By Brian Joura November 8, 2020
Friday was an amazing day in Mets history, as Steve Cohen assumed ownership of the Mets and Sandy Alderson did his best Michael Corleone impression by cleaning house, announcing that Brodie Van Wagenen, his three top lieutenants and Omar Minaya would be leaving the organization. If there was the slightest bit of uncertainty, these moves left no doubt that Alderson has freedom under Cohen that he didn’t have previously under the Wilpons. Minaya was a favorite of Fred Wilpon and it’s hard to imagine that Alderson was overjoyed when the elder Wilpon brought Minaya back to the Mets while he was still there. This is Alderson’s ship and we’ll finally get to see him in complete control of who stays and who goes.
The fact that Alderson was able to bring the Mets to the World Series despite having (at least) one hand tied behind his back due to the Wilpon circus and fallout from the Bernie Madoff fiasco is one of the most underappreciated stories of the 21st Century in MLB. It will be great to see Alderson work without unnecessary restrictions. But that story will unfold in the days, months and years ahead. Right now it’s time to take a look back and try to give an honest assessment of what’s happened in the past and where the Mets stand right this moment.
Tim Britton of The Athletic reported on Friday’s events in Metsland and had what struck me as a really odd take. Britton said, “[T]he Mets are in a better place competitively now than they were on the day they hired Van Wagenen.”
In support of his position, Britton mentioned the extension to Jacob deGrom and Van Wagenen’s willingness to ignore service time considerations by playing youngsters right away. And that’s it – nothing more, nothing less.
Let’s take a look at what Van Wagenen inherited versus what he leaves behind. Let’s start with payroll. There’s not a great way to look at this but let’s use the season-ending 40-man Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) payrolls available at Cot’s. It’s not perfect because these CBT payrolls give the average of a contract over its length, rather than what was actually spent in a given year. But it gives a good ballpark estimate and will work for our purposes. Here’s what Van Wagenen inherited, the Mets’ 2018 CBT Payroll which sat at $160.3 million. And here’s what he left behind, a 2020 CBT Payroll of $202 million.
Van Wagenen was working with a budget $40 million higher than what Alderson had at his disposal. That seems pretty significant. Let’s see what Van Wagenen did with that money, again looking at what he inherited and what he left behind.
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