Sandy Alderson Back To Fix What Brodie Van Wagenen Did To His Team
According to reports, Steve Cohen is bringing Sandy Anderson back to the Mets as an advisor, and he is planning on finding a replacement for Brodie Van Wagenen. Both are excellent and needed decisions.
When it comes to Van Wagenen, it’s difficult to quantify exactly how much damage he has done to the well built and talented Mets organization gift wrapped to him from Alderson. Essentially, all that Alderson built needs to be rebuilt.
Van Wagenen was given a starting staff comprised of Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Zack Wheeler, and Steven Matz. Behind them were well regarded prospects in Justin Dunn, Anthony Kay, and Simeon Woods Richardson.
The Mets rotation over the final week of the 2020 season will be deGrom, Rick Porcello, maybe Matz, and who knows what else?
The position player core was remarkably cheap and talented. There was Michael Conforto, Brandon Nimmo, Pete Alonso, Jeff McNeil, Dominic Smith, and Amed Rosario. Behind them was Andres Gimenez and Jarred Kelenic.
Sure, there were some bad contracts, but they were short term in nature, and they were not going to serve as an impediment to either building on or retaining this core.
For example, the Jay Bruce and Yoenis Cespedes contacts were set to expire after this season. That coincided perfectly with having to have the money to re-sign deGrom and to have extension talks with Conforto, Matz, and Syndergaard.
Instead, the Mets no longer have Kelenic giving them a buffet against losing one of Conforto or Nimmo. They also have Robinson Cano‘s onerous contract on the books which already served as an impediment to re-signing Wheeler.
That’s nothing to say of the quality prospect purge in the same of finding a late inning defensive replacement in center for a team who already had Juan Lagares and adding J.D. Davis to a team already overstocked in 1B/DH players.
Couple this with the Mets getting rid of Wilmer Flores for nothing only for him to be more productive than anyone Van Wagenen brought into the organization and signing Jed Lowrie for $20 million to get eight pinch hitting attempts, and the Van Wagenen stint as GM has been an unmitigated disaster.
If you want to point to Van Wagenen’s drafts as a positive, you should. However, in doing that, remember, that was a scouting group built by Alderson and Omar Minaya. The Mets will be keeping both advisors.
When you take everything into account, Alderson built the Mets to be a competitive team in 2019 and 2020. With any luck, he had a deep farm system to make the types of trades he made in 2015 to help get the team over the top.
The real window for this Mets team was supposed to open in 2021. Given the talent on the Major League roster and in the farm system, it promised to be a 1980s like run.
Instead, Alderson is back to figure out how yo fix this mess. Fortunately for him, he won’t have Van Wagenen or Jeff Wilpon standing in his way. Instead, he will have an owner with deep pockets who intends to let smart baseball people like Alderson do their jobs.
Terrible idea bringing Sandy Alderson back.. Couldn’t stand his bull shitting,, his ridiculous ideas at the plate that stifled offensive development, and for the most part, a bad record at the helm with a few exceptions over his GM and team leading career.
Bad mistake too letting Brodie go if that indeed happens.. I have my doubts it does. I love what he did to elevate player and team culture and structure, develop hitters, standardize majors and minors, hire proven executives, think outside the box, embrace and expand analytics, draft high quality youngsters, including first round talent in other rounds, and do so very shrewdly to sign these players.. I don’t agree with some of his trade choices/decision, but overall, I like what he’s doing.
What he now needs is Cohen’s checkbook to sign Bauer, Realmutto, Stroman, extend Conforto. and lock up some arb eligible, and perhaps some pre arb eligible players.. Bring back Justin Wilson, Jason Shreve, trade Gsellman, Matz, Sewald, Zamora, perhaps Rosario and others for young arms and athletic outfielders.
If Rosario isn’t traded, he should work this offseason on his stride length which has shortened, slowing him, and also be converted to infield – outfield super utility.
Brodie Van Wagenen accomplished nothing, and he did nothing to develop players.
That’s not accurate.
In fact, just a few days ago, one of the players was saying how much better it is developing as hitter under the Brodie regime, rather than the restriction of Alderson. who wanted things done a certain way, stifling growth, impacting player strengths. I think it was one of Dom, Nimmo, or Conforto who said it.
They can say what they want, but it’s simly not true.