I was writing about something else and wondered if Jeff Wilpon has any children, so I googled his bio.
On the bio it says:
A former catcher, he was drafted by the Montreal Expos in 1983 and played part of that season with Jamestown (A) of the NY-Penn League.
I thought that was helpful since a few people had emailed me this week asking about his pro career – so there’s the answer.
I was curious to see how he did.
I googled “1983 ny penn league stats” and found this. I clicked on Jamestown. This page does not list any stats for Jeff Wilpon, but the stat page does look incomplete to me, for example I assume they had more than one pitcher.
Some more digging: This page lists Jeff being drafted. Click on Jeff’s name and you’ll see:
Born:
Height: Weight: Bats: Throws:
High School: Roslyn Heights,NY (-)
College: Palm Beach Community College
Drafted: Selected by Montreal Expos in 4th Round (64th overall) of 1983 amateur entry draft (Jan-Sec)
No game logs are mentioned.
Does this mean Jeff is a liar? No. Does it mean Jeff “sucks?” Of course not. I sure didn’t get drafted by a major league team, did you? Does having a short minor league career make you a bad owner? No.
Mets Today apparently did some similar digging, and have a very good article that makes a more cynical conclusion. Worth a read for sure.
I’d be curious if anyone has any more information.
Main Mets Police page
Follow us on twitter @metspolice
Facebook page
send ideas/guest columns to shannon at metspolice.com
I consulted my 1984 Sporting News Baseball Guide which contains all 1983 stats. There is no Wilpon listed as a player or pitcher in any stat for the Jamestown team or anywhere else in the NYP League. As Casey said, "you can look it up." Shortstop
can someone figure out what draft he was taken in? It certainly wasn't the June Amateur draft, it appears to have been in january. But what draft is that??
It was a draft they did until 1986, and it usually went only a few rounds. Its purpose was to draft players who had either dropped out of school or graduated in the winter. Generally it was for drafting JuCo players.
There was another draft they did in August for a couple years, too.
Whether or not he played any games in the minors, the choice of college says a great deal about Jeff Wilpon.
By the time he was finishing high school, his father was already relatively wealthy and influential. If Jeff had a lick of smarts, he'd have gone to a better college than Palm Beach Community College. Hell, if his only goal was to play ball in school, there are better schools for that, and his father certainly could have used some influence to help him get into some of them. Of course, if he'd been that good a ball player, he would have gotten a leg up on getting into a school with a better baseball program.
So, he's a not-so-smart guy who's a not-exceptional ballplayer who's now taking over a major piece of the family business, which happens to be a (roughly) billion dollar enterprise that includes the need to balance up front needs (fielding a competitive team and making enough money to pay them while attracting and satisfying fans), medium term needs (making sure there's enough talent in the farm system to keep the team competitive), and long term needs (making sure my kids are won over as Mets fans for life). So far, he's failing on all three…
jmp, that's a really good point. scary too. very scary. no wonder things in Mets-land have gone downhill since he starting running things. his dad must be real proud.