Met Financial Picture in Fifteen

[TransMonk]

Megdal seems to be saying, "It's not just me, guys."

[ashie62]

Megdal is speculating at "what could be or bot be" four yours down the road.

[Gwreck]

Megdal was not speculating on anything. The piece was reporting what other reporters who cover the Mets had to say.

[Frayed Knot]

Except that Medgel links to a Joel Sherman's article as evidence for his statement that "even the team itself sounds publicly resigned to losing Harvey" while the article says no such thing.
The speculation in that piece that Harvey will leave via free agency is clearly all Sherman's but Medgel deftly transfers those thoughts to team management and passes it off as if sourced material.

[ashie62]

It all sounds like pacayune bs.

[Gwreck]

Frayed Knot wrote: Except that Medgel links to a Joel Sherman's article as evidence for his statement that "even the team itself sounds publicly resigned to losing Harvey" while the article says no such thing.

I was referring to where he cited the expectations of Tony DiComo and Mark Carig, who he cited as both believing that Harvey will be leaving when he becomes a free agent.

[Edgy MD]

Carig in one paragraph says"I think he's gone. And if he's on a different team, I'm gonna say yes, it would be the Yankees. That's just the reality of what this is."

And then in the next, to go by this report, rants against fans being obsessed about what's going to happen 2019. That sounds like a man who needs a reality check.

[Ceetar]

Headley and McCann's money comes off that year, and A-Rod's comes off a year earlier in 2018. Sure, the Yankees might be able to sign Matt Harvey, but they'd probably have to really overpay to get him to come to a losing team.

[Frayed Knot]

It's not like speculating about Harvey leaving at FA time is going out on a limb or anything; hell, folks here have been doing it for a while.
My objection to Medgel is that he claims [u:2ys8pwu2]the team has admitted as much[/u:2ys8pwu2] and then proceeds to back none of it up while linking to just another writer speculating along with the rest of us.
It doesn't make the speculation bad, just the journalism.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Mets, in first, look again to next year
By Howard Megdal 2:19 p.m. | Jun. 10, 2015

The New York Mets are in their seventh season since they last finished with a winning record. The New York Mets are also in their seventh season since ownership could rely on Bernie Madoff for uncommonly consistent returns and a slush fund for spending. These two facts are not coincidental. Accordingly, no one should be surprised by the revelation in Kevin Kernan's Sunday column that an offense-starved team is "targeting 2016 as their real target date to make a splash." But let there be no question about why this is. It has nothing to do with the pace of the rebuilding effort, necessitated by ownership's inability to afford a major league payroll in the top two-thirds of the league, despite a cash cow of a TV network, the largest market in the league and an influx of national television revenue. As previously reported, general manager Sandy Alderson has been turned down many times when asking for funds to go get a player. And the inability to add even marginal depth this offseason has left this Mets team particularly bereft in case of an injury. Nor does it reflect the team's current standing. The Mets, even after getting no-hit by the Giants Tuesday night, are in first place in the National League East more than a third of the way through the season. The reality, as multiple members of the front office have explained to me, is a simple one: Alderson has no idea what he can spend, or even when he'll know. And their frantic efforts to supplement pitching with an improved offense is severely restricted as a result. That's a far more difficult problem than simply a frugal budget. Give someone $100, and it's hard to afford a car. Fail to tell him how much money he has, and it's impossible to buy a car. The remarkable reality of a first-place team pushing back its own timeline for financial reasons would seem to fly in the face of the MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's own vote of confidence for Mets ownership this spring. Manfred said, back in March: "I think adding players comes at the point in time that you've built your farm system up and you have a really good core of players on the field. And then it's effective to spend. I think the Mets have made great progress in terms of the young talent they have. And I know, at the point in time that they think it's appropriate, they will spend to supplement players." That statement works as long as the "they" isn't baseball operations, but rather an ownership group who continues to put its own financial survival, which requires financing massive debt against team, TV network and stadium, ahead of any investment in the team itself. The same line has been used throughout Sandy Alderson's tenure, regardless of where the team is on the field. Back in 2010, when Alderson took the job, he said this: "I wasn't hired to apply a Moneyball approach to the New York Mets. I would not have accepted the position were I required to run the Mets on a shoestring budget. ... But we do have to get through a somewhat difficult period from a standpoint of our payroll because we already have most of it committed." Mets payroll at the time topped $140 million. Here in 2015, despite massive increases in revenue around the league, and a national television infusion of cash, the Mets find themselves with a payroll of around $100 million, bottom third of the league. And as we now know from Steve Kettmann's book, which included more than 100 interviews with Alderson, that Alderson believed this by February 2011: "Immediately after the Madoff litigation was made public, I realized that was going to have some impact on what we were going to be able to do." And so it has been ever since. In 2012. In 2013. In 2014. In 2015. But as the Alderson rebuild has produced more players, there's been a separation between on-field expectations and off-field realities. Mets fans could see the team wasn't close to winning, and thus each summer would begin hot-stove dreaming a bit early. Each winter, the team did very little, relying on internal, already-paid-for players. Some of these have worked out (Lucas Duda), some of these haven't (Ruben Tejada), but Alderson made no secret of it: he didn't view either one as a "core player" back in 2013. That both are still here is more a consequence of the enormous barrier to making deals during his tenure than any change in his beliefs, though Duda has certainly proven himself since. So the target date for relevance has continued moving back, even with the improved on-field performance that was supposed to trigger spending to move the Mets from talented group of homegrown talent into a team maximizing their window. As Alderson said in the summer of 2013, "Was 2014 always a target year? Yeah. It should be an important year for us." As Alderson said, famously, in spring of 2014, about his call for the Mets to try and win 90 games, "This team is now about being successful. Being successful is not some nebulous concept about winning or being competitive or playing meaningful games some month later in the calendar. This is about concrete expectations about what we need to do. The 90 wins is about challenge. It's about changing the conversation." And after the Mets did little to add to a 2014 team that won 79, not 90, adding Michael Cuddyer and little else this past winter, the spring produced this leaked moment from Fred Wilpon's closed-door meeting with manager Terry Collins that, according to Collins, Wilpon "expects a much better team." Not that anyone heard this from Wilpon himself, who hasn't made himself available to reporters since the spring of 2013, a press conference in which he claimed, falsely, that he and the team were debt-free. Indeed, even the talking point from the organization about Wilpon has shifted from "of course he can afford to run a large-market team" to how much he cares about winning, as if that matters even slightly if he lacks the means to make it happen. And yet, here are the 2015 Mets, their best pitchers excelling and critically in their cheap, pre-arbitration years. Offensive help is on the way from the farm with outfielder Michael Conforto and shortstop Amed Rosario impressing, but how quickly they can arrive in New York and hit major league pitching, no one can say. And without ownership able to lock down these pitchers as they get more expensive, the Mets could find themselves with enough hitting just as it's time to, say, trade Matt Harvey. So as Alderson and his lieutenants cast about for more hitting, all too aware that targets with big contracts are likely off-limits (though one never knows; the money for Bartolo Colon magically showed up about 48 hours before the Mets signed him), the team continues to hold the top spot in a division the Nationals have underachieved enough to make competitive. But the analog Mets fans need to be hoping for here is 1973, when it took only 82 games to win the N.L. East. And that requires the Nationals to keep on playing well below capacity all season, an unlikely outcome. Otherwise, it looks like whatever improvements the Mets can muster to an offense among the worst in the National League, especially since May 1, will have to come from within. Hope that Travis d'Arnaud, activated Wednesday, can stay healthy and productive. Hope Daniel Murphy's quad heals quickly. Hope Juan Lagares remembers how to hit as he did even last year. Pray nothing happens to Lucas Duda, by far the team's best offensive player. It's a strange position for a first place team with good young players in the biggest market in the league. But thanks to MLB continuing to allow Fred Wilpon and his partners to divert that revenue toward financing their company's debt, that's reality for the 2015 Mets, and any Mets team, contending or otherwise.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2015/06/8569873/mets-first-look-again-next-year

[Ceetar]

dude, the horse is already dead.

[TransMonk]

Megdal may be a hack and a one-trick pony, but that doesn't mean there isn't anything behind the trick he is offering.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

It's like a self-propelled machine: Telling this story especially by this point requires willful interpretations of things (often wobbly things like unverified facts or snippets in an opinion piece) that a reporter's cyncial mind would know aren't accurate.

This entire piece is built upon a partial line in an opinion column by know-nothing old-media columnist Kevin Kernan. How devoted to the cause do you need to be to find this a valid hook? I'm a shitty reporter irl and I wouldn't do this.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I didn't read it, but I kinda like the title of the piece.

oe: posted before reading jcl's post

[Frayed Knot]

He starts off by citing, in quotes no less, Kernan's line from a column last week about the team targeting 2016 as the real year for contention, something Kernan never backed up or indicated where it came from, or qualified whether it was an assumption, an opinion, a flat-out statement, or something voiced (even anonymously) from within. But Medgel goes ahead and runs with it as if now a universally agreed upon fact then adds that "Sandy Alderson has been turned down many times when asking for funds to go get a player". Really? When did that happen (and apparently happen again, and again, and again ... )? You'd think THAT would make news if and when it occurred or when it became public knowledge but, even though I don't claim to read every press released, I never heard anything resembling that to the point where I've more often heard exactly the opposite even if I dismiss such stuff as more akin to public relations that stated policy.

[MFS62]

He doesn't even how to misuse a quote from another writer. Once you see the title of the piece and the byline, you know what its going to say.

Later

[Gwreck]

Forget the Kernan stuff. The quote from Sandy was telling:
"Was 2014 always a target year? Yeah. It should be an important year for us."

Well, he missed on that. That's worthy of discussion.

So is discussion of the Mets' failure to get sufficent offense. It's not second-guessing to point out now that the Mets are offensively starved when it was clear that they were short on offense following what was done to the team in the offseason.

I'm sure that the Mets' financial picture is more complicated than pointed out in this or any other Megdal article but the results still speak volumes. I agree with TransMonk. I don't really care if Megdal's articles are a "one-trick pony;" there's still a valid point being made.

[Ceetar]

err, I think the injuries to Wright, Murphy and d'Arnaud are the main culprits in making this team 'offensively starved'

No quote from Sandy is telling. 2014 was an important year. He didn't say it was going to be a contending year, a 'go for it year'. all years are important. What he's really saying is nothing.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I'm working on a column.... Mets Cheap and Broke Revisited.

It's really a series of columns that I'll be publishing every couple
of days for the next five years. Banging the drum often makes me
more creditable!

[Gwreck]

Yes, no team ever suffers injuries and it's [crossout:bhxq8eae]a good idea[/crossout:bhxq8eae] acceptable to plan as if your starters will be healthy all year instead of having some efficient redundancy.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I wanna get a gig at capitalnydotwhatever!

It was a cold and windy day when Fred got the call that Bernie
Buddster was a swindler and a cheat...

[Ceetar]

Gwreck wrote: Yes, no team ever suffers injuries and it's [crossout]a good idea[/crossout] acceptable to plan as if your starters will be healthy all year instead of having some efficient redundancy.

You're not getting efficient redundancy for David Wright, he's elite. You're not getting efficient redundancy for Travid d'Arnaud, catchers are hard to come by and you had at least some hope that Plawecki WAS better than any random veteran guy.

You had Herrera and Tejada for Murphy, and that's generally worked out fine.

Nieuwenhuis probably would've been fine over the aggregate, just like Mayberry will be. The outfield's kinda been fine too, expect for Lagares who's sorta coming around now anyway.

I'm not really sure what the obvious solution here was that the Mets whiffed on. I mean, I would've taken Peralta personally to play SS. That's one, but it's not easy to say that that was financially driven either. Maybe they didn't trust him to bounce back amid PED stuff.

[Edgy MD]

Gwreck wrote: It's not second-guessing to point out now that the Mets are offensively starved when it was clear that they were short on offense following what was done to the team in the offseason.

Forgive me, but what was done to the team in the offseason?

[Frayed Knot]

Forget the Kernan stuff. The quote from Sandy was telling: "Was 2014 always a target year? Yeah. It should be an important year for us."

Sure it was. So was 2013, and 2015, as will be 2016.



"Well, he missed on that. That's worthy of discussion." -- Discuss away. Just don't start twisting offhand statements by who-knows-who into evidence that 2015 has already been written off.


"So is discussion of the Mets' failure to get sufficent offense. It's not second-guessing to point out now that the Mets are offensively starved when it was clear that they were short on offense following what was done to the team in the offseason." -- But did these things happen because Sandy got turned down for players? He claims it's happened "many times" but offers neither the source of that statement nor an idea of which players, when, or how often.



"I'm sure that the Mets' financial picture is more complicated than pointed out in this or any other Megdal article but the results still speak volumes. I agree with TransMonk. I don't really care if Megdal's articles are a "one-trick pony;" there's still a valid point being made. -- The problem is he's laying out questionable and/or unsubstantiated claims and then using them as the foundation for the rest of the piece.

He's certainly free to bring up the topic but all he does is say the same things over and over again whenever he finds a new line in someone else's column to serve as a launching pad. Old stories but with no new info.

[TransMonk]

Ceetar wrote: err, I think the injuries to Wright, Murphy and d'Arnaud are the main culprits in making this team 'offensively starved'

I don't believe the 2014 offense was a Michael Cuddyer away from being a reliable offense on the whole...no matter how elite Wright is.

I think they would still be below league average as a team in most stats this season even if all these guys were mostly healthy.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

Perhaps 2014 was going to be a target year until the team's showcase player was sidelined for the entire year, and there, through fate, was an extraordinarily weak free agent class with few, if any players, worth offering a huge contract.

I think Howard used to have decent stories. He seemed to go off the rails after the team yanked his credentials. I've don't think I've seen a properly sourced story from him in a long time. Instead, it seems we get whispers, insinuations and quotes from equally agenda-driven opinion writers.

Was he the one who called the Mets cheap and broke because the team charged the trainer to use the camp for his clients during the off-season?

Howard doesn't cover the Mets. He's an agenda in search of an article.

[Guest Mets Guy in Michigan]

TransMonk wrote: Ceetar wrote: err, I think the injuries to Wright, Murphy and d'Arnaud are the main culprits in making this team 'offensively starved' I don't believe the 2014 offense was a Michael Cuddyer away from being a reliable offense on the whole...no matter how elite Wright is. I think they would still be below league average as a team in most stats this season even if all these guys were mostly healthy.

But when they had those guys, they were peeling off an 11-game winning streak. All teams have injuries, but haven't the Mets led all of baseball with people on the DL? I'm not saying we don't need a bona fide slugger, because we do. But they've stayed in and around first place with a lineup filled with injury replacements.

[batmagadanleadoff]

TransMonk wrote: Ceetar wrote: err, I think the injuries to Wright, Murphy and d'Arnaud are the main culprits in making this team 'offensively starved' I don't believe the 2014 offense was a Michael Cuddyer away from being a reliable offense on the whole...no matter how elite Wright is. I think they would still be below league average as a team in most stats this season even if all these guys were mostly healthy.

It's debatable whether Cuddyer is even an asset. The jury's still out on that one. And it's been a while now since David Wright was an elite player. I'm waiting patiently for the reveal that the owners forced Alderson to re-sign Wright in 2012, against Sandy's better instincts. Those Mets were so rotted out, that they probably wouldn't have won half their games even if Wright won the MVP in the first year of his newest contract.

Frayed Knot wrote: He starts off by citing, in quotes no less, Kernan's line from a column last week about the team targeting 2016 as the real year for contention, something Kernan never backed up or indicated where it came from, or qualified whether it was an assumption, an opinion, a flat-out statement, or something voiced (even anonymously) from within. But Medgel goes ahead and runs with it as if now a universally agreed upon fact then adds that "Sandy Alderson has been turned down many times when asking for funds to go get a player". Really? When did that happen (and apparently happen again, and again, and again ... )? You'd think THAT would make news if and when it occurred or when it became public knowledge but, even though I don't claim to read every press released, I never heard anything resembling that to the point where I've more often heard exactly the opposite even if I dismiss such stuff as more akin to public relations that stated policy.

I think Megdal's main point here is that Alderson is running the team essentially blindfolded. If true, you wouldn't read that in the press unless some insider leaked that info. It's obvious that Megdal has developed contacts within the organization who are privvy to top-level information. This was apparent at least since the days after the Madoff scandal broke, when the Mets were shopping shares of the team to interested investors. And in an organization as dysfunctional as the Mets, struggling with enormous economic pressures, it's not so far-fetched that there would be disgruntled employees, working under difficult conditions, perhaps unfairly pressured or blamed for the Mets failing, who would want to leak that info. Granted, you have to take a leap of faith to credit an article based entirely on off the record sources, but the thing is plausible. And consistent with what you can see with your own two eyes.

This sports story has been underreported, especially in proportion to its magnitude and its locale. And especially given the strong similarites with baseball's ouster of McCourt. I'm still amazed at how first Selig, and now Manfred, can sweep this under the rug with nothing more than the dog ate my homework juvenille logic, while escaping the scrutiny of the media.

[Frayed Knot]

It's obvious that Megdal has developed contacts within the organization who are privvy to top-level information. This was apparent at least since the days after the Madoff scandal broke, when the Mets were shopping shares of the team to interested investors. And in an organization as dysfunctional as the Mets, struggling with enormous economic pressures, it's not so far-fetched that there would be disgruntled employees, working under difficult conditions, perhaps unfairly pressured or blamed for the Mets failing, who would want to leak that info. Granted, you have to take a leap of faith to credit an article based entirely on off the record sources, but the thing is plausible. And consistent with what you can see with your own two eyes.

But he's not even using off the record or anonymous sources. He usual move, including the one he uses here, is to cite stuff he finds in the articles of others which either doesn't say or doesn't prove what it claims it does and builds a new article around it as if he's discovered heretofore unreleased photographs from the grassy knoll. And then he throws in statements about Sandy being turned down for multiple player acquisitions with absolutely no proof, no backing, and no examples. If this is actually news then he didn't get the story (as Ben Bradlee would say), and if it's speculation then he shouldn't be passing it off pretending it isn't.
And all for the point of what - that the Mets finances have been problematic since the Madoff scandal? Gee thanks Ace.
All this doesn't make the topic unworthy of discussion, but it does make it shitty journalism.

This sports story has been underreported, especially in proportion to its magnitude and its locale. And especially given the strong similarites with baseball's ouster of McCourt. I'm still amazed at how first Selig, and now Manfred, can sweep this under the rug with nothing more than the dog ate my homework juvenille logic, while escaping the scrutiny of the media.

There's scarcely been an article written, or commentary about, the Mets for the last, what is it - 6 or 7 years now, that doesn't mention, if not dwell on, their financial situation and how it affects the team on the field.

[Edgy MD]

This guy is a disgracefully bad poseur of a journalist. Why do you re-post him without comment?

At least offer us something of your own. Being a provocateur by cutting a Megdal fart in a crowded room has got to be getting old.