In a city filled with horrendous ownership, the New York Mets are in a class by themselves.
In practically any other city, the Knicks and Jets ownership groups would be the worst in that metropolis by a long shot. Plenty could be said about James Dolan and how he turned the Knicks into a laughingstock of a franchise. Likewise, Woody Johnson and Chris Johnson have been unable to do anything right when it comes to the Jets. Fortunately for both, the New York Mets also call the area home.
Let’s just take a look at Monday. The Mets were fresh off of a sweep at the hands of the Miami Marlins, a team so inept that they draw comparisons to the 1899 Cleveland Spiders and the 2003 Detroit Tigers. To make matters worse, the Mets were shut out in the final two games.
That led to the staged scene where general manager Brodie Van Wagenen had to come out and give a vote of confidence to manager Mickey Callaway. You know, a manager that he did not pick himself when he left the agent’s office to run the Mets. If anything, that thoroughly noncommittal vote of “confidence” made Callaway’s seat hotter.
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On the same day, injured outfielder Yoenis Cespedes broke his ankle in multiple places. He was already on the Injured List due to surgeries on both of his heels, and was likely to miss most, if not all, of the 2019 season. An unfortunate meeting with a hole on his ranch led to this latest injury, which may end his 2019 campaign before it began.
Yes, there is a degree of bad luck with that injury. And there is a degree of bad luck in the Mets vaunted rotation being unable to produce the results needed to take advantage of what has been a somewhat disappointing NL East. The Phillies and Braves are starting to heat up, which magnifies these uncharacteristic slow starts.
But luck is what one makes of it. Seemingly since the 2015 World Series, the Mets have been plagued by bad luck. In some way, this all comes back to the Wilpon’s.
After all, this is the ownership group that fell prey to the Bernie Madoff pyramid scheme. They received a gift in regards to insurance covering the vast majority of David Wright‘s contract, but refuse to reinvest that money. Van Wagenen was given the green light to overhaul the roster, but not enough to build up sufficient depth.
In a way, that is not a surprise. The Wilpon’s seem to want to do just enough to appear that they are looking to contend and sell tickets, but they refuse to open the vaults enough to really do enough. that desire to put fans in the stands may well lead to the eventual appearance of Tim Tebow at the major league level, even if he has not done enough to warrant such a promotion.
The Mets dedication to chaos and disorganization hearkens back to another New York team – the Yankees during their Bronx Zoo days. At least George Steinbrenner would do anything he could to try to purchase a winner, that dischord and continued insanity all with the end goal of bringing the World Series to New York year after year. However, the Mets are just a circus for the sake of being a circus, a team that is incapable of getting out of its own way due to the ineptitude of ownership.
The New York Mets are that car accident that no one wants to watch, but they cannot turn away from. As long as that means more people buying tickets, ownership does not care.