Reese Kaplan - The Mets: Where New Ideas Come to Die

The biggest issue facing the Mets is the relative inertia since the arrival of the two-headed Sandy Alderson/Terry Collins beast – “Collinson” for lack of a better term.    After the departures of Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya it was painfully clear the team was in need of some major changes.  What complicated it was the whole Madoff madness that, depending on who you choose to believe, had the bank holding the purse strings when it came to payroll spending. 

I’m the first to admit that I’m the resident Collins basher but it’s not without good reasons.  There are numerous ponderous decisions he makes that I cannot blame on Alderson unless he’s in constant Bluetooth range of his boss.  The thoughts today are not about any of the myriad of things Collins does wrong.   It’s about an endemic approach that has simply not worked.

In business when something goes wrong, you fix the problem.  If your competition improves, you do something to become relevant again.  When the iPhones came out the majority of other manufacturers responded with Android.  RIM stayed on the tried and true Blackberry path that they’d always used and where are they now?

In business you do what you can to foster new ideas and encourage the people on the way up who have the enthusiasm and hunger to succeed.  You don’t necessarily fill your staff with people who had success ten years ago and then expect them to replicate it when they’re nearing retirement.

In my company we adhere to a philosophy espoused by business innovator and motivational speaker Brad Hams called Ownership Thinking.  While many of the tenets are not necessarily applicable here, one sticks out like a sore thumb – hire slowly but fire quickly.  The thinking here is you want to make sure you have the right people on your team, but when it’s clear someone isn’t living up to expectations then you have to have a quick trigger finger and replace him.  Hams’ studies have shown that morale instantly improves once the slacker is gone and productivity increases.  The Mets seem to have the first part down perfectly as they take forever to make roster decisions.  The second part, however, isn’t even a work in progress.  It’s as if they go out of their way to reward the mediocre members of their organization while quashing the potential of anyone new contributing to the organization until/unless injuries force their hand.

The Mets have seen declining attendance and declining revenues.  Might there be a connection to the product they put on the field and the increasing disengagement the fans have with the team?  Boring is always a tough sell.  Ask Michael Dukakis or Mitt Romney. 

One of the things we’d heard about Terry Collins from his history with the Astros and Angels was that he was a fiery personality who could rally his teams to perform.  Historically that was an accurate assessment in that he had those franchise up to the precipice of pennant contention but eventually the players grew tired of his ways.  He came here and toned it down so much that I have a hard time remembering the last time he even got tossed from a game.

Another way to look at it is the manager as motivator.  In business you set clear performance metrics that you expect from your staff and then you do what you can to push them to meet those expectations.  I’ve asked the question numerous times and never received an answer, but please name me one offensive player who has flourished under Terry Collins?  About the only one I can name was a veteran of many years, Marlon Byrd.  Perhaps it was indeed something Terry Collins said or did that pushed him to have his best year ever, but you’d think if Collins had it in him to do so for Byrd, then he’d be able to do the same for others.  Granted, the Billy Martin/Wally Backman style of management may only get people playing over their heads in the short term and may not be sustainable, but after three increasingly irrelevant years we have seen what Terry Collins can’t do. 

Lest you think I’m merely taking gratuitous potshots at Collins on the cusp of a new season beginning, Alderson is fully culpable, too.  He coopted Omar Minaya’s “lightning in a bottle” approach by scouring the realm of available major league and minor league talent to bring in an assortment of failed experiments (Brad Emaus,Shaun Marcum, Rick Ankiel, etc.)  I recently catalogued his off-season record and it wasn’t pretty.  Some of his deals were made for financial reasons like Carlos Beltran, but at the same time his shortsightedness in the Jose Reyes situation is totally inexplicable. 

Now that the farm system has produced some very ripe cherries, he’s seemingly too reluctant to trade them yet at the same time he’s also hesitant to promote them.  Instead we get the same roster of has-beens getting their umpteenth chance to prove they’ve found the magic pill that will correct whatever ails them production-wise.  We go into the 2014 season with the SS and 1B questions unresolved, still no firm position for the team’s top AAA hitting prospect (on a team starved for run production).  Roster decisions are even more quizzical with a bevy of young talent available for the 5^th starter’s position and instead we are treated to more Daisuke Matsuzaka and a spot for John Lannan who’s now been released twice in the past two years. 

To his credit, he did dip his toe into free agency once again by signing Curtis Granderson, Chris Young and Bartolo Colon, but the only one of the three met with universal praise was  Granderson.  Young was another lightning-in-a-bottle selection and Colon’s price was depressed by both his age and his girth. 

All winter and spring we’ve been hearing rumors about Stephen Drew, Chris Owings, Nick Franklin, Didi Gregorius and others, yet nothing was done.  We were told Wilmer Flores was a real consideration to play there, but then Omar Quintanilla got more time at the position than did Flores.  Again we’re handed the same solutions.

Whatever has been done (or more often NOT DONE) during this off-season and spring training, the fact remains that the slate is wiped clean come opening day on Monday.  However, after seeing the same failed approach which resulted in losing records for three tedious seasons, wouldn’t you think it’s time for Collinson to try something new?