Mack - The Familia Trade, The Team Formerly Known as the New York Mets, and Jarred Kelenic

Good morning.

I’m going to give it a stab at explaining how the Wilpons’ minds tick about all this, but first, to the Familia trade.

No one seems to be very thrilled with this deal, me included. Even the Mets’ troika was unavailable to the press yesterday after our closer was traded for an aging reliever with good AAA numbers and a mid-tier third baseman that looks like a future pipeline piece.

The thing I found the most remarkable here was the quickness for a trade that was obvious stolen by Oakland, not the Mets. The A’s needed a closer for their run for the pennant. The Mets had the answer. So why not dangle the name around and stay on the phones for another week to see what other teams would offer? Two other General Managers in baseball have already expressed being ticked off that the Mets didn’t get back to them before this deal was completed. 

So, the Mets determine the best they could do was trade their most talented expiring contract for two players not even projected to be in Oakland’s future, but also complete the trade way too early in the rade deadline process.

Next, comes the outright lie by Lying John Ricco that the Mets were willing to pay part of the 2018 salary still due Familia, so the quality of what player(s) they would receive would increase. It didn’t happen. Once again, the primary concern seemed to be operational costs. First, the clearing of Familia’s salary from the books. Next, the addition of one million dollars they can use for an International signing.

You know me. I love International signings, but was I hoping for another player that would be ready in, oh, let’s say, 2023 here?

This was a bad deal on so many levels, which leads me to the second part of this post.

I also want to take another stab on how a multi-million dollar business, that is worth multiple billions on the market, operates.

I managed radio stations for many years. My goals were always to make as much ‘positive cash flow’ (money) as I could for my superiors, be them my corporate head or the banks that financed me.

Yes, ‘spending money to make money’ does come into play here, but it’s much easier to increase your bottom line if you spend less while making the same.

No General Manager worth his salt didn’t spend a single day trying to figure out how he can operate at a lower cost while not sacrificing the revenue he is receiving from market spending.

It’s only when your phone rings and your superiors tell you they want you to maximize the ‘cash flow ratio’ (revenue vs. operating costs) of the business you are running so they can price the business for sale.

Now, the Wilpons.

The Mets are not for sale.

The 81-year old Fred Wilpon will die before his beloved Brooklyn Dod… Mets are sold. He doesn’t have to sell it. He, and his children, are debt free.

What he isn’t going to do is let another ‘whipper-snapper’ come in his office and talk him into ‘spending (more) money to make money. Done that. Twice.

No, it’s easier to sell off 10% of the team’s worth, valued to be $2,200,000,000. You got that number? That’s 22 with eight zeroes.

This is plenty of money to operate this team through 2029 and the value of the team hasn’t changed a lick. Only the owners.

I owned 20% of Spector Broadcast. The other 80% was owned by three people in North Carolina. If I ‘sold’ half of my share to someone… and my partners agreed to that… the radio properties we owned's value wouldn’t change at all.

Do you like it? No.

Is this the way Fred rolls? Yes.

And on to Jarred Kelenic…

Word is he’s having tantrums in the Kingsport dugout after striking out. Bats are being smashed all over the place. Guess he’s learned quickly how much easier it is to do this with a wood bat.

Kelenic is hitting .190 with 14 strikeouts in 42 at-bats. Could be worse.

Maybe the young man should realize that the world is watching and he needs working on timing and choosing which pitches he’s going to swing at.