Fire Your Players, Freddie
Posted by Hasan H, May 15, 2008 - 8:52 pm
Willie Randolph finished second in the Manager of the Year voting in 2006. He increased his team’s win total by at least 12 wins in both 2005 and 2006.
Fast Forward to May 2008.
In typical New York style, “Fire Willie” whispers in the media have slowly turned into loud demands. It sure gets late awfully early around here, doesn’t it?
Let’s look at what Willie has done which is so wrong and so despicable.
Randolph looked like a genius in 2006 when the Mets were among the top 3 in the NL in runs scored as well as Earned Run Average. He didn’t look like too much of anything in 2007 when the team regressed to the middle of the pack in both key stat categories. In his first two years Willie was praised for being a disciplinarian who demanded that his players stay clean-shaven, who played veterans, and who always maintained an even demeanor. All of a sudden these qualities have turned into faults.
I am not arguing that the Mets have underachieved in 2008. I thought that after the Santana trade they were going to come out swinging, trying their best to put the collapse of 2007 behind them. That obviously hasn’t happened. After a brutal loss today after which Billy Wagner predictably lost his cool again (worth watching!), they sit pretty at 20-19, in third place behind the Marlins and the Phillies.
So I know how bad they have been. I am just wondering why everyone conveniently blames Willie while the problem sits right before everybody’s eyes. This team is too old, too injury-prone and too fragmented along ethnic lines. The clean-up hitter is batting .246 and slugging below .450 (that’s pathetic!) The lead-off hitter and the media darling, so-called ’spark plug’ is on base less than third of the time (66th overall). The number 5 hitter has less RBI than household names such as Freddy Sanchez and Blake DeWitt. The big righty power bat is as old as Moses himself and can barely stay on the field because his ankles hurt so much.
(I am not even going to bother dissecting the pitching numbers. They are pretty bad too.)
But even if we look past the numbers, the team just looks divided. The Hispanic players sit together and hang out together. Delgado, Castillo and Reyes could care less about what’s going on around them. The Mets would be down 9 runs, and if Delgado hits a home run, you’d see Reyes and Castillo on the top steps ready to do some stupid pre-meditated dance. Blame Omar Minaya for letting this carefree culture perpetuate. If Frank Cashen can trade Kevin Mitchell for being a bad influence on Doc and Straw, Minaya can sure as heck trade Delgado for being the leader who never was and who has now become a clubhouse cancer. (Wow did I just type that? Anyone who follows the Mets closely will agree, however). So the media is right in that there is no sense of pride in the team at all. Reyes is only 24 but what the hell are vets like Beltran, Castillo and Delgado doing? Why do I have the same sinking feeling inside my heart that I did when I heard about Rickey and Bonilla playing cards in the locker room during a playoff game? I thought this kind of shit was supposed to end when Omar and Willie arrived and we started to win.
Heartfelt locker room speeches and pleas for pride work on men who have displayed a sense of responsbility. When no one other than Wright and Wagner is available for an interview after a loss, when no one steps up and points the finger at themselves, what can a manager do? There is some serious divide on this team. And that falls squarely on Minaya and Wilpon’s shoulders.
No, this is not the Bronx Zoo Yankees who hate each other and can still win. The problem is that these guys don’t even hate each other! They just don’t seem to give a shit.
Obviously Willie is the perfect sacrificial lamb. I predict he is gone before July. But just like every Manager who has been fired before him, he would have as little to do with his team’s success or failure as you and me combined.
So do the right thing Freddie Wilpon.
Tell your (in)capable son to rid of this team of the cancers it breeds.
p.s. Yes I will still continue to watch every pitch of every game but that’s just what I do. And there’s no reason to tell me the Mets suck. Just read this column again, you’ll notice that I agree with you.
Photo credit: Mets.com
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Unfortunately, it’s hard to fire the whole team when everyone underachieves. So the manager gets blamed. It’s a shame if a great guy like Willie gets let go, but it might just be that the players are tuning him out, in which case he needs to go. Just like Avery Johnson with the Mavericks.
Managers are always the scapegoats.You bring up an interesting point about the Latin flavor of the Mets and how that might have divided the ball club. I have been reading more and more articles and tidbits about how the Latin players have developed their own fraternity to the point that allegiance to team is secondary to allegiance to countryman. As a GM, that troubles me. I don’t think Minaya is to blame on this one. It’s far too easy a swipe to say that he’s trying to build a Latino All Star team. Thats a xenophobic swipe.
What I think the Mets lack is a strong peep leader in the clubhouse. Right now they are rallying behind two players that are below 25. Pedro has been too ineffective to lead.
The Mets have that leader. His name is Carlos Delgado. It just so happens that the man can’t juice anymore given the new drug testing policy and hence his stats have taken a major hit, with the result that he cannot really step up and lead. Besides, the Latin fraternity thing is not a fabrication of the media. It was Delgado who first made it public when he signed with the Marlins, rejecting Minaya’s offer when in a pinch, Omar went the Latin route to court him. Now this man is Minaya’s starting first baseman.
Mets will not win the NL East…mark my word on this!!! Willie Randolph needs to adjust fast rather than act like Joe Torre, this is not the Yankees!!! It is documented that Reyes does not get along with Randolph and why is there a big rift between wagner and delgado?. Mets need Lou Pinella, feed off reyes’ energy, figure out a way to utilize speed and power, randolph is not the man for the job.
Furthermore, aside from santana, they do not have a good pitching staff [John Maine and Oliver Perez? please, you are better off relying on glavine and some triple A pitcher…Maine&Perez are inconsistent and still have not proven anything]. And Pedro is a primaddona…”I feel strong and healthy…” and then he pulls a hamstring on the mound looking like a pitcher on medicare not to mention his velocity rarely hits the 90s[Utley, Howard, Jones or any good hitters will drill him]
so what they beat the yanks…mets usually wear pink-panties when it comes to playing against the phillies and braves[looking like bunch of dead horses, i rather root for the rays where they play hard and have an incredible defense…always perform if they have something to prove!!! The Mets need a strong leader, someone vocal in the clubhouse….they are away too young to just collect their paychecks and play with very little energy. I am not impressed that they beat petitte and wang…petitte passed his prime and wang couldn’t use his sinker and kept the ball up….if you have enough bat speed, anyone can hit it
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