The Padres announced that they have hired Omar Minaya. The former Mets and Expos GM will be San Diego's senior VP of baseball operations under GM Josh Byrnes.
“His experience, knowledge, evaluative skills and connections throughout the industry will be invaluable for us,” Byrnes said in a statement.
The Mets dismissed Minaya 14 months ago and though a role in the current front office was a possibility, it never materialized. The Mets paid him approximately $1.1MM in 2011 and owe him the same amount in 2012. The Angels interviewed Minaya for the GM job that went to Jerry Dipoto earlier in the offseason. The Brewers, Blue Jays, Indians and Red Sox also had interest in adding Minaya to their respective front offices.
Minaya will serve as a sounding board and evaluate amateur and professional players, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post (Twitter link). Jon Heyman of SI.com first reported the hiring (Twitter link).
I hope Minaya brings the talent he had while working for the Expos and not the poor judgement he had working with the Mets. I wonder what this hiring means for Randy Smith?
He didn’t do anything with the Expos other than bury them. Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee and Lee Stevens for Bartolo Colon and Tim Drew ring a bell?
The context of that trade was a team in it’s last year making one last push for a playoff run.
It was a terrible trade, but the Expos were long buried.
You bring up a trade in which he was trying to make a push not only to save a season, but to save a franchise.
Colon wasn’t going to make that big of a difference if a team was really going to go “all in.” They gave up way too much, which was clear to everyone even back then.
Minayas was employed by MLB to tank the Expos for Jeffery Loria. He has been terminated from his previous position and was being paid anyways. He was brought in to tank the team so that the franchise was forced to leave Montreal. Minayas number one skill is incompetence.
Loria had purposely ruined relationships with Canadian media so that they could not be broadcast on radio or television and his reward: the Florida Marlins franchise . It is not like the Expos franchise was going to be contracted; they were going to have a future somewhere else, but MLB wanted the team out of Canada and out of Montreal.Loria will have a rightful place in hell as far as I’m concerned with Bud Selig and Minayas right beside him.
His poor judgement on the Mets was giving too much money on so-called proven talent. He did very well scouting. Mets have good young player because of him including Reyes, Ike, Murphy, Niese. long term contracts did him in.
He’s taking McLeod’s job?
Brynes would have been better served hiring me for that job. 🙂
I wouldn’t mind a shot at that gig too.
oh, san diego fans, how we weep for ye.
There are many, many other things that should cause you to weep for us before you should do so over the hiring of Omar Minaya as an assistant to the GM.
that may be true, but by the time y’all start playing, i’m usually thinkin’ on sleeping 🙁
he’ll always be good for punchlines, but minaya has scouting talent. as long as his decision-making power is kept in check by someone smarter, he can be a valuable contributor
My exact thought was “sweet jesus!” then I realized it was a scouting thing, so I agree it’s not actually a bad move. Can Byrnes keep him in check though?
This. I forgot Byrnes was already their GM so I was like “what are they doing?” and then I saw it was a scouting position and so I was like “oh ok.”
Thank you. It is good to see that someone gets it.
People are completely overreacting to this. It clearly says “will serve as a sounding board and evaluate amateur and professional players”. He doesn’t have the ability to sign anyone, just give his evaluation of their talent.
People always forget this. Pretty much anyone who makes it to the role of GM is valuable at *something* in a front office capacity. And while Minaya should never be a GM again, he also made most of his bad moves in dire circumstances. The Colon trade is inexcusable no matter what, but he thought the team was about to be contracted. His moves with the Mets were terrible, but he was working under ownership that actually thought the team was Jason Bay away from winning. If you just put him in a scouting and development capacity, you can get the guy who brought Jose Reyes to the Mets and not the guy who brought Bay to the Mets.
This depresses me.
OUCH!
I want to extend my sympathies to those of you are this board that are Padres fans. No good can come of the Padres hiring Omar for any position.
Actually I think he might prove quite capable in an assistant role. Just don’t give him the GM job.
Padres are working hard to field their front office softball team made up solely of VPs, GMs, special advisers, etc.
There will be some pretty good kickbacks for him for such a post…not that he has experience with that sort of thing.
This is the perfect role for him actually.
Josh Brynes is putting together a good front office.Omar will help and i wish him the best of luck
wasnt he the boy that played willie mays hayes in major league 2??
Wow, Really?
I can see when something is funny or not, but… not even on the radar—was that meant for this post?
it’s a gimmick troll account
I expect the next news to be: Padres sign Oliver Perez to minor league deal.
Well, if he were hired as the GM…the Padres would be in trouble. But since he’s merely advising the GM on Latin American talent, he should do just fine.
I think Minaya’s ultimate downfall in NY was access to that monster checkbook. He spent a lot of money on over the hill players and made a number of big mistakes. That said, he has shown an ability to make the most of a light payroll and make astute judgements when it comes to evaluating young talent in the draft. So long as Byrnes locks away the checkbook (which even he will have limited access to), and limits Minaya to just scouting international players, this should prove to be a good move.
Most of the problem in NY was with the ownership interfering in the process rather than Minaya being incompetent. I’m not saying he was a great GM but the he really didn’t have that much authority to make deals. He was basically just their negotiator.
I think he should have signed with the Yankees.
Lets Go Mets
So much whining, so little comprehension. There’s been like three people out of two dozen who see this for the good move that it is.
His job, literally, is to scout amateur talent. That’s it. That’s what he excelled at for the Expos. He can’t go sign Jason Bay, he can’t go ripping their farm system apart, he can simply go into Byrnes’ office and say “Hey, Josh, this kid looks like he’s got some talent, why don’t we take a look at him?” The end.
Honestly, I was kind of hoping the Red Sox would snag him for a role like this.
With the new CBA’s cap on international spending I’m not sure how big a deal this is. Under the old rules and with Moorads willingness to spend on amatuer players this would have been a coup.
First losing Heath Bell, now this?!
Minaya’s biggest weakness as a GM was giving out bad contracts to free agents (Schoeneweis, Perez, Castillo, etc.) As long as he has no involvement with that, he’ll be fine with the Padres.
Whaaaaat? we loose bell, trade for a crappy catcher from FL and now we give the Mets cast away GM a job? I’m confused by whatever Mr. Brynes is doing, watch it all work out great lol
It is not like Jed Hoyer had GREAT acquisitions with the trades he made. And i mean, seriously? he said he didn’t know that Adrián was VERY valuable to the Padres offense so he traded him to a team where he knew what to ask for, and he asked them what he tought they would give him without too much fuss… ugh… he acted thinking “how could i cause my former boss the less possible damage in the trade?” instead of thinking “how can i improve my team in the short term?”…. UGH!
We witnessed in 2010 a team in the brink of creating something really really good, and ended up with a 2011 team labeled as “in construction” once again and 2012 all of us Padres’ followers will know what the Astros fanbase felt during 2011…
Randy Smith will be leaving soon. Book It.
I dunno, with his hand on all those new 40-man roster additions, would seem like a funny time to show ones displeasure.
Any interesting Padres rumors right now? I have not been paying attention to baseball at all.
Minyana is one of the most entertaining baseball minds I can think of. He pretty much just does what he wants and if it works, fine.
People look into these hirings way too closely. He is not the GM. He is a scout. And has shown that he is a damn good scout to date.
Sucks for the Padres
Nice hire. Will be involved with many areas of scouting (his strength) and trades.
Sad sad day for us padre fans.
I would love to comment on how Minaya will bring lots of Puertorrican ballplayers to the Padres and even maybe help them promote the local mexican talent present in both sides of the border… but i guess i risk being banned once again for saying “racist” things, even if i am an hispano telling things as they are… LMAO!!
And while it is a sad day for Padre fans (my local team), it is also a good day in terms of talent scouting. I think he’ll help bring far more talented plyaers than those the Frailes usually get everytime they go on a fire sale (though that also could hurt their owner’s plan to finish last and live off revenue sharing while still having 20-25 thousand people in attendance most days).