Mea culpa. Minaya obviously has not accepted a position with the Mets, and confirmed today that he would not. My information was inaccurate. Sorry about that.
Folks, I’m happy to announce that Jason was so impressed with the short I wrote (“The Analysts” available now for your free viewing pleasure in the sub-500k versions) that he has given it his full endorsement. I don’t know what more encouragement you need.
The New York Times is reporting that Minaya’s staying put, so I’m not sure what’s happening for sure. I mean jeez, it’s not like the Paper of Record is ever wrong, or anything.
Seriously though, I don’t know what’s up.
Here’s something to think about though: one of the points currently raised by almost all of Minaya’s proponents is that you can’t evaluate him fairly because of the constraints placed on him in Montreal. Let’s take that as true for a second, and further, pretend we can’t say anything about his previous record with the Mets, which was undistinguished.
Say Jason and I went to an electronics store. I’m looking to buy a new DVD player.
“Hey, Jason,” I say, “I have found five DVD players that look like they’re good candidates, and are all priced within my budget.”
“Great,” Jason says, “let us discuss which of these five DVD players, which I agree are all good, would be an ideal DVD player for your needs.”
“No, no,” I reply. “I have decided to buy this sixth DVD player, which is over here.”
“It’s not hooked up,” Jason protests. “There’s no feature list. We don’t know anything about this one.”
“You can’t hold that against it. It’s clearly the best DVD player available to us.”
“You can’t play any DVDs on it, because it’s not hooked up.”
“Again, it’s unfair to this player to penalize it for the situation it’s in. I’m going to buy it.”
“You have excellent information on the five good players — you’re sure they’re all going to be great choices, it’s just a matter of figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of each one. This unknown one could be terrible.”
“Could be excellent, too, full of strengths, and no weaknesses. I imagine it transforms into a robot when not in use and guards your house.”
“Why would you believe that? That’s entirely unreasonable.”
“How do you know that?”
If you believe that it’s unfair to evaluate Minaya on the basis of his time with the Expos, and you’re wrong to think so, you should still recognize that not knowing enough about Minaya does not make him a better candidate than the others.
It’s like drafting players, to start another analogy: should you spend your first round draft pick on someone you’ve spent time scouting and discussing, or should you use it on someone you weren’t able to get any scouts out to, you can’t get stats on, or even see video of, because there’s some moderate buzz around them? Of course not.
This Minaya cheerleading demonstrates the natural human desire to look at the unknown and use imagination, and has no relation to Minaya’s actual demonstrated abilities.