Sandy Alderson appeared on Mets Hot Stove Weekly last night. He was interviewed by Kevin Burkhardt about the Mets process of interviewing managers and the recent front office hires.
I really think that Alderson is going to be a great change of pace from the last six years with Omar Minaya. Alderson seems to have a well thought out plan and the people around him to make sure the plan is executed properly.
Check out the video below:
[Source: Amazin’ Avenue]
Moneyball has infiltrated the Metropolitans. Although the club had long ago hired a sabermetrics analyst, many of the original innovators are now behind a desk at Citi Field. For those living under a rock, Michael Lewis’ book “Moneyball” was to baseball traditionalists what “TheDavinci Code” was to fundamental Christians. The figures in the book including Sandy Alderson, Paul DePodesta, and J.P. Ricciardi along with Billy Beane and others devalued purist stats such as RBIs and stolen bases. They found through analysis that scouts, execs, and so on favored an old flawed relic of a system. They instead chose to use on base percentage and slugging as their ways to identify their coveted players. This also allowed small market Oakland to acquire lower priced players and continue to compete. The front office in Queens will now seem more like a mensa meeting than a baseball one. Trade in your ball and glove for and abacus and graphing calculator. The honeymoon with Alderson is currently in progress but I’d like to play devil’s advocate a moment. Here is an intrigue to ponder.
How will it go over when Alderson doesn’t feed “The Beast”?
This beast I’m referring to is the angry mob of disappointed Mets fans. Mets fans, who after a losing effort, will be hanging out of windows screaming for the highest paid free agent available. The fans who wore Manny Ramirez wigs and paraded outside of SNY a few years back. What if the front office logic leads them to less known, less heralded free agents/trades? How will Alderson explain his desire to sign a player with less of the “sexy stats” and more of his coveted ones? Will impatient fans grow tired of DePodesta’s number crunching and whine excruciatingly about not signing the latest big money stud. Winning will solve all, but how much and how quick will it need to be for the mob to stop crowding Mike Francesa’s phone lines with their red eyed banter. I can’t see this being a problem on draft boards. The MLB draft gets no where near the coverage of the NFL draft. Alderson can skip over a raw talent machine from high school for a polished college kid without much feedback from the masses. Continue reading “Mets Big Market Moneyball – Feed the Beast”
You would have thought the big news this week for the Mets were the interviews for the open managerial position to replace Jerry Manuel. Instead, the news got particularly ugly when well-liked clubhouse manager Charlie Samuels was implicated in an illegal sports gambling ring. Apparently, Samuels was caught on wiretaps with a mob-run gambling organization.
Samuels has been with the Mets for more than 30 years. It’s hard to believe that anyone with such a good job would jeopardize it by getting involved in an illegal sports gambling ring. I have to assume that Samuels is a gambling addict and couldn’t stop himself. It’s really sad that he would hit rock bottom and it looks like he’s going to lose his job over this.
Of course, most of us don’t know Samuels. But Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling bring his name up frequently on SNY broadcasts. They talk about him with such affection. It sounds like he’s a universally liked figure among Mets and former Mets players.
The news in the media is that Samuels admitted gambling on baseball to an MLB investigator. That’s something the Mets just can’t have in the locker room. I don’t think there’s any way Samuels can keep his job of that’s the case. I’m sure the authorities will be working hard to make a splash by getting Samuels to admit that he took bets from players on the team too. Hopefully, that isn’t the next scandal to hit the news.
Here’s a rundown of the news about Samuels:
Sandy Alderson is getting the band back together again. I like it! Hopefully, he’ll be able to pry Paul DePodesta away from the Padres too. I think it’s a great hire bringing in Ricciardi with eight years of experience as the Blue Jays GM. It’s a great move and I’m really starting to get excited about the wealth of experience the Mets are assembling in the front office.
Here’s the press release from the Mets:
FLUSHING, N.Y., November 2, 2010 – The New York Mets today announced that J.P. (John Paul) Ricciardi has been named Special Assistant to General Manager Sandy Alderson. From November 14, 2001 through 2009, he was the Senior Vice President, Baseball Operations and General Manager for the Toronto Blue Jays. Ricciardi spent last season as a baseball analyst for ESPN.
“J.P. brings a wealth of knowledge and a breadth of experience to the organization,” said Alderson. “I worked with him for over a decade in Oakland and I know first hand he’s a superb talent evaluator. He’ll be a tremendous resource in a variety of areas.”
In his new role, Ricciardi will assist Alderson in all aspects of the baseball department.
The 51-year-old worked for the Oakland Athletics for 16 years (1986-2001), including 12 years (1986-1997) when Alderson was the team’s General Manager.
“I couldn’t be more excited about being reunited with Sandy,” said Ricciardi. “We enjoyed tremendous success together in Oakland and it’s my goal to help duplicate that here with the Mets. As a former Met farm hand, it’s a double homecoming for me.”
Ricciardi played two seasons in the Mets minor league system after signing as a non-drafted free agent. In 1980, he was a teammate of current Oakland GM Billy Beane in the New York-Penn League with Little Falls and in 1981 he played for Shelby (A) of the South Atlantic League.
Here’s a video of Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports on the Mets hiring of Sandy Alderson as General Manager. He’s very positive about the move and talks about how Alderson’s presence will allow Jeff Wilpon to take a less active role in baseball operations. I know that’s something that we’re all looking forward to.
Check out the video below from Rosenthal and comment with your thoughts on the Sandy Alderson hiring.
Here’s the audio from Sandy Alderson’s first appearance with Mike Francesa. It’s a long audio clip, about 42 minutes. But Francesa does a good job of getting to the relevant points that you’d want to hear about.
Francesa, of course, talks to Alderson about the current roster and the medical situation. But he also gets into his Oakland days and gets a denial from Alderson that he knew about steroids on those teams.
I take from the audio that Alderson is an intelligent, well spoken guy and that inspires confidence that he’s got the brains to do a good job. You never know how things will work out but I’m hopeful.
You should definitely check out the audio here.
Here’s a brief video from ESPN of Dave Howard introducing Sandy Alderson to the media as the Mets new general manager today. He said all of the right things but so did Omar Minaya when he was hired. His deeds will mean more than his words.
I think one thing that we can expect is that he won’t have the kind of public meltdown that Minaya had last season when Tony Bernazard got fired.
Here’s the video:
http://espn.go.com/videohub/player/embed.swf
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