After adding Brian Sabean to the front office on Tuesday, the Yankees announced Thursday that they have added former Mets and Expos GM Omar Minaya as a special advisor to baseball operations.
But don’t let that title, slightly different than Sabean’s official one as an advisor to Brian Cashman, fool you – both of them will have a similar role being deputized by Cashman wherever he chooses, likely mostly when it comes to scouting up and down the organization.
“We have somewhere close to 70 years of experience in different roles and have had a lot of success – and a lot of failure,” Minaya said of himself and Sabean in his intro press conference Thursday. “I think what we’ll bring is just experience in evaluation, leadership, and team building, because we’ve done it. We started off as scouts and that’s what we love, and we’re blessed to be where we’re at in our career and be able to provide senior advice to the organization across the board. How Brian decides to use us is up to him, but it’s all about what can we do to help the Yankees get better every day. We’ve been around long enough to know we don’t know it all, but we’re just here to help.”
Like Sabean, who spent eight years with the Yankees before 30 in San Francisco, Minaya is happy to be on board to support his good friend Cashman, who tried to get the former Mets GM into the fold last year, too.
“As you know, Cash and I have been friends and competitors for many years, but we have a good friendship and that’s why I’m here,” Minaya said. “Brian has asked me to come on board last year, but I decided to stay with MLB because I was involved heavily in some new initiatives, and it was a lot of fun, but we spoke recently and I just couldn’t say no this time.”
So what changed? Unfinished business being furthered, it seems.
“For the past two years, I’ve been an ambassador for the Mets, but my baseball involvement was with the Commissioner’s Office, and I told Brian last year I wanted to see some things through,” Minaya said. “We were trying to help MLB with things like the combine and the pre- and post-draft leagues; I had opportunities to help people play the game, and I thought I needed one more year to do that – but I’m a baseball operations guy, and I felt like now was the right time.”
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The Queens native technically had four stints across town, the first seeing him work his way up through the front office in the late-1990s before leaving to be Expos GM in 2002. He returned as Mets GM from 2005-10, and then came back in a special assistant role in 2018 that led to him being a co-interim GM for a time. He was let go from that role when Steve Cohen bought the team late in 2020, but rehired as an ambassador shortly thereafter.
And now, he’s back in baseball ops at the team level, and happy to be able to do it in his hometown.
“To be able to have this opportunity with a local team, and a storied organization like the Yankees, is great,” Minaya said. “To be able to be with Brian (Cashman) and many others like Brian Sabean – a Hall of Fame executive in my eyes – there’s a lot of connectivity, and I’m a big believer this game is about people. The goal is to win the World Series, and I’m looking forward to doing whatever Brian and the staff want me to do.”
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