In case you missed it over the weekend, Adam Rubin’s column Meet the Mess, is easily the most important thing written about the current Mets team in the last few weeks. Rubin blames the Mets current problems, not on the injuries which are out of the team’s control, but on factors within the hierarchy’s control – misguided signings, a barren farm system, and a broken relationship between the players, the front office and the medical staff. Says Rubin:
The reality is the organization has been crumbling beneath the surface, with the sizzle of big-ticket additions masking fundamental flaws.
Here’s the big surprise for me. The first suggestion by a credible print journalist that Omar Minaya’s job is not safe beyond the end of this season:
There’s no indication yet that Minaya will be given the heave-ho at season’s end. But there are rumblings that a three-year extension he received after last year’s September swoon, despite already being under contract for 2009, would not be an impediment to making a change. That extension, a source indicated, merely kept the attention focused on brand-new Citi Field entering the season and defused, or at least deferred, any chatter about whether Minaya’s job might be in jeopardy.
So the owners gave Minaya the extension, not because they thought he deserved it, but because they wanted to control the storyline. Is is any wonder that the same GM, who is not compensated for his own performance, but to fit into a larger storyline, feels no need to sign players to contracts whose value corresponds to the player’s actual contribution?
Rubin quotes an NL scout, who after calling the farm system “impotent,” goes harder 
after the top:
If you evaluate the Minaya regime, it is difficult to identify a plan or philosophy beyond acquiring high priced FA talent.
Ouch.
Rubin on the Farm system’s ability to help the Mets fill their likely holes this offseason, including, C, OF, 1B, bullpen arm:
Virtually all of the holes will have to be addressed via free agency. Prospect Jon Niese or Brad Holt can be used as the fifth starter next season, but no one else in the minor-league system is remotely ready to plug a vacancy on Opening Day 2010. That’s a damning indictment. Since Fernando Martinez and Deolis Guerra, who was traded in the Santana deal, signed as 16-year-olds the summer after Pedro Martinez’s addition, that pipeline of Latin American talent has failed to follow. The international signings had been intended to offset the draft picks forfeited for signing free agents. The bottom line: Money, not Pedro’s reputation, results in international signings. And the Mets simply were outbid for the top talent; or they didn’t have the inside track, according to sources, because of special assistant Ramon Pena’s less-than-stellar reputation in the Dominican Republic, the area he oversees.
The thrust of this paragraph is dead-on. Money and effort decide scouting international scouting battles. I don’t know Ramon Pena, but the Mets performance internationally in recent years has certainly not been special.
Even Holt, who I really like as a prospect, will need dramatic improvements to hold down a rotation spot out of spring training. He’s come a long way in a year, he’s got more room to go before reaching MLB starter readiness. Niese is ready now.
After going after some of the failures of the player development and acquisition, Rubin turns his attention to the Mets medical failings:
Questionable medical moves … have become commonplace. Still, players expressed full faith in the Hospital for Special Surgery, which provides care to the organization, and instead fault how the organization has used the information it is provided.
When the players don’t trust their own organization, and are willing to tell that to a reporter, the team is in deep, deep trouble. Rubin cites the following examples of mishandled injuries include an “extremely upset” Carlos Beltran, JJ Putz, John Maine, Willy Wagner and Jose Reyes.
And that takes Rubin back to the relationship between the team and its players:
The Mets have had a curious track record of pushing players too hard. Billy Wagner was furious at Mets VP Tony Bernazard for insinuating that Wagner was dogging it when he complained of discomfort after throwing a simulated game in Pittsburgh last August. Weeks later, Wagner was undergoing Tommy John elbow surgery.
Mets insiders are currently portraying Reyes as soft in private, although that’s a dangerous allegation. After all, they felt the same way when Reyes had persistent leg problems early in his Mets career, and it turned out he was playing with an undetected stress fracture of the left fibula.
Players are complaining about the organization to reporters. The front office is making allegations about players to reporters. This is totally unacceptable on both accounts. Winning usually cures, or at least smooths over these types of organizational fights. However, with the Mets three games under .500 and in fourth place in the division, 6.5 games back, a playoff berth is highly unlikely. Frankly, it sounds like some of the fissures in organization are now too large to repair. The only answer might be a new boss and new people.
Mets could replenish the farm in a matter of year, especially if they miss the playoffs and end up with a draft pick in the top 15 (which lets them sign a Type-A without giving up their #1 pick) … Delgado, Wagner, Putz are all guys that could either bring back prospects or draft picks – depending on what the Mets do (trade – prospects, let them walk / offer arbitration – draft picks) .
If the Mets are 8-10 games out by mid-August, they should stick Delgado on waivers.. let a team claim him.. and then work out a trade and get some prospects back.. then if Wagner finishes as a type-A, decline his option and offer arbitration – he WILL decline it because he will want to be a closer somewhere, not a setup man in the Mets’ 2010 bullpen.. Putz will probably finish as a Type-B, so they should pick up his option and trade him next off-season to a team in need of a closer.
So just like that they could get prospects and/or draft picks in a matter of an a couple months.
Agree 100% with what you said and laid out up there. Good post…
A few points:
1) Getting Delgado through waivers and then getting a prospect of any value are two separate things, which make the post-July 31st trade market hard to navigate. It’s highly unlikely that the Mets can get Delgado through to a team willing to trade anything of substance for him.
2) While Billy wants to close, he is also a smart business guy. If he accepts arbitration, then the least he’s going to make is a little under his current $10M salary. What if he can’t find anything but a one year deal for a fraction of that cost? he may then accept arbitration and the Mets are stuck with him. It’s a risky proposition that I’m not sure if worth taking.
3) As for Putz, I would use the remainder of the season as an audition. If he’s healthy, I would just assume the Mets keep him because Parnell has been shaky.
4) I don’t think any of the other Mets trade baits would net anything of value, except maybe Feliciano who might get you a pair of B-level prospects.
1) – if they cant get good value out of him they could hang onto him, offer him arbitration, and get compensation if he declines. mets might actually need him next year, so if he accepts it wouldn’t be worst thing.
2) – eh this can go either way. billy strikes me as an egotistic guy who wants to have a closer’s role.. and mets have the chance to pick up his option and trade him if they feel like offering arbitration will be a bad idea.
3) – all depends on how putz performs the rest of the year.. gotta get back to this at the end of the year
4) – feliciano is arbitration eligible next season its not like hes a free agent-to-be, so i dont see why he would be traded.. hes going to be needed in next year’s bullpen
Love your site Toby and this is my first post. I love Adam Rubin but that’s as unfair as it comes. What team out there has the depth to overcome Maine, Perez, Putz, Delgado, Beltran, Reyes, Pagan, Church was on the DL for awhile too.
Answer? Nobody.
Now the medical info and the scouting are concerns. But as far as the scouting-you see all those kids coming back older than they are supposed to be?
No major league team out there except the Dodgers could overcome these injuries.
let’s focus instead on how bad a mamma jamma brad holt is and samesies for ruben tejada.
holt – 3 innings 6ks, 1 hit
tejada – 2 for 2, double, walk
It really hurts as a Mets fan. Since 2000, we dealt for years with stories like this analyzing the mismanagement of the organization under Steve Phillips and Jim Duquette. In 2005, we finally had that sincere hope back when Omar brought the Mets back to respectability and in 2006 when the squad finally performed up to its ability. In 2007 and 2008 we have missed the playoffs by margins so small that if only one of the hundreds of mistakes or one injury in those seasons never happened, history would have been rewritten.
Before last season, Omar pulled off a brilliant trade for Santana. My hopes had never been higher for a Mets team entering last season. Now, my hopes for the future are crashing fast. It’s hard to put this into words, but hearing what I heard in this article makes me think I’m in 2001 again, looking ahead to years of teams failing to meet expectations.
I’m not suppose to feel this way. I think few teams in the league can match the talent of Santana, Wright, Reyes, Beltran and KRod leading their teams. And the supporting cast ain’t bad. But this team is never firing on all cylinders, or even “most” of its cylinders.
Maybe we give our hopes up for this season and look towards next season. Yet, now I believe that while Reyes and Beltran likely will be operating on full health, we’d be testing our luck to see K-Rod make it through another full season, let alone the end of this one. Or at what point does age catch up to Johan and while completing one of his athletic plays in the field pulls a muscle. Or maybe on a head first slide running the bases, David Wright suffers a serious injury.
I have little hope. The farm is good, but not good enough to yield a new young core. We have won two straight games entering the all-star break, but that was against a sub .500 Reds team playing without its best players. Too much has to go right after the all-star break for this team to turn it around. And after three under achieving seasons, I’m seriously asking whether this team will ever turn it around.
This team reminds me a lot of the Red Sox franchise in the early 2000’s. They had Pedro, Manny, Papi emerging, Nomar, yet they fell short every time. Well replace Manny with Beltran, Papi with Wright, Nomar with Reyes, and Pedro with Johan… That Red Sox team didn’t have a farm system, they had struggling aging stars all over the place. They traded a few of them off like Nomar, let a few walk via Free Agency like Derek Lowe and Kevin Millar, Johnny Damon…. With all their compensation from those players and their own picks from not signing type A Free agents they built up a farm team.
I wouldn’t be too worried about the Mets “CORE” Wright and Reyes are still very young. Beltran is still reasonably young, but might need to be moved from the CF position into a Corner spot to save his knees in the future.
I’m 100% for trading off any un-necessary parts as the season progresses if they fall too far out of it. Delgado, Wagner, Sheff, Tatis, Reed, Pagan, Castillo, Schneider. Anybody who’s not going to be in the future.
As for not having people ready to stock the majors, thought they haven’t performed well, Murphy was there, Evans, F-mart, Parnell…. Even Santos… I can get on Omar for a number of things, but no team in baseball can lose 3 potential all stars from the every day lineup, 3/5ths of your starters. Your Best set-up man in puts.
Omar actually did a good job putting together this team. He won’t get credit for it, But the Alex Cora signing was a good thing. So was the Gary Sheffield signing. You can get on him for the Putz deal, but at the time it was a great move.
Can’t say Omar has been a great GM, but he’s been an Ok GM. If you were grading him a C or C- would be an appropriate grade. He hasn’t built up the farm system, and what was built up were traded away in the Delgado, Johan, Putz deals. Also some other deals like Heath Bell, Matt Lindstrome, Bannister, have netted nothing in return for quality Major leaguers.
I don’t understand why Mets fans always bring up Bell. Question – Did any Mets fan think Bell was anything close to what he’s become? No. Hindsight is a great scout – no?
agreed.
omar has “lost” 3 players.
bell – who he gave like 6 chances here and was god awful the entire team
lindstrom – couple decent years, and now he’s got arm problems and a 7.00 ERA
bannister – god awful last year
it’s almost impossible to predict relievers at all, so really, are we expecting he’d never have a trade where he gets the worse end?
it’s just bitching to bitch.
I’m not saying that at the time they were moves that would make or break the Mets. But the fact of the matter is what did they get in return for them.
Nothing. There is nothing in the minors, nothing in the majors, the players he got aren’t even in baseball anymore as far as i know except for Bostick.
I was just pointing out that a few minor deals have sapped the AAA team of younger players who would be considered “MLB” ready. If they hadn’t have made these trades, it wouldn’t just be Johnthan Neise and F-Mart at the AAA level. There would be more guys.
Where are Ben Johnson, and Jon Adkins? Where are Jason Vargas and Adam Bostick? Where is Ambiorix Burgos?
And where are the guys that were traded for them. Heath Bell is closing for the Padres, Royce ring has bounced around the Majors. Matt Lindstrom was closing for the Marlins, and Henry Owens was last year. Bannister is 27-29 as a professional.
Not killing Omar but it’s those types of trades that have Sapped the farm system. Not the big timey ones like the 4 guys for Johan or the Delgado deal or even the Putz deal.. Though I always liked Carp..
wow, henry owens and royce ring!
jesus, you have to be kidding when you say things like that.
especially when you have no idea where jason vargas is.
so, in closing, stop talking.
Most of those guys would have been waived because they were out of options anyway, and were not going to make the Mets out of ST. Its not trades that were the problem, it was the evaluation of internal talent.
re: mark
Jason Vargas was included in the Putz deal.
Putz-trade wasn’t that good for Mets..
Mike Carp is hitting well in AAA and with power, Ezequiel Carrera is hitting very well for AA, even Seattle found a way to make Jason Vargas useful in their rotation (I could care less about Vargas though)..
Mets in return got what, exactly? Putz – hes been terrible in a Met uniform and his weak season in Seattle should have been an indicator hes on the downside of his career.. Sean Green is a solid reliever and Reed is a solid defensive outfielder but they aren’t worth giving up Carp and Carrera for.. At least Maikel Cleto has been bad in their farm system
you forgot that Joe Smith and Aaron Heilman would have been improvements over some of what the Mets had in the pen earlier this year.
Heilman leaving had to be done though, even if they couldn’t replace his givens with one person.
eh i didnt have much of a problem with them being dealt… an arm like joe smith is replaceable and heilman would be terrible if he was still with the mets.. if he has any success with the cubs, good for him, because it wasn’t coming in a mets uniform, thats for sure; he needed a change of scenery.
Don’t you think Heilman would have better numbers than Parnell right now?
Heilman had to go for the team to win back its fans, but the FO has basically undone that progress with all the other issues they have created this year.
i rather have parnell over heilman any day.. check back to this in a year, i guarantee parnell will be a better reliever than heilman.