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June 17, 2008
Save
I don’t think Omar Minaya is the best general manager in baseball, nor am I happy with the direction that this club has taken this season. I can’t think of a single Mets fan who would truthfully claim either of these things. The Fire Willie and Omar flags are starting to come up, and while I am probably being somewhat dismissal about the impact of Willie’s job, Joe Posnanski’s post on managers has just left me feeling completely discouraged on the management role having anything to do with the results. On the other hand, the general manager has a far greater say on team construction and the acquisition of the lovely mess they’ve gotten ourselves into: a record under .500, circumstances where a trade for Trot Nixon actually improves the outfield, Aaron Heilman being on pace to shatter the record for most game-altering homers allowed by a reliever in a season, and carrying three catchers on the twenty-five man roster for . . . some reason? That said, I think Omar is getting a bit of a bad rap here. John Peterson’s piece here earlier this week pointed out that: “Billy Wagner is not the problem. Wright, Reyes and Beltran are not the problem. Johan Santana, Pedro Martinez and John Maine are not the problem. It’s everyone else.” While I’m not sure I entirely agree with Pedro’s placement on that list of guys, Wright and Reyes are the only two players that pre-date Omar’s stewardship with the Mets, meaning a full 71 percent of the players that are not among the Mets problems according to John were acquired by Minaya in free agency or via trade. Like I said, I don’t think Omar is the best GM; I’m not even sure he’s in the top five or ten. Why should we keep him? For two very simple reasons: he does the big things right, and he learns from his mistakes. Star players win ballgames. It’s an axiom that has always been true. Without Omar, do the Mets get Pedro Martinez in the first place? And without him, do they get Carlos Beltran? We all have a laugh about the Bannister-Burgos trade these days, but what about the Benson-Maine trade? I know that it’s a little hard to remember our humbler days, but how about a history lesson on the 2003-2004 Mets? Roberto Alomar? Roger Cedeno? Joe McEwing? Excited about a future without Minaya yet? That’s not entirely fair, as I’m sure it would be hard for any GM to build teams that were worse than the 2003-2004 Mets on our payroll, but you can’t give Minaya zero credit for reeling in all of our big fish. And when you have a big payroll team, the biggest thing you have to do is dodge albatross contracts despite all the pressure to spend. Omar has wisely dedicated the big free agent (and trade) deals to Santana, Beltran, Wagner, and Martinez (debatable, but for the influence on the rest of the Mets future I’ll give it to him). Over the course of those offseasons, Carlos Silva was given a $48 million deal, Gary Matthews Jr. was given a $50 million deal, and Barry Zito was given $125 million. When the Mets signed Pedro in 2005, the Yankees signed Carl Pavano for similar money. Those smart alecky Red Sox fans who love to pop up in droves and shout “I told you so” after every Pedro injury suddenly get real quiet when you remind them that the money they could’ve used to keep their surefire Hall of Famer in a Red Sox uniform through the end of his useful years were spent on Edgar Renteria and Matt Clement. Well, not really, they usually just whip out your standard neo-Yankee fan “count the rings.” But I digress. It’s important to get the most bang for your buck on the free agent market, and with the exception of the panicked resigning of Luis Castillo last year, I think Omar has done a pretty good job with that. When Omar was first named Expos general manager, he made a ton of terrible moves, including the ill-fated Bartolo Colon deal that gave the Indians Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore, and Cliff Lee. One thing that Omar has become very good at, in my eyes, is learning from his botched ideas. Oh sure, he’s made a stinker here and there, but compare the package he gave up for a few months of Colon to the package he gave up for eight years of Johan Santana. The Guillermo Mota-led bullpen was terrible last year and Omar brought in so much depth in the offseason that the Mets have often contemplated going with 13 pitchers, and have yet to even break the emergency glass on Tony Armas’ 5-5, 2.23 ERA line in New Orleans. Now, you can debate over whether having all these backup options means anything if Aaron Heilman is allowed to keep pitching every day, but the effort and intent to keep things backed up on the pitching staff was pretty stellar this offseason. After two crops of mostly pitching heavy drafts that haven’t yielded too many dividends beyond Joe Smith and Jon Niese, the Mets learned and drafted two big first round position players in Ike Davis and Reese Havens this time around, then after selecting Brad Holt, followed that up with five more position players in an attempt to restock a dismal farm system off the mound. So if Omar is so good at these things, McCown, then why is the team doing so poorly? Well, part of it is perception. Having a Pythagorean Theorem record of just about .500 isn’t overly shabby, but the Mets were supposed to be a juggernaut that roared across the NL East. Everyone knew coming into the season that the Mets were relying on a lot of unreliable aging players like Martinez, Alou, and Orlando Hernandez. Follow that with questions about Carlos Delgado’s effectiveness as an everyday player, Castillo’s knees and their effect on his speed, how Ryan Church would fare as an everyday player, and Ramon Castro’s ability to play more than once a week, and there were plenty of reasons to be concerned about the Mets and whether this would be the team or the time. Well, instead of 50 percent of this going right for the Mets, they’ve barely seen anything succeed. Pedro is just getting started, but Hernandez has had setback after setback rehabbing from his foot injuries and Alou is looking to be the first player to have MLB’s little disabled list logo sewn to his jersey. Delgado hasn’t bounced back, and looks like the best he can do is repeat last season. Castillo has kept closer to his career numbers than he probably should have, thanks to a lot of walks and a surprising power surge, but he is hitting .260 and is clearly losing a step to either age or injuries. Castro has barely played or been given a chance to play, and now he has to deal with another catcher being on the roster for no real reason. Ryan Church kept his end of the bargain, but has taken some massive blows to the head already this year and has joined a long list of Mets that have missed time, including Brian Schneider, Matt Wise, Angel Pagan, and others. As Mr. Burns once said, “Three misfortunes, that’s possible. Seven misfortunes, there’s an outside chance. But nine misfortunes? I’d like to see that.” This is in no way an excuse for Minaya’s handling of the backup players, which John went over pretty well and which I’ve railed on again and again, particularly losing Ruben Gotay on waivers and lacking any real backup plan for Alou and Delgado. But any team would have struggled under the injuries and misfortune that the Mets have endured so far: even their backup plans are coming up lame. That they are still hovering around .500 is a testament to the stars, Omar’s stars. And while the backend of the roster construction has always been a small problem for Omar, to me it seems like he learns well from his mistakes, and I think if he’d had this to do all over again, he would’ve treated New Orleans and the bench less like a club for all his buddies and more like something that needs to be enhanced in case things do go wrong for you. The fact that he’s been so proactive with minor league free agents like Valentino Pascucci and moves like Trot Nixon spells out to me that perhaps he has learned that these things need to be taken seriously. No, Omar is not the best GM in the game. Yes, he deserves a ton of the blame for this by not having suitable backup plans in tow. The Milledge trade is still unbelievable, even to this day. I’m not sure why there is a third catcher on the roster at all. But he does a lot more right than he is getting credit for right now. 10 Responses to “Save
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Counting on… COUNTING ON… with no legitimate back-up plans, so many aging and/or injured former stars to just magically be at their healthy peak again is just unforgivable, no matter how many good moves you’ve made mixed in there.
Castillo for four years? Having no plan that MAYBE Delgado would start declining at any point in his contract… even after a painfully streaky ‘06 and a flat-out lackluster ‘07, still just assuming he’d somehow bounce back in ‘08?
Moises Alou, just figuring he could play something like a full season, no matter how well he hits the few days he is healthy?
El Duque, for God’s friggin and, I hate to admit it, Pedro Martinez as well. No inkling that maybe both of these guys would end up ineffective in their twilights at once?
Throw in a strictly defensive catcher and a guy fighting so desperately and valiantly hard to play over his level and prove that he’s more than he seemed to be as an Expo that he’ll beg to keep going out their with one concussion on top of another until he can’t walk upright anymore…
And you don’t have much of a team left.
Exposing Flores to keep Julio Franco on the roster?
Discarding Gotay because Willie has delusions about what a second baseman is supposed to be?
Just bad move after bad move.
He wants likable guys and famous guys on the team more than he wants guys who can produce for the Mets for a long period of time.
He might not know this consciously but… it’s gotta be true.
A team of guys you used to want the rookie cards of and affable team chemistry schmucks.
A fantasy GM living in the past mixed in with a gladhanding Michael Scott sort of schlubbiness.
I tend to agree, I think Omar has done a lot more right with this team and would like to see him get a chance to retool this team then he has done wrong.
The trade for Santana is was a no brainer, but he is still the guy who managed to play it right and get that deal done. That Santana deal will end up feeling like the Pedro deal for the Red Sox 4 or 5 years from now. The Red Sox didn’t win right away with Pedro either.
The Lastings trade was never something I was that enthralled with, but lets face it, Lastings is getting some great no pressure full time starting time in Washington and has turned in a 258 5 26 performance so far in Washington. Yes he could still turn out to be something, maybe even as good as Jay Payton at this point, but Chruch was a more useful piece to this team in our situation than Lastings was ever going to be. Yet people still trash Omar for the move.
Omar also gets trashed for deals that short returns looked bad but never really worked out as bad as they ended up. Bannister-Burgos? Bannister has returned to the thoroughly bland journeyman player he always was after one of the most over-rated 12-9 3.65 seasons ever. People still complain endlessly about Ruben Gotay who is hitting 200 in a whopping 40 at bats this season. (But I guess just yet ANOTHER organization who sees him day in day out “SEVERELY” underrates him as a player and never just gives him a chance).
Yes Omar has the Lindstrom and Bell deal in his list, and these are truely bad deals. Yes Omar did not figure out enough of a backup plan for the OF/1B and we have an aging and odd bench. I am not 100% sure what we could have done about that at a global level. I certainly didn’t expect Endy to be this bad if given more play time and no one should have expected the issues with Church this year.
I will still take Omar as my GM thank you very much. Is he perfect? Certainly not. But he seems to get almost no credit for anything he does right (Maine was a “throw in” that he never expected anything out of; Perez never would have been traded for; Santana deal just fell into his lap; “all” he does is sign big players (Pedro, Beltran, Santana, Wagner, etc).
I will tell you this, outside of Castillo and to a lesser extent Delgado Minaya has done an excellent job not overspending for starting pitching and position players (his track record in the bullpen is a little worse, but so have almost every team in baseball).
Minaya spends money fairly well, he has made more good moves than bad and in general has done a better job planning for this season then he gets credit for. Perfect? No. Just not as bad as people seem to think he is.
I’ll give him a little credit for Pedro, but not Beltran or Santana, those were no brainers. And he backed into them. When only two other teams can afford a player and they don’t have his position open or don’t want to part with talent in a trade, you’ve backed into a good opportunity. Minaya had to get those two. Its not really a stroke of brilliance to pick up the best players on the market when you are in the best position to do so.
I’ll give him props for Maine and Perez, but how much of those trades were Peterson’s influence? Why didn’t he keep Roberto Hernandez instead of Mota?
The minor league system went to pot and the bench is a joke.
Minaya got famous in Montreal by developing good young players and mixing in some reliable journey men. He’s done an about face with the Mets.
No, it’s not. But he also spent that money on good players and not merely the best available free agent. And I’d like to think the Yankees, Astros, and Angels AT LEAST were in on Beltran. Santana was rumored to just about every big market team except the Chicago teams. It’s not like Omar was competing with himself to get those guys.
It doesn’t really take Rick Peterson to point out “hey, Oliver Perez was really good in 2002 and he’d probably do well with a change of scenery.” Maine, who knows what percentage was assigned to whom. Fact of the matter is Omar still had to convince the Orioles to give him up for a pitcher who had never been anything better than mediocre in his career and he did. Roberto Hernandez blew up just as bad as Mota did in 07. Of course, that was much more foreseeable since he was 42 in 2007.
Asides from the Santana trade, the minor league system has stayed at just about the same level. Any GM without a brain tumor makes the Santana trade in Omar’s spot. The Mets haven’t had a quality farm system for a long time. The bench I’ll give you.
Minaya didn’t draft anyone good with Montreal. He reaped the fruits of what Jim Beattie gave him. In fact, the only players that even broke in under Minaya from 02-04 were Brad Wilkerson, Tony Armas, Zach Day, TJ Tucker, Claudio Vargas, and his one good draft pick: Chad Cordero. Not exactly a collection of world beaters.
Donal, maybe it was a nobrainer to get Santana, but not every GM would have had the patience and guts to hold out and get him without giving up F-Mart or Pelfrey.
I do agree about Omar’s draft picks. He has a lot to work on there. So far I have given him a partial pass as some of his picks have brought us important players, and many/most of his decent picks have been lost because of FA signings so I don’t hold that against him quite as much. The Wilpon’s demand to stick to the “pay structure” or whatever has certainly hindered him there.
That being said, this year’s draft seems like it was a pretty good one (who can really tell tho), and if Pelfrey turns himself into something *knocks on wood* we will have a bit more to talk about in this department.
Or Hielman who was probably our biggest trading chip at one point (ohh what a few months can change…)
Omar is not the best or the worst GM. The problem with Omar is the “good” moves he has made are all no-brainers. Any reasonably competent baseball person with the Mets budget should be able to sign Beltran, Pedro, and Santana by throwing more money and more years than anyone else at them. In doing so, Omar has signed players for short term impact at the expense of over paying them and having unmovable contracts when they begin to decline. (I fear that Beltran and Johan are already showing signs of decline)
If Omar has one big problem it’s that he throws years onto contracts like he is tossing beads at Mardi Gras. He doesn’t seem to understand that locking on to these players handcuffs the organization in the future. It’s one thing to lock up a young player like Wright or Reyes for six or seven years, but when you give a 28 year old a seven year contract your are signing a 35 year old player.
Omar also doesn’t get enough heat for getting rid of Bell, Yates, Ring, Lindstrom, and Owens. He misread the market for catchers in 2006 and traded for LoDuca (not a bad move) when he could have signed Molina and kept the players. Milledge for Schnieder and Church? Is that really the best he could do for one of your “top prospects”?
There is one other thing to consider. When Omar was hired there was the thought that hiring a Latino GM would create an influx of talent from the Latin American countries. This has not happened.
I don’t really like Omar and he was given way too much credit for 2006. He is nowhere near as horrific as Steve Phillips. The best way I can describe him is that he is good at the blatantly obvious, but he is not at all savvy and he has damaged the organization long term.
Paul DePodesta, Jed Hoyer, or Logan White are all people I would rather see as GM.
Warpspeed, unless you think Omar should have forseen the concussions, it’s hard to criticize Omar for getting Church and Schnieder for Milledge. Apparently, Omar saw far more potential in Church than others did, and he was right?
Warpspeed, unless you think Omar should have forseen the concussions, it’s hard to criticize Omar for getting Church and Schnieder for Milledge. Apparently, Omar saw far more potential in Church than others did, and he was right?
Obviously the concussions were a freak thing that nobody predicted. That’s not my issue.
Schneider is nothing more than a good defensive catcher. (BTW If anyone can direct me to a reliable metric for assessing catching defense and it’s impact I would greatly appreciate it) He is 31 and has a career OPS+ of 81. Given his age, limited ability, and the difficulty of his position, you can expect him to decline from here on out.
Church is 29 and prior to this season only had one season with over 500 plate appearances. His career OBP is .350 and his OPS+ is 116. Not bad but not great. Maybe his offensive numbers were lower because of injuries, the lineups around him, and the parks in which he played, but nobody anticipated the offensive outburst this year. With that said, his numbers so far are based on a sample size of 204 PA’s and only represent a slight offensive improvement over Shawn Green’s production through the same number of PA’s last year. (Church is a much better defensive player)
Milledge was considered by many to be a potential 30 hr player with above average speed and defense. He was seen as one of the top prospects in the organization. If these are the types of players you are getting back for a highly touted prospect it doesn’t say much about your negotiating or evaluative skills as a GM. Omar should have held out for a player with a higher ceiling than Church or hung on to Milledge and looked for alternatives at catcher. If your managerial philosophy is to accept average players in return for top prospect simply to fill a short term need, that is bad for an organization long term.