But why did the Mets’ management wait until now? Why did Willie have to win 3 of 4 to get fired? Why did they fly them 3,000 miles from home, tailed by a looming Omar Minaya, only to send them back with their heads hanging in shame?
I’ll tell you why:Because this is how the Mets’ management plays ball. And it’s the real reason the Mets are floundering around .500 instead of running away with an average division.
Ex-manager Willie Randolph was very much into excusing the past instead of explaining it, and making promises that no one believed they could live up to in the first place. Randolph’s post game mantras of “…we battled,” “quality innings,” and “positive signs” were never going to work with the NY faithful. Randolph in particular would make certain decisions that are completely antithetical to what the statistics show is the proper choice. But those decisions, whether correct or not, are not what has left the Mets under .500 in mid-June. Managerial decisions don’t have enough impact on overall players’ performances to explain why the Mets have become the joke of the National League. It’s not Willie’s fault that the organization decided to simultaneously roll more dice than a game of Yahtzee.
I won’t get into Peterson and his moronic “zen” approach to throwing strikes. Pitching is mechanics and mental strength. But I will say this it’s not Rick Peterson’s fault that the team has had to give ten starts to Nelson Figueroa and Claudio Vargas.
What did Tom Nieto do again? Yeah, I don’t know either. Hell, I have no idea what you can possibly blame on a first base coach. Maybe he didn’t yell “BACK!” loud enough? Couldn’t enunciate? No idea.
The point is, there are far more important bungled decisions that were made by guys who don’t wear the uniform. And none of them seem to be taking responsibility publicly. They’re just throwing each other under the proverbial bus.
In the end, we all know that the real blame lies in the front office — the men who deemed it appropriate to sign a broken second baseman to a ludicrous four-year deal, when a young, healthy Orlando Hudson will be a free agent next season. These are the men that continue to pay large sums of cash to Moises Alou, Orlando Hernandez and Pedro Martinez - three guys who have played somewhere between 15-20 games this season. Total. These are the men that may have sacrificed the Mets’ tomorrow for a today that never happened.
Let’s begin with the Wilpons. On the surface, it might appear as if the father-son duo are doing what every good owner should by ponying up the dough. The Mets are currently 3rd in MLB in total payroll with a figure north of $138M. But the franchise also had an operating cost of 132.9m in 2007. which was the 3rd most behind Florida and Washington - two of the stingiest teams in baseball. I am not claiming poor because that would probably be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever said. However, the manner in which the Wilpons operate bothers me.
For example, let’s take the whole Randolph situation. Willie’s imminent dismissal was one of the worst-kept secrets. We all knew it was coming, fairly or not. But the front office waited. And waited. And waited. They didn’t fire him while the team was still in New York. They did it after the first game of a West Coast trip while New York was sleeping. To top it all off, the principal owner, Fred Wipon, wanted his own hands clean: “(GM) Omar (Minaya) is in charge… It was his decision. He made that decision a short time ago,