Views from the Promenade

According to a report by ESPN, the Wilpon family may not have been such a big victim in the Bernie Madoff scheme afterall. While the Mets Limited Partnership did put $522.8 million into Madoff accounts, they actually managed to withdraw $570.6 million — for an overall profit of nearly $48 million.

I had started to suspect this might be the case weeks ago, when 60 Minutes ran a piece about many investors who did the same thing. In many of these cases, the “winners” were sued to give back their profits to go into a general fund meant to compensate the real victims who had lost their original savings. While this hasn’t happened to the Mets yet, it’s quite possible it will at some point in the future, especially when talking about such a large amount of money.

So it seems like the stories about the Wilpons being ruined by the Madoff scandal may have been completely bogus; rather than losing a ton of money, they managed to turn a profit (inadvertently) at the expense of other investors. Of course, they still have over $500 million less than they thought they did, but it’s hard to feel too bad for a group that ended up ahead of the game in the end. Considering that the money they lost was sitting in an investment fund and almost certainly would never have been used for payroll or other Mets business expenses anyway, it’s quite possible that the Wilpons have been telling us the truth, and that it will have no impact at all on how the Mets are run going forward.

It’s finally over. Take a nice, deep breath, and realize we have six months to relax, recover, and prepare for a better 2010.

Ahh, that felt good, didn’t it?

The Mets actually finished up 2009 on a positive note, sweeping the Astros at home. On the season’s final day, Nelson Figueroa threw his first career complete game shut out to bring the Mets final record to 70-92. That’s the worst record a Mets team has posted since 2003, but I think a better comparison is the 1993 season in which the Mets went 59-103. While this team wasn’t nearly as bad in the end, the level of disappointment felt by the fans and the franchise was similar to the cloud hanging over the franchise again this year.

The Mets have said all the right things about 2010. Ownership is on record saying they’ll spend enough money to keep the team payroll among the league leaders (discounting the Yankees, of course) and that Omar Minaya will have the resources he needs to improve the team where they need help. Season ticket holders will be receiving discounts next year (about 10% on average), and Fred Wilpon and other front office officials insist that revenue is not an issue.

On a related note, many fans are likely to be disappointed in the fact that Minaya and Jerry Manuel will be returning to lead the team again next season. I can’t say I’m thrilled about it either, but I completely understand the decision; much of what went wrong this season clearly had nothing to do with anything either of them has done, so it was hard to properly evaluate them based on this body of work. The Mets are making some cosmetic changes to the coaching staff, but all the major players will be back, including Howard Johnson and Dan Warthen. The biggest dismissal was probably bench coach Sandy Alomar; much to the delight of Mets fans, Razor Shines will be reassigned and will no longer serve as the third base coach (though he’ll still have a role on the coaching staff).

It’s time to put away this miserable season and start looking towards next year. While there’s not much more to say about 2009, I’ll be posting a couple times a week throughout the off-season to discuss what the makeup of the 2010 team appears to be, plus updates on what the Mets do — or plan to do — to build a winning team in 2010. It should be an action-packed offseason, and while it might sound foolish to say this as a Mets fan, I’m feeling very hopeful for next season.