Sandy Alderson (Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post)
Sandy Alderson said yesterday that the Wilpons’ messy entanglement with Bernie Madoff would not have an impact on how the Mets GM does his job going forward, but he said the team plans to lower payroll in the future.
“Our payroll going into the season will be somewhere between $140 million and $150 million,” Alderson said on a conference call yesterday. “I think that is significantly higher than we’d like to be on an annual basis. That’s a product of adding some additional players that we felt the roster needed as well as some existing [contracts]. The plan and the approach that I’ve taken over the last two months has not been affected at all by any other outside factors.”
Alderson refused to put a number on what he would like future Mets payrolls to be.
“At this point is there a specific number? No,” Alderson said. “Whether that means we drop back in future years to some extent, I don’t know. But we will continue to expend money at very high levels and I think be among the highest payrolls in baseball.”
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is expected to meet with the Mets owners today to discuss their financial situation. The Wilpons also are planning to meet with Martin Luther King III’s group later in the week about their interest in purchasing part of the team.
But according to Alderson, his plan for the roster — and how many dollars the team decides to spend in 2012 and beyond — will not be dictated by last week’s news that the Wilpons are looking to sell 20-25 percent of the franchise.
“I want to emphasize that the plan that we have pursued the last couple of months was limited by only one fact, and that was the level of the existing payroll,” Alderson said.
Alderson said he knew to a degree how much the Wilpons’ finances had been hurt by Madoff’s Ponzi scheme when he was hired but not the full extent. Still, he said he is not overly concerned with how he’s going to do business going forward.
“When I interviewed and took this position, I was of course aware of the pre-existing involvement of the Wilpons and the Mets with Bernie Madoff,” Alderson said. “I wasn’t privy to all of the details, nor am I or most of us, at this point, privy to all that detail. And I wouldn’t expect to be.
“At the same time, none of that has affected what I have done over the last two months. I don’t expect that it will have any impact on what I do over the next several months, including into the 2012 offseason.”
That includes talks with shortstop Jose Reyes, who will be a free agent after the season.
“Again, perhaps naively, I don’t expect that this situation will be a hindrance in that regard,” Alderson said.
He said he still would have taken the job even if he were aware of how deep the Wilpons’ financial woes were, adding that the possibility of a partial sale was not talked about before he became GM.
“The short answer is it wasn’t really discussed,” Alderson said. “I didn’t raise it. … I’m not surprised by this development just because the Madoff situation was a backdrop to the Mets and a well-known backdrop.
“My enthusiasm and energy for this position and my confidence in the future of the Mets is undiminished. … You are right to say some circumstances have changed. Would it have changed my position? I don’t think so.”
Just don’t expect the Mets’ payroll to enter the same ballpark as the Yankees’.
“We have never stated, before or after my arrival, as far as I know, that our goal was to achieve payroll parity with the Yankees,” Alderson said. “We certainly don’t have that goal now. I don’t know that I have to justify the differential. But I will say this: To the extent eventually that our product can outperform expectations and our attendance goes back to more traditional levels, or higher levels, that gives us that much more flexibility.”