Category Archives: Mets

The pros and cons of prospective part-owners

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A number of candidates have emerged as potential suitors for the 20-to-25-percent share of the Mets the Wilpons are supposedly selling. Should Mets fans be rooting for any in particular to buy a piece of the team? Let’s investigate:

Vodka maven Martin Silver: As part-owner, Silver could be an entertaining side show in boring seasons. He has a thing for publicity stunts, which could perhaps forebode some Veeck-esque promotions at Citi Field. Another upside: He has access to an absolute ton of vodka. Plus he’s a lifelong Mets fan.

On the other hand, Silver wants a say in the day-to-day operations of the team and has previously said he would offer up decisions to Internet voting, which means we would say goodbye to all the best players on the Mets while a Joe Benigno-led junta cheered their departure because they were soft or unclutch or bad in the clubhouse. Also, Silver plastered pictures of his own daughter’s ass on Georgi ads all over city buses. That’s weird.

Vitaminwater founder Mike Repole: Repole obviously knows a thing or two about business, as he and his partners sold Vitaminwater to Coca-Cola for over $4 billion. And he loves the Mets and hates the Yankees.

But Repole has said that one of his goals in life is to be the GM of the Mets, and the Mets already have a GM that appears plenty competent. Also, another of his goals is “to win the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown,” and that’s redundant. Plus, he made a fortune convincing people that sugary fruit drinks are good for them. That’s shrewd by business standards but perhaps not so tempting to the Wilpons if they’re looking to avoid future dealings with those prone to chicanery.

Martin Luther King III: The upside is that King is above reproach, mostly because you’re not allowed to say anything bad about someone named “Martin Luther King.” I think that might be in the constitution. I can’t tell you the downside.

Some more about this

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I don’t want to seem like I’m willfully ignoring this story, so here’s a link to a Times article about the Wilpons’ prior investments with fraudulent businesses.

I was on the conference call on Friday and it bored me near to tears. I hardly know what most of this stuff means, but it does seem like the particular case is perhaps a bit too nuanced for most of those covering and reacting to it to grasp (I don’t mean the Times piece, I mean columns like this one).

And I fear that trying my best to clear things up will either a) make it seem like I’m defending the Wilpons on account of my paycheck, which I’m not interested in doing or b) expose my ignorance of nearly everything pertaining to business and investments.

Prospective Mets owner proposes worst idea ever

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A lifelong Mets fan and season ticket holder, Mr. Silver organized a team of investors in 2009 after the team gave poor performances both on the field and financially.  He offered a multimillion dollar pledge and changes such as a computer-based system of voting for Mets fans, which would have been the first time in history that a baseball team would be ruled by popular opinion the internet.  Georgi Vodka is number one selling vodka in New York State, and Star Industries sells over a hundred different brands of liquor.

– Press release

I can’t tell which parts of this press release are tongue-in-cheek and which are serious, but basically this guy — Martin Silver, the owner of Georgi Vodka — announced his plans to make an offer to buy the Mets. He’s holding a press conference tomorrow at Jack Demsey’s bar in Midtown at 11:30 a.m.

I guess the upside to making roster decisions based on Internet voting would be that my job would suddenly seem much more important. The downside is the way that would inevitably shake out. And I mean no offense to anyone — I’m not saying I’d vote for the right decisions either.

Wilpons exploring adding a partner

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I caused a minor Twitter meltdown this morning by teasing this news, which I probably shouldn’t have done. Anyway, no idea if or how this affects the team on the field, since the Wilpons will retain majority control. The press release says it’s being done “to address the air of uncertainty created by” the lawsuit against them by the trustee in the Madoff bankruptcy. 

Is this a weird thing to speculate about?

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There was a lot of snickering — by me, among others — after the Mets’ announcement that they’d hold a press conference to introduce Chin-Lung Hu. But Adam Rubin suggested, accurately I imagine, that a press conference to accommodate the Taiwanese media made sense.

Anyway, this vaguely brings me back to something I got at earlier this offseason: I wonder if there is any advantage, in picking between two all-field no-hit utility infielders, in picking the one from Taiwan instead of the one from California (or the Dominican Republic or anyplace else that typically produces Major Leaguers).

Could Hu’s presence have any impact on the team financially? I believe revenue from international broadcasts and merchandise sales are shared among the MLB teams, but will members of the Taiwanese community in New York be so much more inclined to show up to Mets games to have a noticeable affect on ticket sales? Did anyone chart turnout by demographic at Chien-Ming Wang’s starts?

Does it benefit the team’s “brand” internationally, and does that matter at all? Does it help them with amateur scouting in Taiwan?

Obviously, like Alderson says, it must be first and foremost a baseball move. But is it weird to wonder if there’s any real, identifiable added value derived from Hu being Taiwanese? Has any of this been studied? Should I just keep asking open-ended speculative questions?

Mets’ farm system ranked 26th of 30

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Earth to Fred Wilpon: This is what a strict adherence to slot recommendations will buy you. Parsimony has its price.

– Keith Law, ESPN.com (insider only).

Obviously the Mets’ adherence to slot recommendations has cost their farm system; I wouldn’t dispute that. But I’ll add that it probably doesn’t help that they graduated Ike Davis, Josh Thole and Jon Niese to the pros in 2010 and that all look like viable Major League contributors.

The other bad news, for Mets fans, is that the Braves’ system is ranked third and the Phillies’ is fifth. The Braves, in particular, seem like they could be on the brink of another dynasty. Jason Heyward, Freddie Freeman, not-terribly old Bryan McCann, cousin-of-Hanson Tommy Hanson, and a bunch of young arms coming up the pike.

But there’s a small glimmer of sunshine peeking through the clouds that you can only see if you really stare and squint at it: The Mets, I’ve heard, secured the 2013 All-Star Game at Citi Field. If it was really ownership preventing the team from drafting over-slot and not simply mismanagement and misallocation of resources, then the upcoming Midsummer Classic presents hope it could change soon.

My understanding is that selection of the All-Star Game venue, for better or worse, is one of MLB’s best items of leverage to coerce big-market teams into drafting to slot. I don’t know how often it actually works — the Yankees got an All-Star Game despite frequently spending overslot — or if that really has anything to do with why the Mets would play nice with the league, but it should no longer be a concern either way.

Maybe that’s nonsense though. Not about the Mets securing the game — that part I’m almost positive is true and done and will be announced soon — but about MLB using it as leverage for the slot system and the Mets caring and all that. Seems vaguely like a conspiracy theory, and there are a lot of moving parts in play.

Du it

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Free-agent right-hander Justin Duchscherer, considered one of the best starting pitchers still on the market, said on Tuesday evening that physically he feels “pretty much 100 percent” and shot down the notion that his previous depression issues would prevent him from playing in New York….

“For me, it’s black and white. I want to start; that’s the whole mind-set I have. I haven’t even thought of being a reliever. I want a team that’s going to be honest with me and say, ‘If you’re healthy, you are going to start.'”

Duchscherer has thrown two full bullpen sessions off the mound already this winter, with favorable results, and is quick to point out that despite his “injury-prone” label, his arm has proven to be durable.

– Brittany Ghiroli, MLB.com.

It’s going to be hard to shake that “injury-prone” label when you haven’t had a fully healthy season since 2005, but injury concerns aside, Duchscherer is a guy the Mets should probably consider taking a flyer on. I’ve had a number of readers email me suggesting as much, and they’ve got good points: Duchscherer has pretty much always been good whenever he’s been on a Major League mound.

Unlike Chris Capuano and Chris Young — both of whom finished 2010 in their teams’ rotations — Duchscherer’s five starts in 2010 came at the beginning of the season. He’s coming off hip surgery now, which I imagine means he’s less likely to be fully healthy and full-strength by Opening Day.

Still, if by some chance he is healthy and can stay so, he’s probably as likely as anyone on the Mets’ staff to pitch like the ace everyone’s clamoring for: Duchscherer has a career 139 ERA+ (a number, granted, likely aided by his time working a relief role).

Point is, pitchers get injured. Some — like Justin Duchscherer, for example — do a lot more often than others. But it’s not really possible to have too much starting pitching depth. Starters that can’t crack the rotation can count on an opportunity when one of their teammates gets hurt or proves ineffective, and usually can serve valuable roles in the bullpen in the interim.

Provided the Mets don’t know something we don’t about Duchscherer’s current health, if he can be had on a cost-effective and incentive-laden contract like the deals for Capuano and Young, he seems like a good risk to take.

Link via Aaron Gleeman.

Just how awesome will R.A. Dickey be?

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After the coming out party that was last season, expecting him to come back to Earth would be extremely reasonable, akin to a rookie whom the rest of the league had finally gotten a winter to read the scouting report on. But R.A. Dickey is no rookie.

He is, despite his relatively brief time in the Majors, a mature pitcher. Having started his career as a power thrower who converted only because of a missing ligament in his arm, he has become adept at evolving to keep ahead of the hitters. He changes speeds, with knuckleballs that can vary within a 15-20 MPH range and throwing an occasional fastball that still peaks in the 80’s. Most important to his development is that he believes that he is still learning his pitch, that there are more changes he can make to improve his game. He feels that teams won’t have a full scouting report on him because he is not done writing it yet.

– Kieran Flemming, Mets Fever.

We know R.A. Dickey’s going to be awesome in 2011 because he’s presumably still going to be throwing knuckleballs and reading Faulkner and using big words in postgame interviews and everything else. And all those things are cool. But just how awesome can we expect R.A. Dickey to be?

Flemming argues that we shouldn’t expect a so-called “sophomore slump” from Dickey because he’s a mature pitcher willing to adjust his game, and perhaps that’s reasonable.

But will Dickey regress toward the mean? Was he perhaps the beneficiary of some good luck and did he pitch a bit above his head last season? It’s hard to say because Dickey is an outlier in so many ways. He has been getting progressively better since becoming a full-time knuckleballer, and he throws the hardest knuckleball I’ve ever seen — and mixes speeds with it.

Still, baseball is a game of perpetual adjustment. Certainly next season opposing hitters will have more experience against and more video of Dickey, and more knowledge of his tendencies, and Dickey will have to adjust in turn. But it doesn’t seem at all likely to me that he’ll continue pitching at the level he did last season.

Again, I have no solid evidence upon which to base that, just the knowledge that a 138 ERA+ at the Major League level is really, really difficult to sustain. For what it’s worth, Tim Wakefield threw 13 awesome starts for the Pirates when he first came up in 1992 and then enjoyed a career year when he first switched leagues in 1995, and both times he regressed thereafter.

That doesn’t mean Dickey won’t be useful or valuable or awesome, of course.