Mets Get Putz From Mariners

The Mets traded for “closer” J.J. Putz from the Seattle Mariners. It took three teams to get the deal done with the breakdown looking like this:

Mets Get: RP J.J. Putz, RP Sean Green, OF Jeremy Reed

Mariners Get: RP Aaron Heilman, OF Franklin Gutierrez, OF Endy Chavez, and four minor leaguers from the Mets- Mike Carp, Jason Vargas, Ezequiel Carrera, and Maikel Cleto

Indians Get: RP Joe Smith, IF Luis Valbuena

Clearly, Putz is the big fish in this deal and he’s due to make $6 million this season with a club option for $8.6 million with a $1 million buyout.
Rosenthal: Putz packing for New York
Rosenthal: Putz packing for New York

Enhanced by Zemanta

Mets Tender Contracts To Five Players

NEW YORK - OCTOBER 05: Pedro Feliciano #25 of...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Mets decided to offer contracts to all five arbitration elegible players. Ryan Church, John Maine, Pedro Feliciano, Duaner Sanchez, and Jeremy Reed were all offered contracts.

The Mets have a history of agreeing to contracts without going to salary arbitration with their players. Last year Oliver Perez won $6.75 million in arbitration and that was the first time the Mets went to arbitration in 16 years. After the Mets got spanked there, expect them to agree to contracts with all five players before the deadline on Feb. 1.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Mets Trade Schoenweiss, Cash To D-Backs

The Mets continued their demolition of the 2008 bullpen by trading Scott Schoenweiss to the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Mets threw in $1.6 million of the $3.6 million that Schoenweiss is owed for 2009 in exchange for righty Connor Robertson.

Robertson is 27 years old and spent most of 2008 in Triple-A. Even if he never makes one appearance in the majors this will end up as a plus trade for the Mets unloading Schoenweiss. He’s been extremely unpopular at Shea, with good reason, and never justified the 3-year/$9 million deal that he signed after the 2006 season.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Wilpon Allegedly Defrauded

Sterling Equities is reportedly a victim of fraud, allegedly at the hands of Bernard Madoff. Sterling was founded and is managed by New York Mets owners Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz.

The amount of money lost is unknown but has been reported to be in the $300 million range. The effect on the operation of the Mets is debatable but the Mets issued a statement to the press yesterday:

This news does not affect the day-to-day operations and long-term plans of the Mets organization and the Citi Field project.

You can read a full report on the Ponzi scheme and it’s impact on the Mets from Darren Rovell at CNBC.

My initial thought is that the Mets won’t be impacted because $300 million isn’t a huge sum compared to the annual revenue of the Mets. Plus Sterling Equities is a separate entity from the Mets. If things got really bad, Wilpon and Katz could always sell off pieces of the Mets to minority owners to raise cash. We’ll have to keep an eye on that going forward.

Enhanced by Zemanta