Read: The Mets are the 1980s Yankees
In a must-read report for FoxSports.com, Ken Rosenthal says, “Little will change for the Mets until they change the way they operate – from ownership on down.”
According to Rosenthal, “Multiple agents and rival executives say the Mets do not function like most clubs,” saying they never set a budget, “forcing the team to run down its priority list one move at a time,” which Rosenthal describes as a ‘paint-by-numbers approach.’
In addition, Rosenthal feels Minaya is no longer the aggressive, confident GM he was when he signed Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez, instead, ‘he’s a glorified puppet for Jeff Wilpon.’
For example, Rosenthal believes Joel Pineiro identified the Mets as his top choice, but, “He got tired of waiting for the Mets to sort through their other pursuits, tired of waiting for them to raise their initial offer,” and so, though the Mets were willing to increase their offer, Pineiro would wait no longer and instead signed a similar two-year, $16 million deal with the Angels.
Similarly, ESPN.com’s Buster Olney had the following to say yesterday about the Mets, during his appearance on the Michael Kay show, which airs weekdays at 3 pm on 1050 ESPN Radio:
“The one thing they’ve been doing this off season is: the Front Office has never been given a hard budget by Ownership. In other words, if you’re a Front Office member and you’re trying to come up with a strategy, it’s a very difficult thing to do because you don’t know how much you can spend on a particular player, you don’t know how much you should spend on pitching on outfield, etc. And so, it seems almost like it’s an audible each time one of these situations arises.
“Let’s put it this way, three weeks ago Joel Pineiro wanted to sign with the Mets. But, those negotiations didn’t develop quickly enough, and in the end they came up a dollar short and a couple days later they go and make this deal for Gary Matthews Jr., which has people around baseball scratching their heads saying, ‘Why would you take a player, who was probably going to get released in Spring Training, and take a serviceable middle reliever and commit $2.5 million the next two years when you could have just taken that money and finished the Molina deal, finished the Pineiro deal.’ It’s seemingly been a lot of confusion, and I know that’s been felt by other teams when dealing with the Mets, and with some of the agents.
Olney says people around baseball, who he talks to, are constantly comparing these current Mets to the 1980s Yankees. In fact, much like had been the case with George Steinbrenner 25 years ago, he says, Wilpon has been the front man on several free-agent negotiations this off season.
In addition, Olney explained, ‘The scary thing is, if you’re a Mets fan, is that the Yankees had to go through a dramatic down-cycle and a time of failure before George was finally convinced to step back and basically step away from baseball operations, only then Gene Michael, Bob Watson and Brian Cashman stepped in, and now the Yankees are run more efficiently; and you wonder how long it takes the Mets to get to that point.”
In the end, Rosenthal says, though Minaya looms as the obvious fall guy, he is only part of the problem, as, “The Mets need to start over – completely over.”
By the way, to listen to 1050 ESPN Radio, go here; and to follow Rosenthal on Twitter, go here.
Updated at 7:50 am:
… i understand what rosenthal and olney are saying, but, the thing is, this is not to say any one person should be more or less involved than he or she is… it’s about decisions, and streamlining the process… i mean, if wilpon is a bright baseball guy, why shouldn’t he be involved… however, if he isn’t, then he shouldn’t be… to me, that’s how this should all shake out… let the smartest people run things, and have the rest step aside, no matter who they are…
… that said, what jumps out at me is: rosenthal and olney work for rival media outlets, yet they’re both essentially saying the same thing, citing the same example with pineiro, they both use the word ‘efficient,’ when referring to the Yankees, and they paint a similar dynamic in the team’s front office, which leads me to believe they are taking their queue from the same source… which then makes me wonder: who is the source, and why are revealing this information… because, that, more than bad decisions, can be just as damaging…
