Here is the link to another good Sam Page read this morning...

... Omar Minaya is a former pro-baseball player, drafted out of high school. Early in Minaya's tenure with the Mets, his success was championed as an exemplar of old-fashioned roster construction. Before Minaya lost "his guys," the process entailed conference call between his scouts, Sandy Johnson and Tony Bernazard, and his paperwork guy, John Ricco. This franchise doesn't just contrast the careful calculation of other front offices, it advertises the fact: "Paperwork, that's false hustle. It takes away creativity. People who are into paperwork are into covering their asses, so if things go wrong they can point to all the work they did."

No team evidences false hustle better than the Indians. Mark Shapiro graduated from Princeton and has a reputation as one of the smartest GM's in baseball. Like Minaya, Shapiro surrounded himself with men of similar background--his sidekick Chris Antonetti is a Georgetown man. The Indians under Shapiro have developed a process, which involves a lot of "paperwork," most famously, the proprietary DiamondView system, supposed to quantify a players' holistic value. As Antonetti described the goal of DiamondView: "There's still this level of variability, but we've reduced it to the smallest level we can." The Indians, the front office, are the progressive group many Mets fans clamor for, but the Indians, the team, are the 90-game losers Mets fans are sick of watching.

...When the Mets were at their best, in 2006, his guys were nearly always coming through. In a 2006 article, Dave Studeman identified ten players that Minaya picked up on the cheap and became integral parts of the great '06 squad: Chad Bradford, Darren Oliver, Duaner Sanchez, Pedro Feliciano, Jose Valentin, John Maine, Endy Chavez, Roberto Hernandez, Guillermo Mota, and Oliver Perez. Players like Jose Valentin, a guy no one else would expect to be a starting-caliber second baseman, were making Minaya look like a genius, like he had that something Mark Shapiro lacked. Those were ten moves that get you on the cover of Sports Illustrated, that made people pay attention when you started talking about "false hustle," as if it were secret knowledge.

In the conclusion to that piece, Studeman writes, "It may be luck, it may be skill. It may be the result of a team with money taking good calculated risks." Here's a hint: six of those players were relievers, the most luck-dependent players in baseball. Ultimately, though, time revealed the truth: it was luck. Even from that original list, of the seven he retained, five fizzled out, either from injuries or ineffectiveness. Regarding the other two, Endy Chavez was replaced by the awful Jeremy Reed and Pedro Feliciano became the last man standing in several subsequent bullpen failures.

...Then, Minaya started to display some bad tendencies. He became too loyal to his guys: if a reliever with poor skills floundered in the first-half, Minaya would trust him to right the ship. Similarly, as if to underscore that he had done something right, Minaya would pay ridiculously over-market contracts to previous buy-low pick-ups, like Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo, negating the value that made the moves good in the first place. He proved unable to manage injury risks, entrusting Moises Alou and John Maine with serious duties while keeping no reliable back-ups on hand. Minaya's front office overreacted to small sample sizes, see: Omir Santos, Marlon Anderson, and Daniel Murphy. He gave away Heath Bell, Brian Bannister, and Darren O'Day.

Sounds pretty spot on to me.

The one thing Omar did from 2005-2006 that he hasn't done well since is relying on vets like Roberto Hernandez and Marlon Anderson for repeat seasons.  He knew when to cut ties with them and realize that they were not going to repeat the following year.  He has not done that since and he has not been able to find the steals that he had in his first two season's as GM.

Omar comes from a scouting background which you would think would give him an advantage as GM.  The problem is being a GM is more than just being a good scout and having an eye for talent.  Being a good administrator and surrounding yourself with a good staff are just as if not more important than having an eye for talent.  That's why you see a guy like Theo Epstein have success.  Epstein doesn't have a scouting background but he is a great administrator and is surrounded by a great staff that do their jobs well.  The people giving Omar reccomendations on players are not giving him the best advice, IMO.  And as the person responsible for hiring those people Omar ultimately takes the hit for that.

to me, it's about the analysis and the follow through.  It's just like handicapping horses or pro football gambling, etc.  You can make all the right analyses but in the end you also have to place the correct wager.  As a baseball GM, there is a lot of preparation that goes into talent evaluation, player develpment, player management, team construction, etc... but at the end of the day the difference is made in the follow through.  For example, no one is going to care that Omar "found" Darren O'Day but only that he let him get away in a number's crunch... or that Ollie Perez may have once been a nice trade pickup cause he'll have wasted that good fortune by paying him way over his value.

Kicking Minaya now while the Mets are down seems kind of disingenuous. After all, we've had guys here criticizing him daily for the last four years.

Anyway, from his first few moves years ago it was easy to see that 2009 and 2010 were going to be the years that determined whether or not he was any good. Well, 2009 is in the books and he's got a viable (though not really acceptable) excuse.

Now we'll get to see how he fares with the year that was aligned to be the hardest from the start. And, imo, it is going to take FMart and a pitcher making serious runs at RoY for it to be anything but disappointing.

At least the article in the OP points out that failure can come with the opposite approach. It is NOT Minaya's approach that determines whether he succeeds or fails; it IS the decision that he makes. He did okay with 2005 through 2008 despite the disappointments. But those were, believe it or not, the easy years based on the initial moves.

SLMIfan wrote:

And, imo, it is going to take FMart and a pitcher making serious runs at RoY for it to be anything but disappointing.

I'm in agreement with you there...

monzz wrote: Here are so many holes to that piece. My favorite has to be the ending... "First, they need a reliable process for evaluating and valuing major league talent, a la the Indians." LOL.

Yeah, the Indians?   The Indians who just finished back to back horrendous seasons and got next to nothing for Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez?  What do you guys like about this article?  Why is it "spot on"?  A few weeks ago someone linked to some article suggesting Omar failed because he didnt make any in season moves and that article was applauded as being a great article as well, even though it was absurd to suggest that Omar should have dealt prospects for guys like Derosa during a 90 loss season.

A few years back I can remember debating the merits of hiring Wilie Randolph with a poster named Sam.   Sam wanted Randolph in the worst way and after a while, I realized that the reason Sam wanted Randolph was simply because Sam wanted an African American manager.   He saw it is a significant event for African Americans.   I gave up debating things with Sam because he had an agenda which had nothing to do with what was best for the Mets.

I think we have reached that point with the stats guys.  Mark Shapiro went to Princeton, so we need a guy like Shapiro to run our team like he runs the Tribe?   He uses a computer system for evaluating players, so we need someone  to do that?  Let's see how the computer is doing.

Shapiro is paying Travis Hafner 13 mil per year till 2013,  11 mil per year for Jake Westbrook, 10 mil per yr for Kerry Wood and locked up Fausto Carmona till 2013. ( And you guys complain about the Castillo contract) He traded Cliff Lee for a 19 year old pitcher who needed shoulder surgery a few weeks after showing up and dealt Victor Martinez for low ceiling guys.

It is clear that many of you guys are bright young people who want to see bright young people running the Mets.  Unfortunately, there is no correlation between an Ivy League education and being a successful GM. 

I didn't even have to read this to know that the Omar defense was coming....

DuffyDyer wrote:

I didn't even have to read this to know that the Omar defense was coming....

Maybe you should have read it since I didnt defend Omar at all, didnt even mention him.   I just asked why the other approach was good.  You created the thread and claimed the article was a good read.   The author points to the Indians as having a reliable process fo evaluating talent and I pointed out how absurd that is when Shapiro's tenure is littered with mistakes.

oct271986 wrote:

 

monzz wrote: Here are so many holes to that piece. My favorite has to be the ending... "First, they need a reliable process for evaluating and valuing major league talent, a la the Indians." LOL.

Yeah, the Indians?   The Indians who just finished back to back horrendous seasons and got next to nothing for Cliff Lee and Victor Martinez?  What do you guys like about this article?  Why is it "spot on"?  A few weeks ago someone linked to some article suggesting Omar failed because he didnt make any in season moves and that article was applauded as being a great article as well, even though it was absurd to suggest that Omar should have dealt prospects for guys like Derosa during a 90 loss season.

 

A few years back I can remember debating the merits of hiring Wilie Randolph with a poster named Sam.   Sam wanted Randolph in the worst way and after a while, I realized that the reason Sam wanted Randolph was simply because Sam wanted an African American manager.   He saw it is a significant event for African Americans.   I gave up debating things with Sam because he had an agenda which had nothing to do with what was best for the Mets.

 

I think we have reached that point with the stats guys.  Mark Shapiro went to Princeton, so we need a guy like Shapiro to run our team like he runs the Tribe?   He uses a computer system for evaluating players, so we need someone  to do that?  Let's see how the computer is doing.

 

Shapiro is paying Travis Hafner 13 mil per year till 2013,  11 mil per year for Jake Westbrook, 10 mil per yr for Kerry Wood and locked up Fausto Carmona till 2013. ( And you guys complain about the Castillo contract) He traded Cliff Lee for a 19 year old pitcher who needed shoulder surgery a few weeks after showing up and dealt Victor Martinez for low ceiling guys.

 

It is clear that many of you guys are bright young people who want to see bright young people running the Mets.  Unfortunately, there is no correlation between an Ivy League education and being a successful GM.

 

 

ok, let's put it this way... this article is not saying that mark Shapiro is a better GM than Minaya.  It's saying that they have contrasting styles and that had OM been more open to player analysis the Mets may have avoided some of the problems we've seen crop up with recent Met teams.... or basically that the combination of a talent evaluation and analytical approach is probably best over an approach where one totally dismissed the other.

DuffyDyer wrote:

 

 

 

ok, let's put it this way... this article is not saying that mark Shapiro is a better GM than Minaya.  It's saying that they have contrasting styles and that had OM been more open to player analysis the Mets may have avoided some of the problems we've seen crop up with recent Met teams.... or basically that the combination of a talent evaluation and analytical approach is probably best over an approach where one totally dismissed the other.

There is no doubt that combining both schools is the way to go.   It's never a bad idea to have information.  

I do think that fanbases make assumptions on how front offices work when we can only know so much on how they make their decisions. 

Seaver wrote: problem (one of many) I see is that there aren't any big contracts falling off the books by 2011. You figure K-Rod is resigned or a similar replacement is brought in. Minaya needs to make some crafty FA acquisitions.

The Mets have little margin for error this winter, as nothing of consequence comes off of the books after the 2010 off-season (unless they take a big one-year contract).  They really need to be smart here.

oct271986 wrote:

 

DuffyDyer wrote:

I didn't even have to read this to know that the Omar defense was coming....

Maybe you should have read it since I didnt defend Omar at all, didnt even mention him.   I just asked why the other approach was good.  You created the thread and claimed the article was a good read.   The author points to the Indians as having a reliable process fo evaluating talent and I pointed out how absurd that is when Shapiro's tenure is littered with mistakes.

 

 

 

what's the difference between defense and knocking down criticism?

I did read your response.  If you want to be objective, don't you think that it's a little premature to criticize the haul from the VMart and Lee trades since the players received were all prospects and they obviously haven't had much of an opportunity to do anything as of yet?  moreover, further objectiveness would require acknowledging that Shapiro was in a position where he had to move both stars because of the unlikelihood he'd be able to re-sign either player.  Dealing from a position of weakness isn't an enviable position to be in no matter how you break it down.

When players fail to perform b/c of injuries, that's part of the game and hard for any GM to predict, but I don't think anyone's been overly critical of the Hafner or Westbrook contracts b/c of the talent level.  People are critical of Castillo and Perez contracts b/c the judgments were questionable about the talent in those cases.  I can definitely understand the criticism of the Kerry wood contract.  Besides, nobody would ever claim that all of any GMs moves could stand up.... every knows that they all make their share of mistakes.  I don't think the article is about that at all.

Seaver wrote: problem (one of many) I see is that there aren't any big contracts falling off the books by 2011. You figure K-Rod is resigned or a similar replacement is brought in. Minaya needs to make some crafty FA acquisitions.

K-Rod's got a pretty easily-vesting 2012 option; that will have his contract looking silly by the end.

He's guaranteed $11.5MM in 2010 and 2011 -- and the $17.5MM 2012 option vests with:

- 55 games finished in 2011, and

- 100 games finished in 2010-11

(Keep in mind, as pitiful as the Mets were in 2009, Rodriguez still finished 66 games.)

Then there's something in there about doctors "declaring him healthy" after 2011 -- but with the way things have played out on that front [and unless things start to turn around], you'd have to be a bit leery of their judgement.

If the option doesn't vest, then he gets a $3.5MM termination buyout.

http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.c...-york-mets.html

DuffyDyer wrote:

 

 

 

 

what's the difference between defense and knocking down criticism?

 

I did read your response.  If you want to be objective, don't you think that it's a little premature to criticize the haul from the VMart and Lee trades since the players received were all prospects and they obviously haven't had much of an opportunity to do anything as of yet?  moreover, further objectiveness would require acknowledging that Shapiro was in a position where he had to move both stars because of the unlikelihood he'd be able to re-sign either player.  Dealing from a position of weakness isn't an enviable position to be in no matter how you break it down.

 

When players fail to perform b/c of injuries, that's part of the game and hard for any GM to predict, but I don't think anyone's been overly critical of the Hafner or Westbrook contracts b/c of the talent level.  People are critical of Castillo and Perez contracts b/c the judgments were questionable about the talent in those cases.  I can definitely understand the criticism of the Kerry wood contract.  Besides, nobody would ever claim that all of any GMs moves could stand up.... every knows that they all make their share of mistakes.  I don't think the article is about that at all.

Here's Keith Law's take on the Lee deal before Knapp was headed to the surgeon with his shoulder injury

For the Phillies, this looks like a steal. In Cliff Lee, they acquire one of the best pitchers in the American League over the past 18 months while retaining their top two prospects and trading four guys who all have serious question marks.

You seem to be very understanding when it comes to Shapiro's mistakes.  Westbrook has a high talent level?   He is a 4th starter with 1 good season and Shapiro gave him a deal about as bad as the Ollie deal.

Hafner is completely shot and is making 12-13 mil per yr for another 4 years!!!  He can barely play baseball anymore and he is owed about 50 mil and you guys complain about Luis Castillo.   Seriously, if we had Hafner's deal on our books, Vandy would throw himself in front of a train.   We still get compaints around here about the 1 mil that Julio Franco got in his last yr and Hafner's contract is no big deal?

Well, both the Mets and Indians were built pretty well to make a run over the last 3 or 4 years.  Both teams got just as far (championship series - Mets in '06, Indians in '07) and both GMs have handed out some not-so-good contracts.  To me, that basically says that regardless of approach, being a GM is an inexact science.  No matter what your approach, sometimes you are going to look like a genius and other times you are going to look like a fool.