Regardless of whether the New York Mets win the 2015 World Series, the team’s unique construction has reverberated throughout baseball as the new blueprint for a model franchise. Indeed, the New York Metropolitans are now a model franchise — but not entirely as a result of circumstances within their control. In the Mets’ case, as the old proverb goes, necessity is the mother of invention.
The Mets struggles are well documented. Under previous General Managers Steve Phillips and Omar Minaya, the franchise operated as a big-market, free spending team. It didn’t take long for the Mets roster to become an antiquated graveyard of aged, overpriced veterans riding out the end of their careers. Compounded by a competitive division and the pressure of contending for the attention of stubborn New York sports fans and it’s not difficult to understand why the Mets were in desperate need of a pivot in organizational strategy. However, it wasn’t till Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme almost bankrupted Mets owner Fred Wilpon that the franchise was literally forced to evolve or face extinction.
While Wilpon had initially reported some $700 million in losses as a result of Madoff’s scheme, final numbers would accrue closer to $170 million. Even so, Wilpon’s Mets had to take out a loan from Major League Baseball and Bank of America to float the franchise until they could refill their coffers. The Mets struggles and the Wilpon’s financial frustrations appeared to be the impetus for an imminent sale. No longer could the Mets operate as a high-payroll team.
Fortunately, what the Mets realized through all the turmoil was that “big-market” tactics no longer work in modern baseball. The strategy of maintaining a high-payroll cyclically leads teams to boom-or-bust type seasons (e.g. the Boston Red Sox, Philadelphia Phillies, and Los Angeles Dodgers). These teams will consummately lack consistency because they acquire new talent via trade or Type-A free agency at the expense of younger developmental players or draft-picks. Furthermore, this tactic is entirely dependent on the assumption that their aged roster can remain healthy, and whether the team can supplant these older players with middle-aged, high priced talent at the trade deadline.
Enter Sandy Alderson, precisely the leader that the Mets needed to move them towards a low-payroll, small-market strategy. When he took over as General Manager, Alderson made two critical observations that have become the very foundation of the Mets rebuilding process: (1) that older, “star” players still carried tremendous value as short term investments to teams (as they once were to the Mets), and (2) that hitting is acquirable whereas pitching is not. Integral to Alderson’s plan is the understanding that talented young pitchers are likely to be exploited and exhausted by teams before they ever hit free agency. Thus, the franchise assigned a higher value to drafting and retaining young pitching, whereas older stars became expendable. Alderson prophetically refused to trade pitching prospects that have become the foundation of the team’s rotation today: Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, and Steven Matz.
The New York Mets, channeling a strategy of exploiting other teams’ naiveté in exchange for valuable assets, unleashed a fury of brilliant acquisitions from 2011 through this season. Alderson essentially showed injury-prone star Shortstop Jose Reyes the door (he would go on to sign and fail to live up to $106,000,000 contract with the Marlins). Further, fan favorites and aged veterans, including Cy Young award winner R.A. Dickey and All-Star slugger Carlos Beltran, were traded in a series of moves which netted the Mets Noah Syndergaard, Travis D’Arnaud, Zack Wheeler, and Dilson Herrera.
After building a young, electric pitching staff, Alderson turned his attention to the team’s offense and made arguably his most genius move the Mets GM - moving in the outfield fences at CitiField to result in more home runs. Confident in the Mets pitching staff’s ability not to surrender home runs to opposing teams, the franchise sought offensive additions to the roster at a fair rate that could use the stadium’s shortened field to accumulate runs. Alderson plucked National League MVP candidate Yoenis Cespedes, as well as shortstop Juan Uribe and utility-infielder Kelly Johnson, off of last-place teams attempting to acquire prospects. As the Mets franchise was now predicated on retaining prospects, a surplus resulted; essentially, the Mets traded prospects that would have never seen the big-leagues as a result of being blocked by better, young talent.
While there are questions on the horizon for the Mets— Yoenis Cespedes is a free agent this winter, Matt Harvey is represented by Scott Boras, and the long term implications of an aging David Wright— Alderson is likely to have multiple strategies on how to address each. The core of the 2015 New York Mets team will remain intact for several years to come, as most players are years away from free agency eligibility. The team features only three players in their pitching rotation and starting lineup who have not developed in their minor league system. The Mets are as much of a homegrown franchise as any in professional sports.
Most importantly, with Sandy Alderson’s at the helm and commitment to developing talent and evolving with the competition, the Mets are poised to be one of baseball's most competitive franchises for years to come.
This article was co-authored by Blake Yagman.
Jason Belzer, Esq. is Founder of GAME, Inc. and a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Sports Law at Rutgers University. Follow him on Twitter @JasonBelzer.
