New York Mets’ shortstop José Reyes steps up to bat for the Mets in an afternoon game. Reyes is a key component in the corruption that has plagued the Mets organization. Many of his domestic abuse allegations have been ignored by team executives (Courtesy of creative commons).
By the end of the night of July 31, the New York Mets had written the ultimate testament to their inescapable mediocrity.
Within the first inning of the game, the Mets gave up seven runs, replaced the starting pitcher Steven Matz and the first baseman Wilmer Flores simply walked off the field; nine innings later, the Mets lost 25-4. Their failure was recognized as the worst loss in Mets history on the cover of the New York Post the next day.
While the public may place this loss on the shoulders of the players, the real fault lies with two groups: the Wilpon family and Major League Baseball.
Many Mets fans recognize the Wilpons as corrupt. Their biggest claim to fame was being one of stockbroker Bernie Madoff’s biggest supporters before his Ponzi scheme blew up in 2009.
For the few years following the scandal, Fred Wilpon himself admitted that the Mets were “bleeding” $70 million annually in an interview with Sports Illustrated due to their misplaced trust in Madoff.
While the Mets’s exceptional 2015 season made up for much of their share of debt from the Madoff scandal, many fans believe the Wilpons are again leveraging their own financial interests against the team.
Specifically, two of the highest paid players on the team—2015 postseason star Yoenis Cespedes and team captain David Wright—have been dealing with chronic injuries. Cespedes and Wright also happen to have two of the best insurance deals on the team; upon long term injury, the Mets can recoup as much as three quarters of the players’ salary.
Despite the possibility of receiving that money, the Wilpons said that they would not put that money back into the team, according to MLB.com reporter Anthony DiComo.
With the absence of Cespedes and Wright, the Mets not only lose their star talent, but also the millions that the Wilpons won’t put back in the team.
These flaws are all financial. The Wilpon’s moral character, however, is even less pronounced than their financial management.
Jeff Wilpon entered the limelight after he allegedly harassed one of the only female Mets executives because she was pregnant but unmarried. When she complained to human resources, the Mets allegedly terminated her employment, according to The New York Times.
José Reyes also represents the team’s moral character poorly. Reyes was a Mets star throughout the mid-2000s. In 2015, however, he was arrested for allegedly choking his wife and shoving her through a sliding glass door, according to The Denver Post.
Three years later, he is a known domestic abuser and a has-been on top of that. Yet Reyes has played in almost a third of this season’s games. Given the Wilpons’ friendly relationship with Reyes, it has become almost conventional wisdom that they have pushed the day-to-day management to keep Reyes on the roster over younger and less morally tainted talent.
The Wilpons have total control over the Mets, but there is one group that could and should step in: Major League Baseball.
The league is led by its uber-rich and well-connected owners, ostensibly hamstringing the MLB’s ability to act as a regulator of bad owner behavior. Yet there is recent precedent for an intervention from the league.
The Los Angeles Dodgers have consistently been recognized as playoff contenders the past few years, but in 2009 and 2010, they were in a chaos the Mets would recognize.
Owner Frank McCourt had very public feuds with the team’s CEO—his wife Jamie McCourt—that ended in a messy divorce. His tenure was marked with huge debts and a relatively mediocre team.
The conflict and chaos caused MLB commissioner Bud Selig to step up and put the team in the control of the MLB while they figured out how to transfer ownership, according to ESPN. Every year since the Dodgers stabilized, they have earned a spot in the playoffs.
Around the same time of the Dodgers’s drama, the league enabled the Wilpon malfeasance—they were also managing massive debt—by granting them a $25 million loan, according to The New York Times.
With that precedent and the Wilpon’s growing notoriety in the league, Commissioner Robert Manfred could take similar proactive steps to allow the Mets to escape their mismanagement and mixed morality.
If freed, the Mets could easily become contenders. Jacob DeGrom is undeniably among the best pitchers in baseball right now with an ERA of 1.68 and the Mets pitching rotation is rounded out by Zack Wheeler and Noah Syndergaard.
While the offense has not been as exemplary, young talent like Jeff McNeil, Brandon Nimmo and Amed Rosario could excel with the right management.
Whatever the future holds for the Mets, the MLB should recognize that the Wilpons’ influence is toxic and help the team in any way possible.