"Omar comes to me and says Cleveland is offering us Colon. What do you think? What do I think!" Siegle hollers. "Gotta get him. But then Omar tells me what they want. They want our best kid player, Brandon Phillips, and two other good players. I say, 'Naw, we can't do that.' And Omar looks at me, and he says, 'We're doing it." What Minaya was confronting is the push-pull between short- and long-term decision making that every executive faces; investing in a young prospect is like putting a ton of money into R&D behind a promising new drug or new product. It looks great on paper, but one day you discover the shortstop can't hit or the drug doesn't suppress the gene after all. Minaya chose to seize the moment.
"Omar is comfortable talking to the President of the United States," says Sandy Johnson, "and he's comfortable with a street vendor in the Bronx."
The key to the deal was convincing Cleveland to take on the contract of aging first baseman Lee Stevens. Eager to get their hands on Phillips, a can't-miss prospect at shortstop, the Indians agreed to take Stevens and his big salary. As a result, Minaya not only came away with one of the best starting pitchers in baseball, he also managed to do it without adding to his payroll. Not bad for someone with no administrative experience.
Ultimately, even with Colon, the Expos were outmanned by the Braves. But that takes nothing away from Minaya's accomplishment: Despite a team payroll of just $39 million, the Expos finished in second place with a winning record (the 2002 Braves had a payroll of $93 million; the last-place Mets, $95 million). "Omar's been put to the test," says Tal Smith, a former GM who's now president of the Houston Astros. "It was a great educational process for him: franchise in distress, 29 owners, an uncertain future, a lot of last-minute decisions. That's a lot for anybody to go up against. In the end, he showed he had very fine executive and administrative skills. He'll be a success with a big-market team someday, watch and see."
The 2002 season ended with the expos playing well, leaving reason to believe that the team might contend again in 2003. Better yet, Major League Baseball, as part of a new labor agreement that averted a strike last season, committed itself to keeping the Expos alive and actively looking for real ownership. But then Selig delivered another body blow: Montreal, he announced, would have to cut millions from its payroll for 2003. Arguably, Minaya had done too good of a job with the Expos; the other 29 owners weren't going to subsidize a contender -- one of the dangers of being owned by your competitors.
Suddenly, all that Minaya had built was at risk. Once again, though, he was determined to find a solution. He looked at the situation the way McKinsey might advise a company faced with the sudden need to raise cash. He knew he did not want to trade his young nucleus of talent. To do so would produce only a small financial gain -- and at a huge cost to the team's prospects for 2003 and beyond. Instead, he elected to give up the very same pitcher, Bartolo Colon, who'd been his crowning achievement. It was a cool and rational decision; not all business leaders can separate their egos from their decisions -- and divest themselves of acquisitions that don't make sense anymore.
In the past, you could easily trade a No. 1 starter like Colon for a top prospect -- someone like, well, Brandon Phillips. But the market had shifted. Minaya's solution: Play the Boston Red Sox off against their archrival New York Yankees (not unlike getting Microsoft and Oracle interested in the same acquisition). Both teams had deep pockets. Though it took months, Minaya eventually made Colon part of a three-team trade that included the Yankees. The Chicago White Sox got Colon, and the Expos got three players, including the ageless Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, much of whose salary will continue to be paid by the Yankees. In the end, Minaya cut his budget -- and kept his nucleus. A step forward? No. A small victory? Yes.
As a new season begins, there's still plenty of uncertainty in Minaya's life. He and his wife, Rachel, and their two boys still live in New Jersey. His team is still in Montreal -- but playing 22 of its "home" games this year in San Juan, Puerto Rico (where it will draw more fans and collect more revenue). And there's no telling what might happen next year. MLB is currently looking for bidders. Should new owners take over, there's no guarantee, of course, that Minaya would keep his job. But all he can do now -- even having been forced to dump his best pitcher -- is keep trying. He's no different than any CEO in a tough economy, except that he's forced to compete with the better-funded Braves, Mets, and Phillies. That's like going up against Microsoft every day; Minaya can't pick his niche.
Even so, when I next see him, holed up in Montreal's shabby suite of offices, he's still smiling. There's a new season to be played, and field manager Robinson and the boys are raring to go. "Frank," Minaya says, "believes that if we can come out of the first month at .500 we'll be a contender."
Elsewhere, the door to Tony Siegle's office is open and his familiar voice is rising to familiar heights: "Awwww, cuh-RIST!" Administrative assistant Marcia Schnaar still smiles good-naturedly. Life goes on. It is, as Minaya says, "a warm place to be. Good people working together. Family."
No one knows where the Expos will be in 2004. No one knows who the new owner will be. But on the door to the big office there's a sign that says: general manager. And above that: Omar Minaya. In these offices, at this moment, that's all anyone needs to know.
John Anderson is the author of Art Held Hostage (W.W. Norton), which will be published next month.
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