Reese Kaplan -- What Does Sandy Alderson Do Well?

While my feelings about the legacy of Terry Collins are well known, what will be the legacy of Sandy Alderson when he finally decides to head to the summers in a hammock?   He was brought in here to right the foundering ship.  He inherited the whole Omar Minaya/Tony Bernazard/Jerry Manuel mess. 

The team that ended the 2009 had three hitters over .280 – Jose Reyes, David Wright and Angel Pagan.  The starting rotation featured Johan Santana, Mike Pelfrey, R.A. Dickey and Jon Niese – not great but not awful.  The bullpen was perhaps the best they’ve ever had with K-Rod, Elmer Dessens, Pedro Feliciano, Hisanori Takahashi and Manny Acosta.  The worst of that bunch was Takahashi with a 3.61 ERA.    

Going into 2011 Sandy Alderson had some decisions to make.  Many players were retained, including Wright, Reyes, Murphy, Pagan and you had a return to relative health for Carlos Beltran.  Luis Castillo and his .235 average was replaced with Justin Turner.  Reyes won a batting title.  Offense was definitely better.

The pitching was uneven.  You still had Pelfrey, Dickey and Niese, but Santana was on the DL for the duration of the season.  They supplemented these three starters with Chris Capuano and Dillon Gee.  Again, the rotation was far from great but certainly not terrible. 

Out in the pen you had K-Rod as the sole carry-over from the previous season.  Remember that you had arguably the best bullpen in the team’s history, but Sandy Alderson chose to back up Rodriguez with the likes of Jason Isringhausen, Pedro Beato, Bobby Parnell, Ryota Igarashi and Tim Byrdak.  That season should have let Mets fans know how little regard Alderson had for relief pitching. 

I’ll leave the Terry Collins bashing for another day, but suffice to say the team with improved offense, probably equivalent starting pitching and a diminished bullpen went from 79-83 to a record of 77-85.  In this case I’ll actually say that given the weaker team he inherited that’s probably a reasonable record for him to have achieved. 

Alderson has done precious little trading during his tenure, perhaps because he usually wound up on the losing end of the deals.  Consider trading Angel Pagan for a sore-armed Ramon Ramirez and replacement level player in Andres Torres.  Or how about the clunker that sent Colin McHugh who has become a highly effective starter for Houston off to Colorado for Eric Young, Jr.?.  Or how about that gem that sent a very productive Marlon Byrd and John Buck to the Pirates for the never effective Dilson Herrera and the sore armed Vic Black?  Or the one that sent family violence poster boy K-Rod to the Brewers for Danny Herrera and Adrian Rosario?  Say what you will about Omar Minaya’s shortcomings but he was a better judge of talent.

Now Alderson has had a few winners in his day – the R.A. Dickey trade that brought back Noah Syndergaard, Travis d’Arnaud and Wuilmer Becerra is certainly one of them, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find a taker for a Cy Young Award Winner.  Prospects are just that and he got lucky with Syndergaard, the jury is still out on d’Arnaud and Becerra is regressing as he faces AA pitching. 

The big 2015 deal for Yoenis Cespedes helped propel the Mets almost singlehandedly to the World Series but the price paid was a steep one with Michael Fulmer having delivered a 19-13 record with a 3.12.  Sometimes you have to give to get.

The trade of Carlos Beltran to San Francisco resulted in prospect Zack Wheeler..  At the time he was selling the myth that Beltran was washed up and his knees would never let him be productive again.  In his post Mets career Beltran has made the All Star team twice, though now at age 40 with the Astros it appears he may have hit the end of the wall.  Compare that output to what the Mets have gotten from Wheeler and that one is pretty much looking bad for Alderson, too. 

Then there was the trade of Ike Davis to the Pittsburgh Pirates.  Tip the cap to deciding on Lucas Duda over Davis, but once again he appears to have been skunked in a trade.  Reliever Zach Thornton never even made it onto the 40-man roster and pitcher Blake Taylor is still toiling in A-ball. 

On the contract front, Alderson’s biggest blunder has to be David Wright.  He was coming off terrible seasons and the club was smack in the middle of the Madoff scandal.  There was no money to spend yet they offered him the largest and longest contract in the history of the ball club.  Wright has not lived up to it in any way, shape or form, but it was health and not lack of talent responsible for the folly of the deal.  I was the lone wolf at the time screaming from the rooftops to trade Wright to replenish the farm system with inexpensive prospects, but Sandy knew better. 

Now, to be fair, a lot of money was also eaten during the first few years with Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo and Jason Bay all receiving very lovely parting gifts due to the nature of bad contracts. 

With the uncertainty of the team’s financial future Alderson tried building by shopping at the five and dime.  Do the names Chris Young (outfielder), Scott Atcheson, David Aardsma, Vinny Rotino, Shaun Marcum, Aaron Laffey, Bobby Abreu, Omar Quintanilla, John Mayberry, Jose Valverde, Lohn Lannan or Kyle Farnsworth ring a bell? 

Now there are some times when he rolled the dice and it came up sevens.  He got lucky for awhile with outfielder Scott Hairston.  Rene Rivera has had his moments.  He was ridiculed for signing Bartolo Colon and he became the Mets healthiest pitcher during his tenure here. 

Of course, they say that sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make.  Let’s see…how’s staying out of the Cuban and Asian free agent business worked out for the Mets?  How about letting Justin Turner (at just $800K) and Daniel Murphy walk away? How about letting Carlos Torres go?  How about not signing Kelly Johnson as a free agent and then giving up players not once but twice to get him?  How about not adding a single major league caliber player during this past off season?    How about keeping a manager for seven years with a losing record?

Then, of course, there are his drafts.  I think “ugh!” pretty much sums them up. The team has two legitimate prospects in AAA.  Then they're pretty barren on the offensive side of the ledger after that. There are pitchers in the system but Alderson has more often viewed them as trade chips than potential contributors.  

On the whole people who defend the man will point to his two straight post-season appearances and the financial handcuffs under which he operated in the early years.  I don’t know…it seems the team was more regularly in the hunt during the Omar Minaya years even with the bad contracts he handed out.  At least he TRIED to make the club competitive. 

No one knows if Alderson, Collins and company  will be back after this disastrous season, but if you were writing the performance review for Sandy Alderson, how would he fare?