Omar

[Elster88]

Do we have an Omar thread yet?

Can someone explain to me how he does it? Schoeneweis aside.

I post this after the Sosa start in Detroit.

And I thought any move that Omar made to bring a Sosa to Mets would suck.

[smg58]

Well he tried out a number of pitchers who've shown some ability in the past, and Sosa was the one who worked out.

But I do think that given how inflated the market for starting pitchers has been, his ability to find bargains is remarkable. Three of our starting pitchers came basically for the cost of Kris Benson and Xavier Nady, and Sosa was a cheap free agent. They're all pitching better than any of the pitchers who got big deals or were involved in trades for top prospects (not to mention Willis and Zambrano, who still keep popping up in trade rumors). Some credit is certainly due here.

But yeah, I'm not looking forward to three years of Schoenweiss either.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

Back in the Phillips Era, I used to think the Mets got veteran pitchers from other organizations as part of an economic philosophy to let the other orgs absorb the risk of developing guys, then acquire the heretofore reliable ones and pay what we would have spent developing them in the higher salaries these guys made.

Now I still think there's still some truth to that, and an argument for it, it also looks like they engaged in that practice without having a great idea of what they were getting -- Jeff D'Amico? Shawn Estes? Jason Middlebrook? They sounded like good ideas.

Where Omar kicks their asses is in making the decisions of who to get, seems like. Even when it comes to "unproven" guys like Maine, it just seems as if the Mets today are putting a lot more effort, or brighter people, or $$, or all of it, into scouting than did Phillips and the Duke.

[metirish]

Seems like Omar surrounds himself with guys he trusts and has known for years,I read last week although I can't find the article that Omar was not big on Sosa but one of his baseball people sold him on signing him.

So far so good.

[Guest cleonjones11]

You can thank the Devil Rays for us having Omar..Dan Duquette doesnt trade Kazmir and who knows?

So we basically traded Kazmir for Omar..

Fine by me..

[Guest attgig]

here's an article in the ny sun a few weeks ago about the pitchers Minaya got.

http://www.nysun.com/article/55047?page_no=1

[Guest Edgy DC]

Any idiot with money can go out and get the shiny prizes with tags on it that say "former Cy Young winner," "former first-round draft choice," "Japanese superstar." A deft guy trusts his scouts to see what's behind those tags and whether they're valuable going forward, and he not only spends his money more wisely, but he leverages in the market the appeal other teams have for those traits.

The past gives you no guarantees going forward; that's true and it's even more true of pitching. He minimized the risk by making several good commitments, rather than one big commitment.

None of that dovetails with the Schoeneweis signing very well, however.

[Guest iramets]

Omar is a great GM, I agree, because of the emphasis he gives to scouting, rather than to protecting his ass. I hate the BS rationalization that Cashman's defenders give him re the current Yankee pitching staff: "How could he know that Pavano would be no good? Did you protest the Pavano signing? No? Then how can you dare blame Cashman?" But it's his fucking JOB to know things that a fan doesn't know, and results are all that matters. "Covering Brian Cashman's ass" is not a spectator sport, and one I wouldn't follow if it were.

Should Phillips have known that Alomar and Vaughan weren't quite as good as their resumes suggested? I say, emphatically, "Yes." That why he made/makes the big bucks. And if Phillips and Cashman get a lot of dissing because they spent bazillions of dollars signing no-account superstars that everybody on the planet approved of at the time, then Omar deserves major credit for getting results from "lesser" players who have played well. He's the shit.