repeating what he has said since hiring new GM Sandy Alderson, Mets COO Jeff Wilpon told the NY Post that Alderson could bring in any players he wants and that he has no restrictions.
“He’ll have all the opportunity in the world to bring anybody he wants in,” team COO Jeff Wilpon said yesterday, without giving the GM carte blanche. “The way for him to do that is to bring the ideas to us and we’ll talk about it. But he does not have restrictions. We’ll deal with everything on a case-by-case basis.”
On October 29th, Fred Wilpon said in his press conference to announce Sandy Alderson, that the new GM will be afforded the same latitude as Omar Minaya regarding the signing of big players, “We have gone over budget 100% every season”, Wilpon said. “We never said no to any player Omar wanted. Alderson can come to us and discuss any big players he wants just as Omar did.”
Jeff Wilpon also brushed off the notion that the Mets will not re-sign Jose Reyes.
“Sandy and I have had conversations about all the different scenarios that could happen with Jose. When asked if he had lost hope that Reyes would remain a Met, Wilpon said: “Why would we? There’s a long time between now and next year [and there are] a lot of things that can happen in a lot of different directions.”
Despite the very low key spending this offseason, the Wilpons have been consistent in saying that the new GM could add payroll if he wanted, sign who he wants including a big name player, cut unmovable contracts like Castillo and Perez, and have a wide lattitude.
Aside from cutting Castillo and Perez, we haven’t seen those other things play out this season, in fact we’ve seen the opposite. But is that a function of the Wilpons, or is Sandy Alderson just implementing his own way of doing things?
One of the very first things Alderson said regarding payroll was that he thought the Mets payroll was too high. He made that comment in an interview with Mike Francesa shortly after his introductory press conference at Citi Field in October.
During Spring Training, when asked about the approximate $60 million dollars that will come off the books in 2012, Alderson warned, “don’t expect any shopping sprees”.
By the way, in a conference call I participated in, he was also asked about that $60 million and he jokingly said that he might need all of it to sign Jose Reyes. It was pretty funny.
I think what we’re seeing this season, is just a new shift in the philosophy of running the Mets with regard to spending and budgeting.
Alderson is so inherently different than any of the other Mets GM before him, that it will take some getting used to.
He is busy working his plan and whether or not the Mets were at $145 million in payroll or $200 million, he doesn’t have any desire of exceeding the $125 million dollar threshold from what I can gather.
I don’t know how that will play out in this very demanding big market, but that’s how it’s going to be regardless of how much the Yankees, Phillies and Red Sox spend and win.
We’ll just see how it goes…
