|
In a report for Newsday, David Lennon talks with Phillies GM Ruben Amaro Jr. about the Mets and Omar Minaya, and building a potential back-to-back World Champion.
In the mid–to-late 90s, the Phillies lost 90 games in back-to-back seasons, after which Ed Wade took over as GM, hired Dallas Green as a top adviser, among others, and drafted Chase Utley in 2000, Ryan Howard in 2001, Cole Hamels in 2002, and acquired Shane Victorino as a Rule 5 selection in 2004.
“I don’t know how many people he fired and hired, but he really revamped the entire system,” Amaro told Lennon. “The fact of the matter is, without bringing that type of talent into our system, we wouldn’t be here. That was Ed’s goal. The goal was to get here and stay here and we had to do it from kind of the ground up.”
Additionally, as Lennon points out, “The Phillies deep farm system allowed them to make the key midseason trade for Cliff Lee.”
…i have talked to a few player agents over the last week, and to a man they all say it is a given that the Mets are notorious for not spending heavily on the draft… and, since this is understood going in, top players do not slip to them…
…for instance, if a future player believes the Mets will pay ‘over slot,’ his agent will begin telling the market that his client will demand a lucrative ‘signing package,’ and, as such, low-spending teams will avoid drafting him because they know he will not sign for what they’re only willing or able to pay, and so the player slips in the draft, on purpose, where the 
big-spending team will scoop him up and meet his demands… this is what the Red Sox have been doing for years… it’s not a fair system… but, it is the system… and, since it can be manipulated, the Red Sox, Phillies, and others, manipulate it, helping to stock their farm system… for instance, by doing this, and doing it well, the Red Sox essentially end up drafting three or four ‘first-round quality prospects,’ every year they draft…
…from what i understand, this is not exclusive to big-market teams any more… for instance, the last two seasons, smaller-market teams have started forgoing less-impactful, major-league free agents, say, a bench player or two for $5 million, a journeyman relief pitcher for $5 million, and, instead, are re-allocating that $10 million to the draft, where they believe they can get a better return on investment…
To read more, including quotes from Amaro about his close friend, Minaya, read Lennon’s report, here.
 |
 |
 |
RSS 2.0 Both comments and pings are currently closed.
they believe they can bet a better return on investment… but do any of these teams *actually* receive one?
i don’t think the Mets need to go over slot every year. and we’ve gone over the reasons the Mets are so willing to abide by the unspoken rule, from “Freddy Coupons” to ownership’s allegiance to the commissioner’s office. but, it likewise seems silly to me to insist on NOT going over slot every year. c’mon fellas… once or twice wouldn’t hurt.
I’ve been saying this for years.
For Jeff Wilpon to say that the the Mets spend money on the draft using Matz’s signing as an example is ridiculous. They merely went about $200K above slot for Matz. That’s it.
The Mets still managed to finish second to last in total money spent on the draft. That is laughable.
The draft yields prospects which is the best baseball currency. You develop and keep the best players and trade the surplus for major-league help.
I just don’t get it with the Wilpons. I don’t get why they just to comprehend this aspect of baseball. It really makes me question them as business people.
Exactly…Teams are in a better situation to hold on to their talent these days, so you really don’t see as many salary dumps as a few years ago (except for bad contracts). Prospects have a higher value, and even if they don’t come up to star for your team, they can be used to acquire a player who can (Santana anyone?). I understand that the Mets are putting a focus on the international draft, but there is no reason that they shouldn’t be aggressive in trying to lock up amatuer talent. Obviously not every player is worth going over slot, and the Mets is limited circumstances have gone over this cap, but when one of your strengths includes a fat wallet, and you don’t use it, what good will that do you?
Fred Wilpon is old school and wants to “respect” the rules.
The problem is, due to Bud Selig’s overall incompetence, the rules as they exist are broken. There are no serious consequences to teams when they go above slot, so the smart ones that can afford to do so will.
Instead of being deferential to Selig’s wishes, Wilpon should fight to put some teeth into the rules. At the same time, he should not penalize the Mets while the current rules are in effect.
Great information in this post. It’s too bad the Mets are so willing to overpay for major leaguers way past their prime, but pinch pennies when it comes to the draft’s best young players.
I think the Mets have an annual amateur budget which they abide by. But most people look at this budget in much the wrong way.
Lets say for arguments sake the average team spends $4 million in the draft, and then lets say further that the Mets spend only $3 million. This doesnt mean that the Mets have an amateur budget of $3 million. All things have to be considered, and this includes their international amateurs and the complexes the Mets run.
In fact once all things are equally considered, it might turn out that the Mets actually have a $10 million annual amateur budget versus an average of $6-$7 million.
These are wild guesses, but they at least help give some perspective.
This is not to say that I agree with the Mets amateur approach. I too would rather then Mets increase their budget by $5 or more million and go hard at some of the top international free agents and amateur draft players. E.g. They agressively drafted players this year that were committed to top college programs, but they didn’t make aggressive financial offers. They allowed their targets to slip for measly 100’s of thousands of dollars. We are not talking about a difference of a $1 million. We are talking about $100k, $200k, etc…
Furthermore, the Mets have not really signed the big time international talent in a long time. They’ve signed some expensive kids from latin america, dont get me wrong, but they haven’t been players for that 1 or 2 special players who are collectively viewed as the best. I really wish that every year they would sign the absolute best latin talent. I have no problem with this team being incredibly latin-centric as they are obviously some of the best ball players in the world.
I agree. I think the whole latin centric thing only bothers people, like me, when its guys like alou el duque castillo getting these ridiculous contracts. I dont think anyone would have a problem with the Mets going after a guy like Chapman from Cuba at the right price.
The thing is, the Latin signings/trainings are actually outsides of the rules a bit. They spending money and focusing efforts in places that don’t fit into the normal budgetary estimates or analysis. I do’nt know that they’ve seen a return on investment here yet, but all it takes is one stud to come up through that system to redeem them.
Really, all the Mets need to do is go reasonably above slot once, and leak rumors that they will again. I’m not against playing by the ‘rules’, especially if it has a positive affect on the Mets favor within baseball, by getting things like All-Star games and other attentions, all of which lead to revenue.
I wish that I could come on here and read something positive, i know we are at a weird time right now and everyone is upset about the last three years but i can’t take the depressing posts about how our management is incompetent, it makes me worry things will never turn around and i really choice to be more positive than that
I too would like to read positive post on here, but what is Matt supposed to do make stuff up??? I mean half the team took up residence on the DL at one point or another in 2009. And do to the fact that (as explained above, good stuff BTW Matt) the Mets tend not to pay over slot in the draft the Mets lacked the kind of top flight talent in the minors that could pick up the slack for injured players or be traded for key pieces that could really help the team. The biggest issue with the Mets isn’t Pitching, A Big Bat, or an offensive catcher, or even a second baseman that could hit a double more than twice a month. It’s the fact that there is very little in the way of building done in the minors leagues. Without a strong minor league system we can’t replace injured players, we can’t make key trades, in fact it pretty much handcuffs the Mets every year in recent memory in terms of making key trades or deadline deals. All the while it actually cost more to pay to try to get the Major League talent you need rather than build it within from the ground up.
How big a difference does a good minor league system make? Well take for example the 2009 Phillies. There is no way they make the postseason this year without the aquisition of Cliff Lee.They just didn’t have the pitching to get it done in the division. In fact were it not for Lee chances are pretty good they would be playing in Philly tommorow night down 2 games to none. The fact that they had the trade chips at the right time to aquire Lee made all the difference in the 2009 Philles. (adding Pedro didn’t hurt either) And guess what, they still have trade chips in their farm system if need be. Untill the Mets make a concrete commitment to build the farm system properly with players actually worthy of calling up, it will be the same old story of the Mets throwing good money after bad year after year, after year. I for one am tired of the serious lack of vision in the management of the minor league system.
I hear what you are saying, i don’t really mind the negative stuff sometimes it just gets to me, it wasn’t really meant to be a slight off matt, maybe i should have wrote, i wish something positive would happen so i could read about it.
Here’s hoping good things are coming, doesn’t karma owe us?
Karma owes us Big Time, but so do Omar and the Coupons! lol
you can choose whatever you like, but it will not change the fact that management is by every measure completely incompetent
okay then
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating.
The Mets attitude toward young talent, the farm and the draft can be summed up thusly: Since drafting Darryl Strawberry, the Mets have drafted and kept only one solid regular position player. That is David Wright, and the two were drafted decades apart.
The Mets’ draft strategy is abysmal, that’s a given.
But I don’t think the draft is an unfair system. It allows players to maximize their value in one of the rare times they have leverage. The Red Sox are merely doing the smart thing, something a team like the Mets should do every year.
The Royals spent 55 million on Gil freaking Meche. Rick Porcello fell to No. 27 and got a 3.5 million bonus when everyone knew he was the best pitcher in that draft.
This thread provides details regarding the foundation of the Mets’ incompetency. They are afraid of busts, do not go after high risk, high reward players, and instead value major league mediocrity (known entities), over upside and ceilings. To be fair, many fans (including many on this site) also fall into this same trap. The fact that Chapman was not aggressively pursued lends credit to this, as is the fact that all signs point to Jason Marquis joining the team. However, it is not just the slotting system. Generally speaking, their eye for talent is bad on the whole. Didn’t they think they got a bargain when Milledge dropped to them and that he was an all world talent? We always list the Hall of Fame of Mets prospects that bust, but the bottom line is they never seem to be right.
excellent point. You dont have to pay over slot to get talent necessarily, although it does help and the Mets SHOULD do it. If you can evaluate talent properly you can get guys in the 2nd 3rd 4th round that can become legit players. The Mets just seem to whiff on guys they draft left and right. Wright is the only position player this franchise has drafted in my lifetime that has come up to the bigs and contributed. Thats pathetic i dont care how much money you spend on rookies.
Let’s not limit the bashing to their drafting of position players. How many pitchers since Doc Gooden have been developed and made an impact at the big league level for the Mets or another team they were traded to? Kazmir, Isringhausen, Burnett, and that pretty much covers it unless you want to count Pelfrey. They whiff on the pitching front too, yet many fans also acquiesce to this. Whenever a debate pops up about “giving the kids a chance” and I chime in with “what farm system do they have worth preserving,” I usually compare the Mets history of prospects to other teams. Inevitably, I hear something to the tune of “oh their history is not that bad, only 1 in x amount of young players pan out anyway, so the Mets should keep trying to let their prospects develop.” Many ignore the fundamental detriment that is the Mets scouting department… And this is why I don’t kill them when they trade prospects for guys like Delgado, as they are forced to because their youth stinks.
Cerrone finally grasps onto the over-slotting issue, but would have been more useful if he had presented examples and listed equally serious problem trends that directly relate to the one he described.
The other directly related problems to this issue are:
- The Mets FO fails to maximize compensation type A and B draft picks by failing to find and sign players who will bring such picks or to work out agreements with the players who WOULD yield such picks for the Mets. How many times have you heard of teams having an agreement with a player that the team would offer arbitration but that the player would decline? Too many, and rarely with the Mets.
- The Mets fail to coordinate their big FA offseason signings with draft years where they have PROTECTED draft picks, and this results in the exact opposite, where the Mets make a big splash and surrender unprotected picks and make a small splash in FA when they have protected draft picks. While some of this relies on luck, it seems that other teams are very calculated in how they do this. One example would be the Giants in the year and the year after they signed Zito to that horrendous FA contract. The Giants at least went on to have 2 top ten draft picks, 4 overall 1st round picks, and I believe 4 overall 1A round picks !!! Tell me the last time the Mets had a huge splash in FA signings and followed with 2 years of drafts like that.
- The Mets have demonstrated less than average ability to pick the best player available at the draft position in which they are picking. Year after year, draft after draft, we can see that players taken after the Mets players drafter are far superior. Luck is important, but again, the trend is more important. This is a failure to evaluate talent properly.
- The Mets also have demonstrated very poor player development.
These factors, which are all real can be demonstrated by anyone who devotes the time to showing what the Mets actually did in the past 5 years and comparing it to options that were available to the Mets and that had those options been chosen, as other teams did choose, how the results would have been different.
Finally, the over-slotting issue is huge, but it is made worse by the above issues. All of these issues are hand in hand, and failures in each of them cause the failures in the other of them to be more gleaming.
Someone needs to do the documentation, because without the proof the Mets FO will not be swayed to address this comprehensively and will continue to put fingers over leaky holes in their cup.
Thanks.
The definitiion of insantiy is repeating the same task over and over, and expecting different results.
Our Owners, GM and Manager are incompetent. They’ve turned the franchise I love so much into a joke.
You build a house from the ground up. The Wilpons who ironically enough are in real estate development cant seem to make the connection.
It really is incredible. You can give 10 stud high schoolers overslot bonuses and it would cost about half of what they spent on Oliver Perez. If just one of those 10 pan out to be a star, it was more than worth it.
there is a fair shot that none of those 10 contribute even as much as Perez did last year. It’s not a simple “throw money at it” problem.
I do sometimes wonder how the Wilpons manage to be rich.
that made me laugh. thank you.
so simply put its like this…our management/front office doesnt know what they are doing and are stubbornly not even willing to change the way they do business…we could have seen a lot of our prospects the second half of last season but there just werent many who were really ready/good enough…so we saw cory sullivan, alex cora and gary sheffield…talk about depressing….
All I take away from this is that the draft/sign system is broken.
If money can trump the draft order … then it defeats the purpose of the draft entirely. This is a scam, and should be immediately terminated.
Why is it that all other sports handle salary caps and drafting options correctly, with baseball being the only broken exception? Players union needs to be beaten down. It’s ruining our game. As large market fans, it’s easier for us to ignore this, but imagine being the bottom half (financially) of MLB, where you have to be 5 times better than your opponent just to have a chance (see the Twins).