New York Mets: Yoenis Cespedes situation and more with Mike Vaccaro

Level of Incompetence

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EWB: Now, how long have you been covering the Mets?

MV: On and off close to 20 years. I returned to New York for good in the summer of 1998 and that’s when I’ve been an insider. I covered them sporadically when I was working at the Middletown Record a couple of years before that.

About the last 20 years is when I can say that I have had a good understanding of the inner workings of the team and the clubhouse.

EWB: Has it ever been this incompetent?

MV: No. There have always been different levels of incompetence.

As a disclaimer, I wasn’t there in 1992-93 when most people say was the height of Mets’ dysfunction. But that was a different operation, more of a shared Doubleday/Wilpon operation.

That team was just a few years removed from a championship. I think they kind of given a little bit of latitude just because they had been so good so recently.

Now it’s a situation where yes they went to the World Series three years ago but it has been 32 years since they won a World Series. There is a whole lot less of a treasure chest of goodwill surrounding the team that might have been 30 years ago.

EWB: Do you think, like a lot of fans think, that Jeff (Wilpon) is pulling the strings?

MV: I definitely think Jeff meddles. I think that Jeff definitely has his opinions and I think that depending upon how secure you are in your job and your place in the baseball community if you work for the Mets tells you how much you are willing to give an independent voice.

I do think Sandy (Alderson) had some gravitas where I don’t think he was easily influenced by Jeff, although certainly he had to answer to Fred, Jeff and Saul Katz. So there’s that, but I don’t think he was ever told directly what to say or what to do.

Most of what Sandy did he thought was best for the team. Some of those things worked, a lot of those things didn’t. Other people in the organization didn’t have anywhere near that type of standing or gravitas and therefore I think when he deals with those people it becomes a bit dicier.