New York Mets owner Jeff Wilpon laid the blame for the team not spending big on free agents at Sandy Alderson’s feet.
One constant source of consternation of fans of the New York Mets has been the team’s aversion to spending big money on free agents. During the era of Sandy Alderson, the only big signings the team made were re-signing David Wright and signing Yoenis Cespedes after acquiring him in a trade.
The blame for the lack of spending during this tenure, which has ended after Alderson took a medical leave in the summer and will not return, has been laid at the feet of the Wilpons and their well known financial struggles.
However, it appears that Jeff Wilpon does not agree with this, as he said during an interview that the team’s lack of spending was a result of Alderson’s preferences and not financial issues or directives from ownership, according to mlb.com’s Anthony DiComo via Twitter.
Jeff Wilpon says not spending on top free agents was "a total recommendation" of the previous front-office regime. But he will not commit to shopping at the top of the market — the Manny Machados of the world — this year. He says it depends on the next GM's views.
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) September 30, 2018
While many of Alderson’s moves entering the 2018 season didn’t pan out, Jeff Wilpon’s claims are somewhat difficult to believe for several reasons. First of all, there’s the fact that the entire reason Alderson was hired was because ownership didn’t have a lot of money to spend and he had success with the Oakland A’s with a very limited payroll.
However, Alderson only moved to that model after the A’s were sold and the new owners wanted payroll cut. Prior to that, he was more than willing to spend money to acquire talent, so it’s hard to imagine he would now be unwilling to do that.
More so, there’s the fact that the front office was reportedly unsure of how much money the Wilpon’s were willing to spend on the team entering the 2018 season. Marc Carig, then of Newsday, was told by sources that the front office was operating blind with regards to how much money they had.
“According to sources, the front office has only a fuzzy idea of what they actually have to spend in any given offseason. They’re often flying blind, forced to navigate the winter under the weight of an invisible salary cap. This is not the behavior of a franchise that wants to win.”
It’s incredibly unlikely that Alderson would be unwilling to tell his assistants how much money they had to spend if he had that information. The only logical conclusion to come to is that Alderson was never told how much money he had to spend.
DiComo also notes that Wilpon said that the team didn’t spend heavily on their analytics department based on Alderson’s recommendation.
Basically, Jeff Wilpon said the Mets have not spent heavily on free agents over the past decade, or on their analytics department, because Sandy Alderson and his aides recommended that course of action.
He said any changes will be dependent upon the views of the new regime.
— Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) September 30, 2018
The fact that Wilpon made that claim removes even more credibility from anything he said during that press conference. Sandy Alderson was the man who ushered in the analytics era in baseball. He was the mentor to Billy Beane, and he introduced him to analytics and Moneyball.
The idea that the person who led the charge in bringing a field of evaluation of players would suddenly decide that he doesn’t want to spend big money on that area of evaluation is utterly ridiculous, and it frankly takes any semblance of believability away from anything that was said by Jeff Wilpon during that press conference.
Jeff Wilpon showed once again that things will never change as long as him and his father are involved with the Mets organization.
