A transfer of things
What is the difference between a president and general manager?
Catch me up in 30 seconds…
I hope you had a safe and happy Thanksgiving! Let’s get into the Mets…
Yadier Molina hopes to return to the Cardinals, but in a recent interview, he listed the Mets as one of four teams (along with the Yankees, Padres, and Angels) he would be interested in joining.
Tampa Bay Rays special assistant Bobby Heck is no longer a candidate for the Mets front office, per SNY.
Meanwhile, Chris Young — yes the Chris Young who once pitched for the Mets — has interviewed with Sandy Alderson for the open GM position, per the New York Post.
Steve Cohen’s money is already reaching those in need: a subcontracted Citi Field employee says the new owner’s promised relief assistance ($500/month) came through the day before Thanksgiving.
A transfer of ownership
It wouldn’t be fair to say the last great Mets moment came in 1986. While the years continue to pass without another world championship, the Mets have reached two World Series, finally pitched a perfect game, and in-between a lot of losing, they have provided fans with some Amazin’ moments — from Mike Piazza’s home run after 9/11 to Pete Alonso breaking the rookie home run record.
Maybe the best way to put it: there have been plenty of fun moments, but if you’re a Mets fan, not enough winning moments. And the reason for that, in many ways, can be tied to ownership.
Ironically, the ball that snuck through Bill Buckner’s legs has followed an ownership path that has uniquely followed the timeline of the Mets’ ownership.
As Ray Knight rounded third base after Buckner’s error in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, and Mets fans celebrated, the umpire collected the ball that Mookie Wilson had sliced into the ground and later gave it to Mets executive Arthur Richman.
The baseball that represented one of the greatest moments in Mets history had been passed on to a team official. Meanwhile, a passage of ownership was occurring off the field, too. As the Amazins marched toward a championship in the fall of ‘86, Fred Wilpon, a real estate developer, found a way to grow his stake in the team.
Doubleday Publishing owned 95 percent of the team. Mr. Doubleday gained a reputation as a hands-off owner who let general manager Frank Cashen make all the baseball decisions. The strategy paid off in 1986, when a Mets team filled with young players cultivated by Mr. Cashen won the World Series. But around the same time, Mr. Wilpon was outmaneuvering Mr. Doubleday, parlaying his 5 percent stake into half-ownership. At the time, Mr. Doubleday was selling the publishing company that owned the Mets to the German firm Bertelsmann A.G. But Mr. Wilpon had a right of first refusal in the event of any sale of the team, and his lawyers made it clear he was ready to exercise it. In a settlement, the two men agreed to become equal partners, paying Bertelsmann $81 million for the team. It has been said that Mr. Doubleday never forgave Mr. Wilpon.
via Observer.com
The Mets were champions and Fred Wilpon was now half-owner. Seven years later, when Richman decided to auction the Buckner ball for charity, Wilpon and Doubleday continued to feud as their shared team became the worst that money could buy. One month before the Buckner ball was sold for $85,000 to actor Charles Sheen, Wilpon addressed the Mets for the first time.
The famous ball would remain with Sheen until April 2000, which happened to be the spring when the Mets were embarking on a season that would lead them to the World Series for the first time since 1986. Sheen sold it to Los Angeles songwriter Seth Swirsky for nearly $64,000.
It wasn’t until 2012 when the ball was sold yet again, this time for an astronomical price, as described by the Associated Press:
The baseball that rolled through the legs of Boston Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series has been sold at auction for $418,250.
Heritage Auctions says the ball was sold Friday in Dallas to a buyer who wants to remain anonymous.
Who had spent nearly one-half-of-a-million dollars on this piece of memorabilia?
Whad’ya know, new owner Steve Cohen purchased the ball that is symbolic of the last time the Mets won the World Series. He revealed it on SNY on Wednesday and said he plans on displaying it in the Mets Museum at Citi Field. Everything has come full circle. The ball is back where it belongs and a new owner is ready to turn the Mets into world champions again.
What is a president anyway?
No, don’t worry, this newsletter didn’t just get political. As the Mets pivot their front office search from identifying the next president of baseball operations toward finding a general manager, I thought it would be interesting to dive into the difference between the two roles.
If the Mets already have Sandy Alderson, why do they need a president on top of a GM? What’s the difference between a president and GM, anyway?
Sandy Alderson actually commented about the trend toward hiring baseball presidents in 2014:
“It’s a little silly,” New York Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said. “But I think it’s a means by which clubs can cram more baseball minds into a still confined space.”
Is it really that simple?
Hierarchy
Let’s start with the nuts and bolts. If you’re not someone like Steve Cohen, everyone has a boss. Whether you clean dishes, make widgets, or populate spreadsheets, you report to someone.
While the role of general manager and president of baseball operations has been blurred in terms of who makes the final decisions in trades and free agent signings (the stuff fans care about), the functional difference between the two positions can be best explained in outlining their respective day-to-day activities. The GM has become more of the chief of staff to the baseball president. A right-hand man or woman whom can execute on the vision set forth by the highest ranking official under ownership.
When the president wants to trade some prospects for a star player, how does the team do the grunt work to inform and execute on that decision?
Somebody needs to meet with the team’s top scouts and minor league affiliates to gain relevant information on the players who might be traded. Somebody needs to spend the hours on the phone negotiating the tedious details that define the parameters of a trade. Somebody needs to tell the staff in the front office what they need to do that day, week, and month, as these focused trade negotiations carry on.
These were the tasks traditionally split between GMs and assistant GMs. But as John Hart, former president of baseball operations for the Atlanta Braves, explained back in 2014, a new position was needed to elevate top talent above the mundane duties of the traditional GM role.
At age 66, veteran baseball executive John Hart said he wasn’t interested in becoming general manager of the Atlanta Braves last month. But when the team offered to make him president of baseball operations, a role that will spare him from some of the mundane minutiae of the job, he signed on. Hart cited preparation for salary-arbitration negotiations and traveling with the team on road trips as examples of day-to-day responsibilities that he will leave to assistant general manager John Coppolella, whom he is grooming to become GM.
Adding a management layer between the owner and the baseball operations staff allows chief decision makers (now presidents) to have more time to think about the big picture without being bogged down in the day-to-day minutia of contract negotiations and team business.
Teams are inflating the titles of executive positions to make them more appealing, while slowly stripping away the mundane tasks required of the top decision maker.
Talent Protection
So you’re saying that “presidents” are really GMs and “GMs” are really assistant GMs, just with new titles and more impressive business cards?
Basically. But there’s a method to this madness.
When the Dodgers hired the highly coveted Andrew Friedman from Tampa Bay, his title went from “executive vice president of baseball operations and general manager” with the Rays to “president of baseball operations” with the Dodgers.
One of the main reasons teams have introduced a new management layer is to provide a pathway to promote internal talent as a means of protecting against other teams poaching them. It is general practice to allow staff to interview somewhere else for a “promotion” but not a lateral move.
Steve Cohen told SNY this week that this dynamic has been the most surprising part of becoming owner. As the Mets look for the best and the brightest to fill their open president of baseball operations position, they have run into issues gaining “permission” to talk to executives who would be making a “lateral” move.
Unique Talent
Moneyball brought a new thinking dynamic to front offices across baseball in the early 2000s, but the success of Theo Epstein and Andrew Friedman has accelerated the trend for top executives to come from quantitative backgrounds.
Separating team presidents from the day-to-day management of actual baseball activities allows really smart people to become candidates for the job without the requisite experience of a baseball lifer. The percentage of top baseball execs who have an Ivy League degree has increased from only 3 percent in 2001 to 43 percent today, per ESPN.
This is something that could be particularly relevant to Steve Cohen who has made his fortune working in a quantitative field. He might not know everything there is to know about baseball, which is why he was smart to hire Sandy Alderson, but identifying top talent from non-traditional baseball backgrounds, particularly Ivy Leaguers who are strategic and really good at math, is right in his lane.
Accountability
There’s another factor that is important to consider in why the titles of “general manager” and “president” are important. Both are public-facing jobs. If you follow a team, you know the president and you know the general manager, but you probably don’t know the underlings, unless you are a diehard fan.
This creates accountability. In a media market like New York, having multiple voices who can articulate the team’s vision and work together toward executing on it is important. The days of one person - the GM - representing all of the team’s moves, as the assistant GMs hide behind their rolodexes are gone.
While it appears the Mets won’t reach this structure this year (Alderson recently indicated they will turn their attention toward finding a GM since they haven’t had luck identifying a president), once they do, they will be following in the footsteps of several of baseball’s top teams.
And who knows, maybe by the time they do find the right person for the job, they will come up with a fancy new title to qualify it for a promotion over being team president.
Thanks for reading! Look out for the next newsletter on Monday!
And please check out our newsletter about the Knicks, too.
Thumbs down to Chris Young as GM and or President - bad move imo - How can a pitcher a few years ago be in this position anyway ?