Reply to "How is it possible to feel sorry for them?"

luv baseball5,000+ posts

RJM - agree on Bonilla deferred comp but Wilpon's invested the money with Madoff and gave Bonilla an 8% coupon which is pretty rich. They made other deals of this type with Saberhagan and Gilkey so it looks like they had a fondness for trying to make bets to get out of these big contracts at that time.

IMO they were three time losers on this. 1) Signing Bonilla at all 2) Betting they could earn more than the deferred comp 3) Money with Madoff.

Flip side is they took the money they saved deferring Bonilla's money and bought Mike Hampton and that help pay off in one of the few bight spots in the last 30 years for the Mets in a WS appearance. The compensatory pick they got for Hampton leaving was parlayed into David Wright.

So they were actually big winners on the baseball side of dumping Bonilla even if they got bruised in the wallet as it looks like they did.

3/3/199:33 AM

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