I want to start with this passage from Jon Heyman’s July 15th SI article:

While occasional rumblings have been heard about Minaya’s job security, word is that Minaya’s Mets bosses aren’t about to pin this season on him. Mets COO Jeff Wilpon and Minaya have a strong working relationship. But here’s another reason Minaya isn’t going anywhere: The three-year extension that is believed to pay him about $1.5 million per year begins in 2010. Mets people aren’t anxious to eat nearly $5 million. Plus, they just as badly don’t want to start over by replacing the entire staff of experienced and accomplished baseball people, most of which Minaya hired.

Now I’ve been meaning to get up a post about the pathetic mess that is the New York Mets for weeks and just haven’t found the time, but between reading the above passage and previously hearing of the latest act of complete stupidity by their moronic GM, I couldn’t put this off any longer. And I hope no one thinks I’m hitting below the belt by using word ”moronic”, obviously it’s often a reactionary and hyperbolic adjective full of nothing but anger. Here, though, I really mean it. I’ve thought about it a lot and I really do think Omar Minaya is a complete moron.

Let me start with this most recent travesty. Trading for Jeff Francouer is a complete slap in the face to every Mets fan, even every baseball fan for that matter. He might as well just start peeing in the beer at Citi Field. Of the 147 players with enough at bats to qualify last season, Jeff Francouer ranked 142 in OPS, the next closest corner outfielder on that list was nearly 70 points ahead of him, and even more impressively, he was 146th in OBP, only Michael Bourne reached base at a lower rate than Jeff Francouer. Read that last sentence again, because that is some mind boggling stuff. And his numbers through the first half of ‘09 are almost exactly the same. Considering the position he plays, you can make a case that he’s been the worst everyday player in all of baseball for the last season and a half. I don’t think I can even talk about this trade anymore I’m so disgusted, and I don’t even like the goddamn Mets.

I guess this really shouldn’t surpise us much though. The man has always been a terrible GM. I could cite his entire career as evidence for his ineptitude, which includes the worst trade of the last decade (Brandon Phillips, Grady Sizemore, and Cliff Lee for Bartolo Colon), and a passage in Moneyball that portrays him as the village idiot who Billy Beane can manipulate in whatever ways he sees fit to get the players he wants. I will ignore all of this though, because I know that with contraction lurking, those Montreal days would’ve been tough for anyone. And plus, this article would have to be 20,000 words to cover all the dumb shit he’s done over his entire career.

I know some would argue that Minaya does have his strengths. If you want to give him credit for convincing the Wilpons to spend money and then convincing some very, very good players to take that money, go right ahead, but let’s remember a few things. He took over a team with two budding stars on the left side of the infield and lots of money to spend. He gave Pedro Martinez 4 years and $53 million for one good season (2005). He was also the high bidder on Beltran, who reportedly begged the Yankees to take him at a discount before agreeing to sign. Carlos Delgado was essentially a salary dump. He lucked out that the Yanks and Sox pulled out of the Santana sweepstakes, and then he gave him a shitload of money to agree to the trade. None of these were hard baseball decisions. He convinced an old white guy to write a lot of checks. Congrats, so did Anna Nicole Smith.

But whatever, I’m willing to call him a good fundraiser and even a good recruiter, particularly of Latin talent, but he’s horrible at every other part of his job. The least efficient way to build a baseball team is by relying solely on the ability to be the high bidder for players who are entering the big money phase of their career. You have to find ways to acquire and develop young talent to build a good organization, and the Mets have been completely inept at doing so since Minaya took over after the ‘04 season. Seriously, think of how little they have produced. This is his 5th year, so you can no longer place most of the blame on the previous regime.

I’ll give him a lot of credit for getting John Maine in the Kris Benson/Jorge Julio deal. I give him some credit for getting Oliver Perez in the Xavier Nady/Roberto Hernandez deal, although that one wasn’t exactly a steal. And I give him a very small amount of credit for getting Mike Pelfrey in the 2005 draft considering it was probably the most loaded draft of all time (the next three picks were Cameron Maybin, Jay Bruce, and Andrew McCutcheon; with Volstad, Garza, Rasmus, Ellsbury and Bucholz going later in the first round) and also that they payed overslot to get him. That’s pretty much it in terms of above average young players. I mean guys like Daniel Murphy and Omir Santos are the epitome of mediocre, and we don’t know what Fernando Martinez will be. The last time Minaya had a much hyped 5 tool outfield prospect, he turned him into a mediocre catcher and the guy he’d later trade for one of the shittiest players in baseball, so forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical that F-Mart will ever be representing the Mets in an All Star game. The fact is aside from signing the big guys and making the moves I listed above, Omar has made very few wise acquisitions. He tends to either go for guys he had in Montreal (Tatis, Church, Schneider, L. Hernandez, El Duque, Armas, etc.) or past their prime all stars (Castillo, Sheffield, Alou, Lodoca, Conine, etc.) mainly, in my opinion, because he knows them. They rarely work out that well, and usually aren’t worth the money or players it took to acquire them. He keeps going to the well though because they have no youth with which to fill the holes.

This inability to produce talent from within is why the team completely crumbles with a few injuries, and also why there is no way in hell Minaya shouldn’t be held accountable for this season. They have been paper thin for years. In 2007, it was starting pitching that fell apart, well after the season, Omar went out and got Santana so what else could he do? In 2008, it was the bullpen, well Omar got K-Rod, how can you beat that? This year, it’s the lineup, and Omar will probably think signing Jason Bay or Matt Holliday will cure all. It’s the same goddamn thing over and over again, but the problem is not the top 10 guys in the organization, it’s the next 30. Any idiot can go out and give a $80 million to an all star. The bottom line is that the Mets have the second highest payroll in all of baseball and are starting guys like Argenis Reyes, Alex Cora, and Jeremy Reed. Injuries are not a good enough excuse. I don’t feel sorry for poor unlucky Omar.

In fact, while we’re talking about luck and sympathy, let’s talk about 2008. Last year, the Mets didn’t have a single injury among their 4 big ticket superstars (Delgado played 159 games, Reyes 159, Wright 160,  Beltran 161). The four combined for 116 HR and 419 RBI. In terms of OPS, they had the best CF in the NL, the 2nd best 3B, the 3rd best SS, and for the second half of the season, Delgado was the best hitter in the league not named Pujols or Manny. They also had arguably the best starting pitcher in baseball start over 1/5 of their games and throw over 230 innings to a 2.53 ERA. Pelfrey and Perez also pitched every 5th day, while Maine was able to make 25 starts despite some injury issues down the stretch. As we’ve seen this year, this is an organization with no depth anywhere, so to have that few injury problems to your key everday players and starting rotation requires a lot of luck.

So I ask you: how can the loss of a fucking relief pitcher invalidate everything I just listed above? There is no way to rationalize that without coming to the conclusion that the GM did a horrible job. I know nothing about Nascar, but I think this would be like spending millions of dollars on the best driver, the best car, the best parts, etc., and having them run great, but never winning a race because you decided to pay a group of 85 year old women minimum wage to be the pit crew. 

As I’ve said, he inherited Wright and Reyes, he was given the resources to sign Beltran when no other big spending teams were overly interested, and though Santana and Delgado were acquired via trade, money was the key factor in both of those acquisitions as well.  It didn’t take skill to build that core, it took deep pockets. He has proven completely incapable of supplementing that core, so how can this man possibly keep his job? He’s made the playoffs one time with a payroll that has hovered between 2nd and 4th in all of baseball. I rooted for the late 90’s Mariners because Junior Griffey was and still is my favorite athlete ever. They had 2 of the best players of all time, one of the best LHP’s of all time, and perhaps the greatest designated hitter of all time, and yet only won one playoff series because of an idiotic GM who couldn’t build a winner around these stars. So take it from me, you can’t keep a guy around just because the team is competitive when it has this much talent at the top. The window isn’t going to stay open that much longer, and if they don’t get rid of Minaya soon, it’ll be too late.