Less Wilpon?

[Edgy MD]

Yeah, I'd be happy to replay last season with the same players and a different manager. The Mets were the better team than the Nats for half the season. The Nats just got hot at the right time.



Hey, maybe in the replay, Céspedes doesn't fall into the hole!

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

Pretty strong take in the Snooze. Makes some assumptions and a little over the top, but gets to what's always struck me about the Wilpons: They're just an idosyncratic, weird-ass small family business that makes the same mistakes over and over again and never learns a thing. They just happen to own a business that millions of people care about, so it matters.

It has not been clear, for the better part of a decade, whether the Wilpons have enough money to operate a big league team, but the problem was less about the money the Wilpons maybe didn't have and more about the qualities—discernment, patience, humility, the capacity to listen to the baseball people they've hired—that they manifestly did not have.

I mean, this graf:

More than anything else, the Wilpons' signature neuroses have shaped and limited the teams they've owned. Insofar as the Wilpons really do want to win in an era when many MLB owners just want to get paid, this is good. In every other sense, though, it has been unhelpful and often disastrous. The Wilpons created a toxic and discriminatory front-office culture, never missed an opportunity to insult fans in the cheapest and most chiseling ways, and were never anything but peevish and grudgeful in their public behavior. No one should question their desire to win, but there's no reason to sentimentalize it, either—they wanted to win on their own bespoke terms and those terms only. They wanted to be right and almost never were, and they were so determined in their backwardness that the Mets have only grudgingly engaged with modern baseball practices for the better part of a generation.

Link if you take the popups: https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-wilpons-steve-cohen-sale-failure-doom-20191205-qnct6o4uavgldfc5jlfiyc5o3u-story.htmlhttps://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-wilpons-steve-cohen-sale-failure-doom-20191205-qnct6o4uavgldfc5jlfiyc5o3u-story.html

[Guest 41Forever]

That column is heavier on snark and insults than on facts. Travis was cut because of one bad game? Really? The things they actually do are damning enough without having to embellish. Your take is more honest.

[Ceetar]

That column is heavier on snark and insults than on facts. Travis was cut because of one bad game? Really? The things they actually do are damning enough without having to embellish. Your take is more honest.

Travis was cut because they decided they didn't need him and he wasn't going to add anything. They tendered him a contract as sort of a safety net, but they decided they were fine and moved on. That's how I read it.







yeah, that's a more apt take. They also do just enough to ameliorate the frustration at their mistakes, but rarely reverse them.



Not enough Mets stuff in the park when it opens, open a museum and slap up some paint. Fine, but you could do so much more.



maybe training/medical stuff ain't up to snuff? Write some corporate buzz words and hire a few people you know in that buzz. Great start, but feels like they might've just crossed it off the list as done while other teams are Sabermetricing sleep regularity and delving into biometrics (Mets could be doing this, no one really seems interested into digging into this stuff)



Analytics dept only big enough to keep up, not to innovate. Jury's still out. They hired a bunch of guys. the right guys? are they doing stuff? Every once in a while you get hints about things like a system that lets managers replay decisions, but then no one elaborates.



Toxic misogynist work culture? I mean, I dunno how to tell. They settled with Leigh and later on fired Alex Anthony for making misogynistic jokes, so they probably put some policies in place? but then they employed Jose Reyes and he wasn't even like, "oh at least he's good so we'll live with it". Could mention Familia too but that seems less cut and dry.



Spend top tier money? I mean, they spend, they kept Cespedes extended deGrom, etc, but they're still *wink wink*ing insurance money and the difference between luxury tax # versus actual payroll. (Of course, so do the Yankees, who flat out try not to pay contracted money) According to https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/tax/https://www.spotrac.com/mlb/tax/ they're 5th in Luxury tax payroll and 6th in 40 man 2020 payroll. Of course this is a little bit of baseball-wide issue, that doesn't give them a pass though. The Nationals are crying poor too, basically letting Strasburg go (and Rendon), and they just won the damn series. They probably made enough extra money just in ticket sales to pay both their salaries for 2020 and 2021.



Fans clamor for a fanfest. they ignore them. basically deny that fans want it. Group of fans run an unofficial one, even get SNY sponsorship, and finally they're all like "maybe we could have a fanfest now do you guys want to have a booth here? And please don't have yours in January that's when we want to have the official one"



Probably a bunch of others.

[Edgy MD]

I saw some truth in the News article, but I think I recognize the Wilpons more in the ceetar post.

[Centerfield]

Tim Healey has an interesting article in Newsday. I can't read it since I'm not a subscriber. In the part that they show you, there is this interesting tidbit:

Under the terms of the deal, Fred Wilpon and his son, chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon, will retain their titles for five years — an unorthodox arrangement, many of the specifics of which are not clear yet. After that five-year window, a source said, Cohen will take over the role of “control person” — the top executive and decision-maker in the eyes of Major League Baseball — from Fred Wilpon. Cohen's ownership will need to be approved by a three-quarters majority of the other 29 major-league owners, but that vote is not imminent. The vote for approval typically does not happen until the incoming owner is put forth as the new control person — which, under the current parameters, would not happen until after the 2024 season.

https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/mets-sale-steve-cohen-sny-1.39252944https://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/mets-sale-steve-cohen-sny-1.39252944



I haven't heard that anywhere else. And it would seem to contradict what Forbes is saying. I can't imagine Cohen would invest a dime toward payroll until he got approval. I think it's more likely that Cohen will be the control person from day 1, with the Wilpons holding those titles for appearance. And maybe Cohen is willing to some control over the team (with veto power only) for a certain time. But I can't imagine they wait until 2024 for approval.

[Ceetar]

We'll know more when it's finalized. The forbes piece about control is just speculation, based on the finances/control stuff, but not really based on sources. It does make sense though, you can't exactly rollback the sale 5 years later. Especially if he's been rolling along fine with no drama for that time. And what happens then? Jeff just keeps running it cause Cohen can't? But that's what I pondered originally, that we'd go to some sort of 'board of investors' and they'd just keep voting Jeff to run the team. But again, that's just another approval person in a game of telephone to get additional approval for funds. Especially of Cohen wont' "actively" manage to investment, his company will. BVW wants to sign a big guy, asks Jeff, who asks Fred, who asks the Cohen group, who hold a conference call...bleh.



Everything we hear about Jeff seems to indicate it won't be a "token" leadership thing, but I wonder if he'd be more cavalier with someone else's money (mostly?). He's still going to be hanging around Flushing and in all the big meetings. He's not just gonna eat the free donuts and observe.

[Centerfield]

Edgy MD wrote: Yeah, I'd be happy to replay last season with the same players and a different manager. The Mets were the better team than the Nats for half the season. The Nats just got hot at the right time. Hey, maybe in the replay, Céspedes doesn't fall into the hole!

Acknowledging that anything can happen in a replay, it's misleading to suggest the Mets were close to the Nats. Their starting pitching was better than our's (#2 in MLB versus #7). Their hitting was better. (#6 offense vs. #13). The only place we beat them was the bullpen. (#25 versus #30).



They had a better record in the first half (41-40 versus 37-44), and they were better than us in the second half (52-29 versus 49-32). 7 games total for the year. Again, anything can happen in a replay. Maybe Ces comes back and hits 25 HRs, but it's also possible that deGrom and Alonso collide on a popup.

[seawolf17]

=Centerfield post_id=27880 time=1575648238 user_id=65]it's also possible that deGrom and Alonso collide on a popup.

[Edgy MD]

While not really serious about the Céspedes, no I didn't mean to be misleading. I wasn't really dividing the season into two temporal haves, so much as speaking of the ebb and flow of the season.



The Nats were the best team at the finish, but at almost no time from April to August would I have called them that. And yeah, at some points the Mets looked better. Sometimes a lot better. Just stupider. And so, when the Mets were low, they were lower.



The Braves were playing better than either one most of the time. But the Mets were seemingly playing them even going into that stupid Players Weekend sweep at home, when the Mets stupided away all three games.

[Lefty Specialist]

Just wondering, does Steve Cohen have a dipshit son with delusions of grandeur? I'm hoping not.

[Edgy MD]

He's got six children and one a step-child.

[LWFS]

Lefty Specialist wrote: Just wondering, does Steve Cohen have a dipshit son with delusions of grandeur? I'm hoping not.

He's a wealth-amassment and hedge-fund-venture-capital-bro-hemoth, who pulled himself to a splashy Greenwich pad all the way up from his hardscrabble upbringing on the superrich side of Great Neck. He's a 63-y/o dude, onto the 2nd upgrade spouse, about whom you've heard plenty about splashing money on a Giacometti or parody-of-a-rich-person-sized mansions, and nary a whit of charitable investment, outside of veterans'-group giving that's essentially a https://fortune.com/2018/08/03/hedge-fund-billionaire-steve-cohen-veterans-why-are-people-angry/sideways way of privatizing the VA... and the occasional art museum handout. He spends more on seed money for cryptocurrency and fin-tech startups yearly than Texas does on its college football coaches, or sub-Saharan Africa does on public health.



Thought experiment: what kind of kid do you think he'd raise? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe his assistant picked a kind, wise nanny.







BTW, that DN piece was written by ex-Deadspinner/frequent target of CPF ire David Roth. Take issue with some of his tone or elisions, but "vinegary, incoherent grievance" sounds like a pretty tight sum-up of Wilponalia to me.

[Lefty Specialist]

Well, I'm hoping if his kids are rich entitled assholes that they have no interest whatsoever in running the team, but are content to watch the money flow in and let professionals decide on bullpen usage and free agent signings.

[G-Fafif]

Times collects enough anonymous anecdotes to paint a picture of the Wilpon ownership as less than optimal.



https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/sports/mets-wilpons-sale-cohen.htmlhttps://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/06/sports/mets-wilpons-sale-cohen.html

Tensions between Jeff Wilpon and his relatives have been brewing for years. Many of them work with Sterling Equities, the family's closely held umbrella company, but the baseball team, which last won a World Series in 1986 — before the family took full control — was largely Jeff's domain. For years, some family members have questioned his choices behind the scenes. In 2003, for example, Jeff and his father called on Jeff's younger brother, Bruce, who is fluent in Japanese, to help pursue the free-agent infielder Kazuo Matsui. Soon after Matsui joined the Mets in 2004 and reported to spring training, he injured his finger. Jeff Wilpon was adamant that Matsui play in televised spring training games to build excitement for the season after a last-place finish a year earlier. Bruce was more protective of Matsui and urged caution. The disagreement came to a head when Jeff, seeing a promotional opportunity, wanted Matsui on the field. Bruce pushed back. The argument grew heated and ugly, as Jeff dug in. After that, Bruce rarely, if ever, was involved with the team again. Such accounts of the family and its decision to sell are based on interviews with more than a dozen people with direct involvement with the Wilpon family and the Mets, nearly all of whom asked not to be identified so as not to damage their relationship with the family. Through a spokesman, Fred and Jeff Wilpon declined to comment.

[batmagadanleadoff]

It might not be just Katz's kids forcing the Wilpons to give up the Mets. It might also be that the Wilpons have reached a point where they can no longer afford to run the Mets and thus, must sell the team, no matter what Katz's kids think of Jeff Wilpon. Also, look out for some possible sneaky Fred Wilpon tactics to screw Steven Cohen into investing in the Mets without ever becoming a controlling owner. Although, if the press figured out this sneak tactic, then Cohen has to know about it also.





The New York Mets are $350 million in debt (Report)

By

Kyle Newman -

12/23/2019



The Wilpons are in desperate need of a sale. The New York Mets' bottom line is too far in the red for them to hold onto the team any longer.

According to Mike Ozanian of Forbes, the New York Mets are $350 million in debt. That's terrible news for everyone involved, except Steve Cohen. The massive debt means that Fred Wilpon and Jeff Wilpon are going to be forced to sell the team. The Wilpon family is only worth a reported $500 million according to an earlier Forbes report. They simply don't have the capital to run the team anymore. That explains why they've been so hesitant to add payroll for a long time. They simply can't afford to. To be honest, this isn't surprising. In 2011, the New York Times broke a story that the MLB paid the Mets $25 million in secret so they could afford payroll. By rule, when that happens, the MLB should've forced the Wilpons to sell. Nonetheless, they didn't. A close relationship with former MLB commissioner Bud Selig saved them. Now, Ozanian is reporting that Cohen could end up paying $1.5 billion and never have control of the team. He reports that in the current incarnation of talks, Cohen will have 75% control of the team immediately after the purchase. As a condition of the purchase, the Wilpons will stay controlling owners for another five years. This is different from previous reports that said the Wilpons would simply maintain their respective titles for five years. It's an important distinction too. Under MLB rules, Cohen wouldn't need to swear in by the other owners if he isn't the controlling owner. This means that the Wilpons would have five years to convince the other owners that Cohen doesn't deserve to be the controlling owner. That could lead to Cohen cutting a $1.5 billion check and never receiving control of the team. It seems unlikely now, but the Wilpons have always been sneaky businessmen. They tanked two other deals to sell the team in the past, according to Howard Megdal of Forbes. Cohen may end up the majority owner bankrolling the team with no control. It's unlikely a strong businessman like Cohen would risk his money in this way. That being said, this is a scenario that can't be overlooked. Mets fans could be stuck with the Wilpons for years to come, even if a sale does come to pass.

https://elitesportsny.com/2019/12/23/new-york-mets-news-organization-is-350-million-in-debt-report/https://elitesportsny.com/2019/12/23/new-york-mets-news-organization-is-350-million-in-debt-report/



Here's the link to the underlying Forbes piece:



https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2019/12/14/why-steve-cohen-may-write-15-billion-check-for-mets-and-never-gain-control/#6e9751306adehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2019/12/14/why-steve-cohen-may-write-15-billion-check-for-mets-and-never-gain-control/#6e9751306ade

[smg58]

The Forbes article cites "baseball insiders." Not sure what that means. I also think it's more likely that the Wilpons are that deeply in debt than the team is, unless the stadium has been a far bigger money-suck than we know about. I've seen no evidence that team revenues are bad enough to cause that kind of issue, especially with payroll being relatively low.

[Lefty Specialist]

Steve Cohen didn't get where he is by being an idiot. I'm betting he'll be pulling the strings earlier than the Wilpons may want him to.

[batmagadanleadoff]

The Forbes article cites "baseball insiders." Not sure what that means. I also think it's more likely that the Wilpons are that deeply in debt than the team is, unless the stadium has been a far bigger money-suck than we know about. I've seen no evidence that team revenues are bad enough to cause that kind of issue, especially with payroll being relatively low.

I'd bet that the answer isn't so straightforward because the Wilpons have complicated their already very complex holdings by intermingling their real estate portfolio with the NY Mets. We know, for example, that the Wilpons have been using Mets revenue to pay back their Madoff debt. Also, it is now being reported that the Mets have lost more than $100M dollars over the last two seasons.

Lefty Specialist wrote: Steve Cohen didn't get where he is by being an idiot. I'm betting he'll be pulling the strings earlier than the Wilpons may want him to.

Absolutely. And if Cohen senses that this is just a scam ploy so that the Wilpons could hang in there for a few more years, buying time in hopes that a miracle will occur in the meantime that would let the Wilpons keep the team long term, Cohen will simply pull out. This is essentially what the Wilpons tried to pull on Einhorn a few years ago.

[Edgy MD]

Lefty Specialist wrote: Steve Cohen didn't get where he is by being an idiot. I'm betting he'll be pulling the strings earlier than the Wilpons may want him to.

Well, that may be his play, but ... while I think it's always smart to bet that rich people have a way to stay rich and get richer, it's not necessarily as sure a thing to say that they aren't idiots.



When it comes to American sports owners, I think that the incidence of brightness seems to fall somewhere around maybe 38%.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

I met a guy at a new year's party who said he was a Michigan grad who holds season tickets, and so has met both Fred and Jeff.



FWIW, says Fred these days is out to lunch, might be dealing with dementia or other affliction of old age. And can confirm Jeff's an arrogant dick who thinks his brief moment as a professional (who never played) gives him baseball authority.



Also confident that Cohen would be baseball's wealthiest owner once he takes over. I hadn't given that much thought but he might be right.

[Edgy MD]

I wonder if Bradley Wilpon is feeling he's being screwed out of his chance at the family business or he's seeing it as a dodged bullet, and he'd rather get a share in the huge pile of Cohen money to play with.

[Lefty Specialist]

Edgy MD wrote: I wonder if Bradley Wilpon is feeling he's being screwed out of his chance at the family business or he's seeing it as a dodged bullet, and he'd rather get a share in the huge pile of Cohen money to play with.

I'm thinking it's the latter. Wilpons will still be minority owners after Cohen takes over, so he can still be a jock-sniffer if he wants. And he gets to be fabulously rich without working for it.

[nymr83]

Lefty Specialist wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I wonder if Bradley Wilpon is feeling he's being screwed out of his chance at the family business or he's seeing it as a dodged bullet, and he'd rather get a share in the huge pile of Cohen money to play with. I'm thinking it's the latter. Wilpons will still be minority owners after Cohen takes over, so he can still be a jock-sniffer if he wants. And he gets to be fabulously rich without working for it.

Yeah, "minority owner" generally means you get to have all the fun - except playing GM.



Hopefully Cohen will want to fire the player agent at the helm, hire a smart baseball guy, write him a blank check with a mandate to win or else, and then stay out of the way.

[Edgy MD]

Do you really think it's already established that Brodie Van Wagenen isn't smart? Or that his mandate isn't success?

[Guest 41Forever]

Lefty Specialist wrote: Edgy MD wrote: I wonder if Bradley Wilpon is feeling he's being screwed out of his chance at the family business or he's seeing it as a dodged bullet, and he'd rather get a share in the huge pile of Cohen money to play with. I'm thinking it's the latter. Wilpons will still be minority owners after Cohen takes over, so he can still be a jock-sniffer if he wants. And he gets to be fabulously rich without working for it. Yeah, "minority owner" generally means you get to have all the fun - except playing GM. Hopefully Cohen will want to fire the player agent at the helm, hire a smart baseball guy, write him a blank check with a mandate to win or else, and then stay out of the way.

I'm not ready to give up on Brodie. Obviously not all the moves panned out. But he was doing more than changing players. It sounds like he was changing cultures, especially in regard to the analytics. You have to give him more than a year to build his team, on and off the field.

[Centerfield]

If given the choice, I'd ditch Brodie now, but like 41F, I don't think can necessarily say he's a lost cause. I mean, it's hard to know how many of his moves are him, and how many were dictated by Jeff. Maybe he was speaking out against the Cano trade the whole time. We just don't know.



Jim Duquette on the other hand...

[Benjamin Grimm]

I suspect that Brodie was the architect of the Cano trade, and if so, that's a serious mark against him, one that he hasn't yet made up for. (But who knows, maybe he has some genius moves in his future that will put him in the black, but he has some doing to do.)

[Frayed Knot]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=29002 time=1577409749 user_id=68]Also, it is now being reported that the Mets have lost more than $100M dollars over the last two seasons.

[Centerfield]

Frayed Knot wrote: Also, it is now being reported that the Mets have lost more than $100M dollars over the last two seasons. It's statements like these which keep me from buying the ones we hear/read often about how every team Makes hundreds of millions per year every year.

Every baseball team makes tons of money each year. The owners may not, if they've saddled the team with debt that is either unrelated, or used in connection with the purchase of the team, but the business of baseball itself is hugely profitable.



And even if those owners run in the red for a bunch of years, the asset increases in value so those "losses" are offset.