{"id":4,"date":"2005-02-28T17:52:51","date_gmt":"2005-02-28T21:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2005\/02\/28\/omar-minayas-plan-for-los-mets\/"},"modified":"2005-02-28T17:52:51","modified_gmt":"2005-02-28T21:52:51","slug":"omar-minayas-plan-for-los-mets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/2005\/02\/28\/omar-minayas-plan-for-los-mets\/","title":{"rendered":"Omar Minaya’s Plan for “Los Mets”"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

The cover story<\/a>
\nof this week’s New York magazine, written by Chris Smith, focuses on
\nthe offseason of the New York Mets, and in particular, on the changes
\nthat general manager Omar Minaya is bringing to the club, as evidenced
\nby the high profile signings of Pedro Martinez and Carlos
\nBeltran.  I was particularly struck by Minaya’s team-building
\nstrategy:<\/p>\n

“More intriguing, though, is that
\nMinaya envisions a new model for
\nbuilding a team that’s neither purely intuitive nor coldly rooted in
\non-base-percentage calculations. The Mets will still draft dozens of
\nplayers, but they’ll increasingly deploy Minaya as a recruiter, almost
\nin the mold of a college coach, particularly in Latin America. There,
\nthe amateur players aren’t subject to the major-league draft, so teams
\nwith big money and connections have a sizable advantage.  This
\nwinter is a vivid example of how the approach can pay off at the
\nbottom and top of the ladder: Minaya’s signing of Martinez attracted
\nthat 16-year-old Dominican shortstop who showed up at the Mets Academy
\nbecause Pedro now wore blue and orange. And it also gave the Mets
\ncredibility with Carlos Beltran.”\n<\/div>\n

\nIt will be very itnteresting to see how this plays out over time, in a
\nnumber of ways.  Certainly it is a contrast to the Moneyball
\nphilosophy that just brought the Red Sox their first World Series title
\nin a long time.   But another angle is that if “Los Mets” can
\nindeed begin to create a buzz in Latin America that
\nthey are “the team” where Latinos can feel most comfortable, this will
\ngive Arte Moreno, the owner of the Anaheim Angels, a run for his
\nmoney.  Since Moreno had purchased the Angels there has been a lot
\nof speculation that he was capitalizing on his own cache as a Latino
\nowner to attract high-priced Latino stars like Vladimir Guerrero.<\/p>\n

Besides giving lessons in how to get deals done in the DR and Puerto
\nRico, hopeully these clubs will go one step further, and use their
\nLatino stars not only as recruiting tools, but also as positive role
\nmodels for up-and-coming players like the 16-year-old that Smith
\ndescribes in his article.  Right now, the 16-year-olds might show
\nup in droves for the chance to make Pedro Martinez-type money. 
\nBut it would help even more if collectively, the Martinezes and the
\nBeltrans, with the overt assistance of their teams, could show the kids
\nfollowing in their footsteps that it is important to be a good citizen
\ntoo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cover story of this week’s New York magazine, written by Chris Smith, focuses on the offseason of the New York Mets, and in particular, on the changes that general manager Omar Minaya is bringing to the club, as evidenced by the high profile signings of Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran.  I was particularly struck […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/kirkman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}