Baseball Maverick Read online

  Ever hungry for scraps to feed the Twitter beast, these media professionals who grew up idolizing people like Roger Kahn and Tom Boswell now put in hours of patient vigil to tweet the occasional one-liner about someone from the A-list eating potato chips or wearing a loud shirt. Along the way there is time for swapping jokes with ex-ballplayers now plying a trade for regional baseball networks, catching up with a scout one genuinely enjoys, or just following the prime directive of the media pack to intermingle and share, to swap, like members of the Borg Collective (“Resistance is futile!”). “What do you hear?” comes the half-whispered aside, and notes are compared on this pitcher’s perceived value-of-the-moment, or the current odds on this or that past-his-prime slugger’s chances of landing a four-year deal. These micro-adjustments cancel themselves out over a day or two, which is just the point. It would be as pointless to criticize practitioners of the new media arts for shallowness as it would be to object to a ballplayer ducking out of the way of a 90-mile-an-hour fastball thrown at his head.

  We can lament, however, the absence of an element that not so long ago was seen as part of a sportswriter’s job: thinking. Often during my three-plus days at the 2012 winter meetings, I mentioned this sad shift to sportswriter friends, expecting them to be offended, and was bowled over by their reactions. “Who has time to think?” one told me, only half ironically, and then looked down at his smartphone. Who indeed? If by thinking we mean reflection, time for creative perspective and original point of view, then we’ve crossed the Rubicon. The conversation and camaraderie of the swarm staking out the walkway were not without enjoyment and fun, but it was trumped by a palpable feel of agitation and uneasiness, and what I got talking to veterans of the scene was an almost desperate hatred of the idiocy of the ritual.

  Several hundred yards above the conga-line klatch of sportswriters huddled along the railing of the walkway leading away from the Opryland lobby, Sandy Alderson spent his days sequestered in a sixth-floor suite, spacious and neat but nondescript. The drapes were as likely to be pulled shut as not, since the interesting action took place inside. The week before, Alderson told me he would probably have some extra hours to meet and talk about the goings-on. He was kidding himself. He ended up hunkered down in a suite upstairs for far longer than he expected, mulling the possibilities and running the numbers on various permutations with his team of smart young guys. Such moments are the times he enjoys the job of Mets general manager the most.

  “It is like a puzzle or a chess match, I guess, but it’s not like you’re trying to outdo the other side, you’re trying to find a deal that appears mutually beneficial,” he told me one night during the meetings, his brain trust behind a door in the next suite, their voices rising and falling as they got more or less excited about different trade possibilities. “But it’s also the camaraderie. At my age, it’s fun to be with twenty other guys who are all involved and have a common purpose. It can be a great morale builder. But you have to be prepared not to make a trade. You have to be prepared to do less than hoped. Sometimes it happens that you do more than hoped, but doing more isn’t always better.”

  Alderson’s first winter meetings were held in Hawaii at the Sheraton Waikiki in 1982, but back then he was finding his way. Alderson was secure enough, during those years in baseball, not to pretend he was anything he wasn’t; he listened and learned. “When you’re a first-timer or a second-timer, everybody else seems to be an iconic baseball figure,” he says. “I imagine it’s like coming into the big leagues and pitching or hitting for the first time against people you’ve grown up hearing about. Al Campanis was the general manager of the Dodgers at the time. Guys like Phil Seghi of the Cleveland Indians, Buzzie Bavasi—he’d have been with the California Angels at the time—Trader Jack McKeon of the Padres. Just a lot of old-school personalities. I basically kept my mouth shut and listened.”

  Alderson’s second season leading the Mets, 2012, in some ways represented a step backward. The team finished fourteen games under .500 and was clearly a long ways from contention, but there were glimmers of excitement, starting with the unlikely late-career ascension of knuckleballer R. A. Dickey, who finished the year 20-6 with a 2.73 ERA to win the Cy Young Award, all at age thirty-seven. It was a feel-good story that made Dickey a sentimental favorite of fans and writers. Dickey even published a book in early 2012—with Wayne Coffey—that was honest and funny, featuring a winning self-mocking sense of humor (“I spend seven years—seven!—as a member of the Triple-A Oklahoma City RedHawks, and some people in town are seriously suggesting I run for mayor”) as well as jarring revelations of Dickey’s abuse by a babysitter.

  The single most exciting highlight of the season was something no one could have seen coming. The Mets’ ailing ace, Johan Santana, took the mound at Citi Field against the St. Louis Cardinals and was unhittable. Given the green light from manager Terry Collins to pitch a complete game, even though it meant throwing 134 pitches, Santana tossed the first no-hitter in Mets history. He was aided by a great catch from left fielder Mike Baxter, who darted back to snare a hard-hit ball from Yadier Molina and then slammed into the wall at full speed and slumped to the ground. When Santana struck out David Freese on a 3-2 changeup for the final out of the game, and the no-no went in the books, the ovation from the crowd of 27,069 was among the giddier moments in Citi Field history. Santana was swarmed on the mound by his teammates, and the thrill he felt was contagious. “I don’t think I’ve ever even thrown a no-hitter in video games,” he said afterward.

  Another jolt of energy came from the debut of Matt Harvey, their first-round pick in 2010, whose raging self-confidence fell somewhere between joke and wonder. During spring training in 2012, Alderson told the Daily News, “Aside from Matt himself—and I love that he thinks this way—there is no one in the organization who feels he is ready to be in the major leagues.” Harvey’s confidence was an asset but also presented a risk: Take a player like that and put him in a position to fail, and the confidence can crumble in a hurry. That was why the Mets had been leery of having Harvey make his major-league debut in New York.

  “We put it off, we put it off, we put it off,” Alderson told me. “We waited and finally pitched him in Arizona because we didn’t want him making his debut at home with a big crowd and big expectations. Then of course he came out and was just dynamite that first game and went from there.”

  Harvey made his debut on July 26, 2012, and blew past Tom Seaver (nine) and Bill Denehy (nine) to finish with eleven strikeouts against the Diamondbacks, giving him the record for most Ks by a Mets pitcher in his first game. He hit 98 on the gun with his fastball and recorded his first victory, but lasted only 51/3 innings. He finished the season 3-5, but with a 2.73 ERA and seventy strikeouts in 591/3 innings, against twenty-six walks. Harvey was in some ways a work in progress, but in the critical area of electrifying the fans and getting them excited for the future, he’d already made huge strides.

  “I remember at the All-Star break we were sitting around discussing when would be the right time to bring him up,” Paul ­DePodesta recalls. “I remember saying to the room, ‘If we bring him up now, there are going to be some clunkers. There will be gems, but there will also be clunkers and he’ll learn more at the major-league level.’ As it happened, I was totally wrong. There were no clunkers.”

  Among the dizzying array of challenges looming for Alderson that offseason after 2012, two of the top priorities were signing the face of the franchise, David Wright, to a long-term deal and finding a way to keep Dickey, if at all possible. Dickey had one year left on his contract, and the Mets hoped to sign him to a new deal without having to overpay. Nevertheless, the first order of business was getting Wright signed to a long-term contract that would keep him happy and establish him as the cornerstone of the team’s rebuilding plans. Wright was not only a gifted all-around ballplayer, a two-time Gold Glove–winning third baseman and a hitter who anchored the Mets lineup, but he was also a capable team leader.

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sp; “He leads by example,” Alderson says. “He’s not somebody that talks a good game. He backs up his leadership with action. If somebody is going to get hit in the back for retaliation, he wants it to be him. He’s respectful of people across the board, he doesn’t go out of his way to be critical or intimidate people. And he’s got a personality that most are naturally drawn to.”

  Wright, the oldest of four boys and the son of a police captain, was impressed with the details he’d heard about Alderson as a Marine officer in Vietnam and found out for himself via Google. “I come from a military town in northern Virginia, so that was big for me,” Wright told me. “The structure, the organization, the leadership ability of the military is something I know firsthand being from that town. So I was excited. Then obviously I read Moneyball. I saw the movie.”

  Alderson needed time to get to know his franchise player, so he packed up his golf clubs in October 2012 and hopped a flight from Newark down to Norfolk International Airport, where Wright met him. They piled the clubs into the back of Wright’s big pickup for the quick nine-mile drive over Lake Smith Reservoir to Bayville, a private course in Virginia Beach where Wright belonged and played occasionally. “He wanted to come down and talk to me one-on-one, no agents, no ownership, no nothing, just me and him playing golf,” Wright told me.

  “It wasn’t that intensely competitive, it was quietly competitive,” Alderson says.

  “He plays ultracompetitive,” Wright told me.

  The course starts with a challenge right off the first tee: a water hazard. They both got off good drives and Wright was able to par the 429-yard par 4. “I was obviously very pumped about that,” he told me. “I’m not a very good golfer. I would say Sandy is a better golfer than me, but I probably played the best nine or ten holes I’ve played in a long time. You get two competitive guys out there. I could tell he wanted to win. I wanted to win. And I think it just brought the best out of me.”

  An empty golf course is a great place for wide-ranging conversation and they touched on many topics. Wright mentioned the big amphibious base only five miles to the south of where they were playing their round, and Alderson discussed his years in the military. Afterward they went for a bite to eat at a nearby fish place, Chick’s Oyster Bar. “Sandy, I have a love for this organization that runs deep,” Wright told Alderson inside. “I want to be here, but if I’m going to go all in and put my chips in, I want the same in return from you, I want you to go all in and give it to me straight. If you say that this is how it’s going to be and this rebuilding process is going to take longer than expected, then you know what? Maybe this plan is better without me.”

  That was exactly what Alderson wanted to hear. Yes, he believed deeply in the plan they had in place to build toward a team in 2014 that would have deadwood millions in salary off the books at long last. The Mets in 2013 would still be paying Johan Santana $31.5 million in salary and buyout, even though he wouldn’t pitch at all; $16 million to Jason Bay for having released him; and another $6.5 million to reliever Frank Francisco, who would be limited by injury to less than seven innings of work. Once they cleared that salary, they would have more options.

  Alderson was not going to tell Wright he thought the Mets had a realistic shot at going to the World Series in 2013, but he did believe they would be a playoff-caliber team by 2014. “We had Matt Harvey coming, Zack Wheeler was well known at the time,” Alderson says. “David knew what else we had on the team currently and some of what was coming in the system, so he had a pretty good handle on things. I think he just wanted to hear from me that I thought this could be done.”

  The plan to build for 2014 had a number of steps, starting with growing the roster of minor-league talent and developing those players to where they could either join the Mets and contribute or be packaged as attractive trade bait. This approach would take time and it would not allow for missteps or backsliding. “Whether or not you want to hear it, he’s not going to give you the BS version of what he thinks, he’s going to give it to you straight,” Wright told me. “That brutal honesty meant a lot to me. I’m in this thing for the long run. I’m all in. And when we do get to the point where we’re competing for the National League East and going to the playoffs, I want that to be a yearly occurrence, not just in my case a 2006, kind of done and then you take a step backward from there.”

  Ownership was fully behind signing Wright, but it took many calls back and forth between the Mets and Wright’s agents before details were worked out on an eight-year, $138 million contract extension, the largest contract in team history, which would make Wright a lifetime Met. It was a so-called team-friendly contract in many ways, with deferred salary and a middle-loaded structure. “Spending that kind of money almost never proves to be worthwhile in a pure performance sense, but if you factor in the brand value, particularly in light of what’s happened with the Mets over the last three of four years, it’s definitely the right move with the right player,” Alderson told me.

  He was not trying to make friends with Wright, or with any other players. He’d learned from experience that could be a bad idea. But they could still get along. “It’s the relationship I try to have with everybody, and this is true of players and staff as well, which I call friendly but professional,” Alderson told me. “I’m sure I got that from the Marine Corps.

  “The service is similar to baseball. There are so many different types of people you meet. I’ve met the president of the United States through baseball, but guys on the grounds crew can be just as interesting. If you’re not a player, you’re not really central to the story. I do believe, though, that the people around the players have value and I sort of identify with, you know, Steve Vucinich and Mickey Morabito.”

  For the hordes hanging out at the Gaylord Opryland, clotting up the walkways in search of rumor, the Wright signing was nothing like a blockbuster trade, but still a story worth running down: The press conference announcing Wright’s new contract was packed. Wright was asked if he could ever picture himself playing with a team other than the Mets. “No, no,” he said. “I made it very clear after Sandy visited me in Norfolk after a round of golf and sitting having a late lunch, that was the first step. After I heard the conviction, the plan moving forward, I was all in… . So to me there was no thought of ever putting another uniform on.”

  One characteristic of the Wright contract was that his salary for 2013 actually dropped, giving the team more payroll flexibility. The larger strategy was to aim toward 2014, but Alderson was also focused on the hard reality that the team was only going to improve long term by steadily showing tangible gains in competitiveness on the field. If they could be a winning team in 2013, it would accelerate their overall organizational progress. Wright’s deferment increased the chances that the Mets could also sign R. A. Dickey to a long-term deal.

  It was a challenging situation for the Mets. Dickey had just won the Cy Young, winning twenty games for a sub-.500 team, and better yet, he had one year left on his contract, at $5 million, which made him a relative bargain. “We have a very valuable one year left on his contract compared to what teams are paying for pitchers of his caliber, but having him for a year doesn’t really fit our timetable for strong competition,” Alderson told me in Nashville.

  “Sandy is paid to make the Mets better,” Dickey said that week on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. “If I can help him do that by being traded, then that’s what’s going to be done.”

  The Mets were not going to trade Dickey just to look like they were being active. Some teams distrusted knuckleballers and were leery of them. Plus, Dickey’s age had to make teams wonder about his continuing durability. If no team impressed them with an offer, they were ready to make a serious run at landing Dickey for at least two more years. The trick was to test the market without doing it in a way that shaped the market. Dickey could boost attendance, but only when he pitched—at best every fifth day. The Mets knew he was unlikely to repeat his 20-6 breakout season in 2013, but what loomed
larger in their calculations were 2014 and 2015. How would he fare in 2014 at age thirty-nine? Would he hold up at age forty in 2015? Dickey represented a tremendous amount of value for 2013, but that value would decline after that—and if the Mets were going to stick with their program, they needed to look for ways to add talent to the system.