Omar Minaya will not receive a World Series share from the New York Mets, not only because executives don’t get World Series shares but also because the Mets don’t acknowledge Minaya’s critical contribution to their advance to the World Series.
The fact is the Mets wouldn’t be in the World Series if not for Minaya, their general manager from 2005 through 2010. The Mets used to have class, at least their owner, Fred Wilpon, did. But then Wilpon unwittingly or wittingly became immersed in Bernie Madoff’s unprecedented Ponzi scheme and hasn’t seemed to be the same since.
I tried to talk to Wilpon and/or his son, Jeff, the team’s chief operating officer, Wednesday before the Mets completed their four-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs in the National League Championship Series. I was unable to reach father or son.
“Fred is not going to be able to talk today,” Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ spokesman, said.
Earlier, he told me, “Jeff is in meetings all day.”
If a translation is necessary, Horwitz meant, “They don’t want to talk to you.”
I would like to have asked either or both Wilpons how they feel now about the allegedly barren farm system Minaya left them with when they fired him after the 2010 season. I don’t recall that the Wilpons themselves included that criticism in their list of grievances against Minaya, but they never told reporters that the farm system wasn’t a problem or the target of unfair criticism.
When such criticisms arise, they have a tendency to linger, and there are probably New York reporters and columnists who today would still say Minaya and his staff didn’t build a farm system. Everybody talks about the players the Cubs’ minor league system has disgorged, but the Mets? Fuhgedda ‘bout it.
Where, though, would the Mets be without Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, Jonathan Niese, Jeurys Familia, Lucas Duda, Wilmer Flores, Ruben Tejada, Daniel Murphy, Juan Lagares, Hansel Robles and Kirk Nieuwenhuis?
They would not be headed to the World Series, that’s for sure.
These players all grew up in the Mets’ system, drafted or signed as undrafted free agents, and minus Tejada, who suffered a broken leg in the division series last week, those players await the start of the World Series next Tuesday.
Those players are a special group. They are the personification of the terrific, though ignored, work Minaya did for the Mets as their general manager for the 2005 through 2010 seasons. When the Mets fired Minaya in October 2010, he was maligned and criticized for expensive signings of free agents such as Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran, but worse, he was faulted for failing to build a farm system in his six years on the job.
There’s no question that the acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes by Minaya’s successor, Sandy Alderson, served as the catalyst for the Mets’ capture of the National League East crown, but they would not have been in position to take that step without the players from the farm system.
Even the Cespedes trade had a Minaya touch. One of the two minor league players the Mets gave Detroit was Luis Cessa, a Mexican pitcher, whom a Minaya scout signed at the age of 16 in 2008.
Similar trades used Minaya-signed players. Starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard and catcher Travis d’Arnaud came from Toronto in exchange for R.A. Dickey. Zack Wheeler, who is expected to join the starting rotation next season after he completes his recovery from elbow reconstruction surgery, was acquired from San Francisco for Carlos Beltran.
Minaya made one more move that has received little attention but has turned out to be instrumental in the Mets’ march to Kansas City or Toronto for the next and ultimate series. He hired a veteran major league manager in 2010 to serve as the Mets’ minor league field coordinator. And when Alderson came in as general manager and looked around for a new manager, he saw Terry Collins and decided he was the logical choice.
In the end, though, like everyone else, Collins overlooked Minaya’s impact on his lengthy baseball career. “Sandy came in five years ago,” Collins said in a post-series interview, “and knew he had to rebuild the team.”
But what did Alderson do to rebuild the team? He acquired d’Arnaud, and he signed Curtis Granderson as a free agent. In his first season with the Mets last year, outfielder Granderson hit .227 with a .388 slugging percentage. Last winter Alderson signed Michael Cuddyer as a free agent to bolster the offense, and the outfielder hit .259 with a .391 slugging percentage.
Alderson signed Bartolo Colon for the starting rotation in 2014 and added Michael Conforto, the team’s No. 1 draft choice in 2014, to the outfield late this season. And in July he traded for Cuban outfielders Cepedes, infielders Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe and reliever Tyler Clippard.
Those moves, however, did not constitute rebuilding. Duda, Murphy, Tejada and Flores became starting infielders and Lagares the starting center fielder. Contrary to the view of critics, all of Minaya’s minor leaguers became Mets’ major leaguers. Those critics cited Duda, Murphy and others as not being major league prospects. Some members of the Mets’ baseball staff were among those holding that view.
But Alderson basically stayed with what he had, what Minaya had bequeathed to him. As it has turned out, there was no reason to want anything more. About half of the players on the National League’s World Series team are Minaya’s legacy to the 2015 Mets.