The Mets hired J.P. Ricciardi as a special assistant to new GM Sandy Alderson, according to a team press release. The former Blue Jays GM (2001-09) had been working as an analyst for ESPN.
Alderson, who worked with Ricciardi for more than a decade in Oakland, says the 51-year-old is “a superb talent evaluator” who will assist in all aspects of baseball operations.
Great hire. Not the greatest actual GM (see Vernon Wells), but he has a great eye for talent. I really like the direction the Mets are going now.
To be fair, it is widely accepted that the Wells contract was demanded from on high (ie. Rogers’ brass).
Which isn’t to say he didn’t make some bad deals; I’m sure the Jays’ fanbase will be happy to offer a litany of ‘crimes’ to choose from.
Not only that but he was going to get a similar contract from high bidders. They didn’t want to lose Wells like Delgado and others.
That deal, because of Carlos was made by Godfrey on behalf of Rogers. That contract is not the type of contract JP likes, which is why a guy like BJ Ryan, he only gave 3 years to, but still a lot of money. And BJ was great for that one year and was well worth the money.
He was well worth the money for ONE YEAR not for three so in fact it was a terrible signing.
Look at the Jays’ pitching depth. Thanks, JP.
Yeah pretty much this. He’s got an eye for talent but everything, he is pretty crap at doing. I think this is a good move for Mets.
He’s good at finding solid college guys.
Cant they trade him to San Diego for Paul DePodesta?
Why not get both?
Great move… for the Red Sox.
i love this move! he might of sucked as a GM, but he knows talent when he sees it
Omar is a good scout too…
i know, i would take him back in a scouting role.
more specifically, i would re-assign Omar to head up the International Scouting Dept.
DR/PR/Venenzuela/Panama/Mexico/Cuba plus the scouts he hired in Europe. I believe he also was working on doing some scouting out in Africa back in 2007.
Europe and Africa may have tons of untapped talent as well. I know the mets currently have 3 Euro’s moving up their ranks currently.
i agree, omar has a great eye for internation talent. and i never heard he scouted africa, did they sign anyone out there?
not sure…but i do know his firing did upset some folks in the African Baseball Network.( from their facebook site: Omar Minaya remains respectfully a great friend to Baseball & Africa. First MLB team GM to act on the development of Baseball in Africa. Way too classy for the Mets . )
Edit:
So yeah after doing a little looking up. Omar’s had Africa in his plans back in the 2006 off-season. He went there several times during 2007. In 2008, he went to Isreal as well.
actually setting up shop in each country with scouts, etc is probably a bigger mission in itself.
I do know that he has scouts in the Netherlands and they have 3 prospects signed from there.
He did a pretty highly publicized trip to Ghana back in 2007, if I recall correctly. Seemed like just laying groundwork and creating goodwill. I don’t know what happened after that.
haha, way too classy? i dont know about that…
but yeah, hopefully they bring minaya back in an international scouting role
Willie Randolph/ Jim Duquette/ Steve Phillips – aka people who have worked with Omar have all called him a class act.
unless ur still stuck on the adam rubin incident. I dont see why u would think otherwise.
now that i think of it, he did seem like a classy guy. i was just thinking of the Rubin situation when i posted that
Good move by the Mets. He’s got his deficiencies, but he put together the team that Jays fans are so excited over. The guy knows talent.
Loser going to a loser franchise.
However I am SHOCKED that he’s 51. I would have said like, 35.
Why? That would mean he was 26 when he was hired by Toronto.
He just looks young for his age.
Same here, I thought he was WAY younger. I actually thought it was a typo, but I looked his DOB up, and did the math. He’s definitely 51.
Oops!
Great Hire
He was a bad GM but he was good at finding pitching talent
That’s great because the Mets have some of the worst pitching mojo in the League.
bad mojo explains how they were 6th in MLB this year.
this includes losing 3 starters, 2 8th inning guys and their closer for the year
6th in what? Pitching mojo? lol
ERA
Jays fan…
Decent GM, but has a good draft record. JP will only help the Mets, great resource to have an ex-GM.
Good hire!
Best of luck JP.
Solid signing. As the post states, he is very good at evaluating talent. Yes bigbang, not the best GM, but Alderson will take care of that end of the business now. A sharp front office is coming together for the Mets. For a moment, I was concerned he would be hired by the Red Sox and it would have made it more difficult for criticize Epstein. I can now continue on my path to call him a moron every chance I get.
Good night new york mets,j.p is a cancer in any club. Yes he’s great in seeing talent but don’t let this guy talk to the players. All depends what his role is but if it’s dealing with people the mets have not done their homework.I was shocked how this guy openly talks about people on the radio and does not care what they think. At first it was funny but seeing what happened in toronto you can understand why the players quit and this guy was fired!
A cancer that was allowed to spread for 8 seasons? Rogers must have a crappy oncologist.
My thought exactly, he was given 2, maybe 3 contracts during his time here, but I just don’t feel like checking. He has 2 deficiencies, way less than his haters will accept. Number 1, he likes to tell people EXACTLY what’s on his mind! Imagine that a guy that doesn’t spew BS on what he thinks of players (citing Adam Dunn who apparently hates baseball and only cares about money), and number 2, his only true mistake in Toronto was pretty much evacuating his Latin American scouting department, a department that had great ties because of the George Bells and Tony Fernandez’s and Robbie Alomars (though not signed by all them) during Toronto’s history. His first round draft picks were about average to above average compared to other teams in terms of players making it (keep in mind his team was never so awful he never could draft a “can’t miss prospect”. And for fans here to say he doesnt know talent…because there are plenty, Marco Scutaro stolen from Oakland for spare parts, traded a spare part (sorry Robinzon Diaz) for Jose Bautista.
And my favorite was in the forums when people were complaining it was in Sabeans court and that he had offered Alex Lazy Mother…….ing Rios for what people here were saying “some guy named Lincecum”. He’s only won 2 Cy Youngs and a World Series in the three seasons since that off season.
Except JP blew both the Rios and Halladay deals because all he did was talk to the press about them.
Except that he didn’t. When did he talk about Halladay other than to say “we’d have to be blown away”? When did he talk about Rios at all until after the fact? It wasn’t even a deal to be blown because it was a pure salary dump from Rogers. They didn’t even want a return.
JP might not have talked to the press directly about Halladay, but he certainly did an outstanding job of alienating them to the point that they would happily write stuff that made him look bad or hurt his ability to do his job effectively.
The Rios-Lincecum deal was nixed by the Giants, but Ricciardi told the press he decided he liked Rios better (great example of talent evaluation there, by the way.) That was the sort of thing that bothered me most about him; he routinely lied about things to try to spin ugly situations in his favor. He would’ve been a better politician than a baseball executive.
Also, for the record, Rios had a lot of value at the time he was being shopped for Lincecum. Ricciardi didn’t sign him to that stupid contract until after he “decided he liked Rios better than Lincecum.”
Furthermore, because he drafted shortstops in the first round of two consecutive drafts (Aaron Hill and Russ Adams) he refused to draft Troy Tulowitzki, and neither of his drafted shortstops could stick at short, forcing the team to field a bunch of replacement-level (or worse) players at that position until he lucked into Marco Scutaro’s one good season. Sure Romero has worked out as well as anyone could expect, but the team didn’t have an issue with starting pitching the way they did at shortstop. Bad decision-making that produces good results once in a while is only bad decision-making with some luck thrown in.
Of course he had to “Like Rios better”. Sabean did nix the trade, which meant Captain Sluggish, Mr Afraid of the Wall…….was still on our team. He couldn’t at that point come out and say, well damn, i wish we could’ve pulled that one off. At the time, personally, I was in complete favor of the deal to the point that I’m hoping it was called off because Giants management got together and decided signing Aaron Rowand was a better idea. I’m hoping that is what it was because personally, I would’ve sweetened the pot with any pitcher we had in our system at the time. But a fair guess would be if Rowand signed somewhere else, the trade would have been one for one.
Had he drafted Tulo we all know the articles that would have been written about him for drafting short stops for three consecutive seasons. His philosophy on drafting pitching is a reason our staff is the way it is now. In the AL East, you can never have too much. Don’t get me wrong, Tulo would be nice, but without Romero this season, imagine how much Brian ****ing Tallet we would’ve seen starting games this season.
And did he get lucky on the Bautista trade? Or Miguel Batista for Jason Frasor? Troy Glaus nearly put our team in the playoffs when we finished 2nd to the Yankees 107 wins or something after he traded O-Dog for him because Hill had moved to second base. And trading Bobby Kielty for Ted Lilly…….his trading he generally came out on top. His drafting he generally left us with very solid players.
His only flaw was talking too much (being too honest about some things at times), and pulling right out of Latin America. Put just 1 stud from down there on some of his teams and they get much better.
At least he didn’t trade michael young for esteban loaiza, or david wells for mike sirotka (and those were done within 6 months of eachother…thanks gord ash).
BTW, it was Jayson Werth for Jason Frasor, not Miguel Bastista
thats right batista was thrown into the hudson for glaus…forgot werth was even around then…that werth trade was an out of options player for an out of options player…werth was then dumped the dodgers anyway…then werth started growing facial hair very similar to jose theodore who was suspended for using a masking agent that was for hair growth…….i wonder where that power all of a sudden came with from werth.
I always thought of Werth as a Shawn Green clone.
what is JP’s record with regard to scouting and development ?
familiar with his work as GM but not much more..
He was pretty hardcore college-only in his early years in Toronto because of the low payroll and his own conservative philosophy. They didn’t take high school players early in the draft and every pick had to be signable so no over slot bonuses. He didn’t spend much in Latin America either. The idea was to get talent up to the majors as soon as possible before starting to go with higher-upside picks/signings. He notably fired Tim Wilken to bring in his own scouts.
As much as this was derided, it did deliver a good return on investment. For less than what other teams spent on their drafts, I’d say we got at least an average return from each draft. Lind, Hill, Marcum, Romero and others came from those drafts.
Then starting in 2006, they got a payroll increase from ownership and finally took a high schooler in the first round–Travis Snider. They raised their profile in Latin America and have some nice prospects from there like Carlos Perez, Moises Sierra, Henderson Alvarez and others. They took more chances earlier in the draft and started paying over slot.
It is widely speculated that the nobody-over-slot policy was dictated from on high as the Jays were receiving equalization payments for the Canadian dollar being weak. Then the Canadian dollar got strong and they stopped getting payments. Then the Canadian dollar got weak again and they didn’t start getting payments, which meant they were kind of screwed at the major league level but did enable them to draft whoever they wanted.
Agreed. Forgot about that quid pro quo with Selig.
ok. so how many of his picks have turned out to be all-star caliber ?
there is also a big difference between being a GM and heading up a scouting
dept.
some are better suited for one more than the other.
i was more referring to his work with Oakland
I don’t get to say this often and no offense to true Met fans here, but Good Move by the Mets.
Neither do we bro, so we’re cool.
JP had mixed reviews in Toronto and made some mistakes (who doesn’t?), but he’s a solid, hard-working guy who lives and breathes baseball. Good pick-up by the Amazins, and good luck to both JP and the club.
sorry to hear mets fans…
I’m just happy I don’t have to see or listen to him on espn anymore
Just ask Adam Dunn what he thinks of J.P. as a talent evaluator….Ricciardi was the biggest mr. frownie pants GM in Blue Jays history and I doubt that Sandy A will be able to keep his monster ego under control in NYC.
Umm, GM and Assistant GM are two different positions. Which means they’re two different roles. Sandy has already worked with Ricciardi in Oakland, which is why he recruited him over to the Mets.
Ok, I’ll leave my juvenile comments aside for a second and say that this was before J.P. became a General Manager.
After eight years at the helm of a club I’m curious to know how the working relationship would work a second time around. I like and respect Sandy’s experience, but JP was a nightmare of a GM from a fan’s perspective. He was a very poor communicator, lacked a clear team development strategy and was lousy when it came to drafting anything other than college players. Yes, the pitching staff in Toronto has finally come around and Hill and Lind have made an impact, but how many bona fide stars did the Jays develop during his eight years with the organization? How many lopsided trades that benefited the club did JP make? In fact, outside of dealing with the As, how many attention grabbing deals did he make (maybe the first Glaus and then Rolen deals)?
I’m telling you, anyone who thinks that JP is going to make the Mets a credible contender is the same guy who thought their re-signing of Oliver Perez was a shrewd move. But not to worry, JP would probably have done it too, just like giving Josh Towers his first big money multi-year contract after pitching one decent season in the majors…JOSH freakin’ TOWERS!
baseball-reference.com/players/t/towerjo01.shtml
But wait Mets fans, there’s more moves like that one….here’s one I personally loved, his insane signing of Frank Thomas to a big money multi-year contract after the As had him for one year and paid him $500k. So what does JP do, oh he gives him $6m in year one and then $12.5 in year two (at age 40!). Best of all, he releases him, leaving a mid-market team on the hook for a huge portion of his $12.5m contract (a move he later had to repeat with BJ Ryan). What I really enjoyed was his public shot at Adam Dunn, when you compare his stats and Frank Thomas’ I wonder why in god’s name he wouldn’t prefer a guy like Dunn at DH over Thomas. I mean three years ago wouldn’t anyone rather pay $12.5m to Dunn to be your DH???
This is just a small sample of the genius that is JP.
Have fun Mets fans!!!
Im just glad he isn’t on ESPN anymore.. now if we can get rid of Chris Singleton and Doug Glanville
JP was a good gm, dont let all the Leaf fans sway you, who think that he was a bad gm.
From a Jays Fan(Not Leaf Fan)
I guess Adam Dunn isn’t going to The Mets anytime soon…