Being sued for over $1 billion by the victims of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, Mets owner Fred Wilpon likely hasn't been in the best of moods of late.
Nobody, though, expected him to lash out at his own team to the extent that he has in a recent New Yorker article. In the piece, Wilpon takes harsh stabs at his three best position players, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran and David Wright — as well as the franchise itself.
"S—– team. … We're snakebitten, baby," he said.
Apparently, Wilpon believes that Reyes is delusional about his potential free-agent value.
"He thinks he's going to get Carl Crawford money. He's had everything wrong with him. He won't get it," he said.
Speaking of being misinformed about free-agent value, Wilpon chastised himself for making a mistake signing Beltran in light of his 2004 playoff success.
"We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series. He's 65 to 70 percent of what he was."
As for Wright, Wilpon's rip was as blunt as could be.
"Really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar."
Wright responded to Wilpon's comments, downplaying his words as the products of his difficult circumstances.
"Fred is a good man and is obviously going through some difficult times. There is nothing more productive that I can say at this time," he said.
As for the lawsuit, Madoff believes that Wilpon shouldn't bear responsibility for the damages.
He emailed the author of the New Yorker piece, Jeffrey Toobin, accordingly.
"Fred was not [at] all stock market savvy and [brother-in-law] Saul [Katz] was not really either. They were strictly Real Estate people. Although I explained the strategy to them they were not sophisticated enough to evaluate it properly, nor were most of my other individual clients. They were not in a position to perform the necessary due diligence and did not have access to necessary financial info or records."
