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Hey! The '86 Mets Carried Rafael Santana ....

batmagadanleadoff Nov 27 2013 10:17 AM

The Mets' Tejada era continues, after all By Howard Megdal 10:56 am Nov. 27, 2013 Back in the heady days of summer and early fall, when the Mets' pursuit of big-ticket outfielders like Shin-Soo Choo populated some newspapers and Sandy Alderson spoke openly of $100 million payrolls, one thing was all but certain: Ruben Tejada wouldn't be the shortstop in 2014. The Mets made this clear in several ways. Tejada and Ike Davis both struggled early, and both were exiled to the minor leagues for a significant portion of the season, but only Davis returned. Rather than bring Tejada back, the Mets elected to go with Omar Quintanilla for most of the year, even though Quintanilla's present (.222/.306/.283 in 2013) and his future (he just turned 32) didn't suggest he'd be particularly useful. And with a winter of upgrades supposedly coming, it was hard to fathom the Mets wouldn't choose to move on from Tejada and improve upon Quintanilla. So it was sobering to hear Alderson, on Tuesday's conference call introducing the low-rent alternative to Choo, Chris Young, say this about shortstop in 2014: “So is it conceivable that Ruben Tejada or someone within in the organization is playing shortstop for us on Opening Day? I think the short answer is yes. But, again, what we’re trying to do is improve the team as a whole. And so while shortstop is an obvious place for improvement, it’s not the only one. And if we’re successful elsewhere, as many clubs do, they get by on their strengths and hope to be as adequate as possible in those areas where they’re weaker.” It wasn't the most robust vote of confidence, to be sure. And logic would dictate that Alderson speak as positively as possible about his own players. After all, what organization would publicly tarnish one of its own tradeable assets, especially one budget constraints might force them to keep? Here's Alderson, on the need to upgrade at shortstop, way back in October 2013: "Now you look at shortstop and, well you know, can we get by, you can’t get by with multiple positions that way so you know we’ve got to look at it that way and it’s not as easy as just saying well we’ve got to improve the shortshop position, we probably do. Can we go into the season with what we had last year? Well we got by with Quintanilla and Tejada and so forth, but that’s not what we’re trying to do next season so it’s definitely an area we have to look at." And why was the organization so down on Tejada? Alderson spelled that out as well, back in September. "You know, one of the problems with Ruben is, it’s like pulling teeth. Extra batting practice, extra this, extra that, doesn’t happen unless someone else is insisting on it. And that’s what we need to see. We need to see a commitment to improvement." They didn't get to see that much in New York. The team delayed bringing Tejada up to the big leagues until September 10--a maneuver that gave the team an extra year of control over Tejada, in 2017--at the expense of seeing what he could do at the major league level for a meaningful period in 2013. A little over a week later, Tejada broke his leg, ending his season, and his post-demotion evaluation, after seven games. But, even if he'd played out the season, the Mets wouldn't have learned much more in an additional two weeks. Now certainly, there's an argument to be made for putting Tejada into the Opening Day lineup next year. He's just 24 years old. He was a competent major league shortstop as recently as 2012. As Terry Collins put it back in July: "He's not Jose Reyes, but this guy had great instincts to the ball." But, two years after ownership's financial limitations meant letting Reyes, the team's homegrown elite shortstop, go elsewhere, the Mets were supposed to be chasing better shortstop situations than simply hoping the guy who hit .202 last year ,while management publicly disparaged him, (and is recovering from a broken leg) will return to previous form. Instead, Mets fans might want to get used to more soundbites from Terry Collins about Ruben Tejada like this one, back in May, after Tejada failed to get a bunt down. "When I first came to this organization, that was the first thing they talked about was Ruben Tejada, his approach to the game and how it’s so beyond his years as far as his mental approach. But he's had a rough start and hopefully what I saw the last couple of games, he’s starting to see the baseball a little bit better, hitting more line drives. Hopefully he’s back and finishes the season strong because you don’t hit .285 by mistake because he’s a good hitter." http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/s ... -after-all

batmagadanleadoff Nov 27 2013 10:20 AM Re: Hey! The '86 Mets Carried Rafael Santana ....

You know that the guy's just chomping at the bit to ridicule the Mets off-season pickups, but he's gotta bite his tongue for now because the team still has -- according to the team, anyway -- about $25M more to play with. So we get this Tejada piece instead, for now.

Ceetar Nov 27 2013 10:27 AM Re: Hey! The '86 Mets Carried Rafael Santana ....

no 'era' continue until 3/31, fwiw.

batmagadanleadoff Dec 10 2013 01:45 PM Re: Hey! The '86 Mets Carried Rafael Santana ....

You know that [Megdal's] just chomping at the bit to ridicule the Mets off-season pickups, but he's gotta bite his tongue for now because the team still has -- according to the team, anyway -- about $25M more to play with. So we get this Tejada piece instead, for now. Mets perform triage for beat reporters By Howard Megdal 4:10 p.m. Dec. 9, 2013 It's been a staple of Sandy Alderson's tenure as general manager of the New York Mets to provide ever-changing guideposts for what payroll, in the post-Madoff reality for Fred Wilpon and his partners, might be to reporters. These guesses are almost uniformly inaccurate, and as the broken promises have piled up, the Mets have gotten diminishing public relations returns on this strategy. Now, P.R. aside, there's an argument to be made in general that a general manager's public proclamations needn't carry a ton of truth to them, providing Alderson, or others, with more negotiating room. The problem is, there's a universal trend that's gone into every revision of Alderson's self-described budget. He's never missed low. You'd be a rich man, if each time Sandy Alderson talked about how much money the Mets could spend, you'd bet the under. (How systematically disappointing fans by failing to live up to their own promises counts as useful public relations, no one can really say.) This is no accident. So it was anything but encouraging, two days after the Mets agreed to terms with outfielder Curtis Granderson, to hear Alderson say his budget for payroll in 2014 is $85 million in a conversation with reporters Sunday night at baseball's winter meetings. And not surprisingly, the reporters noticed. That means, with Granderson in the fold, that the Mets are almost tapped out. They've got about $11 million to spend, if that is the limit. As mentioned above, it also wouldn't be a shock if that turned out to be high. But when such a declaration comes 19 days--19 days!--after Alderson told most of the same reporters that Mets payroll would not be lower than $87 million, it's worrisome. And when that declaration, complete with revisionist math, came just a few months after Alderson described needing a $90-100 million payroll "to be competitive", it's more perplexing, still. If only Alderson were making these declarations for public consumption, while working with, if not a sufficient budget, even a static one. But the public statements mirror the uncertainty within--the Mets front office is well aware that today's numbers from ownership could change tomorrow. That the changes are coming closer together certainly doesn't suggest any stability, nor does the consistent dropping of numbers that for years now, have turned out to be too optimistic, every time. As long as those covering the Mets don't make ownership's big-picture inability to provide basic resources for the major league team to compete the story, the stories about whether the Mets will trade Lucas Duda or Ike Davis will seem like the most important thing going on. Alderson wasn't hiding from the fact that the budget he's been given, if you can call slow-walked approval for individual player expenditures (the result of the process the Mets owners go through with their creditors to make such things happen) a budget, isn't enough. "We came into the offseason hoping to improve in a number of areas," Alderson said Sunday night. "And I think we have improved, hopefully, in one area. That, logically, leaves three or four others to potentially address. But, depending on how things materialize, we may live with certain weaknesses. The idea is to minimize the number of weaknesses--not necessarily correct all of them--and hope we've constructed a team that minimizes those." This is an astonishing admission by a general manager in December. That it comes from a GM of a New York team (with New York revenues, in a situation where those revenues aren't siphoned off to keep ownership afloat), one whose organization spoke of finally being freed of financial shackles to return the Mets to prominence this winter, is disspiriting to a front office which desperately hoped that would be so. It's not going to make the fans come back any sooner, either. Alderson's not wrong on the math required to make the Mets contenders. The Mets won 74 games last year. They did so with Marlon Byrd posting a 138 O.P.S.+ in right field and Matt Harvey dominating for most of the season, two players certain to be missing in 2014. Granderson is a better bet in 2014 than Byrd, but neither outfielder is particularly likely to repeat Byrd's 2013. That still leaves the Mets a Matt Harvey short of... a 74-win team. The Mets can address roster needs with trades, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see Daniel Murphy dealt. Alderson seemed to imply that Eric Young Jr. could be a starting player, and there have been rumblings that the Mets could jettison Murphy and play Young at second base. Other than his hitting and his fielding, Young would be a fine choice at the position. Alderson also said to expect one of Lucas Duda or Ike Davis to be traded soon, clearing first base for the other. Exactly how many needs the Mets can address in what they receive for Murphy and Davis will go a long way toward determining how helpful this offseason was at repairing years of financial starvation from ownership. But the promised winter of relevance has, once again, devolved into triage, while ownership tries frantically to re-work a coming loan of $250 million due next June, merely one of the huge financial roadblocks ahead for ownership. Or as Alderson put it Sunday night, talking about the shortstop he and others buried all year back when they thought they'd be given money to buy another one: "For example, we can come out of these meetings with Tejada as our regular shortstop. Worse things could happen to us certainly. But, to the extent we can address as many additional issues as we can, we're going to try to do that." http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/m ... -reporters

MFS62 Dec 11 2013 08:22 AM Re: Hey! The '86 Mets Carried Rafael Santana ....

What a turd. I'm surprised he didn't say that the Wilpons are waiting to see how much money they make or spend in the Rule V draft (at $50 K a pop) before they know if they have any more money to spend on free agents. Or will that be his next article? And then there's Klapisch: Klapisch: LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – This is supposed to be the year Mets fans are finally liberated from the dark age, but good luck to anyone out there who actually believes it. There’s no realistic reason to think the Mets will be better in 2014, or that the much-expected cash windfall from the expiring commitments to Johan Santana and Jason Bay will ever make it to the open market. In fact, as Curtis Granderson spoke about new beginnings during his news conference on Tuesday, the ceremony represented the end of the line for the Mets. With $15 million a year devoted to Granderson through 2017, GM Sandy Alderson hinted that the upgrade in center field was the winter’s last major move. That means you can forget about a much-needed shortstop like Stephen Drew; the money just isn’t there. Instead, Ruben Tejada, the very player the Mets have been trashing recently, is being recycled as an everyday asset. Of course, Jeff Wilpon won’t admit he can’t afford Drew, insisting shifting responsibility onto his general manager. “It’s a baseball decision because Sandy hasn’t come to say ‘Gee, we have to sign Stephen Drew’ or anybody else for that matter,” Wilpon said after Granderson’s introduction at the Winter Meetings. “They’re looking at things on the whole. It’s not financial at this point.” Wilpon may or may not realize how such statements dishearten – or, more accurately infuriate – the very fan base he’s trying to recapture. Nearly half of the fans who paid to watch the Mets five years ago are gone, as attendance has slipped from a record 4.04 million in 2008 to the 2.06 million suckers who showed up in 2013, believing a rebirth was right around the corner. Instead, loyalists have been fed a steady diet of broken promises, starting with the day the Madoff scandal exploded and the Wilpons insisted the day-to-day operation of the ballclub would be unaffected. At every turn, there was a steady drizzle of false hope; in September, Alderson told reporters a $100 million deal for a free agent “was not out of question.” But the $60 million to Granderson, coupled with the $7.2 million to Chris Young, leaves approximately $11 million for the rest of winter. Anything more crashes into the hard-ceiling $85 million payroll for 2014. It’s inconceivable that a major-market team, with a beautiful, relatively new stadium and its own regional network estimated to be worth $2 billion could only pay its players $85 million. It’s not just inconceivable, it’s unacceptable. Once again, Alderson is being forced to build the Mets on the cheap. Lucky for the Wilpons that Bud Selig has such a soft spot in his heart for the family, and for Fred, in particular. The commissioner isn’t kind to his enemies – see what he did to Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and what he’s attempting to do to Alex Rodriguez — but an MLB official recently said Selig believes Fred is “doing great.” Only, how? Admittedly, the off-season is still relatively young, and the Mets could, theoretically, engineer a surprise signing by opening day. But the more likely scenario is a handful of low-budget acquisitions like Freddy Garcia or Chris Perez, which means the Mets will struggle to match last year’s 74 wins. Yes, Granderson is a nice addition, even if, given a full season to do it, he’s good for nearly 200 strikeouts with his 35-40 HRs. But Granderson, with a career .828 OPS, is unlikely to exceed Marlon Byrd’s .847 in 2013. One more thing to remember: the Mets won’t have Matt Harvey, which means they have to find his nine wins – and the unquantifiable dominance – somewhere else. So swapping out Byrd for Granderson, subtracting Harvey and adding Young, who batted .200 last season, and you have the nucleus for another dismal summer. The difference, again, was supposed to be the money – until it was no longer there. Or perhaps never was. The first whiff of trouble came in mid-November when Alderson said he was shocked – shocked – that the market was exploding. The Mets believed they had a shot at Jhonny Peralta, but that was before it was obvious the shortstop was out of their price range. Peralta signed a four-year, $53 million deal with the Cardinals and the Mets acted as if that was lunacy. Alderson, one of the industry’s most respected executives, is too intelligent and certainly too shrewd to be caught off guard by the rising cost of signing a free agent. Then again, maybe Alderson realized all along he could never snare a hot commodity like Peralta, not when his bosses are still trying to recover from the Madoff fiasco. Just what do the Wilpons’ finances look like today? They lost a whopping $70 million in 2011, although, by cutting overhead, limited their losses to $20 million in the last two seasons. Still, more than $600 million is still owed on a loan against SNY, due in 2015, and another $250 million loan taken against the team, due in 2014. The family’s best hope is to re-finance the loans, based on the re-valuation of the franchise. The fact that the Dodgers were sold for $2 billion in 2012 inflated the Mets’ worth to $812 million, according to Forbes – an overnight boost of $100 million. Yet, the Mets’ cost-cutting can last only so long. The banks will inevitably want to be repaid, and the Wilpons can’t keep borrowing against SNY forever. Sooner or later, they’re going to have to raise cash the old fashioned way – by drawing fans who’ll pay to see a winning team. And who knows when that will happen? Later

Ceetar Dec 11 2013 08:45 AM Re: Hey! The '86 Mets Carried Rafael Santana ....

I'm convinced it was writer people who set 2014 as the 'goalpost' for contention as their own little "Deadline for writing charming rebuilding/recovery pieces" and now will go on their own little crusade. Let's see how the the rest of the offseason shakes out, but I think the Mets might be better off at this juncture than last year. Why does no one mention a full year of d'Arnaud, or that even if they went with Tejada he'd be hard pressed to match the ineptitude of the Ruben Quintanilla tandem last year? Or that Rick Ankiel and others were a collection of outs? Or that they won't let Davis not hit at first for three months? More Wheeler and perhaps other prospects like Montero and Noah, who's last name I should learn to spell, may bridge that "No Harvey" gap a little, and again chances are we get a better veteran SP than Marcum.