Who's gonna be the General Manager?

[Centerfield]

Vic Sage wrote: I deal with agents every day. Their only common denominator is that they are required to be able to know where and what the market is, and what is the value of their product in that market. Then tell a story that sells their client into that market for the best deal possible. They are salesman, plain and simple. So the only thing I know for sure about the Bro-meister is that, as one of the preeminent sports agents around, he is able to talk people into buying his wares. He was certainly successful at it getting the Wilpons to buy. Whether or not the wares he's selling are any good is unknowable at this point.

Centerfield wrote: I think that it means that Brodie Van Wagenen is a terrific salesman. That he's great at making his clients appear to be worth more than they are. That he talks a good game and is adept at painting his clients in the best possible light. Holy crap. I just figured out why the Wilpons hired him.

I just want to be clear that before Vic and I have been in the same room (stadium anyway) way back when. And that we are not the same person.

[Benjamin Grimm]

The press conference will be tomorrow (Tuesday).

[Ceetar]

I would definitely like to hear his take on analytics. I would like him to see him employ more/better analytics people, presuming it is understaffed, and find/hire better/more scouts and analytics and trainers down the line. nutrition experts, etc.

I don't know that the #MetsBeat is going to really ask him these questions of course, so it'll be murky. fat-shaming Mike Puma already intends to try to hold his feet to the fire on some random deGrom quote he had last year.

[Vic Sage]

avi

[Ceetar]

Also looks like he deleted his Twitter.

[Ceetar]

Here's Brodie with Kesti Aysseh, Brandi Maniscalco, and Anthony Maniscalco at the DOMUS Gala Beachside Clambake

[Frayed Knot]

Ceetar wrote: Here's Brodie with Kesti and Brandi ...

Of course those are their names. The only real surprise is that neither opted for the double-i spelling.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Welcome General Manager Brodie Van Wagnen The New York Mets announced today that the club has named Brodie Van Wagenen the club's 13th General Manager in franchise history. He will be introduced at a press conference tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. at Citi Field, which you can watch via SNY, the Mets social media channels and mets.com. Van Wagenen, 44, co-founded the baseball division of CAA Sports in 2006 where he served as the co-head of CAA Baseball. In 2017, he was just one of three agents named on USA Today's Top 100 "Most Powerful People in MLB." "Brodie is an extremely knowledgeable, creative, progressive and collaborative leader, who I'm confident will lead us toward sustainable success," Mets COO Jeff Wilpon said. "I'm very excited for our fans to hear and see the direction Brodie outlined for us." "Brodie showed us he is a progressive thinker, who is prepared for this role and has great baseball acumen," Mets Chairman of the Board & CEO Fred Wilpon said. "Jeff brought forward an array of candidates and we all agreed that Brodie's high character, blend of analytics, scouting and development ideas illustrate why he will be successful in this role." Van Wagenen worked for IMG as an agent from 2001 until joining CAA. He began his professional career with Athlete Direct, a tech startup company that provided online business sites for athletes. Van Wagenen attended Stanford University on a baseball scholarship as an outfielder. He played for the Cardinal in 1993 and 1994 where he was teammates with current Astros manager A.J. Hinch. "I'm beyond excited and motivated to take on this new challenge," Van Wagenen said. "I want to thank Fred and Jeff for believing in my vision and abilities. I look forward to beginning the progress of getting the Mets to contend for a championship year after year."

[Centerfield]

Funny that Fred is the one that uses the word “analytics”.

I wonder if it ended up being simply that BVW was the compromise. Fred wanted Melvin. Jeff wanted Chaim. So Brodie it is!

[HahnSolo]

“Sustainable success”

Hey CF Jeff has been reading your posts!

[Centerfield]

I saw that! Nice to know Jeff and I are on the same wavelength.

[Benjamin Grimm]

The two of you is like peas and carrots.

[metirish]

Going to be a very interesting presser

[Benjamin Grimm]

Jeff Wilpon wrote: "I'm very excited for our fans to hear and see the direction Brodie outlined for us."

I think this is probably the explanation for why it was Van Wagenen over Bloom. The Wilpon boys probably preferred VW's proposed plan.

I hope that he's forthcoming during today's press conference. I'd love to know the plan!

[batmagadanleadoff]

It's gonna be the plan where everybody has a career year and free agent signee Andrew McCutchen returns to his MVP form of five, six years ago. Jeff Wilpon will hinder this guy in ways that we'll never truly get to know because that's who Jeff Wilpon is and in the end, BVW will leave in disappointment and gross underachievement while Jeff Wilpon blames him for everything under the sun that went wrong, all the while claiming that BVW could have increased the piddling payroll to any level he wanted to. BVW won't refute Jeff because NDA's and because BVW will want to continue working in the industry. Charlie Brown football kick.

As if it matters who the Mets new GM is so long as eff and Jeff own the team.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Guest

[Ceetar]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: It's gonna be the plan where everybody has a career year and free agent signee Andrew McCutchen returns to his MVP form of five, six years ago. Jeff Wilpon will hinder this guy in ways that we'll never truly get to know because that's who Jeff Wilpon is and in the end, BVW will leave in disappointment and gross underachievement while Jeff Wilpon blames him for everything under the sun that went wrong, all the while claiming that BVW could have increased the piddling payroll to any level he wanted to. BVW won't refute Jeff because NDA's and because BVW will want to continue working in the industry. Charlie Brown football kick. As if it matters who the Mets new GM is.

Fuck off with this garbage take. you're a broken record and have no new or interesting reason to keep copy and pasting this. You believe that, as do many. That's fine, whatever. It's not helpful, we're trying to have a conversation about Do Man here.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm not a broken record. The Mets are a broken record. Two first place finishes in 30 seasons.. You think this is progress? How many GMs do the Mets need? Now it's a four headed triumvirate. Progress? It'll be three steps backwards when the Phillies sign Bryce Harper. What a joke. The Mets sign an agent with zero experience on the baseball side of anything as their GM and the Phils are gonna get Bryce Harper. And they''re lucky to get this guy because nobody wanted to GM for the Mets, just like just about nobody wanted to manage the Mets. And I'm a broken record but you're gonna write your posts about how every single Met is gonna be three WAR better than last season. Including David Wright because that's what you write every year.

Edited October 30, 2018 by Guest

[Ceetar]

I'm no even reading. you're copy and pasting the same stuff. If you really think nothing has/will change, stop posting here? What's whining about it to us going to do?

If you don't, for example, think Brodie will sign Manny Machado, that's fine, but you don't need to spam every other post about it with the same thing while those of us that want to discuss the possibility do so. You've got a billion threads for the Wilpon/Finances/conspiracy theory stuff.

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm no even reading. you're copy and pasting the same stuff. If you really think the Mets are gonna win the World Series every single season, nothing has/will change, stop posting here? What's fantasizing about it to us going to do?

[Ceetar]

Have you looked up the definition of 'fan' lately?

[ashie62]

Brodie is not as qualifield as Bloom imho

I assume Brodie resigns as an agent? deGrom must be rolling his eyes

[Guest 41Forever]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Jeff Wilpon wrote: "I'm very excited for our fans to hear and see the direction Brodie outlined for us." I think this is probably the explanation for why it was Van Wagenen over Bloom. The Wilpon boys probably preferred VW's proposed plan. I hope that he's forthcoming during today's press conference. I'd love to know the plan!

Me, too! Given the outside-the-box nature of his selection, it will be important for him to address the fears by showing how he plans to move forward. I hope someone asks him about the Buster Olney tweet saying he’ll be a disaster. A strong answer will put that to bed.

He also should reach out to Olney directly and talk. I wouldn’t do that for every critic, but Olney has a pretty big megaphone and changing his opinion would go far.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: I'm not a broken record. The Mets are a broken record.

N4N, that's one of the greatest quotes in CPF history.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I'd love to know the plan!

Me, too!

As the immortal Amblood declared some two decades ago, "show us the plan!"

[Ceetar]

meh, fuck Olney. Let him whine if he wants to whine. It's not Do Man's job to appease the media and smooth talking them now will only work for a bit.

I don't know how much he'll say about his actual plan. But It'd be nice if he gave us a little more than rhetoric about signing the right guys and good fits and big players and all that.

[Guest 41Forever]

You don’t have to appease the media or an individual analyst - especially the ones who do nothing but attack. (Nothing you say will change their minds and you just give them more material to attack you with.) But Olney is a fairly reasonable guy with a national presence. He’s worth trying to build a relationship with - especially after he’s called you a disaster in the making.

[Centerfield]

I don't think Buster Olney, or any other informed critic, will be swayed by any talk from BVW. The criticism isn't that he can't talk. We already know he can do that. The criticism is whether he knows how to do anything else but talk. And for that, only time will tell.

I am not as pessimistic as Buster, but his points are valid. The Mets are looking to build a team with (presumably) a limited budget. Chaim Bloom has demonstrated himself to be a terrific candidate, having done exactly that in Tampa. He is highly regarded throughout the league. He was, unquestionably, the best candidate for the job.

The choice of Van Wagenen is, as Olney states, bizarre. There is no good reason that has been presented to explain why the Mets went in this direction. He has never worked for a team, much less run one. He has no relevant experience, and therefore, he's a wild card. He can be amazing, a disaster, or anything in between, and all of those outcomes equally as likely to transpire. Why go this route when there is a terrific candidate with a high probability of success sitting in the other chair? If this blows up, this is an unforced error.

The words used to praise the move are along the lines of "innovative" and "outside the box". Without explanation, these are just words. Hiring a squirrel would also be innovative and outside the box. That doesn't make it a good idea. Something is innovative if there is sound logic and sense behind it.

If this were five years ago, and the Wilpons said:

"We're hiring Chaim Bloom. He's 30 years old, and has limited experience in baseball, but he's well versed in something called "advanced stats". It tracks things like spin rate on pitches, and exit velocity on balls hit, and it's supposedly a great tool for measuring the skills of a ballplayer. We know it's unconventional, but we're going to give it a try."

This is innovative. Hiring someone unconventional because they have a new, specific skill set that you think will be successful in your industry is innovative.

Nothing like this was offered to explain the unorthodox decision to hire Van Wagenen.

"Brodie is an extremely knowledgeable, creative, progressive and collaborative leader, who I'm confident will lead us toward sustainable success," Mets COO Jeff Wilpon said. "Brodie showed us he is a progressive thinker, who is prepared for this role and has great baseball acumen," Mets Chairman of the Board & CEO Fred Wilpon said.

There is no specific skill set here. These words can be used to describe literally any candidate.

Look, I don't think we'll get the answer to this question today. I don't if we'll ever get that answer. But for anyone praising this move, I'd love to know the logic behind that statement. Not pretty sounding words, actual logic.

[Edgy MD]

I don't know who the best candidate was or could have been, but I disagree that his background doesn't count as relevant experience. It's as relevant as, say, Sandy Alderson's or Frank Cashen's when they got their first GM appointments. Probably moreso.

[Ceetar]

Exit Velocity and spin rate didn't exist 5 years ago.

There's a lot of lavish praise for Bloom, and it's hard to say if any of it's deserved just because he was 'around'. Maybe he's simply good with the tools Tampa Bay presented him, whether it's an already built in system of scouts or analytics or other information sources. Maybe he presented himself as bland and uninteresting and didn't seem to have an obvious plan. Simply having worked for one mildly successful organization and that organization having success is not the same thing as him being the stand out best choice to run a team.

And it's not like Van Wagenen was working on Wall Street or something. You think he has no idea what it means to build a team? Every damn season he looks at 30 teams, identifies holes and weaknesses and sells pieces that fit those holes and weaknesses. Now he gets to focus on one.

[Centerfield]

And though I didn't want Ng to get this job because I thought it would be bad for her in the long run, it is worth noting...


Hi. I'm Kim Ng. I'm an Asian American woman, and I've been working in baseball for 27 years. I was the assistant General Manager to Brian Cashman during the Yankee Dynasty of the late 90's. Afterwards I served as the Vice President and Assistant General Manager of the Dodgers for ten years. For the last 7 years, I have been serving as Senior Vice President of Baseball Operations for Major League Baseball. I'm widely regarded as one of the best minds in the game.


See, I don't know if you're second interview material.


Hi! I'm Brodie Van Wagenen. I'm a white guy with no relevant experience. But check out how straight my teeth are!


You're crushin' it Bro, CRUSHIN IT. When can you start?




(Admins, feel free to re-size the pictures. Sorry, that's a lot of Jeff in this last one)

Edited October 30, 2018 by Guest