Deeply flawed Mets' management and owners

[Zvon]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: ="Zvon"] Bret Sabermetric wrote: In her [Mrs. Payson's] case, I'm willing to consider that she may have gotten lucky on a cosmic scale. ....more like a karmic scale. I never thought of Mrs. Payson as a wise owner. More like a fortunate fan. Zvon Feb 02 2006 12:25 AM Bret Sabermetric wrote: This is the heart of the issue I have with most teams' policies. The Wilpons don't seem to understand that putting pressure on their GMs to produce NOW!!! comes at a long-term cost, and the Wilpons need for the Mets to be competitive in 2011, even if Omar doesn't. You're right, in that selling off prospects to get suspects and expensive patchwork fixes makes sense to someone looking at two or three years in which to show results. For an organization it's terribly destructive to focus only on the short term results but that's how they've structured Omar's deal, and it hurts them very badly. You have a good point here. But it seems to be in line with the state of the game these days. And dont forget the Mets are launching a new TV deal and want that to take off out of the gate. Once that set up is cruisin' I would hope Omar will be afforded the time to look towards the long term future of the team. MFS62 Feb 02 2006 11:17 AM Omar should bring in Frank Cashen as a consultant. When Frank was hired as GM, the first thing he did was model the Mets development system after the very successful Orioles' system he had left (to join the Mets). He standardized everything as much as he could, from having similar dimensions at all Met minor league ballparks, to teaching player positioning on the cutoff play. That way, the players moving up in level wouldn't be forced to learn new ways of doing things, based on the personal preferences of coaches and managers at each new level. And it was during that era, the mid 80's, that had the greatest infusion of home-bred/ developed talent to the major league club. Today, we talk of the "braves way" with envy. We need to start an environment that is the "Mets way" for winning. Later RealityChuck Feb 02 2006 02:00 PM ="Bret Sabermetric"]She had plenty of money and was (supposedly) willing to spend it to improve her team. This might seem obvious, but it was far from true of every teams' owners, some of whom did not have money to spend, and some of whom saw their teams as more of a pure business than Mrs. Payson, who really loved the team, ever did. Bill Veeck, for example, reallly loved his White Sox but just didn't have the scratch to support them properly---he was always arranging for financing deals that Mrs. Payson never had to think about. She was also elderly, which motivates owners to spend more freely over the short haul. Ah, yes, a textbook example of Rothman's First Law of History: The hardest thing to understand is that people in the past thought differently than we did. You are using 2006 assumptions to criticize the mindset of those in the 1960s. And the biggest internalized assumption guiding your entire criticism is this: you're assuming there was free agency in 1965. Your entire argument assumes this. There wasn't. And signing bonuses were rare (the days of the Bonus Baby were past). A team would go out, scout a player and sign him to a contract. Nearly all the time, the player would go with the first team to sign him. How much of a bonus did the Mets pay Nolan Ryan? Jerry Koosman? Ed Kranepool? How much was paid to any of the 1969 team, other than Seaver? But even spending money on signing bonuses was no guarantee that the player would ever amount to anything (this is why the days of the Bonus Baby were over before the Mets came into existence). You built a team by scouting and good trades back then. (IIRC, Tom Yawkey spent at least as much money on his team in the 50s as Dan Topping did, but it didn't help him.) A player's salary was determined by the GM's whim -- and giving him a big raise did nothing to improve his ability. Many players before free agency hated their GMs, because it was the GM's job to lowball the player, and the GM had all the clout. Nowadays, you can buy the players you want, and contracts are often a factor in why a player is traded. Money makes a difference. But not in the 60s. Long-term contracts were rare, and the player had no choice but to take your offer. Money was hardly ever a factor in trades. Until you stop unconsciously assuming there were free agents in the 60s, you can't judge the situation properly. It really didn't matter if Weiss was cheap (he was cheap at the Yankees, too, wasn't he?). Bret Sabermetric Feb 02 2006 02:50 PM I'm not unconscioiusly assuming anything. I'm saying that the 1960s represented an untapped bonanza for a visionary deep-pocketed owner, which Mrs. Payson certainly was not. You had ballplayers who were severely underpaid, and owners in competition with each other who did not see salaries as a tool to help your team (with rare exceptions like Veeck and Finley, both of whom were operating on much smaller budgets than Mrs, Payson was). People didn't think differently anyway, not so much as circumstances were different. This is how progress is made. Someone sees an opportunity that no one else sees, and jumps on it. We didn't do that. That's too bad (though it worked out fine for us, anyway.) But, given their resources, there was a window of opppurtunity for the Mets to become a powerful force in the NL, which, in hindsight, they chose not to take. Yancy Street Gang Feb 02 2006 02:58 PM What are you saying they should have done? Before there were free agents to chase, the only thing I could see is offering big money to other teams for their expensive players. (Like what the Yankees and Red Sox tried to do in the 1970's with Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi, and Vida Blue.) I don't have a sense, though, for how many such players there were, or who they were. Could the Mets have thrown big money at the Giants, for example, and purchased Marichal and McCovey in 1968? They could have tried, but I don't know how successful they would have been. Bret Sabermetric Feb 02 2006 03:05 PM Poured money on an unprecedented scale into signing and developing kids. Widey mentioned that we almost lost Tom Seaver because the Mets liked him only $8,000 and not $45,000. This was a foolish way to think, given Mrs. Payson's resources and her desire to build a winning team. He also mentioned that we almost let Koosman go, instead of analyzing his ability and nurturing it at whatever the cost. The 1960s Mets were very cost-efficient under Weiss in a time and under circumstances when it behooved them to be very free spending money to get the team up to speed. TheOldMole Feb 02 2006 03:10 PM ]I'm not unconscioiusly assuming anything. Nothing? Ever? Johnny Dickshot Feb 02 2006 03:58 PM The 60s Mets were so disadvantaged to start with, there was only so much they could do. Had they spent an xtra 37,000 on every player they thought another team would grab ahead of them, they'd go broke, probably. If they could do it all over again, perhaps they'd have been better off spending even more on development and scouting and the minors (tho we really don't know what they did spend compares to others), but there was risks to that too (prior to the draft, they risked losing every player they signed in the 1st-year draft, making outspending all others danagerous). They also could have made ballsier trades, like say, ruthlesssly trading in every Ron Hunt or Al Jackson who showed promise as soon as they did. Also, maybe give a grant to some Columbia students and invent sabermetrics (well, not invent, of course, but invest in ways to compete that others could or would not). Bret Sabermetric Feb 02 2006 04:30 PM Johnny Dickshot wrote: The 60s Mets...'d go broke, probably. Well, this is what I'm arguing against. Supposedly, she had a lot of money and a lot of desire to win, and Mr. Cheap running the show. MFS62 Feb 02 2006 06:11 PM You don't have to go back as far as the 60's to find penurous GMs. It was whispered that when Dan Douquette was GM of the Red Sox, his performance (as in bonus paid to him) was based on team profit. Based on that, some fans felt that he was reticent to add high salaried veterans at the trading deadline in order to try for the pennant. Of course, you have to ask yourself, what are the responsibilities of a GM and are they very different from those of a GM in another business. How many GMs in other industries keep their jobs after they say somethning like "Well, we were able to produce the very best widgit on the market, but we lost a ton of money last year"? Not too many I'd guess. The management of profit/ loss is one of the responsibilities of a baseball GM. But sometimes the fans get distracted by their flashy role of making trades and forget that. Some teams have involved CFOs and owners, who manage the finances. But whether the owner, CFO or GM determine the budget, it is the job of the GM to manage to it. Later Bret Sabermetric Feb 03 2006 09:47 AM And now we can move on to appreciations of M. Donald Grant. (There was a long Seaver vs Grant thread somewhere --anyone know where?) We should consider a broader approach than that one issue, anyway. Grant vs. Yogi, vs. Cleon, vs. Kong, etc. I'd classify him as patriarchal and authoritarian, though he tried to portray himself as just representing sound business practices, most of which seem (again, Chuck, by our current standards) to be more closely linked with the 1920s than with the 1980s. He, too, had an opportunity to go the extreme other way with Seaver, and say "No one else in baseball renegotiates contracts, but this is a chance to sign up Tom Seaver for the next six years--hell, yeah!" Of course (he would say) just as soon as Seaver realized he was being underpaid by 1980 standards in the contract he'd signed back in 1978, he would start asking to renegotiate all over again. The incident with Cleon in the van is one we haven't explored (that I can remember). Was this simple racism? Do you suppose he would have done the same with Seaver, say, if Tom had been caught in a van with a woman other than Nancy? Was it merely race-blind patriarchal moralizing about something that was none of his damned business? Was it in any way justifiable? These are merely the most immediately memorable incidents in Grant's tenure--does anyone remember him, or want to charcterizing him, differently than as an obnoxious, supercilious, retrograde money manager who had no business involving himself in the operations of a baseball team? I'm also recalling his insistence that his baby Donnie Shaw (who I also thought highly of) be a dealbreaker several times in the late 1960s, thus showing that Grant (and I) lacked baseball sense at the time. (My excuse is that I was twelve.) MFS62 Feb 03 2006 10:01 AM When you look at Grant's reaction to the Cleon Jones incident, you have to look at Grant's reaction to when several Yankee players destroyed the Copa in that famous brawl incident. (My uncle told me that he was present when several Yankees later did the same thing in the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Terminal) Does anyone remember remember how (or if) Grant punished them? Later Yancy Street Gang Feb 03 2006 10:10 AM I don't know if the Cleon in the van thing was discussed, but it was celebrated in song. Johnny Dickshot Feb 03 2006 10:23 AM Grant wasn't involved with the Yankees at that time, or any time. That Yankee batboy, by the way, mentioned in his talk at SABR that the real culprit in the Copa incident wasn't Billy Martin but pitcher Johnny Kucks. MFS62 Feb 03 2006 10:35 AM Johnny Dickshot wrote: Grant wasn't involved with the Yankees at that time, or any time. Oops. You're right. Never mind. Later Yancy Street Gang Feb 03 2006 10:39 AM I can only imagine what Grant would have done with Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich if he had been involved with the Yankees.

[Zvon]

Bret Sabermetric wrote: This is the heart of the issue I have with most teams' policies. The Wilpons don't seem to understand that putting pressure on their GMs to produce NOW!!! comes at a long-term cost, and the Wilpons need for the Mets to be competitive in 2011, even if Omar doesn't. You're right, in that selling off prospects to get suspects and expensive patchwork fixes makes sense to someone looking at two or three years in which to show results. For an organization it's terribly destructive to focus only on the short term results but that's how they've structured Omar's deal, and it hurts them very badly.

You have a good point here.
But it seems to be in line with the state of the game these days.
And dont forget the Mets are launching a new TV deal and want that to take off out of the gate.
Once that set up is cruisin' I would hope Omar will be afforded the time to look towards the long term future of the team.

[MFS62]

Omar should bring in Frank Cashen as a consultant.
When Frank was hired as GM, the first thing he did was model the Mets development system after the very successful Orioles' system he had left (to join the Mets).

He standardized everything as much as he could, from having similar dimensions at all Met minor league ballparks, to teaching player positioning on the cutoff play. That way, the players moving up in level wouldn't be forced to learn new ways of doing things, based on the personal preferences of coaches and managers at each new level.

And it was during that era, the mid 80's, that had the greatest infusion of home-bred/ developed talent to the major league club.

Today, we talk of the "braves way" with envy. We need to start an environment that is the "Mets way" for winning.

Later

[RealityChuck]

="Bret Sabermetric"]She had plenty of money and was (supposedly) willing to spend it to improve her team. This might seem obvious, but it was far from true of every teams' owners, some of whom did not have money to spend, and some of whom saw their teams as more of a pure business than Mrs. Payson, who really loved the team, ever did. Bill Veeck, for example, reallly loved his White Sox but just didn't have the scratch to support them properly---he was always arranging for financing deals that Mrs. Payson never had to think about. She was also elderly, which motivates owners to spend more freely over the short haul.

Ah, yes, a textbook example of Rothman's First Law of History: The hardest thing to understand is that people in the past thought differently than we did.

You are using 2006 assumptions to criticize the mindset of those in the 1960s. And the biggest internalized assumption guiding your entire criticism is this: you're assuming there was free agency in 1965. Your entire argument assumes this.

There wasn't. And signing bonuses were rare (the days of the Bonus Baby were past). A team would go out, scout a player and sign him to a contract. Nearly all the time, the player would go with the first team to sign him. How much of a bonus did the Mets pay Nolan Ryan? Jerry Koosman? Ed Kranepool? How much was paid to any of the 1969 team, other than Seaver?

But even spending money on signing bonuses was no guarantee that the player would ever amount to anything (this is why the days of the Bonus Baby were over before the Mets came into existence).

You built a team by scouting and good trades back then. (IIRC, Tom Yawkey spent at least as much money on his team in the 50s as Dan Topping did, but it didn't help him.) A player's salary was determined by the GM's whim -- and giving him a big raise did nothing to improve his ability. Many players before free agency hated their GMs, because it was the GM's job to lowball the player, and the GM had all the clout.

Nowadays, you can buy the players you want, and contracts are often a factor in why a player is traded. Money makes a difference.

But not in the 60s. Long-term contracts were rare, and the player had no choice but to take your offer. Money was hardly ever a factor in trades.

Until you stop unconsciously assuming there were free agents in the 60s, you can't judge the situation properly. It really didn't matter if Weiss was cheap (he was cheap at the Yankees, too, wasn't he?).

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

I'm not unconscioiusly assuming anything. I'm saying that the 1960s represented an untapped bonanza for a visionary deep-pocketed owner, which Mrs. Payson certainly was not. You had ballplayers who were severely underpaid, and owners in competition with each other who did not see salaries as a tool to help your team (with rare exceptions like Veeck and Finley, both of whom were operating on much smaller budgets than Mrs, Payson was). People didn't think differently anyway, not so much as circumstances were different.

This is how progress is made. Someone sees an opportunity that no one else sees, and jumps on it. We didn't do that. That's too bad (though it worked out fine for us, anyway.) But, given their resources, there was a window of opppurtunity for the Mets to become a powerful force in the NL, which, in hindsight, they chose not to take.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

What are you saying they should have done? Before there were free agents to chase, the only thing I could see is offering big money to other teams for their expensive players. (Like what the Yankees and Red Sox tried to do in the 1970's with Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi, and Vida Blue.) I don't have a sense, though, for how many such players there were, or who they were. Could the Mets have thrown big money at the Giants, for example, and purchased Marichal and McCovey in 1968? They could have tried, but I don't know how successful they would have been.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Poured money on an unprecedented scale into signing and developing kids. Widey mentioned that we almost lost Tom Seaver because the Mets liked him only $8,000 and not $45,000. This was a foolish way to think, given Mrs. Payson's resources and her desire to build a winning team. He also mentioned that we almost let Koosman go, instead of analyzing his ability and nurturing it at whatever the cost. The 1960s Mets were very cost-efficient under Weiss in a time and under circumstances when it behooved them to be very free spending money to get the team up to speed.

[Theoldmole]

]I'm not unconscioiusly assuming anything.

Nothing? Ever?

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

The 60s Mets were so disadvantaged to start with, there was only so much they could do. Had they spent an xtra 37,000 on every player they thought another team would grab ahead of them, they'd go broke, probably.

If they could do it all over again, perhaps they'd have been better off spending even more on development and scouting and the minors (tho we really don't know what they did spend compares to others), but there was risks to that too (prior to the draft, they risked losing every player they signed in the 1st-year draft, making outspending all others danagerous). They also could have made ballsier trades, like say, ruthlesssly trading in every Ron Hunt or Al Jackson who showed promise as soon as they did.

Also, maybe give a grant to some Columbia students and invent sabermetrics (well, not invent, of course, but invest in ways to compete that others could or would not).

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

Johnny Dickshot wrote: The 60s Mets...'d go broke, probably.

Well, this is what I'm arguing against. Supposedly, she had a lot of money and a lot of desire to win, and Mr. Cheap running the show.

[MFS62]

You don't have to go back as far as the 60's to find penurous GMs.
It was whispered that when Dan Douquette was GM of the Red Sox, his performance (as in bonus paid to him) was based on team profit. Based on that, some fans felt that he was reticent to add high salaried veterans at the trading deadline in order to try for the pennant.

Of course, you have to ask yourself, what are the responsibilities of a GM and are they very different from those of a GM in another business. How many GMs in other industries keep their jobs after they say somethning like "Well, we were able to produce the very best widgit on the market, but we lost a ton of money last year"? Not too many I'd guess.

The management of profit/ loss is one of the responsibilities of a baseball GM. But sometimes the fans get distracted by their flashy role of making trades and forget that. Some teams have involved CFOs and owners, who manage the finances. But whether the owner, CFO or GM determine the budget, it is the job of the GM to manage to it.

Later

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

And now we can move on to appreciations of M. Donald Grant. (There was a long Seaver vs Grant thread somewhere --anyone know where?) We should consider a broader approach than that one issue, anyway. Grant vs. Yogi, vs. Cleon, vs. Kong, etc.

I'd classify him as patriarchal and authoritarian, though he tried to portray himself as just representing sound business practices, most of which seem (again, Chuck, by our current standards) to be more closely linked with the 1920s than with the 1980s. He, too, had an opportunity to go the extreme other way with Seaver, and say "No one else in baseball renegotiates contracts, but this is a chance to sign up Tom Seaver for the next six years--hell, yeah!"

Of course (he would say) just as soon as Seaver realized he was being underpaid by 1980 standards in the contract he'd signed back in 1978, he would start asking to renegotiate all over again.

The incident with Cleon in the van is one we haven't explored (that I can remember). Was this simple racism? Do you suppose he would have done the same with Seaver, say, if Tom had been caught in a van with a woman other than Nancy? Was it merely race-blind patriarchal moralizing about something that was none of his damned business? Was it in any way justifiable?

These are merely the most immediately memorable incidents in Grant's tenure--does anyone remember him, or want to charcterizing him, differently than as an obnoxious, supercilious, retrograde money manager who had no business involving himself in the operations of a baseball team? I'm also recalling his insistence that his baby Donnie Shaw (who I also thought highly of) be a dealbreaker several times in the late 1960s, thus showing that Grant (and I) lacked baseball sense at the time. (My excuse is that I was twelve.)

[MFS62]

When you look at Grant's reaction to the Cleon Jones incident, you have to look at Grant's reaction to when several Yankee players destroyed the Copa in that famous brawl incident. (My uncle told me that he was present when several Yankees later did the same thing in the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Terminal)

Does anyone remember remember how (or if) Grant punished them?

Later

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I don't know if the Cleon in the van thing was discussed, but it was celebrated in song.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Grant wasn't involved with the Yankees at that time, or any time.

That Yankee batboy, by the way, mentioned in his talk at SABR that the real culprit in the Copa incident wasn't Billy Martin but pitcher Johnny Kucks.

[MFS62]

Johnny Dickshot wrote: Grant wasn't involved with the Yankees at that time, or any time.

Oops. You're right.

Never mind.

Later

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

I can only imagine what Grant would have done with Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich if he had been involved with the Yankees.