DePodesta's Baseball Reform

This is a presentation that Paul DePodesta gave in 2003 called The Genesis, Implementation, and Management of New Systems. It is an awesome read about his time in Cleveland and Oakland and should be interesting for all Mets fans to see how their new head of Player Development and Amateur Scouting thinks. So give it the proper 15 minutes it takes to read.

Thanks to Dave Studeman at The Hardball Times for finding this.

Front Office Dream

Gone, is the creepshow that was Omar Minaya. Gone, is his "I'm a baseball guy, so I know more than you" nonsense. Gone, is his guesswork.

In, is some brains with a plan. In, are some guys who HAVE tools, not guys who ARE tools. In, is a modern, intelligent approach to baseball.

Watching the Mets bring in Alderson, Ricciardi, and DePodesta is like a dream come true. These are the guys that changed the way everyone looked at baseball just 10 years ago. They found a cheap way to build a first-place team. Hopefully, they can keep evolving and find a new way to do it, again.

To me, the structure of the front office looks like this.... Alderson is the GM, the CEO, the owner (hell, the Wilpons probably should just hand over the team to him), while Ricciardi and DePodesta are the assistants that actually do all the work. They'll choose the players, come up with trades and run the system. Alderson will smoothly pull off the transactions. It's all in place.

However, my fear is this.... the Mets are 10 years too late. These guys had their run. They had their glory. They took advantage of a broken system. Everyone caught on and they've lost their edge. Once the rest of the league figured out what they were doing, they followed their path. Ricciardi and DePodesta both failed as GMs, and maybe this was the reason. Everyone is playing their game.

Still, this has to be exciting for us Mets fans. Proven winners have been inserted while a proven jackass is gone.