Mets owner Fred Wilpon spoke to reporters yesterday at spring training in Port St. Lucie. Here is the transcript of the interview:
Q: What’s your outlook for the season?
A: You always want to feel good and optimistic. I think what Terry [Collins] and Sandy [Alderson] have said is we are going to surprise a lot of people. I think we have very good players. I think that some of them didn’t perform the way they would have liked last year, and I think they have something to prove. Listen, I’ve been around 33 years and I know it’s hard to tell in spring training. But we’re very optimistic. We’re very optimistic that this team will be far better than you all have reported.
Q: How are your finances?
A: I’m OK — I’ve got fives (showing reporters a roll of $5 bills). We’re OK. I can’t talk about the [Bernie Madoff clawback] lawsuit. But that’s proceeding as you all have been reading. And we’re proceeding with bringing in partners. We have seven partners, in terms of groups. We have seven whose money is in escrow because they’ve been through Major League Baseball. We have two that are ready to almost finalize in Major League Baseball and a couple of others that are in the process. It’s a real process. If you have three, four people in your group, everybody is vetted. They’re all in there. And we hope to be able to close that out shortly.
Q: Will you have more minority shareholders there than you originally planned?
A: If nothing falls out right now, we have more than 10. But you never know — we probably would consider selling 12, because we bought the first two.
Q: How many have no ties to the Mets or your family that are just external buyers who wanted to get into baseball?
A: For example, there are people, friends of ours. There are groups — a couple of them, we don’t know at all. The SNY group, don’t forget they have an interest on both sides, so that was a natural kind of thing.
Q: Four shares for SNY? Is that accurate?
A: For SNY? Yes.
Q: You cut payroll dramatically. Should Mets fans be concerned about the future and viability of you owning this franchise?
A: They shouldn’t be concerned about us owning the franchise, because we intend to own the franchise for a very long time. Whether they’re happy about that right now or not, I don’t know. Don’t forget, we cut a lot of payroll that wasn’t producing. If you look at the payroll now, it’s fluid. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what Sandy [Alderson] is going to do. Many of the people that weren’t producing are not here now. We didn’t make many major moves that Sandy and Terry [Collins] wanted to make, but we’re pretty satisfied with some of the people that were coming back from injury. We’re pretty satisfied with some of the people whose career years were not great last year and they weren’t satisfied. They think they have a pretty good team. So do I.
Q: There’s been a lot of talk about David Wright’s future. Is your intention to try to lock him up and keep him here for good?
A: My intention is always to follow the baseball people. In spite of what [the media] used to say that [ownership was] running the baseball department, Sandy Alderson has a great feel for this, and so does Terry. If it works out, I would be thrilled. I think there’s no finer guy. [Wright] is just a very fine young man. Any of us who are old enough to have him as a son would be proud to have him as a son.
Q: When will you get payroll back to where it was a few years ago and spend for big free agents?
A: Well, that’s Sandy view. Sandy was the architect when he came in saying, ‘I want to do some things, I want to have some flexibility and I want to have flexibility in the four or five areas that you can have flexibility in.’ That’s what he’s doing. I don’t know whether there’s someone out there that he might want. I don’t remember a time that we’ve turned down when the general manager and the manager wanted certain people. Look at our history — for a long period of time, some of it wasn’t well-invested. And you criticized us for that, rightfully. So now you have a right to say, ‘OK, you’d like seven more stars here.’ But if some of these guys become stars then …
Q: Isn’t Sandy acting within your parameters, though? Wouldn’t he have treated Jose Reyes different or pursued higher-end free agents if the payroll was set higher?
A: We certainly act in certain broad parameters, but the parameters always change. I’m not sure of this, but I think Sandy made an offer of around $100 million that Jose could have earned if healthy. But Jose did what was best for Jose. He is a very nice young man and a very good player and we wish him well. I think we’ve got a very nice young player [Ruben Tejada] who will play shortstop this year.
Q: The contract Reyes got from Miami, was that more or less a baseball decision as opposed to having anything to do with team finances?
A: It was clearly a baseball decision. Are we a little leery of six-year, seven-year, eight-year contracts? Yes. Is Sandy leery of it? I’m big-time leery of it. Others have done it. I don’t want to criticize anybody else who’s done something differently. We did different also, and we got burned. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some player in the future that we think we would do something with longer term, but the history has not been very good.
Q: Is selling this team in your vocabulary?
A: As long as I can, I plan to be the owner here.
Q: Twelve shares is the max, because 12 at 4 percent each keeps the collective minority investment at less than 50 percent?
A: It’s correct arithmetic, but it’s really not correct because you can find a lot of ownership where someone might own 20 percent and yet they are the control person.
Q: So you don’t have to keep 50.1 percent?
A: You don’t have to, but I doubt whether we would sell significantly more. That’s not the plan right now.”
Q: How long before you become big players in free agency again and make trades for top-echelon players? Will fans have to be patient?
A: It’s a combination. When you say financial things, when I said three years ago that the Mets weren’t affected by the Madoff thing, I was telling the truth — I know you don’t want to hear it — because we weren’t sued then. This was prior to the suit. Then did it affect it? Sure. I would tell you, ‘Let’s see how this team plays. Let’s see what we need.’ I can tell you that my view of what I see in winning teams is that they have a core of winning players. That core usually comes from the minor league system, and then they fill in. May he rest in peace, Gary Carter came at the end of 1984. Gary was, I don’t mean a fill-in, he was a great player, but they were ready for that kind of great player to play around the core that was in place. You look around, Sandy tells me about the number of calls he got on our right fielder [Lucas Duda], the number of calls he got on the injured first baseman [Ike Davis]. The number of calls he got on some of these young guys was very significant this winter.
Q: There’s a waiting period for this next generation?
A: They’ve had some experience now. We can be talking six months from now or three months from now at the All-Star break and say this core looks like it matured. [Alderson] may then want to do something then.
Q: You said you weren’t affected by Madoff thing originally. As you stand here, now how much have you been affected?
A: That’s been a motion picture. When it started, there was a really big number out there. Now it’s down — I’m not minimizing it — but it’s down to a different number. So I think the next couple of weeks will tell. Whether there’s a trial or no trial, we’ll see. I think that things are going to become a lot more clear in the next [few] months.
Q: What is your message to Mets fans?
A: My message would be the same message I said to you: I actually believe we have a better team; I think the professionals think we have a far better team, than what you all feel. I would tell [fans] to feel good about it. One of the questions is: When do you get back? We’ve got to win the fans back. Strike that, we’ve got to win the fans and customers back. They love coming to Citi Field, but we have a diminished population coming to Citi Field. We need that revenue. We just can’t do it on air. We need that revenue to support us, and the only way we’re going to get that revenue is if we have a competitive, interesting team on the field. Otherwise, they’re not going to come just because they love Citi Field. So we’re hoping to do that. And we’re hoping that trend starts the other direction this year.”
Q: Is it hard for you to sit and talk about a team that could contend as opposed to a team that should dominate the division?
A: I’ve stood here many times when you guys said, ‘Well, how soon are you going to win the division? Who are you going to kill in the World Series? I’ve been through that.’ I’ve been through the early-’80s, when we had no one, to all of a sudden 1983, was it when we started to have someone? And then ’84 and ’85, and the core developed. Sure, I would love to stand here and say we have All-Stars at every position. By the way, you can have All-Stars at every position and you know damn well that doesn’t mean you win.
Q: Could the result of the court proceeding have any impact on Wright’s future?
A: No. They are not tied in.
Q: For clarity, when you said as many as 12 shares, you mentioned two that your family purchased — Jeff and Saul. Is that included in the 12?
A: The family bought the two to begin with to start the process, and then we said we would sell 10.
Q: So it could be as many as 12 including the two family members?
A: Up to 10 more.
Q: How much has the payroll been affected by Madoff? Would Reyes still be here?
A: I’ve said, no, because I don’t think Sandy would have made the kind of arrangement that he was able to make elsewhere. I think Sandy offered $100 million if he stayed on the field and that he could earn. The amount of time was less time than he got elsewhere, so that was Sandy’s decision — absolutely Sandy’s decision.
Q: Wasn’t it your decision to cut the payroll? You said in the magazine piece last year it was likely going to be $100 million.
A: Remember we had payroll that wasn’t even on the field, and some of it on the field wasn’t very productive. We knew we weren’t going to keep certain of that payroll.
Q: You could have brought people in to raise the payroll to the $140 million, or even to $120 million.
A: But your correlation is higher payroll, better team in every single case. I’m not sure that it’s proven to be the case. The Mets have had the highest payroll, within the top five, for numbers of years, and we weren’t successful.
Q: Was the amount of spending affected by Madoff?
A: No, because it was affected by the revenues we got. It was affected by the operations of the team and what the team was doing. Don’t forget, it’s been a motion picture. There was a point when the suit was almost three times what it is now. It seems to be — hopefully — going in the right direction. It has some effect, but that was not the deciding factor.
Q: The 2013 All-Star Game at Citi Field has not been announced yet. Can that be announced before you pay off the $25 million loan to MLB?
A: The loan has nothing to do with it. I think that the hold-up in the announcement is conditions have changed for New York City and their finances and what they can do. But we’re very optimistic we will have the All-Star Game in 2013.
Q: Once the minority ownership shares close you’ll repay the loan from MLB?
A: Yes. None of the money that’s coming in is going out. All of the money that’s going in is staying in the club.
Q: Close soon and favorable in next several weeks?
A: I don’t want to comment. I’m always optimistic. But I don’t want to comment about what’s happening now in the courts.
Q: What will it allow you to do in practical terms when you get the minority investors closed?
A: It will be better for the organization because we’ll pay off a lot of debt. We’ll reduce the first mortgage on the team debt, and we will have additional ready cash to run our team.