How the Mets handled the firing of manager Willie Randolph and pitching coach Rick Peterson certainly ranks among the most appalling moments in Mets history, but that’s old news by now. And it’s not like they traded away Nolan Ryan or Tom Seaver. For all the ineptitude shown by Omar Minaya in his handling of this situation, the only thing that was really clear is that he had to do something.
The boat was clearly sinking and Minaya didn’t want the ship to go down or to go down with it. You can argue that Minaya doesn’t deserve that fate, and in truth he has been a better than average general manager.  But you can lay the blame for the schism in the Mets clubhouse on his shoulders - not because he’s a bad GM, but because he brought in the players who have caused it.
He has been heavily criticized for assembling a large crew of highly talented Latino ballplayers because this Mets team has never gelled.  And while many people look at this as bias, what it may really be is Minaya’s fatal flaw. He doesn’t favor or prefer Latino players, but he does relate to them better and he is able to convince them (usually with numbers followed by a lot of zeroes) that they should come and play in New York and that he’ll stand by them.
That has caused problems as some of those players clearly think they are greater than the team, greater than the management, and greater than the fans.  This came to a head last week just days before the firing of Randolph when a certain player believed by most to be Carlos Delgado told Randolph that he’d be there long after Randolph was gone. If true, the fact that Minaya gave Willie his walking papers, rather than standing behind his manager says far too much about the trouble in New York.
That became even clearer when Jose Reyes threw his tantrum at new manager Jerry Manuel in the first inning of his Mets managerial debut last Wednesday when Manuel pulled Reyes from the game as a precaution due to a possible injury. Reyes supposedly later apologized, and while many are writing that off as the excitement of a young player who didn’t want to come out of a game, others are wondering if this is what we see and hear about, how much more are we missing as it is going on behind closed doors?
It’s the manager’s job to weld the varying personalities, talents and skills into a unified team, to make the sum greater than the total of its parts. Willie Randolph failed at that job.  But did Willie ever have a chance to do it?Â
The sound of silence from upstairs at Shea is concerning. Where was the disciplinary action by management for the player who told Willie off? Where was the management in coming down on Reyes for his outburst? Without the backing of the Mets’ front office, especially that of Omar Minaya, Randolph had no power base on which to make the players respect his position.
That problem now belongs to Jerry Manuel as the team’s new manager. The question is does he have real support within the organization?  Certainly there has been no tangible evidence that the people upstairs are on the ball. Omar Minaya will define his tenure as the Mets GM right now - either with some definitive backing or by silence - making it clear that the inmates are running the asylum.
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