Omar Has Lost It
Here’s the quote of the year.
“Right now we do not envision [being a seller],” Minaya said. “If we’re 6 ½ [back] in the wild card with a couple of teams in front of us, we are still kind of trying to find out how we can improve this team, if we can improve it through trades.”
Jose Reyes hasn’t played a game since mid-May. Ditto Carlos Delgado. Carlos Beltran has been on the shelf for the last month. John Maine and J.J. Putz slightly longer than that. But now, with his team 10 games out of first place and 7 1/2 games out of the top spot in the wild card, having just watched his team lose back to back games to the Washington Nationals, Omar Minaya thinks it might be time to get his roster some help.
Someone buy the man a fiddle, because he needs something to do while watching the burning rubble that is his personal overpriced Rome. During one of the great buyer’s markets of all time, Minaya paid through the nose for a bad starting pitcher and bullpen help, while neglecting the fact that there was no organizational depth beyond the starting position players. If any of them got hurt, it was going to get bad in a hurry, but that apparently didn’t need to be addressed in his spending spree over the winter.
Maybe the Mets didn’t deserve to have all these injuries strike at the same time, but the resulting collapse is directly due to a lack of planning on the part of the guy in charge. Minaya has never been very good at this whole General Manager thing, but 2009 is his Little Bighorn. If he actually thinks there’s a season left to salvage, he’s crazy. The Mets have something like a two percent chance of making the playoffs. The Pittsburgh Pirates are more likely to be playing baseball in October than the Mets are, and they’re in total sell-off mode.
There’s a bit of self-preservation going on here, of course. Minaya has earned his way into a lack of job security, contract extension or not. In a world where baseball teams are getting exponentially smarter, he refuses to catch up. Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall – his days as a major league GM are numbered. If he doesn’t get fired this winter, it will just delay the inevitable. He’s not one of the 30 most qualified people to be running a baseball team, and 2009 should seal his fate.
Sorry Omar, but if you wanted to save your season, the time to improve the roster was in May, not in July. You’re too late.
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If you look at all of his good moves, it’s pretty easy to see that he cast his line and landed a big one with his eyes closed each time.
If he didn’t acquire Santana I doubt he would even be a GM right now. What Santana contributed in 2008 was worth several crucial wins over whichever pathetic alternative the Mets had. 89 wins with him, barely over .500 without.
And trading Church for Francoeur is absolutely inexcusable. Better yet the Mets will have to catch the Braves to make the playoffs… plus a few more miracles.
As a Mariners fan, the JJ Putz (and others) deal is to Omar what the Bedard deal was for Bavasi. A GM desperate to save his job swinging for the fences and missing.
If I were a Mets fan, I’d be waiting for Omar to be fired and hoping that the Mets hiring someone as good as the Mariners did.
The one honorable thing about Omar is that even though his job is hanging in the balance, he has not gone ahead and done anything crazy that would jeapordize the team’s future to try and save his job (ie Kazmir for Zambrano).
Other than that, there’s not much positive. Also, I think you hit the nail on the head about the Mets’ organizational depth. Even if the Mets had not all decided to go on the DL at once I do not think you can definitively call this a playoff team.
I should add, Omar has also repeatedly stated that the best of the best Mets’ prospects (don’t laugh) will not be traded this year. That means he will be hanging on to Mejia, Fmart, Holt, and Flores.
The quote at the begining of this entry is somewhat dubious, and does not neccesarily mean that the Mets will be “buyers” this July. It just means, if we interpret it as literally as possible, that the Mets will not be sellers and they will instead look to “improve” their team. This could mean trading a piece like Sheffield, Schneider, or Feliciano for younger major league ready talent/depth.
I am not going to get on Omar because he refuses to “sell” off talent, because honestly, who do the Mets have to sell? I do not see them trading any of their core (wright, reyes, beltran), and they do have some moveable pieces such as Putz, Maine and even Delgado, but those players are on the DL. k-ROD might be moveable, but there wasn’t much interest in him this offseason and his contract is considerable.
It’s time for the Mets to clean house and start over. The whole franchise has turned into a complete joke. It may not seem too bad from someone that doesn’t watch on a daily basis (I’m not a Met fan, I’m just in the NY market), but it just won’t work with the pieces they have in place (management, players, everything). This team is a joke.
So many things wrong with this team right now.
- lack of organizational depth (as we have seen)
- weirdly alloted money (K-Rod’s earning $37 mil over 3 years, will he even pitch 200 innings?)
- Terrible manager (Castillo is one of the few guys hitting right now, you have him sac bunting in the 1st inning??)
- Of course, Minaya.
So its perfectly acceptable to rip a guy who is not very sabermetric-savvy, but no words on Cleveland, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and San Diego, 4 teams that supposedly are modern-thinkers, but have last place records?
What are you talking about? Everyone rips on Pittsburgh and San Diego all the time. The thing with Cleveland and Oakland, and San Diego and Pittsburgh too to a lesser extent is that they understand both their position in the standings and realize that they are not buyers. They also have a ton of organizational depth. That’s the problem here. Minaya has a lousy team and wants to buy, but first of all he has nothing to sell, and second of all he’s too far back in the standings to realistically think he stands a chance. I remember a while back hearing him say he prefers the trade market to the FA market, which, when you’re a big budget team like the Mets, is ridiculously stupid.
To be clear, Pitt just acquired some organizational depth after years of harrowing farm system decisions, and San Diego rivals Houston as the worst farm system in the game. Depth is still a problem for these teams, but yes, you’re right in that they know this and are trying to fix it.
i do not think that you can take from this quote that the mets want to buy. omar says vaguely (deliberatley so i think) that the team is looking to “improve” and “not sell,” this could mean any number of things.
it is nitpicking, but he easily could have said the word “buy” but refrained from doing so.
Payroll, media market, expectations, etc.
Yes. This piece is about Omar Minaya – not last place teams.
You missed the entire point of the article. If non-contending teams make moves that will save cash and/or strengthen themselves for the long term, good GM. If non-contending teams make delusional claims that they’re still “in the race” and then add salary for no reason and/or make moves that hurt themselves for the long term, bad GM.
You’ve missed the point I’m trying to make. When a non-sabermetric team is screwing up, you can be sure to find it here. We get potshots that aren’t constructive, they do nothing to help us learn more about the game. When a sabermetric team can’t get out of the cellar, there’s silence, at a time when fangraphs can create excellent work explaining why the team is failing.
It’s not really about that. Outside of some of the issues faced by those teams (San Diego is in full-on sell mode because of their past ownership issues, the Pirates aren’t really all that saber-inclined and didn’t have anything to start), it isn’t always that saber yields great results every time. Many organizations, however, are beginning to see that it gives you the best opportunities to build better teams, provided you combine it with solid scouting/farm system development, whereas other teams like KC and the Mets seem behind in the times. That reflects in the moves and signings they make.
Not every team can be good every year once you start applying sabermetrics; there just isn’t enough wins to go around. But stuff like trading for Jeff Francoeur when he has little chance of becoming anything, signing Oliver Perez to an absurd contract when no one was bidding against you, and not building up organizational depth and relying on Fernando Tatis to back up every position reflects not only a lack of sabermetric use but a fundamental flaw in personnel management.
The injuries were unlucky, but there were question marks right at the onset, no doubt about that.
There’s a difference to be sucking without a budget then sucking with a budget.
And peope rip Pittsburgh all the time.
Well, the other difference is that Oakland, Pittsburgh and especially San Diego are hampered in the extreme financially, while the Mets have the second highest payroll in all of baseball. The Mets are spending 135 million dollars this year on salaries, while Oakland (62 mil), Pittsburgh (48 mil) and SD (42 mil) are all spending less than half that. No amount of analysis can overcome stingy/broken ownership (SD) or small-revenue market economics (Pitt and Oakland).
For 135 million dollars the Mets should have a backup shortstop that isn’t Angel Berroa.
And no amount of analysis can overcome the injuries the Mets have. If Berroa was there on opening day, he wouldn’t have been the backup, he would have been 4th string. How does he compare to other team’s 4th stringers? But my point isn’t the defend the Mets or Minaya. It’s about the ridiculousness of the stats vs non-stats arguments, and that some people on either side are still taking potshots at the other side. Just because I click to fangraphs.com, one can already assume I know the Mets aren’t playing well, and generally what their issues are. I don’t need a blog post suggesting Minaya might be an idiot. What I want to know is why my Cleveland Indians, you know, of the 4th brightest future, and PECOTA-expected division winners, might lose 100 GD games.
Also Cleveland, Oakland, Pittsburgh and San Diego do not have the money that the Mets have had to spend over the past couple of seasons
I have no idea how you’re supposed to “plan and prepare” for losing:
An All Star, All World leadoff hitter capable of quad 20s with a .300 batting average
An All Star, All World 3/4 hitter capable of 30/30, who by the way was having a career year
An All Star 1b who abused baseballs with regularity 2nd half last year, and was doing it again
A former All Star closer turned setup man
A former 15 game winner in John Maine
If you were the GM and this happened to you, you would likely be curled in a corner somewhere in the fetal position sucking your thumb, and begging for your Mommy.
An All Star, All World leadoff hitter with a career .337 OBP with a career full of hamstring problems(they literally had to teach him how to run without hurting himself)
An All Star, All World 3/4 hitter who is made of glass and sits if his hair hurts
An OLD All Star 1b who was in decline 2 years ago, abused baseballs with regularity 2nd half last year, and is now even OLDER
A former All Star closer turned setup man coming off of 3 years of elbow problems and declining velocity
A former 15 game winner in John Maine who averages 4 BB/9 and a career 4.64 FIP
exactly which part of this equation was supposed to be a surprise?
I don’t feel sorry for the Mets one bit. I am a Braves fan and I think it’s hilarious typical that we get these “poor Mets” articles in the media.
Last season the Braves lost 4 of their 5 starters. Then lost a replacement starter. The lost their set up guy for the entire season, and they had their two-headed closer team was hurt/out for most of the season.
So please, cry me a river Mets fan. Suck it up like we had to last season. Even with all those injuries last season, you guys had a hard time beating us and you had all your All-Stars healthy.
Go ahead, make trades, you’re not catching the Braves this year, and we’ve got better young talent playing now, and a few more on the way. Suck it up!
wow, that was a very cogent and non-cherry picked argument
Hating on Reyes and Beltran = imbecile
How do I know this?
Because we see that the Mets without Reyes and Beltran are a .360 team.
Q.E.D.
And by the way, Reyes’ OBP is skewed downward by his early years, where he struggled to OBP .300. Since his emergence in 2006, he has OBPed around .360
Joe, what the HELL are you talking about with this?
weirdly alloted money (K-Rod’s earning $37 mil over 3 years, will he even pitch 200 innings?)
HE’S A CLOSER!
Right, and closers deserve tons of money, because they’ll be pitching SO many innings for the team and contributing so much.
Closers are highly overrated, and giving them $12MM a year is a great way to overpay for them. There’s only been one season where Rodriguez has earned $12M under the $4.5M/1 WAR rate, and that was in 2004, when he wasn’t a closer.
I won’t argue he isn’t a good one, but I will argue he isn’t a more than a 2 win player.
I agree with Joe, 37 mil for three years for a guy who may or may not pitch 200 innings is a waste of money. That’s roughly 12 mil per year for 60-70 innings pitched. Hence, a waste of cash.
One with declining K/9, BB/9, and a huge WHIP. Going to be fun paying him $12,000,000+ in 2011 when he’s rocking a K/BB of 1.
To justify that much for that little work, you better be Rivera in his prime levels of lights out. Angels saved millions and lost nothing just by taking Fuentes over K-Rod.
find me an organization that can over the losses the mets have incurred.
the red sox, the almighty red sox, rely on kotsay, bates, green, kottaras, bailey, carter, etc. as their back-up position players.
has omar “bought” anything yet? or is he in NYC and not waiving the white flag to a rabid fan base?
seriously, get a god damn clue
the yankees did have 4 out of 5 starters down multiple times since 05 and have had an allstar catcher/OF in an out of the lineup for 3 years… in a tougher division
i’m not saying that its comparable to having the top half of your order on the DL but, only that it does happen, and teams do overcome it.
yea, the yankees set the world on fire in may without a-rod.
good call.
wow big baby, way to completely miss the point. are you intentionally oblivious to the world?
How about last year with the Rays?
-They lost Scott Kazmir (their #2 or even #1b SP) for the first month of the year, and then was fairly crappy in the 2nd half.
-Matt Garza (#3 SP) missed a month.
-Troy Percival (closer) was hurt or ineffective the entire 2nd half.
-Carlos Pena went down for a month.
-Evan Longoria missed a month late in the year with a hand injury.
-Carl Crawford was ineffective due to lingering leg issues then missed almost two months in the seconds half with a wrist injury.
-BJ Upton suffered through a season-long shoulder injury that sapped almost all of his power.
-Jason Bartlett spent time on the DL (two different stints, I think).
And all of this in a much tougher division, yet they still made the playoffs and captured the AL pennant. How were they able to accomplish this? Outstanding, nearly unprecedented, organizational depth.
do you have any idea what the word “luck” means?
sometimes players are good. sometimes they’re bad.
last year tatis was awesome. last year murphy was awesome. this year, they aren’t.
i’m sure friedman knew zorilla was going to have a massive breakout and show skills he had never before shown.
ditto jason bartlett.
still no answers on who comes up if youkilis and pedroia go down.
How about the Blue Jays? In recent years they’ve lost just about all their starters except Halladay to major injuries and they’re still somehow fielded some of the best pitching in the majors.
So, you’re now supposed to be able to prepare for your Major League DL list hitting double-digits? I don’t get this lack of foresight argument, considering if any team lost anywhere near the sheer quantity of players (And key players) the Mets have, they would be in a similar position. The Phillies lost just Raul Ibanez for just a couple weeks and played Sub .500 ball without him, and they’re the defending champs.
As for the quote, Minaya has already stated that he’s not looking for any rental players, so if he decides to shop now for players that can help him in 2010 and beyond, what’s the issue? I guess he’s missing an okay chance to sell, but there’s nothing really to sell anyways, especially now that Sheffield is hurting.
Tej has a good point. Who builds a team that will cruise through losing as many good players as the Mets have lost.
How many teams have above an above average CF, SS, 1B, SP or set-up man waiting in reserve? How many have all of those in reserve?
Lets not forget where the Mets were at the end of May.
Pick your favorite GM and find out which ‘stars’ he has in reserve to replace all those positions.
Omar should ask Andrew Friedman for advice on building depth.
Seriously?? I hope none of these other people on here bashing Omar are Mets fans like I am. Because its excusable for a non-fan to not remember what life was like before Omar. Even when we made the WS in 2000, it had nothing to do with organizational talent and everything to do with Bobby V. being a great coach. As soon as Omar came to the Mets, the Mets mattered again. The Mets were players in the FA market and any trade and put together teams with as much talent as any other team in baseball. Did they have the heart or the coaching these last few years, no but they had the talent. Anyone who doesn’t see that should pay attention sometimes.
Plus, Omar did put together some great depth. Angel Pagan, Alex Cora, Jeremy Reed, Omir Santos…. I could go on but I hope you idiots realize how dumb you sound
Mets Fan here, obviously…
I would like to see him go for a few reasons.
1. Forget the DL stuff, that isn’t his fault. Even if he was the best GM of all time, he couldn’t overcome this.
2. Not trading assets when he can. The team doesn’t have many, but Pedro Felicano could be an asset to a contender. Gary Sheffield could be a decent bat, he is better than Adam LaRoche (this season).Trade them away and let the kids play. Just to be clear, I’m not implying that they could get Brett Wallace, but they could get decent pieces.
3. Not having the balls to talk to the Wilpons about the importance of utilizing their economic strength in the draft and internationally. Its ok to overspend in the FA pool, but not anywhere else?
4. Overspending on FA. The Luis Castillo deal is the worst freaking deal. K-Rod’s deal was bad from a personal POV, but it wasn’t awful. Oliver Perez was AWFUL.
5. No depth. We can’t expect Omar to plan for this much damage. But who was the back up short stop plan? Alex Cora? Ok, I’m cool with that. Not super long term, but ok. OF, Angel Pagan? I can see it, not awful, but not good. A starting OF of Murphy and Church/Tatis? That is awful. Those should be your depth guys. No catcher either… Pitching… none.
How could Omar prepare to lose Jose Reyes, who, since 05 hasn’t played less than 153 games ina season. The Mets did get a legitimate backup shortstop in Alex Cora (.327 wOBA in ’08), but he went down to an injury. They brought up Ramon Martinez, who was solid in limited playing time last year, and traded for Wilson Valdez. Martinez stunk and also got hurt (out for the year), and Valdez couldn’t hit. They signed Angel Berroa only after injuries to their starting shortstop, backup shortstop, and backup-backup shortstop.
Omar’s plan for a backup to Delgado was a combination of Nick Evans, Daniel Murphy, and Fernando Tatis. Murphy, after a great start last year, has completely lost it this year. Tatis, after winning Comeback Player of the Year last year, is a double play machine this year, and Nick Evans started the year in AAA where he went 7 for his first 75 and had to be sent down to AA Binghamton to remember how to hit.
At centerfield, Omar relied on Angel Pagan and Jeremy Reed to backup Beltran. Not surprisingly, Pagan got off to a great start and got put on the DL. He’s back and has a wOBA of .376 and is projected to finish at .342. Jeremy Reed has been terrible for the Mets (he and Ramon Martinez have combined for -1 wins), but he, like Martinez, was the backup backup option.
And let’s remember these backup backup options weren’t for Luis Castillo or Brian Schneider. They were for Carlos Delgado, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran. Delgado had 2.9 WAR last year. Reyes had 5.9! Beltran had 6.7!
And then let’s plug in some other injuries, with their accompanying WAR from 2008:
John Maine (1.4)
Billy Wagner (1.2)
Brian Schneider (1.6)
Fernando Nieve (.1) (2009 WAR)
JJ Putz (.6)
Ryan Church (1.6)
Oliver Perez (1.3)
Tim Redding (1.1)
And other injuries:
Fernando Martinez
Ramon Martinez
Gary Sheffield (our regularly, close to DL)
Angel Pagan
This is not at all a defense of Omar Minaya on the whole. I think he should be fired for being an inefficient GM. It’s just a rebuttal to those who say he didn’t have proper backups. Nobody would.
Damn.
That’s 24.4 WAR lost to injury. Wow.
boom. pow. surprise. ball game.
oh, and kudos to the rays, here’s how you build depth: finish last in baseball for 8 years straight accumulating endless amounts of 1st picks in the draft.
great, one team in baseball has legitimate depth.
damn you mets for not being the rays. damn you to hell!
Yeah, because which one of their backups was a #1 draft pick? Was it Willy Abay (acquired from the Braves for Jeff Ridgway), Ben Zobrist (6th round pick by Houston acquired by trade), Fernando Perez (7th round pick), or maybe Grant Balfour (acquired from the Brewers for Seth McClung)? Oh yeah, Jeff Niemann was a #4 overall pick and those two games started with a 5.09 ERA must have been the difference right? Organizational depth really is a result of picking high in the first round. Got it.
Yeah, anyone still claiming the Rays’ success is built on years of 1st-round draft picks isn’t paying an iota of attention to what’s actually happened in baseball the last couple years.
There are 5 guys on the Rays’ roster who were drafted in the top half of the first round. Three of them were drafted by the Rays, and only 2 of them were involved in the playoff run last year, and neither of those two guys were at full strength! One of their high draft picks was stolen from the Mets (Kazmir), the other was stolen from the Twins (Garza). All of them are starters, and have nothing to do with organizational depth.
The Rays have great organizational depth because Andy Friedman is very good at his job.
I wrote this last October about the Rays organization and it’s fitting. Anybody who thinks the Rays just hit on high first round talent has no idea what they are talking about. The Rays have been extremely aggressive drafters and have found excellent talent beyond round 1.
http://www.metsgeek.com/articles/2008/10/24/a-lesson-in-drafting-using-the-tampa-bay-blueprint/
See my post above. Last year the Rays lost significant contributions from two of their top three starting pitchers, their closer, three quarters of their infield, and two thirds of their outfield to injury over the course of the season, but they had the depth to overcome that and win the AL East. Get over it with the injury excuse already.
What? Kazmir still started 27 games, and that was least on the staff.
The only serious injury they had was to Crawford, who wasn’t very good last year, and he still played 109 games!
Reyes, Beltran, and Delgado won’t come close to that this year.
Oh, and Percival was hurt. Big deal.
Not even close.
Didn’t the 2009 LA Angels get reamed by injuries too? Hunter, Vlad, Lackey, Escobar, Ervin Santana, Adenhart, and Shields, plus maybe some others I forgot about.
Mets problem is that basically all of their backup options sucked, and this was obvious to most if not all neutral observers before the season started. There isn’t one position on the diamond where you could say that the Mets could bring in a decent stop gap in case things went wrong, and one guy that was half decent (Church) got run out of town for Francoeur. Omar’s planning for 2009 was atrocious, but it was one more year of delusional ‘We’re only 1 piece away’ misreading of the team’s relative talent level, which has been killing the Mets and helping the rest of the division since 2006.
Most GMs understand that the master plan will go wrong, and they work flexibility into the roster so that they can prepare some contingency plans for when injuries and ineffectiveness rears its head. Omar, meanwhile, prepares as if the best possible scenario is also the most reliable, and when it blows up in his face, he’s got nothing to fall back on.
Nobody’s saying that the Mets were expected to be able to overcome this many injuries, the problem is that Omar still doesn’t want to sell and built for the future. That’s the big problem here.
You could still argue that Minaya has been better than the guy he replaced, which should infuriate Mets fans. All these potential advantages, and yet the organization is clownshoes through and through.
That said, I think the logical successor to Omar is Tony Bernazard. Let’s keep the good times rolling.
Bill Bavasi is available!
The Mets should get Joe Torre to be their manager once he leaves the Dodgers. He would simply drop David Wright to 8th in the batting order, and they would automatically become the best team in baseball even though it makes no sense.
Boy the Mets fans are up in arms. Can we honestly agree Minaya hasn’t done a good job with the moves over the offseason? That clearly has nothing to do with the injuries they have this year. Perez was as expected and worse, Putz was on the decline and the Mariners were smart to sell high on him and obtain some good parts. The K-Rod deal is nice if you think he’s better than 2.5 WAR a season, but so far he isn’t and he is showing signs of decline in his peripherals, as he had the year before, when he randomly set a record for an overrated statistic.
Minaya has signed the right guys long term, but he clearly missed this offseason, and the signs that said he would miss were there. And considering the money they spent on acquiring Putz’s contract from Seattle and signing Perez and K-Rod could have gone to assisting the outfield on the significant chance that Daniel Murphy wasn’t as good as his 100+ PA said he was and that Fernando Tatis couldn’t back up each corner infield and outfield position.
It’s easy to blame bad luck with injury, but some of it does also have to do with bad personnel management, at least this offseason.
absolutely. i agree with this. omar had a bad off-season. but that doesn’t mean that the injuries haven’t decimated this team and that he’s some sort of clown.
No, it means that he’s a clown who can now conveniently blame his inability to assemble a winning team on injuries. Omar has consistently made illogical and bizarre moves which never seem to address the issues that are confronting the Mets. He went in to 2009 relying on guys who were (a) declining in effectiveness, (b) getting older, or (c) had reliability issues in the past. So, while he didn’t throw the stone that broke the glass house, he was the foreman that allowed it to be built in the first place.
Yet here you are trying to defend him. This guy has sold the Mets down the river. He’s made so many mistakes that my head spins trying to count them and yet you’re willing to forgive them because of the injuries? Even without the injuries, the Mets weren’t making the playoffs this year. Or next year. They won’t make the playoffs until someone in that ownership group gets off their ass and hires someone with more than three brain cells, someone who can jettison some of these absolutely useless pieces and rebuild with the state and explicit goal of winning, not achieving mediocrity.
The writing is on the wall for Omar, it’s time to go.
I know his defense is not good, but Abreu at 5 million for one year should have been a no-brainer for the Mets.
I guess what I’m getting at is that they could have used Perez’s money to go out and sign Abreu, while also having some money leftover for a Randy Wolf sort of a pitcher, who wouldn’t require big bucks or big years but had a decent chance of being league average.
While I don’t think Omar’s a good GM overall, the injuries the Mets have suffered this season have been pretty darn bad. They’re a mess, and any organization would have trouble coping. The Mets have coped… poorly. And Omar sounds like he’s in denial. I’d pay more attention to what he actually does than what he says, though. He’s in NY. Sometimes you have to say crazy things b/c your fanbase may, in fact, be crazy. I know this. I’m a Yankees fan.
Man, nothing like a Mets post to get people riled up.
I agree. Matt Kemp should not be batting 8th. Or 7th. Or 6th. Joe Torre is crazy.
Make him the Mets manager and before you know it, Daniel Murphy’s leading off and the team wins 103 games as everyone outside of the organization says “WTF?”
Omar’s made some bad moves (Failcouer comes to mind) but the Mets stink because they’ve lost Reyes and Beltran. End of story. Replacing those players is not possible. Reyes is arguably the 2nd best SS in the game. Beltran is the best CF in the game. Throw in Delgado and you’re done.
If the complaint is that he hasn’t said he’d be a seller, I guess it’s fair. But on the other hand, Minaya has been reluctant to dispose of the farm system for nothing. For years the team was linked to guys like Ramirez and Zito every deadline and they always passed. Until the Mets actually make moves, I wouldn’t scream.
You’d think the guy had orchestrated a disaster since he was hired. But this is the first year under his run the Mets will be under .500 (after being under for the four years prior). They made the NLCS and finished a combined 2 games out of the playoffs in two straight years. A break or two in the last three seasons and we’re talking about a World Series Champion.
If of course, he does pull a Kazmir-Zambrano move, then yeah, critique and a canning is in order.
for all you using the injury excuse, I humbly submit my reply:
http://www.amazinavenue.com/2009/7/23/958788/omar-minaya-has-to-go
good article, the knock on joe blanton was a little odd though, he’s been pitching pretty well fora few seasons now…
As a Mets fan for over 20 years, this season stands out as one of the worst I’ve witnessed (’93 included). Yes, the injuries are a big part of it, but it’s mostly on Minaya, who probably visits the same stupid baseball oracle as Bill Bavasi.
Omar must go–hopefully as soon as this train wreck of a season ends.
Read it this morning Sam. (Amazin Avenue is the best metsblog on the interwebs) It’s good stuff, but picking one team does not an argument make. The Red Sox could survive, but could anyone else? No one in the NL could, except maybe the Dodgers, and I think that’s the work of unemployed Dan Evans, not Colletti. Heck could anyone in the AL outside of Boston? Maybe the Rays. I’m not confident the Yankees could. This is a team that was slotting in Cody Ransom at 3B in place of A-Rod, knowing that his hip condition could destroy his season. By all accounts Brian Cashman is a pretty smart guy. And while the Red Sox have done well, they are not immune to costly mistakes. I see your Luis Castillo and raise you Julio Lugo. And while I don’t want to get into the nitty gritty of your piece here, the Sox also let David Aardsma go.
I know with my friends I’m guilty critiquing in a vacuum. But the reality here is the same reason why NFL coaches don’t go for it on almost every 4th down even through statistically, they should. Those positions promote risk aversion. When you go against the grain, people are looking for you to fail. Even if you do a good job, like Paul DePodesta did in bringing in JD Drew, Jeff Kent and Brad Penny, you still get canned because you went against the grain. PR is part of the game. Remember the Red Sox vaunted bullpen by committee? It could and probably should work, but that outcry when it didn’t work for a few games, rather than the results, are why teams won’t go back to it.
This isn’t to say Minaya is amazing. He had a bad offseason. But I’m hesitant to demand the head of the GM when this team’s farm system has improved, the talent has improved overall since he’s arrived and the team until this season, has been one of the better teams in baseball.
Didn’t make one thing clear when I was bringing up risk aversion; it’s why teams spend on guys like Lugo and Perez. Because if they don’t and their cheap options fail, the media tears them a new one. So if Minaya lets Perez go and doesn’t spend money on someone else, he gets ripped.
Classic example with DePo, too.
By all accounts did a decent job, but did things with a big market team that others didn’t like very much, and got run out of town once things went south.
I picked the Red Sox specifically because they’re the team closest to our payroll, and is very well run. It’s not an argument that it’s Minaya’s fault, just kind of a vision of what could be with better management. (and they let David Aardsma go, because they could. I don’t blame them for that, they have plenty of relievers who fit my description of “skills”)
Regarding risk aversion, I’m not sure Oliver Perez is the best example, he’s a pretty big risk. In fact, if Omar Minaya was MORE adverse to risk, I wouldn’t be writing any of this. Moises Alou was a huge risk, so was Murphy, Perez, etc.
I suppose your point about risk regarding media perceptions, but I feel the media will make up any story they want once the ending is in place. If the Mets were good, I think the media will make up any BS they want to explain it.
Besides, Depodesta was hated from the start, unfairly. The media didn’t hate him because he went against the grain, they hated him because he was in moneyball.
When I say risk averse, I don’t mean the statistical risk averse. Again to bring up football, if the percentages say you have a better chance to win by going for it on 4th down, and you don’t, you are actually incurring greater risk of losing. But the perception is that going for it is the risk, so you are avoiding being lambasted by the media and your owner, who doesn’t understand the non conventional wisdom. And loss of owner support means loss of job.
Jon Niese had a decent shot to be as effective as Perez. But Perez has the “proven veteran”TM tag. As inconsistent as he’s been he’s also been a guy with a 4.00 ERA who threw a lot of innings for the Mets. It’s the same reasoning that got Steve Trachsel start after start. Basically, if Perez fails, Minaya looks bad, but Perez shoulders some of the blame. (which we already see. He’s out of shape, can’t get it together etc.) If Niese fails, then Minaya takes all the blame. Remember last year when the media got on Cashman’s case for not trading Phil Hughes for Johan? There are lots of legit arguments to say Cashman was right, but he went against conventional wisdom and was hammered for it when his results didn’t pan out.
It’s kind of funny though. Seems like last offseason was full of booby traps. Most people I know, and I was included in this, laughed at the Phillies paying Ibanez all that money when they could have just resigned Pat Burrell for a fraction of the cost. I also dreaded Ibanez ending up in a Met uni. So the Phillies make a move many considered to be a poor one, and it works out because Ibanez goes all world in the first half. The Mets make a similarly stupid move with Perez and it blows up in their face. Heck even Derek Lowe, who I would have preferred over Perez, has not lived up to his contract thus far.
Again, if you want to can Minaya cause you don’t trust his process, fine. But his results don’t warrant him getting fired. As bad as it seems right now, this organization is still in a pretty good spot come 2010 and a potentially better one in 2011, once hopefully a few of these prospects pan out.
So of course after I say that, he’ll deal Mejia and Martinez for Cliff Lee.
You can’t blame Minaya for the Beltran/Reyes injuries, although I do remember hearing in the past that Beltran had been hurting but that’s neither here nor there.
Here’s what you can blame Minaya with:
Going into this season with Daniel Murphy as his starting left fielder. He hit .313 in limited time last year…. with a .386 BABIP – he did hit a ton of linedrives (33%) but that was unsustainable when you look at his minor league ld%’s over his 3 years in the minors. It just didn’t add up ZiPS had him as a .730 OPS this year. So even if he hit up to that level he would have been one of the worst hitting left fielders in baseball. On top of that, he threw Murphy into Left field with very little training, Murphy is a natural third baseman – who played some second base in winter ball last year and some LF/1B in AA last year. Why not just play Murphy in Left field during the winter league to get him more experience rather than a pipe dream position like second base. Not surprisingly Murphy was brutal in left field.
With Dunn/Abreu etc. on the market for cheap he decided to stick with a complete unknown in left field. With the primary back up being Fernando Tatis who had a .345 BABIP last year
They ended up picking up Sheffield which was a good move, but he’s a DH right now he can’t play the outfield (at all) and they ran him into the ground by playing him daily in LF/RF.
So now on to the other things you can blame him for.
The rotation: Behind Santana there were 3 guys who you couldn’t really count on going into this year (Perez, Maine, & Pelfrey), plus a ? at the # 5 spot.
Ollie got a 3/36 million dollar deal, but he’s always been insanely erratic and you never really know what you’re going to get from him on a game to game basis. He outperformed his FIP each of the past two years (4.35 & 4.68) vs actual ERA’s of 3.56 & 4.22. Last year his numbers dropped his K’s down, walks up. So counting on him to be the # 2 or 3 was questionable at the time. Him being injured for much of the season looks like it was actually beneficial to the Mets since he’s been so bad when he’s actually on the field.
Maine was coming off a season where he was injured with arm troubles. He also outperformed his FIP each of the past 3 years, and had rising walk totals.
Pelfrey the last of the three can’t strike anybody out, and gives up a lot of hits. He’s not an extreme ground ball pitcher. Again he can’t strike anybody out, and again he gives up a lot of hits. The major difference this year is his unsustainable LOB% has fallen.
Then he signed Tim Redding/Livan to duke it out for the 5th spot & be insurance, and both have been as expected (terrible). No need to waste any time explaining why.
The trade for JJ Putz was a questionable deal as well, because he was coming off an injury plagued season and is surprise surprise injured again.
Having no back up plan for Delgado is also something you can rip him for. Because a guy Delgado’s age with the mileage he has on him is bound to be injured.
How can a team with insane financial resources and a brand new stadium have absolutely no systemic depth? It doesn’t make one bit of sense to me. Yes, losing Delgado, Reyes, and Beltran hurts…but they don’t have even fringe talent to replace them. That’s just poor planning.
First off, Omar said “they will not be sellers” cause like everyone else, he knows the Mets have nothing to sell.
Omar has done a terrible job from day one!
For all his supporters that compliment getting guys like Pedro, Beltran. K-rod…it wasnt him it was offering the extra years or compensation to the contracts. He trades for the sake of trading sometimes without seeing few steps ahead. Ex: he trade Bannister for Burgos cause he had to many starters (which is impossible to have), but then trades Lindstrom and Owens for vargas and some other scrub? Trades Heath Bell away cause he wasnt fitting here, its Omar who isnt fitting. Ollie Perez didnt like Omars first rediculously high offer, but had no other teams to bid on him so Omar decides to bump it up? Did Omar see something I and the rest of Met fans didnt see last yr with a guy who was tops in Walks and HRS allowed? Getting a first round draft pick for him would of been a steal. I didnt mind the Putz deal, since we all wanted Smith and schowenweis and Heilman outta here. I dont know the value of those guys so I cant complain with what he got back. Plus I like green too. And I dont mind the Francouer deal when he is a compliment to the team and not the cleanup hitter.
Lindstrom and Owens… the guys everyone loves to bring up. Owens who has spent the last year on the DL? Lindstrom who is your run of the mill set up man? Let’s not go crying over those two. I was a huge Heath Bell supporter when he was here, but few complained when he was dealt because he had “shown he couldn’t do it in New York.” Bannister is a nice story, but he’s another one without much upside.
Minaya’s big mistakes are Perez and Castillo, and Castillo’s not actually that bad this season. The biggest reason I can see firing is because I’m not loving his process recently. But go through the GMs across MLB. They all have more than one major bad signing; trade etc. That includes Epstein, Cashman and certainly Colletti.
How bout this for a move?
Toronto is desperately trying to give away Wells.
Why not Mets take him (and his contract) with Halladay.
Give them back Ollie (which why wouldnt they do to unload Wells), FMart, Flores or Tejada and another prospect (not neise, parnell, mejia or Holt).
Payroll goes up this yr a little, but next yr Halladay (15mil)=Ollie(12)+Redding(2.5) and Wells(20mil)=Delgado(12)+Putz(8).
Wagner(11) also comes off books to get role players with.
epic logic fail
just because they are “your” best prospects doesn’t make them “good prospects” in the eyes of… any other team in baseball.
Sorry, but neither the 2008 Rays or Yankees, or the 2009 Angels have suffered injuries of the magnitude the Mets have this year.
Not only did the Mets lose 3 of their top 4 hitters, 2 starters, and their primary setup reliever — all the same time — but they also had their primary backup infielder and outfielder also out on the DL at the same time.
No team could have sustained these amount of injuries while staying very competitive.
I think Minaya should be fired and feel he’s a mediocre GM. But he’s not as bad as some make him out to be. If any other club were experiencing these amount of injuries this year, their GM would be undergoing public flogging now too.
As a Mets fan, I must say that Minaya’s failure is in using the Stars and Scrubs model to build his team. He’s actually done a very good job in attracting and retaining top-notch players (Pedro notwithstanding). He knows a star when he sees one and he overpays to get him — which is OK when you have $150M+ to spend each year. But he surrounds these players with below-average talent and hopes to get away with it. In some years, guys come off the scrap heap and help (e.g., Tatis 2008, Ollie 2007), but you can’t possibly expect that to work every time. And when it does, you can’t rely on that guy to have a career year again (see: Tatis 2009, Ollie 2008) and pay him accordingly.
Obviously much of this can be addressed through the draft and the international market, but that takes time, and Minaya is impatient (understandably) and the Wilpons refuse to go over slot. And I’m not sure to what extent Minaya is held accountable for organization development — it seems the Wilpons are more interested in building a good storyline than a healthy franchise.
At any rate, one of the reasons I love the Mets is because they are so imperfect — how can you really love the Yankees or (recent) Sox when they just win win win? But I must admit the Mets are trying my patience.
I think that’s the reasonable criticism of Minaya. The Mets probably have more “stars” than any other team in MLB right now except the Yankees. Wright, Beltran, Reyes, Santana, and K-Rod are all known by most anyone who knows what baseball is, and Delgado’s pretty close to that level. But the difference between their stars and their other guys is insane.
Check this out:
http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Mets&pos=all&stats=bat&qual=0&type=6&season=2008&month=0
3 absolute monsters, one average guy (Delgado), and then everyone else is below average.
Compare with the 2008 Rays lineup:
http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Rays&pos=all&stats=bat&qual=0&type=6&season=2008&month=0
8 guys at 2+ vs. the 4 of the Mets. #9 guy in Bartlett better than the Mets’ #5 guy as well.
While it’s totally unfair to use injuries to crucify Minaya, it is very true that his team was simply not built to withstand the injury bug. On that note, the Mets should seriously consider shopping one of their core guys to fix the problem at other spots.
This is in reply to Ben. For some reason I can’t reply to the post where you said you shouldn’t fire Omar based on his results, but maybe if you want to on his process (I am paraphrasing). Bingo. Having read Sam’s stuff on AA, he is big on process. Bad process can beget good results (pace Ibanez). Decent process with a large payroll can get you 3 years of playoffs or very close. I think Sam would like for the massive resources of the Mets to be used with a better plan, and Omar might make a very important part of that plan, scouting-wise, as counsel, but that, and yes, the injuries haven’t helped, he may not be the man to formulate and implemet that plan.
It’s totally fair to think that. Maybe I’ve never recovered from the Kazmir trade and that Minaya has been a better GM than Duquette or Phillips has me blind to the truth.
I don’t know. I look around and don’t see a lot of guys who are much better. I’ve defended Neal Huntington with the Pirates, but a lot of people are argued fairly he didn’t get back fair value for any of the valued pieces he’s traded. (sort of a good idea, bad execution situation.) Shapiro isn’t getting results in Cleveland. Minaya is not Epstein or Cashman but I’m not sure he’s better or worse than the other GMs out there.
Perhaps my real lack of faith is with ownership. Would any Mets fan expect them to fire Minaya and replace him with Kim Ng? Or would you expect them to replace him with someone like Jim Bowden?
True enough. He certainly has done better than Phillips but you are starting from a very low baseline.
Omar is certainly not the worst gm out there and has made some decent moves. And no, I am not sure the Wilpons can be trsuted to do better with the next pick, but certainly I think improvement could be made, aside from the question of would it.
Hmm, reyes says he may come back at 80%. Don’t push too hard for this year, Jose.
Minaya’s no worse, than, let’s say, Kenny Williams. But he does need to take the middle 1/3rd of his roster more seriously.
To say the Red Sox or Yankees may be able to sustain injuries but nobody else is exactly the point. The Mets are a large Market Team, they should be in the same position.
The point is not that the Yankees or Red Sox plan for injuries to their stars and have big time backups. The point is that their best 3 or 4 players are surrounded by other good capable players preventing a serious collapse. They can weather the injuries without falling way out of contention.
Cody Ransom is no better than Alex Cora but when he plays he slots into the 9 hole, he isnt relied on to produce exactly the same as Arod like the mets have asked of Cora. If the Yankees lose Jeter, Arod and teixeira they still have Johnny Damon, Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, Nick Swisher, Brett Gardner, Robinson Cano. Those guys are capable of temporarily picking up some slack. The same can not be said for the Mets supporting Cast.
I don’t see how Mets fans can support the GM when he thinks relying totally on 6 or 7 people can ever work. It clearly does not even work when they are all healthy.
Cody Ransom is worse than Alex Cora. Much worse. He’s awful.
Ok, so the GM might have to shoulder some of the blame here, but should the majority of the blame be placed on the players themselves? Sabermetrics and projections only work if one assumes that the players will work as hard or harder to prepare their bodies and knowledge for 160+ games of baseball. Did the Mets players properly prepare for 2009? If not, that is where blame should lie.
I never understood how this lack of depth thing is taken seriously. What would happen if Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Ryan Madson, Joe Blanton, Jamie Moyer, and Jimmy Rollins all got hurt? You don’t have depth for these kind of guys. If you could have reasonable depth, these guys wouldn’t be superstars. They had depth in terms of guys like Fernando Tatis, Daniel Murphy, Nick Evans, Alex Cora, Gary Sheffield, etc. What would you have proposed they do? I am very disapointed. This is my favorite baseball site to read, and it is sad to see that you have piled on to the Mets, no differently then any piece of shit beat writer or newspaper. When 4 of your 5 best players are hurt, your second best bullpen arm, and 2/5 of your rotation, there is NOTHING you can do.
If players of the Mets caliber on the DL all got hurt, any team would be in trouble. Butt he point about depth is that maybe if they had decent bench guys then the starters could take more rests to avoid injuries without sacrificing games.
@ Nrmax88,
You’re right, the Mets have been done in by injuries, and idk if any other team would be doing much better in such a situation. But I don’t think many people here are saying anything to the contrary. I think the main argument against Omar is that he ‘s put an old, fragile, top heavy team on the field. It’s not so much that the Mets weren’t built to survive such injuries, it’s that they were built in such a way that a decimating rash of injuries were inevitable. Here are a few red lights most of New York overlooked this past offseason:
-Your best player is a 33-year-old Latino Center Fielder. They break down more quickly than a Ford does after the warranty expires. Oh, and he has a knee surgery on his resume.
-Your starting first baseman is a 38-year-old who looked finished 16 months ago. I don’t really get why the consensus was that he had another 35+ HR season in him.
-Your shortstop has battled hamstring issues for much of his short career. You really can’t be surprised that they popped up now.
-Your #3 starter (Maine) was coming off a shoulder surgery and was never really that good to begin with. (Career FIP around 4.7; far worse than his career ERA). You couldn’t have expected him to stay healthy; any pitcher coming off surgery is a HUGE question mark. Anyway, even though you lost him, it didn’t hurt you nearly as it should have. The fact that you can’t find a suitable backup to give you a FIP of 4.7 goes to show how shallow your team is.
-Your set-up man had been declining for 2 years, and was coming off a year where he missed like 2 months, as well as shoulder surgery. Again, pitchers coming off of surgery are never a sure thing, and yet most Mets fans seemed to believe he was going to form a lights-out 1-2 with K-rod. I hate to say it, but anyone who thought as much was foolish.
-Don’t even put Ollie on the injury list. We all know the only DL he was put on was the disgraceful list. He wasn’t hurt, he was DLed because his command was awful and he was out of shape. Yet another genius signing by Omar.
-As for Billy Wagner last year, he was a 37 year old power pitcher. Come on, that has DL stint written all over it.
So no, I can’t blame Mets fans for feeling dejected about the number of injuries they’ve suffered. However, I do blame them for not seeing it coming.
Lets not let the facts get in the way of the story here Andy. Some guys were injury risks, but a couple points. Reyes hasn’t had hamstring injuries in years. He has been totally healthy since 2004.
Re: Delgado… People thought he could hit because he put up a .300/.380/.600 line in the second half of 08.
Beltran may have had knee issues in the past, but he has been as consitent a guy in the OF as there has been the last 4 years and was having his best season to date this year.
Ollie was definitely hurt. His velocity was WAY down, he pitched sporadically in the WBC, and he was way more volatile then usual. Say what you want about him and his contract, but at worst he was a good number 4 starter in 2007 and 08 and that production was lost when he was hurt. Your assumptions that he didn’t really get hurt mean nothing.
I have no idea why you felt compelled to mention Billy Wagner.
You’re right, there were injury risks, but the odds that every single one of those guys missed serious time were very small.