The Truth Shall Set You Free

A new article in the New Yorker about Fred Wilpon written by my old colleague Jeffrey Toobin is getting a lot of attention for the frank way Wilpon discussed the team and it's players.
The article is very long (I suggest you read it anyway) and it mostly focuses on the Wilpons association with Bernie Madoff.
There's some interesting backstory in there: the Wilpons and Madoffs first got together when Jeff Wilpon met Mark Madoff at Roslyn High School.
The story doesn't really shed new light on whether Wilpon knew that Madoff was a fraud. But it does raise a pretty good refutation: if Wilpon did know the nature of the scam (a Ponzi scheme) why did he keep $550m of paper money in his Madoff accounts?
I think it's more likely the Wilpons suspected he was doing something illegal or questionable (insider trading maybe) and chose to look the other way. I doubt they would have thought a Ponzi Scheme of this magntitude could have lasted this long.



Barring all that, here's the part of the article that has everyone talking:

"In the game against the Astros, Jose Reyes, leading off for the Mets, singled sharply up the middle, then stole second. “He’s a racehorse,” Wilpon said. When Reyes started with the Mets, in 2003, just before his twentieth birthday, he was pegged as a future star. Injuries have limited him to a more pedestrian career, though he’s off to a good start this season. “He thinks he’s going to get Carl Crawford money,” Wilpon said, referring to the Red Sox’ signing of the former Tampa Bay player to a seven-year, $142-million contract. “He’s had everything wrong with him,” Wilpon said of Reyes. “He won’t get it.”

After the catcher, Josh Thole, struck out, David Wright came to the plate. Wright, the team’s marquee attraction, has started the season dreadfully at the plate. “He’s pressing,” Wilpon said. “A really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar.”

Wright walked.

When Carlos Beltran came up, I mentioned his prodigious post-season with the Astros in 2004, when he hit eight home runs, just before he went to the Mets as a free agent. Wilpon laughed, not happily. “We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series,” he said, referring to himself. In the course of playing out his seven-year, $119-million contract with the Mets, Beltran, too, has been hobbled by injuries. “He’s sixty-five to seventy per cent of what he was.” Beltran singled, loading the bases with one out.

Ike Davis, the sophomore first baseman and the one pleasant surprise for the Mets so far this season, was up next. “Good hitter,” Wilpon said. “Shitty team—good hitter.” Davis struck out. Angel Pagan flied out to right, ending the Mets’ threat. “Lousy clubs—that’s what happens.” Wilpon sighed. The Astros put three runs on the board in the top of the second.

“We’re snakebitten, baby,” Wilpon said."

Let's take all the claims separately:

Jose Reyes is not going to get Carl Crawford money because he's always hurt. Indubitably that is accurate.

David Wright is a very good player, but not a superstar. I could publish reams of statistics supporting that claim but I don't think I need to.

Wilpon was a "schmuck" for giving Carlos Beltran $119m. I disagree with this one, but its a popular opinion. He had a very bad 2005, a great 2006 (marred by one negative image), very good 2007 and 2008, then two years ruined by injuries.

Ike Davis is a good player on a "shitty team." Wilpon said that when the team was 5-13. Even now at 22-24 I'd agree with the assessment.

I just don't see how anyone can take issue with anything he said as far as its veracity, whether an owner should be that honest is another matter, but I personally enjoyed his candor.

As for him hurting the trade value of Beltran and Reyes, can you imagine any GM in the majors who changed his opinion on either of these players based on Wilpon's comments? That's a false argument.

There's a lot of hate for Fred Wilpon (much of it comes from anti-Semitism I believe) and very little of it has any basis in fact. He's not cheap, he's spending $144m for this last place team. He's not the problem with this franchise, payroll is in the top 10, results are in the bottom 10, that's the fault of the players and front office (his blame for that ends and hiring those fools). And he's not ripping his players, he's just being honest.

I'd Pay $1000 For This

The government is selling all of Bernie Madoff's shit including this too-sweet 80s-era Mets satin jacket personalized with Madoff on the back.
The Wall Street Journal says this item will go for $500 - $720 but I think it will fetch $1000 easily.

Can We Finally Stop Talking About This Now?

I'm sick of hearing reports that Mets owners the Wilpons lost millions in the Ponzi Scheme and therefore can no longer afford players and may be forced to sell the team.
Like any Ponzi scheme those who are first in make out like bandits while everyone else was holding the bag.
The Wilpons throughout the years invested $522.8 million dollars with Madoff. And over that time they withdrew $570.6 million.
Yes, they made money.
Now psychologically the Wilpons -- like many of Madoff's other "victims" -- took a huge blow because they thought they still had millions of dollars and all that went poof and disappeared.
But facts are facts, the Wilpons made money on Madoff, and may even be forced to repay some since they made out so well.
I hope that ends this discussion once and for all and get back to calling them cheap Jews when they fail to spend like the Yankees this offseason.

Madoff's Gift to Mets Fans

Fred Wilpon may be forced to sell the Mets because of losses he suffered in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme.
Erin Arvedlund author of "Too Good to Be True," one of several recent books about Madoff says of a possible sale of the Mets, "It's a matter of when. It could be as soon as next year."
She says the Wilpons lost as much as $700m in Madoff-related investments.
The Wilpons have pegged their losses at $300m and said the losses were in other businesses and would have no impact on the operation of the Mets.

Many Mets fans have criticized the Wilpons for being frugal, dating all the way back to the A-Rod situation. I think the Wilpons have for the most part acted judiciously in their spending (they did sign Santana to the biggest contract ever given to a pitcher, and gave K-Rod $15m per year) but many fans want them to act spend the Yankees, and that is never going to happen.
Even though they are in the same city the Mets' revenue will always be much less.
Many fans wanted the team to sign Manny Ramirez and Orlando Hudson in the offseason, moves I would have liked as well. But it's hard to call them cheap with the third biggest payroll in the majors. What they should do is stop wasting money and guys like Carlos Delgado and Luis Castillo and probably even Oliver Perez (though I endorsed that move), so they can use it to sign good players.

That said, I would love to see an ownership change, preferably to someone who will give his underlings the time and money to build a powerhouse team over the long-term.

Good Seats Still Available

Two prime seats right behind home plate at CitiField are available.
Those seats in either the first or second row behind home plate, a section known as Delta Club Platinum, once belonged to Madoff Securities.
Now the trustee for says they are an asset of the firm and should be monetized.
The seats (not sure if there are 2 or 4, maybe more) go for $695 each for platinum games like Opening Day and the games against the Yankees. They cost $595 for gold games, $495 for silver, $395 for bronze, and a steal at $295 for value games.
That comes out to $40,000 per seat for the season.
"They're paid for. They can do with them what they want to," says Mets Executive Vice President David Howard said.

The Mets are Down with OPP

A few days after the Mets season ended I wrote my offseason plan.

"Absolutely, positively, sign Oliver Perez, no matter the cost. It will probably cost 6-years, $90 million," I wrote.

Thankfully, the Mets came to their senses and got Perez at a bargain basement price. The Mets needed to fill a hole in their rotation and they did by getting a good (not great), young pitcher, at well below market value. Over the past 2 seasons Perez and Derek Lowe have essentially been equals (slight edge to Lowe) and Lowe got much more money, an extra year, and he's 8 years older. Based on market conditions this is a steal for the Mets.

In October I wrote, "The best fit might actually be Manny Ramirez. He can hit under pressure and his lax attitude, while galling at times, may be exactly what this team needs to avoid folding under pressure again."

But that's not going to happen. I think he's exactly what they need, but the Mets are not interested in acquiring his attitude, his surliness, his capriciousness and of course his huge salary. That's because it would put the Mets over the luxury tax, something they said they won't do.

It's not because they lost $300 million to Madoff (that was a separate business venture), it's not because they are worried Citigroup won't give them the naming rights money and it's not because they're cheap jews. It's because they're trying to operate their business on a budget.

And as much as I love Ramirez, I can't say I blame them for that.

And I reiterate, the Mets came up just a couple games short the last two years. They didn't need a makeover, they needed some improvements, and K-Rod and Putz should add 10 wins between them. So if everyone else combines to play only 5 games worse, the Mets should finally make the playoffs.

One Bad Apple

Sometimes the actions of few, or even one bad individual can taint an entire race or group of people.
Jews who have spent the last 60 years calling all Germans "krauts" may now get a small taste of their own medicine.
Disgraced investment guru Bernard Madoff is accused of orchestrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
No, I'm not comparing him to Hitler, I'm just using an extreme example to illustrate my point.
Even though Madoff stole the majority of his money from fellow Jews and ruining several Jewish charities in the process, Madoff enforced some of the worst steretypes about Jews.
While delivering shockingly great returns for his clients, Madoff earned the nickname "The Jewish T-Bill."
But now that Madoff's fund collapsed and all the money is gone those in the community fear this case is fanning vicious stereotypes about Jews that go back to the Middle Ages.
The Anti-Defamation League cites a spike in anti-Semitic comments online after Madoff's Dec. 11 arrest. A columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz lamented the case as "the answer to every Jew-hater's wish list."
And the American Jewish Committee's executive director, David A. Harris, wrote a letter to The New York Times criticizing what he saw as "a striking emphasis" on Madoff's faith in one of the paper's many stories about the scandal.
The case is "fodder for the bigots," Abraham H. Foxman, the ADL's national director, said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. "It's both embarrassing and it's painful."

*****

It's difficult to describe the case in any detail without mentioning Madoff's religion. The 70-year-old money manager and former Nasdaq stock market chairman donated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, much of it to Jewish causes. And many of the known victims of his business, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, are big names in Jewish life.
Yeshiva University, one of the nation's foremost Jewish institutions of higher education, lost $110 million; Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, lost $90 million; director Steven Spielberg's Wunderkinder Foundation acknowledged unspecified losses; and a $15 million foundation established by Holocaust survivor and writer Elie Wiesel was wiped out. Jewish federations and hospitals have lost millions and some foundations have had to close.

*****

Adding to the sense of betrayal in the allegations against Madoff are worries about whether they feed into centuries-old, ugly caricatures of Jews.
Since Jews served as lenders in medieval Europe, where they were barred from many other occupations, they have sometimes been portrayed as miserly, greedy and obsessed with money. In just one example, Shakespeare's Shylock, the Jewish character who demands a pound of flesh in payment for a loan in "The Merchant of Venice," has become synonymous with usury.
Anti-Semitic broadsides have peppered the Internet in the wake of Madoff's arrest, some in highly visible public-comment sections of popular news sites.
Some get removed by the sites' administrators or draw replies noting there are bad apples of all creeds and in all walks of life. Victims also extend to all creeds and walks of life — banks, insurers, pension funds and even the International Olympic Committee are among those who say they've been taken by Madoff.
Still, the scandal has reverberated throughout the Jewish community. This week, representatives of about three dozen Jewish foundations met in New York City to come up with a plan to help Jewish nonprofits that lost money with Madoff, said Jeffrey Solomon, president of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies. Solomon said the foundations agreed to contribute to a pool of money that will be distributed to hard-hit organizations.

Normally stereotypes such as the Irish are dunks, or black people like fried chicken are mostly harmless. But the reason this one hurts so much is because this is the exact rationalization Hitler gave to the Germans when explaining the need to exterminate all Jews. And 70 years later our own people are living down to Hitler's opinion of us.