Hispandering in Baseball=Money, and Teams, Flushed Down the Tubes

By Nicholas Stix

Almost two weeks ago, a friend wrote, asking, among other things, “Mets sign Jason Bay?”

When I read that, I thought, “He’s gotta be kidding. Bay was signed a month ago!”
After all, I had heard that Bay was signing with the Mets eons ago. So, I punched in his name and “Mets,” and up came up the Miami Herald article, “Is Flushing Beirut?”

According to the author, Chris Ruddick, Bay had held off on the signing, hoping that some other team—any other, even Washington or Hanshin!—would give him a reason to sign elsewhere. When no one did, he reportedly signed a four-year, $66M deal with the Mets.

When Omar Minaya returned to Flushing in ‘05 as GM, no one wanted to play for the Mets, who were losers, so he had to overpay free agents. And now, after five years of him working his magic… no one wants to play for the Mets, who are losers, and so he has to overpay free agents.

For me, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when he signed Luis Castillo to a four-year, $25 million contract, after the ’07 season.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Castillo as a player (game-losing dropped pop-ups, base-running goofs, and idiotic, ejection-provoking arguments with umps, notwithstanding), but…

I asked The Boss last year how old she thought he was. She said, “40.” I laughed, because I agreed with her. Then I told her that he listed as 34. She didn’t believe it, and neither do I. He’s from the Dominican, the Land of Imaginary Jocks’ Ages.
Even Mets announcers acknowledged in ’06 or ’07, before his knee went gimpy, that Castillo had lost a bit of the mobility he’d had in his prime. And then the club learned that he needed arthroscopic surgery on one knee, before offering him the contract. (He signed after getting scoped.)

Thus, Minaya went out of his way to pay serious money to a diminished, broken-down player.

The value of signing Castillo was because he was an aging star who could still help a team, as long as he was signed really cheaply to a one or, at most, two-year contract. Jose Valentin II, but with good speed on the basepaths, instead of power, at maybe $3 mil for a season, max $6 mil for two. (In 2006 and 2007, Valentin earned a combined $4.7M playing for the Mets.) Instead, Minaya paid a past-his-prime second baseman 30-40 percent more than the man had ever earned in his salad days.

Not only did Minaya waste almost $20 mil on Castillo, but overpaying him made it impossible to move him, and locked up money that was then unavailable to sign a top free-agent second baseman such as Orlando Hudson, who then went to the Dodgers, and earned either $3.36M or $7.61M, depending on the source, via an incentive-laden contract, on a base of only $3M.

Castillo’s post-scope injury problems were foreseeable, because we’d been down the same road with Valentin. And before Valentin played at Shea, it was hardly news that older players who are playing every day get hurt more often than younger ones.

When Minaya signed Castillo to that insane contract, all doubt in my mind about his motives was erased. He wasn’t signing Hispanics because they were quality players, and it made economic sense. Rather, he simply wanted to transfer all of the Wilpons’ fortune to Hispanics, the team and the fans be damned.

Apparently, someone whispered something in his ear (maybe, "Remember what happened to Tony Bernazard"?), leading to the Bay signing. But the roster remains frightfully thin on talent, while maintaining a bloated payroll. At $149M, the 2009 Opening Day Mets had the highest payroll in the NL, over 30% higher than the defending World Series champion Phillies ($114M), who had just signed the catch of the free agent class, Raul Ibanez. (The Phillies, of course, we put together by the great Pat Gillick, who had engineered the back-to-back Toronto champs of ‘92-93, and who had not benefited from Hispandering.) Meanwhile, while the Dodgers made it to the League Championship Series last season, in spite of their payroll going down 15%.

Yet the Mets had a miserable season, and were the worst team in the league the last month or two of the season, while the Phillies made it back to the Series. And the Mets start this season with a bloated payroll, but a thinner roster than they did in 2009.

Granted, Castillo had a decent if punchless season, his bizarre moments notwithstanding, but at what price? Meanwhile, in his first year with the Dodgers, the wide-ranging Hudson, an American who looks younger than his official age of 32, went to another All-Star Game and won himself another Gold Glove.

At least when Casey lamented, “Can’t anybody here play this game?!,” the Mets had a second-division payroll, to go with their second-division play.

Is Omar Minaya the baseball counterpart to Soledad O’Brien?