This Fish Rots From Jeff Wilpon Down
by KranepoolRools on Jul 26, 2010 11:19 AM EDT
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So Howard Johnson is gone as hitting coach, or soon will be, replaced by another guy who will presumably tell Mets hitters to "take more first pitches" and "look for a pitch in their zone," and whatever else a hitting coach should be telling a team that’s been approaching every game like a meaningless contest on the last day of the season ("Go up there hackin’, son; I gotta plane to catch!"). And of course the Mets hitters will come out of their slump and start hitting the ball again, whether because of the shock of their friend’s firing or the law of averages (most likely the latter).
Meanwhile, Jerry Manuel will remain manager, and he will find ways to lose, whether the team hits or not. He will continue to play Rod Barajas over Josh Thole and pull Johan Santana after 100 pitches (gotta keep Jo’s confidence up) and bunt Reyes ahead of Castillo and use his worst reliever in the most critical situation while saving his bajillion-dollar closer for the ninth inning of blowouts at Citi Field, and the many other nonsensical bows to conventional wisdom he’s employed over the past three seasons … moves that have resulted in a reasonably talented team playing to an under-.500 record during his tenure.
Jerry Manuel’s job is safe for the rest of the season. It’s the hitting coach who pays the price.
(I ask this, apart from my main point, which I’ll get to shortly: Is there some reason Jerry couldn’t have talked to his hitters about "taking more first pitches" or "looking for pitches in their zones?" He is, after all, the manager.)
None of it makes sense, but then again, how can one expect something sensible from such a poorly run organization? Moreover, how can you expect an organization to be run anything but poorly when the guy at the top got the job solely because his daddy owns the team? As someone once said of a certain prominent politician who also made a mess of his daddy's inheritance, Jeff Wilpon was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.
Look at his history: According to the NY Times, the Montreal Expos drafted Jeff in 1983 as a favor to daddy Fred Wilpon. Jeff never played an official game for the ‘Spos organization or any other in MLB. Jeff went to work for Fred, rising (surprise!) to Vice President at Sterling Equities. Fred gave him the Brooklyn Cyclones to run for awhile, before handing him the keys to the Bentley. Now he’s driving the big club off the road. Into a ditch.
Jeff is probably a decent guy. It’s not his fault he’s rich (after all, he didn’t do anything to make it happen). Neither is it his fault that he never had to learn the baseball business from the ground-up. After all, who among MLB team owners did?
But to run a successful business, one has to recognize the gaps in his knowledge and experience, and hire people able to compensate for his shortcomings. In Jeff’s case, he obviously knows nothing about building a winning organization, so he should put it in the hands of someone who does, and become what Mets fans should be praying for: the most absentee of absentee owners.
One assumes Jeff Wilpon loves the Mets and wants them to succeed. But unless he’s willing to step back, hire a real baseball man and let him do the job, the Mets will remain a joke … baseball’s Knicks, run into the ground by Queens’ answer to James Dolan.
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Apparently, there is a movie, too.
One day, this team is going to kill me.
by fxcarden on Jul 26, 2010 9:10 PM EDT up reply actions 4 recs
Summary of that propaganda laiden bio
Jeffery S. Wilpon, Executive Vice President
Responsible for sucking the blood of all Mets fans. His accomplishments include being born in to money, not soiling himself today (unverifiable) and spoon feeding his father strained carrots.
Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but Jerry abuses the privilege.
I wonder how this man was hired by the Mets
He must have had a great resume.
by Putnan Prince on Jul 27, 2010 10:52 PM EDT up reply actions
This description tells me so much...
Think about it. Even high performing people will be stretched now and then to run, oh, say, a major public/private construction project. And he does this and is supposed to run a baseball team at the same time? And give his services for various charities? And the Greenwich Country Day School? Most parents can handle work + school board, but that and everything else. The man needs to rely on subordinates, even though he cannot possibly oversee the full scope of their daily decisions.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 30, 2010 1:37 AM EDT up reply actions
Sadly, he's got no sense of how to delegate,
at least with regard to the Mets. His track record is consistently poor, and if all the stories about how the Wilpons dictate player acquisitions are true, then they don’t have even a sound, basic understanding of how finances work.
Right.
For an executive of his level, delegation is the name of the game. While I have no direct basis to know whether he delegated efficiently in other aspects of the business, it sure seems that he doesn’t in the player development and management sphere.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 30, 2010 6:15 PM EDT up reply actions
does he actually do any other aspects of buisness
most of my knowledge is based on Wikipedia but I’ve never actually heard about his involvement in the Wilpons other businesses. It’s like Fred gave him the mets to play with to keep him out of his hair.
He’s our Hank, except we weren’t lucky enough to get a Hal with him.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
I sympathize, but...
… to be completely fair, that team in the Bronx has a lot of guys name o’ Steinbrenner in that front office, and they’re not exactly wanting for franchise success.
by LeiterMilnerFasterStronger on Jul 26, 2010 1:43 PM EDT reply actions
The main reason for Yankee success
Has been the hiring of people who know the game.
That’s it, pure and simple.
Pure and simple?
No mention of the $50+ million payroll advantage every year? And since the wild card came into being the Yankees are also competing against other teams where their payroll advantage is $100m and more.
If we imagine for the moment that the Mets could add another $70m in payroll to get theirs into Yankee range, and imagine too that they simply burned half of that money, for $35m the Mets could easily have added this offseason an excellent starter, 2bman, and bullpen arm. They would now be at least slightly ahead of the Braves, and ahead in the wild card race. Tak would have never left the pen. Maine or Perez would never have started a single game. Castillo would be the backup, and Tejada and Cora would have gotten into a very few games. There would have been money a couple of months ago to get a rental in RF.
For a while now the Yankees have simply avoided hiring incompetent people at key positions. Once they managed that feat, their enormous edge in payroll has made the rest easy.
This
"I reject your reality and substitute my own"
-Adam Savage
by blueandorange4life on Jul 26, 2010 7:57 PM EDT up reply actions
While I agree for the most part
They do also draft and develop young players better.
I think Cashman gets a little too much credit. Their scouting dept is much better than ours though.
eh even if you break down our respective payrolls
they’re getting WAY more bang for their buck. They have a 50 million advantage, but you have to consider about 55 million of that is tied up in A-rod and Jeter, who are essentially their Wright and Reyes, (though I suppose Cano might take A-rod’s place in that equation these days), but making like 10 times what they’ve mad the last 5 years. So they’re still managing to squeeze in like 24141 above average to all star players to surround them with while we’ve paid Wright and Reyes peanuts and managed to surround them with poop.
I mean when you consider they’ve squeezed, Sabathia, Burnett who was good for that one year, Tex, Swisher, Posada, Petite, Damon, Matsui (and now Berkman and Kearns for literally next to nothing), Gardner and Canoe and probably some other players I’ve forgotten into close to the same amount of money we’ve spent the last 3 years on our payroll, we still come out as big failures.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
According to Cot's the Yankees' payroll is currently $87 million higher than the Mets'.
$87 million. That’s the entire" payroll of around half the teams in the majors. You can piss away two-thirds of that, and still add the starter, 2bman, and reliever that would put the Mets in a virtual tie w the Braves *despite the complete insanity of Maine and Perez on the roster and Francouer as the starter in RF, and STILL have friggin money to pick up a player at the deadline.
That’s how massive the Yankees advantage is. You can literally flush two-thirds of it, and even with all the blatant idiocy of the FO and Manuel, you’re as good as any team in the National League. It’s unbelievable.
its 87 million this year
only because we cut our payroll by 30 million for no apparent reason. Last year it was only 30 so million bigger.
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
Which doesn't change my point in the least.
Wilpon is a disgrace. The Mets did nothing at the deadline to get better. Nothing. They couldn’t even pick up a frigging bullpen arm.
What a ‘fuck you’ to the fans.
True, but ...
The Yanks latest run of success began in the early ’90s, when George was suspended by Fay Vincent. With George banned from day-to-day operations and Stick Michael in charge, the organization rebuilt. By the time George returned in ’93, the foundation was set for the Yankees we know and hate. All he had to do from that point was sit back and watch … which to his credit, he did. Moral to the story: When a meddling owner takes his grubby mitts off the baseball operations and puts it into the hands of someone who knows his stuff, good things happen.
In his absence, Michael et al built an incipient juggernaut, which Steinbrenner allowed to run mostly unimpeded from the time he returned in '93.
Sure, he continued to be a blowhard, but he let Michael, then Bob Watson, and finally Brian Cashman run baseball ops without much interference. Unless you remember George in the ’80s, you have no conception of the term “meddling owner.”
by KranepoolRools on Jul 29, 2010 4:57 PM EDT up reply actions
Well said.
He was an abomination.
The plumping for him elsewhere for the Hall strikes me as grotesque. He’s as deserving a candidate as, say, someone bizarre, whose brief peak was very likely fueled by drugs. I’d much, much rather see Dave Kingman in the Hall than I would Steinbrenner.
Agreed
And I say it goes with suspension # 1 coinciding with the 76-78 tams developing. Don’t forget they went to the WS in ‘76 before free agency really started. (And don’t talk to me about Catfish Hunter: 1) He was declared a free agent before it was given en masse to the players in general;: and 2) he was great in his first year with the Yankees (‘75) and started to downhill from there. He simply wasn’t the dominant pitcher in the Yankees’ championship years that he was in Oakland.
What's the score, boys?
What did Bugs Bunny do?
What's with the Carrot League baseball today?
Really?
Man my family lore must be up to something. Hunter was reputed to be a lot more important than that from 76-79. I’ll take your word for it but this is surprising.
Hunter had the one great year with the Yanksin
1975, when he came in 2nd in the Cy voting. Then he was finished as a top pitcher, an average starter of decreasing durability from 76 to 78. He was terrible and hurt in 79, done at 33. He wasn’t good in the postseason for the Yankees, either.
It’s remarkable that he even sniffed the Hall of Fame, let alone got in. No offense.
He did have one of the last great baseball nicknames...
Before everyone started just contracting to Initial-Syllable and similar.
Another option...
If the Mets double or triple their payroll, that could offset some of the mismanagement.
I think with a $300M+ payroll, we could at least get some “meaningful games in September” once in a while.
Until that happens, yeah, I’d say every year is going to be like this, or worse.
that's not realistic right now, is it?
The Yankees aren’t even close to a $300 mil payroll.
John Olerud, Hall of Famer. Got a nice ring to it.
No it's not, and I think that's his point.
by KranepoolRools on Jul 26, 2010 4:41 PM EDT up reply actions
yeah
sarcasm detector had a bit of a malfunction.
John Olerud, Hall of Famer. Got a nice ring to it.
How do the yankees spend that much money and have a great farm system?
How are the able to eat shit contracts like Igawai and keep him in Scranton but we have to play Ollie because of his contract. How do they do this? I
Igawa didn't have enough
MLB service time; he has no choice if the Yankees want to send him down.
What's the score, boys?
What did Bugs Bunny do?
What's with the Carrot League baseball today?
I take your meaning but
we don’t actually have to play guys like Perez (or Luis Castillo). It’s fiscally prudent to hang in there with a guy when he has a long contract. People have pointed out exactly that on this site wrt to Carlos Beltran’s lousy 2005 season. You clearly give a guy you just signed to 7/119 every chance to get back to his previous levels since you’ve just pissed away over one hundred million dollars if you give up on him when he isn’t done and is simply having a down year. Another reason to stay with a guy is if, while he’s not playing at a level near what you expected, he’s still providing at least some value—around $11m prorated for the year in Jason Bay’s case.
With Ollie it’s a matter of deciding, first, whether you can live with his production when he’s on the roster, and second, whether the amount remaining on his contract justifies gambling on keeping him on the 25-man. Ollie’s performance in 2009 and in Spring Training in 2010 strongly indicated he was done. That’s strike one. Once the season started he was actively undermining the team’s chances of contending, putting up a remarkable negative 1.0 WAR. That’s strike two. Perez took his sweet time cooperating with the team’s best interests and stay in the minors until he’s demonstrated he’s at least as good as the last man in the pen. That’s strike three.
The Mets are cheap. The Wilpons routinely misunderstand and mishandle payroll and finances. They downplayed the nightmares that were Ollie’s 2009 season and 2010 Spring Training because they had neither the wit nor (believed they had) the money to pick up another starter. They downplayed how badly Perez was hurting the team because their goal is NOT getting to the postseason, but merely to play ‘meaningful games in September’. Further, they mishandled the situation both by not persuading Perez to accept an “injury” assignment in early April, and by not—if they were going to tolerate him on the major league roster—pitching him the mopup role out of the pen until he was able to demonstrate he could stil get major league hitters out.
And they’re still screwing up, agreeing to bring him up too soon, then putting him in a position—after his poor minor league outings—where Perez could actually continue to cost the team games.
A smart team wouldn’t have let Perez get into a position where he could cost them the three or four wins he’s cost them to date. That’s half the team’s deficit in the standings. The Mets mishandled the entire Perez situation, while the Yankees are smart enough and rich enough to either keep their problems in the minors, have the foresight to write contracts allowing that very thing, or unload their problems entirely. The Mets FO, on the other hand, doesn’t think well and it doesn’t think ahead. I can’t imagine Perez and Boras would have let a stipulation allowing the Mets to send Perez to the minors in various scenarios get in the way of signing that noncompetitive 3/36 deal, but that little bit of foresight would have solved a lot of the Mets problems this season, and would STILL have them firmly in the middle of the wild card race.
by Jack Str on Jul 27, 2010 4:14 AM EDT reply actions 3 recs
where did this come from
cause everyones saying it all over
I want Jerry Manuel fired now, not three years from now. That is my stance.- John Peterson
TV show, I think?
"Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!"
Gil Hodges IS a Hall of Famer.
by Brooklyn Dodgers Mets Fan on Jul 31, 2010 1:00 PM EDT up reply actions
Nope...this guy.
The one and only mistermet on teh Interwebz!
by Steve Schreiber on Jul 31, 2010 7:58 PM EDT up reply actions
I don't know why I never watched that show...
I’ve seen a few recently and they were great.
Save Jenrry Mejia!
Good post...
And I think Steinbrenner would have handled Ollie a little differently. Do you think he would have taken the whining about not going to the minors?
by MookieTheCat on Jul 30, 2010 1:43 AM EDT up reply actions
I think Ollie would have been out on his butt within a day
and departing on the heels of some pretty nasty words aimed in his direction. RemeMber Hideki Irabu, and George’s foaming at the mouth over Irabu’s travails?
Exactly.
George would have not taken any of it. Ollie would be out the door within a day, sunken cost or not.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 30, 2010 6:16 PM EDT up reply actions
Yeah, it rained for 5 minutes. The storm was weak and hit north of us...
Made me realize why those folks in NO ignored the Katrina warnings. Too much crying wolf.
by MookieTheCat on Jul 31, 2010 2:06 AM EDT up reply actions
Remember when...
the Marlins bought the 1997 championship witha stagering payroll? Then the next year they dismantled most of the team. Money can’t buy you love, but it can by you a World Series Championship. The Yanks have been doing it for years. Looks like they’re going to repeat this year. I don’t see anyone taking a series from them.
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