Reese Kaplan --- Too Soon to Judge BVW; Look at Sandy Alderson's History for Reference

Depending on your perspective, the Mets are markedly better, slightly better or doomed for the future due to the trades and FA signings done by Brodie Van Wagenen and company since he assumed the reins last fall.  And, despite being called the Debbie Downer of the site, I’m actually in the first column and fully support what I’ve seen from BVW thus far.  The biggest difference between he and his predecessor is that he’s at least actively trying to improve the team. 

I won’t go into my well-worn speech about the patented Alderson inertia, but I did get to thinking about some of the transactions he made and tried to figure out the best and the worst of them.  Let’s take a look.

Sandy Alderson Good Moves

Many would right away point to the acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes for future Rookie of the Year pitcher Michael Fulmer and prospect Luis Cessa.  Cespedes virtually singlehandedly delivered the Mets to the 2015 World Series. 

In fact, 2015 was something of a banner year for Sandy Alderson as he shipped away mediocre prospects for the likes of Addison Reed and Tyler Clippard to stabilize a very rocky bullpen.  He peddled a few more middling bodies to Atlanta for Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe.  He also late in Spring Training obtained Jerry Blevins from the never-amount-to-anything Matt den Dekker. 

Others would say astutely selling high on Cy Young Award Winner R.A. Dickey and obtaining a couple of catchers and an outfielder who didn’t work out but a lower level pitching prospect who grew into the guy we call Thor.  Yup, that was a win for Sandy.

There were some smaller wins as well.  Choosing Lucas Duda over Ike Davis surprised a great many people but turned out to be the right call.  Signing Asdrubal Cabrera was a positive.  Even though Curtis Granderson was a shell of his former self, he still delivered 10.8 WAR over the course of his contract so that was a marginal win.  Taking a chance on PED abuse Marlon Byrd was another good one. 

He also had a few credible draft picks, including Michael Conforto and Brandon Nimmo, but most of the rest of his draft talent selections should be reserved for the next section.

Sandy Alderson Bad Moves

Oh, where do we begin?

It’s easy to pick on individual players signed to relatively short contracts that bombed spectacularly.  This group would include Michael Cuddyer (who also cost draft pick compensation), Chris Young (OF), John Mayberry, Jr., Alejandro de Aza, Antonio Bastardo, Frank Francisco, Jon Rauch, Fernando Salas, AJ Ramos, Alex Torres, Jason Vargas, Jay Bruce, Anthony Swarzak and others.

Then there were the various scrap heap picks like James Loney, Jose Valverde, Rick Ankiel, Bobby Abreu, Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Bautista, Austin Jackson, Jose Reyes and others.

There’s the category of people who he chose to let walk away, including Justin Turner, Carlos Torres, Daniel Murphy and (again) Jose Reyes (without even making him an offer). 

Then there are the trades in which he was fleeced.  Angel Pagan to the Giants, Colin McHugh to the Rockies, every salary dump trade he made since 2015…

Another huge dunce-cap moment was the mismanagement of the AAA franchise which expired in Buffalo after leaving New Orleans ostensibly because the environment was too distracting for the players.  So the next stop after failing to plan ahead was to sign for multiple year in Las Vegas in arguable the worst stadium and worst pitching environment in baseball.  Besides, what could possibly distract players in a town nicknamed “Sin City”?

My number one contender for boneheaded Alderson moves (and now people will accuse me of revisionist history), was the David Wright contract extension.  To be fair, it may very well not have been his decision, but the Wilpons who wanted to grow their own Derek Jeter player-for-life.  

Wow, for a team that was very nearly taken away from the Wilpons due to financial mismanagement during the Madoff scandal, to hand out a contract to a player who had performed inconsistently in the new ballpark when you said you had no money to spend was downright foolish.  Then that contract became the albatross that hamstrung the franchise for the next seven years when they claimed they could not bid on the best available free agents. I screamed as much from the rooftops back in 2012.

At the time I advised that the better course of business would have been to sell high on a player in his prime, stockpiling prospects into your farm system and saving $138 million, but everyone told me I was completely wrong.  The unfortunate health problems that happened afterwards caught many by surprise, but he had had a spinal fracture prior to signing the extension, so it was not a Ripley’s Believe It or Not moment when he later had ongoing spinal issues. 

Obviously you can’t evaluate any GM on his first few months on the job until you see what’s happened a few years down the road when prospects advance or not, players produce or not, and money spent is either deemed a good investment or a sunk cost.  We’ll be going through the same exercise with BVW a few years from now with hopefully better results.