Is Mets GM Omar Minaya Baseball’s Answer to Soledad O’Brien?

From the Mets to Los Mets to Lost Mets
(Part I of a Series)
By Nicholas Stix



Mets General Manager Omar Minaya is the big leagues’ first Hispanic general manager. Is he the baseball counterpart to Soledad O’Brien, as in someone given high-profile, highly paid positions based solely on his race or ethnicity, rather than his abilities, and who proves himself a racist incompetent on the job?

With O’Brien, as my VDARE.com colleague Joe Guzzardi showed, in bestowing on her the 2010 VDARE Worst Immigration Reporter Award (VDWIRA), the matter is a slam dunk. In fact, there was so much damning material on O’Brien that Joe needed a second column, in order to complete his case!

But Minaya?

After all, wasn’t Minaya’s first Mets team, in 2005, the first winning team (83-79) the organization had fielded in four years? And didn’t his 2006 club win the most games in the league (97), and come one inning from going to the World Series? And didn’t the 2007 and 2008 teams almost win the NL East?

Well, consider the following:

• Every year that Minaya has run the club, the Mets have had the highest payroll in the National League, while only reaching the playoffs once;

• Five years with the league’s highest payroll has bought an average of 85.4 wins per season (the Mets also had the league’s highest payroll in 2003 and 2004, but did not have the highest NL payroll for the years 1993-2002, which includes their World Series season of 2000);

• Last season, the league’s highest payroll bought them a 70-92 record, and fourth place in the NL East (they fought the Washington Nationals tenaciously for fifth—i.e., last—place, but ran out of time);

• At $149,373,987, the Mets spent over four times as much last season as division rival, the Florida Marlins ($36,834,000), but the Marlins won 17 more games than the Mets (87 to 70; i.e., the Mets spent about five times as much per win—app. $2.13 million vs. app. $423,000—as the Marlins did;

• Despite having baseball’s lowest payroll in 2009, the Marlins had a winning team, and ended up in second place behind the defending World Series champs, the Phillies;

• After leading their division in 2007 and 2008, the Mets choked each season down the stretch, with the 2007 collapse going down as the worst in big league baseball history, as they went from seven games in first place, with 17 games to go, to losing the division on the last day of the regular season. In 2008, they “merely” went from three games in first place with 17 to go, to losing the division by three games, and again missing out on the postseason with a loss on the last day of the regular season (both years to the Marlins);

• In five years Minaya, aided and abetted by his right-hand man, VP of Minor League Player Development, Tony Bernazard, managed somehow to gut the team’s farm system (see also, here and here);

• Minaya kept Bernazard on the job, after the latter proved himself both incompetent and a walking scandal machine (see also here and here), only firing Bernazard after the Daily News published exposés on the latter. Minaya then sought to deflect blame by publicly slandering the reporter, Adam Rubin, who had exposed Bernazard;

• Not only did Minaya’s transparent, pro-Hispanic bias in building the team alienate many white fans, but his shameless playing of the “race card” even offended some Hispanic stars;

• Minaya installed a Latin Mafia at the minor league level, which the Mets’ principal owner, Fred Wilpon (or his son, team COO Jeff) only began dismantling last fall, in the wake of the Bernazard scandals;

• The current team has no stars that were developed under Minaya and Bernazard—its only home-grown stars, Jose Reyes and David Wright, were already on the big club when Minaya took over;

• In 2009, the club mishandled one injury after another to stars (Reyes and Beltran) and to one major acquisition (J.J. Putz), so that its own players no longer trust its own medical staff, and free agents shun the Mets;

• Minaya has overpaid for Hispanic free agents (e.g., Martinez and Beltran), and wildly overpaid to re-sign often marginal or fading (Castillo, Tatis, Cora, et al.) Hispanic players already on the team;

• Minaya has done nothing to fill the team’s greatest need for the 2010 campaign: Quality starting pitching;

• Minaya undermined, and permitted Bernazard to undermine his black manager, Willie Randolph, with the team’s Hispanic players, and then fired him, in a “disgraceful” manner;

• Minaya has for years maintained an ethnically and linguistically fractured clubhouse, with no sense of cohesion and no character (see chokes);

• Although the team’s fan base was and remains overwhelmingly white, Minaya decided, from the get-go, to alienate them, sign and trade for racist and anti-American Hispanic stars, identify with Hispanics whose financial support for, and identification with the team is minimal (New York Hispanics overwhelmingly support the Yankees), and recast it as “Los Mets.”

So, baseball’s first Hispanic GM isn’t quite as bad as Soledad O’Brien, but he’s still an affirmative action hire, still racist, still unprofessional as heck, and still incompetent.

In the name of diversity, who could ask for anything more?