484 replies to this topic

[SportsGuy]

...another injury gut-punch
 
Noah Syndergaard down for Tommy John.

Another guy who should have been traded and likely could have aided in making a team better long term and now, the value is gone.

[BSLChrisStoner]

CBS Sports: Mets GM 'optimistic' Yoenis Cespedes will play in 2020 as team tweaks player pool, mulls Tim Tebow addition
https://www.cbssport...ulls-tim-tebow/

[BSLChrisStoner]

Mets' closer Edwin Diaz blows it in Saturday's loss to Braves.

https://www.cbssport...loss-to-braves/

[BSLChrisStoner]

CBS Sports: Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen apologizes after video surfaces accusing Rob Manfred of suggesting one-hour walkout
https://www.cbssport...e-hour-walkout/

[dude]

Mets are back to exclusive negotiations with Cohen to sell the team.  Other 2 groups (one included A-Rod and J-Lo) are both out.

 

Looks like this might not have the same crazy parameters (from the first sale attempt) where Jeff Wilpon gets to stay in charge for 5 years.

[BSLChrisStoner]

The Ringer: Tom Seaver Was the Best Pitcher of His Generation—and Maybe Every Other Generation, Too
https://www.theringe...r-new-york-mets

 

FanGraphs: Remembering the Terrific Tom Seaver (1944-2020)

[24fps]

New owner Steve Cohen takes machine gun to Mets front office an hour after the sale is completed.  Alderson new GM.

 

Author speculates that Jeff Luhnow could be a candidate for one of the FO positions.

 

https://apnews.com/a...0fdaf4ab4e444e0

[BSLChrisStoner]

FanGraphs: The Mets Offense is Sneaky Good

[BSLChrisStoner]

CBS Sports: Mets' Robinson Cano suspended for entire 2021 MLB season after second positive PED test
Cano will forfeit his $24 million salary for the 2021 season

https://www.cbssport...itive-ped-test/

[24fps]

Welcome back to the Mets, Sandy.

[TwentyThirtyFive]

CBS Sports: Mets' Robinson Cano suspended for entire 2021 MLB season after second positive PED test
Cano will forfeit his $24 million salary for the 2021 season
https://www.cbssport...itive-ped-test/

Probably ends any HOF discussions. Have to question his whole career.

[You Play to Win the Game]

I guess because he failed in 2018, he gets tested more regularly? Kinda weird to see this in mid-November.

[24fps]

Probably ends any HOF discussions. Have to question his whole career.

HOF is likely out now, but he still has a fighting chance at pulling a quarter-billion dollars out of the game.  Even if he pulls a Chris Davis in 2022-2023 he's golden.

[Il BuonO]

I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell ya, to hear that Robinson Cano was caught cheating-AGAIN!

https://www.mlbtrade...-peds-mets.html

[BSLChrisStoner]

CBS Sports: Mets set to name Diamondbacks assistant Jared Porter new general manager, per reports
https://www.cbssport...er-per-reports/

[Nigel Tufnel]

Bill James used to work with Porter at the Red Sox.  He wrote wrote an article about the hire, with some details of the Andrew Miller trade thrown in.

 

I’m trying to explain Jared Porter to you, the Mets new GM. 

 

            The Andrew Miller trade came up, as I recall, 23 minutes before the trade deadline in 2014.  Very unusual; usually you’re working on a trade for at least a week before it happens, sometimes for months, but Andrew Miller was having a great year and the Red Sox were having a bad year, so we were looking at options to get something for him.  The Red Sox had trade offers for him from several other teams and over a period of weeks, but didn’t like any of them.  We had no history of trading with the Orioles, didn’t usually make trades with direct competitors, but the Orioles called Ben Cherington, as I recall, at 3:37 PM before a 4:00 trade deadline. 

 

            We were hanging out in the conference room, waiting for something to happen, and this was something.  The Orioles were offering us two pitchers who were pitching really well at High-A, and I thought that sounded great.  There were eight to ten of us in the room—Cherington, Brian O’Halloran, Zack Scott, Jared, Mike Hazen, Amiel Sawdaye, several scouts.   The two pitchers the Orioles were offering looked good on paper, excellent ERAs and steady work histories.  Everybody liked the offer; we were just happy to convert Andrew Miller into something we could build with, but Jared said, "No, we don’t want those guys; we want this other guy, this other pitcher."  This other pitcher was struggling at AA; he was 3-7 with a 4.79 ERA at the time.  I was the most skeptical guy in the room, which is kind of who I am; I understood that it was more Jared’s job than mine to be ready for a moment like this, but still, I’m going to say what I have to say.  

 

            Jared was our pro scouting director at that time; it was his job to know everything there was to know about minor leaguers in other organizations.  Ben left the room to (a) inform upper management of the offer, and (b) talk to the Baltimore GM.  Brian went to do the actual work that makes a trade happen, if it does happen.  I had about three minutes to talk to Jared.  After three minutes, I knew absolutely that he was right and I was wrong.  He pointed out to me that this other pitcher, who was struggling at AA, was a year younger than the two guys with better records, and a level ahead of them.   He gave me their radar readings, and he showed me video of this kid who was struggling at AA, to which I replied "Oh, Wow" after one pitch, and "My God" after the second one.   We made the trade, for the kid who was 3-7 with a 4.79 ERA at Double A. 

 

            It was Eduardo Rodriguez. 

 

            One time when I was in high school, another kid threw a rock that hit me in the back of the head.  The Orioles trade offer came at us like a rock thrown from behind; we couldn’t see it coming, and we had no time to prepare for it—but Jared was ready for it, 100% ready for it, just the same as if he had had a week to prepare. 

 

The Mets New GM | Articles | Bill James Online

[Nigel Tufnel]

More James:

 

But this is really what I am trying to get to, why I am hopeful that this is the right move for the Mets.  Theo used to talk about seeing baseball with both eyes, the scouting eye and the analytics eye.   But there’s another way to think about an organization, which is ground-level and top-level operations.  Everything the fan SEES, everything they talk about on talk shows, everything that people like me in the public eye discuss, that’s all top-level stuff. 

 

            The top-level stuff is important, but it’s. . .what, 40% of what makes an organization work, maybe?  An organization can’t succeed if they trade away young players they should have kept and keep young players they should have traded away.  They can’t succeed if they have the wrong manager and they make player decisions that waste tens of millions of dollars. 

 

            But what people who don’t work in the game don’t understand is, 60% of what makes an organization successful is the ground-level work.  The ground-level work isn’t one thing; it’s a million things.   It’s making sure that you have not A scouting report on Juan Cruz or Eduardo Rodriguez, but SEVERAL scouting reports every year on Eduardo Rodriguez or Juan Cruz, and making sure that those "scouting reports" cover what happens off the field as well as what happens on the field.  It’s hiring young scouts who have the energy to drive 6 hours to watch a baseball game, and hiring old scouts who can teach them how to do their jobs, and hiring the RIGHT ONES of each, and then co-ordinating them so that you have the complete and redundant coverage that you need.  It’s building friendships with college coaches so that they will tell you the truth.  It’s making sure that you have a state-of-the-art facility in the Dominican Republic to have access to all of that talent, and making sure that you have some way of drawing that talent into your network.  It’s making sure that you have minor league coaches and managers who can actually teach a 19-year-old third baseman how to plant his right foot and line up the throw to first base, and when to put the ball in his pocket because it’s too late to make the throw, as much as you want to.  It’s making sure that you have an Equipment Manager at Double-A who knows how to find four batting cages on wheels on a moment’s notice, and making sure that he isn’t selling drugs to the kids on the side.  It’s getting a Low-A pitching coach who can show a kid why you don’t stand on the first base side of the rubber and throw a curve ball.   It is having medical and training staff that can help you a little bit to maybe occasionally see an injury coming before it gets there, and having nutritionists and psychologists and Spanish speakers everywhere, and having English language instruction for people coming to America.  It is doing everything possible to make sure that every player is ready to do what you will need him to do when he gets to the show level. 

 

            It is WORK, in other words; it is organizing work so that everything gets done.  It’s ground-level work; that’s 60% of why organizations succeed. 

 

            I am not in any way knocking the Mets’ previous General Manager; the Mets’ organization has had challenges in this area for decades.  But what I am trying to say is that there are "Ground Level" organizations, and there are "Top Level" organizations.  You can’t win by doing one or the other.  Some organizations—the Angels, the Mets, the Red Sox before the current owners bought the team—focus on the Top Level stuff, and let the ground-level stuff run on auto-pilot.   Some organizations—the Pirates in recent years, the Twins, the Royals, do the ground-level stuff well, but don’t do the top-level stuff well, or perhaps don’t have the money that it takes to do the top-level stuff well.  Some organizations do both things well; some organizations don’t do either one well. 

 

            But if you do the top-level stuff perfectly, absolutely perfectly, you’ll still fail most of the time if you don’t do the ground-level work.  I don’t know how well Jared will be able to do the top-level stuff.  He’ll have to prove that over time.  But I know that what the Mets mostly have needed, over the years, is better attention to the ground-level work.  And I am 100% certain that Jared Porter is the right man to take on that challenge. 

[BSLChrisStoner]

CBS Sports: Mets could go after big names on the trade market; here are the pieces new GM Jared Porter might move
https://www.cbssport...ter-might-move/

[dude]

Nigel....GREAT stuff.  Thanks.

[BSLChrisStoner]

Mets finalizing a trade for Lindor.