The Mets may have trouble convincing baseball’s top executives to take over as the team’s next general manager, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post. The Mets will fire or re-assign GM Omar Minaya after the season, according to Sherman, but that’s the easy part. Sherman reports that chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon has a reputation in baseball circles as a tone deaf, credit-seeking, second-guessing micro-manager who isn’t accountable or self aware.
That reputation won’t make the Mets’ search for a new GM any easier, but they’re prepared to spend, even though they owe Minaya millions after 2010. Former Padres GM Kevin Towers will likely take the Diamondbacks GM job if the money is right and former D’Backs GM Josh Byrnes is hesitant to work for the Wilpons, according to Sherman.
Former Astros GM Gerry Hunsicker likes working for the Rays, but those close to him say he would consider the right GM job. Those are far from the only qualified candidates to run a team, but it appears that the Mets will have to fight the perception that Wilpon is a difficult boss as they hunt for their next GM.
I hear Steve Phillips is free.
Post of the year, every year
I need a new team to root for.
Peter Gammons said that if the Rays were to move, the only place that could support them is New Jersey. I’m an NJ native so I’d change in a heartbeat.
Gammons doesn’t know what he’s talking about again -_- seriously the Rays are about to get a new stadium soon just like the Marlins are so why exactly would they be moving the team again…
He never said they would move, only that NJ would be the only place he thinks a team could be supported.
it almost doesn’t matter who manages that team, when they have the most incompetent owners in baseball
Owner, Fred is the only owner, Jeff, his son, is the dumb as a rock COO.
Owner, Fred is the only owner, Jeff, his son, is the dumb as a rock COO.
That article is brutal, but there will still be disillusioned Mets fans who will claim they be competitive next year.
There will still be disillusioned Mets fans who will claim that Omar Minaya shouldn’t be fired as well
its hard to measure Minaya’s performance when a good portion of his decisions aren’t even his….his good ones are ignored and his bad ones are amplified.
Just because he isn’t the entire problem doesn’t mean he isn’t part of the problem. Would the best course of action include the Wilpon’s selling the team? Of course. However, I’m still convinced Omar is just plain not a good GM. This isn’t speaking out of bias so staking claims saying that he doesn’t get treated fairly is just an attempt at rationalizing. Which good, major moves did he make that everyone ignores? I can name plenty of awful ones.
lol
funny how u narrow the scope with “major” moves. R.A. Dickey wasn’t a “major” move…however I would consider him a good pickup….
when minaya came on board, the mets had no 2B, no C, no 1B, no RF, no closer, no set-up man.
in 5 years, he plugged in the hole at 1B with Delgado…who was eons better than any available option from 06-09….and has since drafted Ike Davis…who has hit nearly 20 HR’s in his rookie campaign…again…if Ike CONTINUES to show progress…I consider that a score for Minaya
he plugged in the hole at 2B with Valentin in 2006…who gave the best performance of his career that year…in 2007, he came up injured…the mets had NO 2B and still had a lead almost the whole year…when valentin confirmed he was out for the year…omar trades for castillo…( aka johan’s best friend and business partner in minnesota )…castillo hits for .300 in aug/sept…plays good defense…and is the only viable option for the mets at 2b…
he plugged in the hole at C with LoDuca, who like Valentin, gave the performance of a lifetime in 2006…and like Valentin came up lame in 2007….Omar drafted Thole…who looks to be a viable option at C…
he plugged in a hole in RF ( sorta ) by signing Beltran and moving Cameron over to RF…Cam gave great production and defense til the head-cracker that came in August. There are quite a few interesting OF prospects for the mets…kirk niewhauss…sean ratliffe…f-mart…
as far as pitchers go…he has drafted pelfrey…niese…gee…mejia…parnell….got a great year out of pedro in 2005…( too bad looper blew 10 games )…
At Closer, he inherited Braden Looper…who blew 8 games that year…he signed wagner…( who they then mismanaged his injuries )…they then signed K-Rod…who has been ok for the team ( family issues non-withstanding ).
The thing is, no matter how many good moves he makes, major or minor, he falls in love with players and pays them too much. Luis Castillo, Oliver Perez, and Carlos Beltran ,(which wasn’t too terrible, but he’s overpaid) someone Omar said he had to sign, are the major ones he should have never paid what he did.
well if u are the mets..coming off 3 straight terrible years…and u are
trying to compete with the yankees and red sox and other much better teams
for free-agents…and you have NO LEVERAGE. this is how u end up paying
carlos beltran a 7 year contract. and even u just said it wasnt too
terrible, its even less terrible when u consider the market at the time and
the mets position relative to the market at the time.
the problem is PERCEPTION. this is NY…he paid luis castillo 24 million for
4 years…albeit at the end of 2007, the mets did not have ANY other
free-agent options and the ones that were out there, were asking for the
SAME amount as Castillo…now take the circumstances into consideration. You
just traded for Castillo…who at the time had a decent
reputation…Castillo also hit .300 for them in august/september…provided
decent defense….your other options are david eckstein and kaz matsui…u
have no internal options…
and they are all asking for the same amount…
and even so…a major market team like NY…should be able to eat a contract
like castillo’s without too much trouble…if Detroit can eat over 15 mil of
Sheffield’s contract…and the Angels can eat 20 mil of GMJ’s contract, why
is it so hard for Met ownership to do the same?
im still waiting for the boatloads of terrible transactions jim hen..i mean
omar has made …..
With Castillo or Perez, no one else was really competing with the Mets for them, so there was no need to pay them that much, or that long.If I was Omar, I would see that Castillo is showing signs of aging, and I would only sign him to a two-year contract at most, but he didn’t and now he is stuck with him.Also, the fact that Omar hasn’t just cut Perez is a dumb move in it’s own right. Not only is he throwing away millions of dollars, but he’s also wasting a roster spot.In regards to eating contracts, no one is really sure how much money the Wilpons lost in the Madoff scheme, or if they have recovered from that yet, so they might not be able to eat Perez and Castillo’s contracts and upgrade at second base and/or pitcher.And how’s this for the terrible transactions:Re-signing PerezRe-signing Castillo for as long as he didSigning Moises AlouTrading Angel Pagan for cash, and then trading two players to get him backOnly getting Oliver Perez and Roberto Hernandez for Xavier Nady, he panicked here.Trading Stokes for Matthews Jr. when having bullpen strugglesTrading Billy Wagner as soon as he recovered from injurySigning Tim ReddingTrading away Endy ChavezRe-acquiring Mike Jacobs
lol wow….
ok again…NO 2nd baseman in the system for 2008…castillo coming off good performance…only 3 2nd baseman on free agent market all asking for the same amount of money..
signing alou was a mistake
who were the players they traded to get pagan back for ?
only getting oliver perez and roberto hernandez for nady?
are u serious?
do u realize omar only had 24 hours to make that deal…duaner sanchez had gotten injured right before the trade deadline…smh….
and to top if off…ollie gave good performances in the playoffs and won 15 games in 2007…smh…
stokes for gmj was a wash…what did stokes do this year?….o by the way, the mets pitching staff was ranked 6th in mlb this year in ERA….i dont think stokes was gonna make a difference.
trading wagner was totally on the wilpons…( see wagner jumping over omar’s head and demanding a trade from jeff himself )
what has endy done since he was traded ?
mike jacobs played 3 weeks with the mets…the mets didnt want to start ike and start his clock early…
like i said…his good moves outweigh his bad by alot…lets not even talk about all the moves fans were bashing him for ( RA DICKEY ) and the ones they bashed him for not making ( signing Zito, signing Marquis, signing Sheets, signing Piniero, etc )
Again, I have no problem with the Castillo signing at that point, but it was too long a contract.They gave up a couple prospects for Pagan, but my point was the net result of the two trades was giving cash and two players to the Cubs for nothing.Regardless of Ollie’s one good season, and a couple good playoff games, he was always a headcase, and it’s very hard to work with a pitcher who gets in his own head.Also, the pitching ERA is mostly from the starters, they have pitched excellently, the back end of the bullpen has been a revolving door, and last year Stokes was at least an average pitcher, and GMJ has been released.Okay, Wagner may have been on the Wilpons, I admit I was wrong on that one.Chavez was a solid starter for the Mariners, until he got injured on a fly ball that Yuniesky Betancourt had no business going as far out as he did on, which means he probably would have not suffered the same injury in NY, and he would be a solid bench bat, and all the Mets have to show for it is Sean Green.I never personally bashed him for RA Dickey, I was hoping he’d make the team, I have always liked Dickey, I’m not sure why, but I always wanted him to catch on somewhere.
I also don’t like Minaya because he sounds so dumb and clueless when he gives interviews. For example, when he attacked Adam Rubin because he thought Rubin wanted the GM job and was coming after him. Not only was that the wrong thing to say PR wise, it’s a dumb statement too. I don;t know, maybe it’s the impression I get that he doesn’t know what he’s doing that makes me more critical of his moves, but at best he is an average GM.
well if u are the mets..coming off 3 straight terrible years…and u are
trying to compete with the yankees and red sox and other much better teams
for free-agents…and you have NO LEVERAGE. this is how u end up paying
carlos beltran a 7 year contract. and even u just said it wasnt too
terrible, its even less terrible when u consider the market at the time and
the mets position relative to the market at the time.
the problem is PERCEPTION. this is NY…he paid luis castillo 24 million for
4 years…albeit at the end of 2007, the mets did not have ANY other
free-agent options and the ones that were out there, were asking for the
SAME amount as Castillo…now take the circumstances into consideration. You
just traded for Castillo…who at the time had a decent
reputation…Castillo also hit .300 for them in august/september…provided
decent defense….your other options are david eckstein and kaz matsui…u
have no internal options…
and they are all asking for the same amount…
and even so…a major market team like NY…should be able to eat a contract
like castillo’s without too much trouble…if Detroit can eat over 15 mil of
Sheffield’s contract…and the Angels can eat 20 mil of GMJ’s contract, why
is it so hard for Met ownership to do the same?
im still waiting for the boatloads of terrible transactions jim hen..i mean
omar has made …..
The thing is, no matter how many good moves he makes, major or minor, he falls in love with players and pays them too much. Luis Castillo, Oliver Perez, and Carlos Beltran ,(which wasn’t too terrible, but he’s overpaid) someone Omar said he had to sign, are the major ones he should have never paid what he did.
Look I don’t want him as GM just as much as the next Met fan but Omar does know how to scout talent that’s been his one strength so why exactly would it be a bad thing to reassign him to scouting instead…this whole mentality that he’s been horrible has just been blown way out of proportion of you ask me considering the restrictions he’s had to deal with (ie: the Wilpons).
well define “competitive”. they were actually a .5 game out by early July, til the bottom fell out. they were shut out 4x in 11 games and scored less than 3 runs in 8 out of those games after the ASB. even during their hot streaks, their offense was anemic. a healthy reyes…pagan ( rf )…wright…davis…beltran…bay….thole…tejada/castillo ON PAPER should be more than enough to win games.
“On paper” as you say, almost every MLB teams players “should be more than enough to win games” if their best players stay healthy. The Mets cannot blame their failures this season on injuries alone. The Phillies and Braves also lost key players but were able to overcome those setbacks. The fact is the Mets always talk about how good they will be (and their fans believe them) but usually don’t measure up to their hype.
As you note, “on paper” the Mets can be a very good team; on the field however, they are simply a very ordinary team.
ummm…i doubt on paper, every mlb team has 4-5 all-star caliber players in their lineup.
if reyes…wright..beltran…bay…just match career line numbers, and thole/davis continue to progess the mets are fine.
and its not the injuries as much as the WAY the injuries are managed that determine the difference in how a team over-comes them. the mets p*ssy-foot the situation because they are thinking one week at a time ( attendance-wise ) ..the phillies and braves ( like most normal clubs ) are thinking about winning a pennant.
look at the disaster they made out of reyes/beltran’s injuries. rather than putting someone on the DL when they are injured, they leave them in day-to-day …pushing them to come back and making a small injury far worse. they did this to beltran in 2005 TWICE ( his quad and then cracking his skull against cameron’s ) they did it to putz…did it to schneider…did it to wagner…did it to santana…did it to beltran in 2009…so on and so forth…remember in 2009 when Delgado went down with a hip injury…they told us every 2 weeks that delgado was on the verge of coming back…someone that i know that does security at their functions told me IN JULY, that 2 mets players told him that Delgado was not coming back that season…
2 weeks later, another statement comes out that delgado feels better and is coming back by mid August…Mid August comes…No Delgado…
I would be scared to run a mess of a team like the Mets also, because of bad contracts that’s hard to move without absorbing 80 percent of the contract, the owner is a bad one who thinks he’s George Stienbrenner (rip) when he is the opposite of an he doesn’t take responsibility for his actions an thinks he is the gm. 3rd If you don’t make moves your going to get blasted by fans and media and if you do make moves and they don’t like them your getting scrutinized more so with this team. All in All this job is bad for your reputation.
Ill do it! call me up.
…Jeff Wilpon has a reputation in baseball circles as a tone deaf, credit-seeking, second-guessing micro-manager who isn’t accountable or self aware.
But I don’t mean that in a bad way…
Awesome.
I disagree with this article.. it might be considered the black hole of mlb gm jobs, but its also got to be up there in terms of toughest challenge and biggest reward.. Imagine being the gm who brings the mets back from a laughing stock to a perennial world series contender. Will it be tough? of course, but they have the funds, all they need is someone bright, bold and ambitious to get in their, bottom out, and do an actual rebuild, not keep piling contracts up and hope for the best..
all they need is someone bright, bold and ambitious to get in their, bottom out, and do an actual rebuild, not keep piling contracts up and hope for the best..….AND get Jeff Wilpon to stay out of the way, keep his wallet open, and his mouth SHUT.
🙂
Anyone else’s Firefox going bananas today when trying to load this site?
Mine is, I just disabled the blocker.
Google Chrome is doing the exact same thing.
Same here actually.
Yeah mine to. its even doing in on my laptop and its safari but mlbtr is saying open it on interner explorer
Mine was earlier but now it’s fine.
Mine was earlier but now it’s fine.
Anyone know about their assistant GM John Ricco? Is he still with the team? And if so, is he in the running for the job?
Hopefully not.
Hopefully not.
I wouldn’t want anyone currently affiliated with that organization.
I wouldn’t want anyone currently affiliated with that organization.
I’ve heard on the radio this past week that he’s still being considered. I’d also prefer it to be someone from the outside, but us Met fans never get what we want…so…
I’ve heard on the radio this past week that he’s still being considered. I’d also prefer it to be someone from the outside, but us Met fans never get what we want…so…
Anyone know about their assistant GM John Ricco? Is he still with the team? And if so, is he in the running for the job?
I’d make Wilpon pay heavily and get contractual provisions on whose in charge before I took the gig. Jerry DiPoto would be a strong candidate for replacing Minaya.
I’d make Wilpon pay heavily and get contractual provisions on whose in charge before I took the gig. Jerry DiPoto would be a strong candidate for replacing Minaya.
John Ricco has no scouting background. That’s not a guy I would want running the organization. In the end I think the Mets will give the GM and Manager jobs to guys who have limited options (Wally Backman) because they know they can control those types. Backman isn’t getting a job elsewhere so if the Wilpons tell him to pitch some scrub with a bloated contract he’s going to listen.
John Ricco has no scouting background. That’s not a guy I would want running the organization. In the end I think the Mets will give the GM and Manager jobs to guys who have limited options (Wally Backman) because they know they can control those types. Backman isn’t getting a job elsewhere so if the Wilpons tell him to pitch some scrub with a bloated contract he’s going to listen.
Hunsicker left the Astros (basically forced his own firing) because of the intolerable environment created by the don’t-know-nuthin-’bout-baseball, micro-managing owner, Drayton McLane. It’s really hard to imagine that Gerry would knowingly enter a similar situation.
bring back Joe McIvanne. Look at the Twins he has been there awhile since Steve Phillips stabbed him in the back for the job. I take Joe back.
It’s not the the moves Omar made (good vs. bad). It’s the magnitude of the bad ones and all the moves he didn’t make that could have made the club better. A team like the Mets should have financial flexibility to make decent acquisitions that bolster the bench, bullpen, or fill in a back-of-rotation starter. Minaya has signed numerous players to very big contracts when they weren’t worth it that ultimately have undermined the payroll flexibility. Re-signing Perez was, possibly, his worst decision. Other than one good season with Pittsburgh and one decent season with the Mets he is an underwhelming pitcher who didn’t deserve 3yr/$36mil. This is America, so good on his agent, Scott Boras, for getting him the biggest deal possible, but Minaya should have steered clear of Boras and Perez altogether and sought other options. That deal in 2008 has severely impacted the 2010 season and it’s current payroll.
Plenty of other “little” occurances add up. Kelvim Escobar…really? Not resigning Pedro to give the bullpen depth was a mistake, and he wanted to come back. Instead, he goes to Philly because he was so insulted by the Mets upper “management.” What a nice slap in the face that was. Trading away a healthy Billy Wagner was dumb. In turn, it was necessary to find another closer so Omar gave a hefty contract to K-O-Rod, that worked out well too.
Omar also likes Type-A free agents too much, which costs the Mets first round draft choices, who could have been developing over these last few years. Bottom line is…life has taught me there is always another option. Sometimes…that option is patience and actively choosing to not sacrifice the future of your team for a horrible option at a particular position right now. I’m pretty sure for 100K a year we could get someone to come in and pitch better than Ollie has and he’s got the Mets on the hook for 12mil. There is always another option…at GM too.