Matt Harvey was originally drafted by the Angels so Omar went with their scouting analysis. He knew which answer sheet to copy from which I give him credit for.

This is like asking, who had the better second term as President of the United States, Clinton or Obama?

In all fairness, Sandy has been cleaning up Omar's mess ever since he became GM. Still has $~45M on the books this year(Santana 25.5 and Bay 18.1) that are essentially useless which currently represent over 50% of the current committed payroll. As a GM Omar was a complete total disaster, he had been given all the money to sign anyone possible and he made mistake after mistake that handcuffed Sandy since he became GM. Remember, Castillo and Perez contracts that were still on the books the cost $18M per year or about 20% of the budget Sandy has been given. Now I'm not saying Sandy has done a great job either but from the looks of it we will be pleased with the results of the 2 big trades he has made. He has however made some mistakes but honestly none of them so bad that they have handcuffed the team and the operating budget like carrying the contracts of Bay and Santana. (And yes I expect nothing out of Santana and doubt he tosses more than 75 innings for that 25.5 M plus another $5.5 buyout, so in essence we will get 75 innings for $31M). I would like to see what Sandy can do with the extra $45M+ per year as that could turn into 3 or 4 very good players if spent wisely. And I personally believe Sandy is a much more intelligent GM than Omar.

"He also tried to always have a solid middle of the lineup, with Wright, Beltran, Delgado and he took more risks than Sandy, whose just playing money ball. "

Dear lord, I wish you people really understood things. The differences in their situations are light years apart, but sure, let's compare a guy who had ~150 million to spend every year to a guy who's been here 2+ years and the first thing he was ordered to do was cut payroll and shed contracts.

I think that's a fair way to look at it. Sandy hasn't even been able to really make his own team yet, he's still waiting out and trying to repair Omar's old team.

It's too soon to pass a verdict on Sandy, IMO, especially if you're accepting the notion that we're restructuring and gearing up for 2014 and beyond. All that aside, however, from a fans' standpoint Omar was far and away more amiable and outgoing. Failure or not, there was excitement every year to see what acquisitions the Mets would make, and he did manage to put competitive teams on the field. You got the sense he did want to appease the fans, whereas Sandy tows company line and the Wilponzie's agenda of watching every penny. It's a tough sell to ask fans to wait a few years before you see results, no less to get excited about signings like Cowgill, and you could argue that Omar's spend thrift ways (and Madoff) brought us to where we are now too, but I miss the Omar era purely from an excitement/star level. What's going on right now isn't much fun.

" and he did manage to put competitive teams on the field."
Yes, but then again I would hope even a mediocre GM would put a competitive team on the field when he's allowed to spend the most or nearly the most in the NL.

"You got the sense he did want to appease the fans, whereas Sandy tows company line and the Wilponzie's agenda of watching every penny."
Of course SA is following their agenda. So does every GM. No doubt Omar had more autonomy (and a heck of a lot more $$$), and signed some really bad contracts (some his fault, some not).

We don't KNOW yet what kind of GM Sandy is yet. Right now, in some ways he's like the GM of a small-market team, and would we ever declare such a GM a failure?

"but I miss the Omar era purely from an excitement/star level"
Me too, but if and when SA gets 140 million to play with, we'll be saying the same about him :)

Sandy will get $140 million to play with, it will just be over the course of two and a half seasons instead of one.

Its Omars moves that was atleast mostly responsible for putting us in the position we are in now.Omar pretty much gutted the minor league affiliations .Yes,he did put together A solid MLB team ,we did go to the playoffs in 2006 and prob couldve went more if they didnt spend the last month choking in a couple seasons.For that ,I wont name Sandy A better G.M than Omar.

Sandy did restock our farm,so far,Thats about all hes done.

The jurys still out on that question.Lets see what happens when he has the financial means to build A MLB team.Next year he will have that.Thats when that question can be answered.

"Me too, but if and when SA gets 140 million to play with, we'll be saying the same about him :)"

I'm not so sure of that. First off, he'll probably never sniff a $140mil budget with this team. Second, he strikes me as an extremely frugal GM who doesn't like to spend money regardless. The days of signing high priced/high profile players might be gone for good.

If SA was given every resource that Omar was given, SA would build us a WS contender.

A GM is only frugal when his owner is frugal. Why would a GM not spend money if it was easily available to him? Unless he is stockpiling his resources for use in another year there is no sense in doing that. If he get a portion of all the money saved that would be another story but they don't.

When he was the GM of the A's teams that went to the World Series three straight years they had one of the highest payrolls in baseball. It wasn't until new ownership came in and forced him to cut spending that he started to delve into the moneyball tactics. Essentially, he went cheap out of necessity, not desire.

~~~ True, but I have never heard Omar credited with discovering him. Who was the international scouting director during that time? ~~~

From what I've read in the past, Omar was the Asst. GM then, and while scouting in the Dominican Republic, he discovered Reyes. He had to convince then GM, Steve Phillips, into signing him as Phillips didn't want to because he was too small. As for Wright, I think he was already an established prospect when Phillips drafted him. He was drafted as a sandwich pick. I can't remember who the Mets lost to get that pick, but whoever it was... thank you.

David Wright was the supplemental pick we got for losing Mike Hampton

>>So you honestly can't see the difference between the situations they walked into? Omar walked into a situation with a blank checkbook. Sandy walked into a situation where he was forced to cut payroll. I get the feeling some of you are just willfully ignorant of reality.

There's world of difference between the situations. Omar got the blank checkbook and Sandy walked into a mess. Any GM that came in was going to have to cut payroll. The team hasn't generated enough income to pay the team's bills for the past three seasons. Seeing how the teams is not generating enough revenue, what's left to Sandy right now is cutting payroll to try and even things out. Sandy doesn't have a magic wand he could use to make this team a winner over night. the man walked into bad contracts, a farm system that in Omar's last year was ranked anywhere from 21st to 25th, depending which ranking you looked at, and few quality trade chips. He traded Pagan for a reliever that had been solid for three seasons. Sandy had no way of knowing that the guy was going to stink when he got to the Mets. You can only go by a player's track record.

And that's exactly what he was hired to do here: employ moneyball tactics and find untapped talent on a restricted budget. He's not getting an Omar level budget to work with on this team...ever. I'm not convinced that Sandy is of the mindset that if he had a huge budget he'd be out spending it anyway. He generally seems conservative in his approach and I still think he's carefully (stubbornly?) weighing production and return on investment vs. cost factor, perhaps to a fault. Time will tell.

I'm no great defender of Omar, but some of these claims are exaggerated. He inherited a team that won 66 games and finished last in 2004 with a $117 million payroll, the second highest in baseball at the time. They won 71 and finished fourth in 2004, 83 and finished third in 2005 and of course won 97 games and the division in 2006. That all happened with a lower payroll than the 2003 team had. He was also saddled with several bad players and contracts Mo Vaughn was his Jason Bay.

It all went off the rails after 2006 and that's when the big money bad contracts were given out. Up until then he had done a credible job.

Pedro and Beltran were big money contracts at the time so was Glavine if you remember. It is just that some contract are worse than others. After '06 he signed some bad contracts and some good ones that turned bad. All in all that is what, along with Madoff, put the team into the condition it was in after '09.

>> I'm no great defender of Omar, but some of these claims are exaggerated. He inherited a team that won 66 games and finished last in 2004 with a $117 million payroll, the second highest in baseball at the time. They won 71 and finished fourth in 2004, 83 and finished third in 2005 and of course won 97 games and the division in 2006. That all happened with a lower payroll than the 2003 team had. He was also saddled with several bad players and contracts Mo Vaughn was his Jason Bay.

Omar made some good decisions and did a decent job for the most part. He also helped in running this organization almost into the ground. It's just not bad contracts, but bad contract clauses he gave. To try to compare Omar and Sandy as GM right now is impossible. If it was an even playing field it would be one thing, but the situations are quite different.