Eppler Resigns

[A Boy Named Seo]

Seems like if Eppler was going to stay on, this IL investigation changed that pretty quickly. MLBTR speculates a penalty of fines or suspensions if the Mets are found to have violated rules. That would suck if we lose healthy player(s) in '24 for any length of time to serve suspensions for gaming the system. THANKS BILLY.

[Frayed Knot]

i like to think that on strearns' first day on the job he called in billy eppler for his one-on-one intro meeting, and it satarted off like, "have you noticed what the braves are doing in atlanta? explain to me why you hadn't locked up pete alonso yet?" and that was that.

Of course Eppler could counter with, 'Have YOU noticed that they're doing quite nicely after NOT resigning Freddie?'

[MFS62]

https://scontent-lga3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/386313738_828324829294921_325344905052020365_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s640x640&_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5614bc&_nc_ohc=S5DTCKHxuesAX_0kX3j&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-2.xx&oh=00_AfCKKO8fP0hZ77CbIXN1302tZTrJvPN15w5XA83sRj6F0A&oe=6524AA15https://scontent-lga3-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/386313738_828324829294921_325344905052020365_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s640x640&_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5614bc&_nc_ohc=S5DTCKHxuesAX_0kX3j&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-2.xx&oh=00_AfCKKO8fP0hZ77CbIXN1302tZTrJvPN15w5XA83sRj6F0A&oe=6524AA15



tough crowd.

Later

[metsmarathon]

Frayed Knot wrote: i like to think that on strearns' first day on the job he called in billy eppler for his one-on-one intro meeting, and it satarted off like, "have you noticed what the braves are doing in atlanta? explain to me why you hadn't locked up pete alonso yet?" and that was that. Of course Eppler could counter with, 'Have YOU noticed that they're doing quite nicely after NOT resigning Freddie?'

bah. don't ruin my fun with your inconvenient facts.

[Gwreck]

Frayed Knot wrote: Of course Eppler could counter with, 'Have YOU noticed that they're doing quite nicely after NOT resigning Freddie?'

If there's a Matt Olson-quality player out there available to replace Pete Alonso, I'd certainly entertain the idea. Who exactly that would be is not clear in this hypothetical.

[Frayed Knot]

Of course it's hypothetical and I'm not advocating for Not signing Pete, particularly since you need depth in the minors to pull off that kind of move.

Merely pointing out that there's always more than one way to skin a cat and, if one is going to point to Atlanta as a model to emulate, they've done quite well by not chasing even their own FAs into their 30s, Freddie and Swanson recently but also going back to the days of Andruw Jones and Raffy Furcal plus others in between.

[Edgy MD]

Frayed Knot wrote: Of course Eppler could counter with, 'Have YOU noticed that they're doing quite nicely after NOT resigning Freddie?' If there's a Matt Olson-quality player out there available to replace Pete Alonso, I'd certainly entertain the idea. Who exactly that would be is not clear in this hypothetical.

There's always somebody. Who will perform like Matt Olson in 2024 and beyond is an open question, but somebody will. Vladdy Guerrero,Jr.? Josh Naylor? Matt Vientos? And somebody may even be more likely to perform like Matt Olson than Pete Alonso is likely to perform like Freddie Freeman. Or like Pete Alonso.



It's certainly unclear, as the future always is. But that's where the smart folks find their edge.

[Gwreck]

Frayed Knot wrote: if one is going to point to Atlanta as a model to emulate, they've done quite well by not chasing even their own FAs into their 30s, Freddie and Swanson recently.

They have done well recently. The production they've had from Olson is remarkably similar to what Freddie has put up for a team winning just as many games as Atlanta. The Braves probably got the better deal in the end (Olson is 4.5 years younger, but they had to give up a bunch of prospects) but it's still too early to make that call.



I didn't point to Atlanta as a “model to emulate.” Not that I necessarily disagree with it, but it's fair that they've been blessed with a a certain amount of luck in players having a willingness to sign arguably below-market value contracts versus testing free agency.

[MFS62]

I didn't point to Atlanta as a “model to emulate.” Not that I necessarily disagree with it, but it's fair that they've been blessed with a a certain amount of luck in players having a willingness to sign arguably below-market value contracts versus testing free agency.

Here's more about how they do it.(original Yahoo sports content)

https://sports.yahoo.com/how-the-braves-were-built-inside-the-extensions-that-turned-atlanta-into-a-perennial-contender-190510965.html?fr=sycsrp_catchallhttps://sports.yahoo.com/how-the-braves-were-built-inside-the-extensions-that-turned-atlanta-into-a-perennial-contender-190510965.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall



Later

[Frayed Knot]

=Gwreck post_id=139025 time=1696636685 user_id=56]
I didn't point to Atlanta as a “model to emulate.”

[Edgy MD]

It was also pre-Cohen.



Pre-COVID too.



Not pre-Madonna, though.

[Edgy MD]

Also bailing a day or two before was the Mets director of amateur scouting, Marc Traumata. Marc had been with the Mets since 2012, and will become special assistant of player personnel for the Blue Jays, an organization he was with before coming to New York.

[A Boy Named Seo]

I've been thinking about what's next for Eppler and it feels a little bleak. Like, who's the next team that's gonna go, "Eppler, definitely Billy Eppler." It seems like weathering the storm with the Mets over this IL investigation would've been the safest move for him, so it must not have been an option, right?

[smg58]

In Eppler's defense, he did a few things right. He brought in Senga and Quintana to be third and fourth starters on a winning team, and Quintana's injury aside, they did what they were hired to do. Pham was a good pickup too. But the bullpen was way too top-heavy given the team's payroll and the depth that teams need to have in today's game, and when the #1 guy got lost for the season, it was left horribly exposed. I think the Scherzer trade was good for the Mets and the Verlander trade was bad. So, basically, mixed grades. And while I do think Eppler was an improvement over his immediate predecessors in the job, the bottom line is he was handed the largest budget in the history of the league by a wide margin and had 75 wins to show for it. You can't do that and expect to keep your job.

[Benjamin Grimm]

The Verlander trade may turn out to be a good one. Drew Gilbert is considered a very good prospect.

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

=smg58 post_id=139337 time=1697114408 user_id=62]
In Eppler's defense, he did a few things right. He brought in Senga and Quintana to be third and fourth starters on a winning team, and Quintana's injury aside, they did what they were hired to do. Pham was a good pickup too. But the bullpen was way too top-heavy given the team's payroll and the depth that teams need to have in today's game, and when the #1 guy got lost for the season, it was left horribly exposed. I think the Scherzer trade was good for the Mets and the Verlander trade was bad. So, basically, mixed grades. And while I do think Eppler was an improvement over his immediate predecessors in the job, the bottom line is he was handed the largest budget in the history of the league by a wide margin and had 75 wins to show for it. You can't do that and expect to keep your job.

[Edgy MD]

I would ask where he departed philosophically from the mainstream.



If you have the biggest budget ever, why sink so much of it into starting pitching in an era when — between caution and injury — starting pitchers get an ever-decreasing opportunity to impact the game? If you're unwilling to depart from the prevalent thinking, you can be minimizing the advantage of a large budget, rather than maximizing it.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Yeah, I had mixed feelings about the Scherzer and Verlander signings. $43 million a year for pitchers in the vicinity of their 40th birthdays. I'd say that money could have gone elsewhere, but the Mets weren't exactly on a tight budget.



Yoshinobu Yamamoto will be a much better get, if they can close that deal. (I expect that they will.)

[roger_that]

when the #1 guy got lost for the season, it was left horribly exposed.

Hey, come on. It was perfectly reasonable for the Jets to depend on having Aaron Rodgers all season!

[A Boy Named Seo]

The Mets will in be hamstrung by both the ghosts of Scherzer and Verlander next year, too (and maybe for taxation purposes $17.5M more for Verlander in '25). If they wanna emulate the Dodgers, then they'll run up payrolls, eat and shit out the taxes, then dip back down under the threshold to reset the clock and go again. Per Tim Britton, they have about $56M tied up to players they're paying to play elsewhere in '24. That's a quarter of the way to the luxury threshold ($237M) on just those dudes and we still gotta do something with Pete and sign other baseball players. Billy Eppler, man!



Britton piece -> https://theathletic.com/4951603/2023/10/11/mets-payroll-offseason-2/https://theathletic.com/4951603/2023/10/11/mets-payroll-offseason-2/

[Gwreck]

A Boy Named Seo wrote: The Mets will in be hamstrung by both the ghosts of Scherzer and Verlander next year, too (and maybe for taxation purposes $17.5M more for Verlander in '25).

This hardly seems like something that gets charged to the account of Eppler. He certainly could have moved more of the money when trading Verlander/Scherzer. Steve Cohen was very candid about the fact that he preferred to eat the money and acquire better prospects.

[Gwreck]

Edgy MD wrote: If you have the biggest budget ever, why sink so much of it into starting pitching in an era when — between caution and injury — starting pitchers get an ever-decreasing opportunity to impact the game? If you're unwilling to depart from the prevalent thinking, you can be minimizing the advantage of a large budget, rather than maximizing it.

Because starting pitching was a way to rapidly improve the team without committing to long term contracts?



Trea Turner or Aaron Judge - or even Carlos Correa - were all available last season (and Cory Seager, Marcus Semien, and Freddie Freeman the year before) but required contracts of substantially different length than the 2 or 3 years committed to Scherzer and Verlander.

[Edgy MD]

It's a way. I'm just trying to suggest that it's an increasingly unreliable way — as the way teams deploy starting pitching is increasingly counterproductive.

[Frayed Knot]

One of the problems in trying to evaluate Eppler's tenure in Queens is that it's hard to know how many decisions were made over his head, ie: by Cohen.

It's obvious that the Correa thing was a virtual Stevie solo gig. I mean, yeah, that deal never actually was made, but was Eppler even in the loop?

Verlander talked about how talking to Steve is what sold him on the Mets but was Steve there to just seal the deal or was that a soup-to-nuts situation also?

Ditto the Scherzer negotiations a year earlier.

And when the decision was made to break the whole thing down at the deadline, was Eppler part of that decision or was it made for him and he was just

then put in charge of making the best deals out of moves that were essentially dictated to him?



Maybe Eppler, like Ng earlier this week, didn't like a situation where they had not just one person over him but more than occasionally two.

[metirish]

[Benjamin Grimm]

I'd be interested in knowing which specific transactions were in violation. I'm not sure that will ever be disclosed.

[bmfc1]

There were no superfluous comments about Eppler's age or presumptions about his mental state.

[A Boy Named Seo]

He's on the 265-day IL.

[kcmets]

Funny, I expected to hear of him latching on to some new gig somewhere

when I clicked on thread - not a Go To Jail card and do not pass GO or collect

any dough tweet.



Oh, and good one bmfc!

[Edgy MD]

It seems to me that Eppler's abuse of the IL is something that's more or less done by most GMs, and I'd sure like to know what's different about this case. Was his abuse worse or was the evidence just more damning?



He probably shouldn't have hired Alina Habba to represent him.