Major League Baseball: New York Mets to Have a New General Manager
New York Mets have hired Sandy Alderson as their new General Manager amid a severe need to rebuild their franchise which had been devastated after they could not perform well in the last season. Moreover, there were issues about dwindling attendance accompanied
by personal issues of the players consistently taking place on and off the field.
Alderson has been perhaps the best choice Mets could ever make. The guy is an Ivy League-educated ex-Marine; he has proved his potential by unleashing the talent of championship teams with the Oakland athletics and by laying the groundwork foundations for
San Diego Padres to emerge as a strong contender for the season. He has also worked as a top executive for Major league Baseball. The guy has been handed over the duty to reform and rebuild a team which has been missing four straight seasons despite of having
the top payrolls of the sport, reaching to 134 million dollars this year.
“Alderson, the 62-years old new General Manager will be formally introduced to the media personnel in a news conference which is expected to be held soon at Citi Field” told the Mets’ spokesperson in a statement. The announcement was aired on an
off-day as the World Series session was going on. This was to avoid any possible conflict with the baseball’s Championship round.
Prior to hiring the new General Manager, the Mets had fired Omar Minaya, the then GM, and the manager Jerry Manuel last month after the team had finished the season with 79-83. After taking the charge, the first task before Alderson would be to find the
suitable replacement for the ex-manager Manuel. According to the reports, he can consider Wally Backman, the former Mets player and the current manager of its Class A farm Club, as the potential guy for the position. Other choices include Chip Hale, the major
league team’s third-base coach and Mr. Bob Melvin, who has been managing the Seattle Mariners and Arizona Diamondbacks.
Alderson had successfully built an athletic team back in 1980, which won American League Pennants for three times and World Series in 1989. He is also considered the pioneer for using the statistics to identify the players which were rather undervalued.
The guy has also had the privilege to hold the league office jobs. It started when he left the A’s and became the vice president of baseball operations. He held the position from 1998 to 2005. After that, he spent around four years as the chief executive
officer of Padres where from he stepped down the position in 2009.
Padres, despite of second lowest payroll of $38 million a year depicted perhaps the best performance ever when it finished second behind the San Francisco Giants at this Year’s National League. Padres have also been leading the division for most part of
the season.
Alderson, who happened to be the alumnus of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, has been working till recently with the Major League Baseball for eradicating the corruption of sport’s feeder programmes in the Dominican Republic.
The ownership of the Mets picked Alderson over the Josh Bymes, the former General Manager for the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Mets have been probably through their worst era for past few seasons. Their top players like Carlos Beltran and Johan Santana got
injured, there had been numerous legal problems to tackle with and there had been consistently empty seats at the two years’ old Citi Field. This season the attendance went further down, making things further messy for the organizers.
Mets have been trying to reach the postseason in 9 of the last ten years; on the contrary their close rivals New York Yankees have made the playoffs for 15 times out of the 16 seasons. While they also managed to win 5 world title series held in Spain. Talking
to the media, when Minaya was being fired, instead of protesting upon the decision, he was of the view that a change was needed, and perhaps he was the one where from the whole change process had to be initiated.
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