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June 17, 2008
The latest and final twist in the Willie saga came in the wee hours of the morning:
Thank God it’s over, if only for everyone’s peace of mind. This day-to-day stuff was demeaning and tiresome. I don’t have a whole lot else to say right now, but feel free to throw your own thoughts on the matter down here. 73 Responses to “Daily News: Mets Fire Willie Randolph”Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment. |
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Could this have been handled with less grace, tact and respect? I’m embarrassed to be a Mets fan today.
Funny: A month or two ago I’d be doing cartwheels over this move. Now I think it’s just a band-aid.
A friend of mine more or less said the same thing.
Pathetic, just pathetic.
What the heck is a “minor league field coordinator”?
And why the hell was Alomar spared?
Piss poor job by Omar.
This org just can’t get out of their own way. Sloppiness in the FO and ownership.
I’m not terribly upset the fired Willie, I’m upset with how it was handled.
Manuel better turn this around now, or the media is gonna have a field day.
They make him fly to LA for this? This team is a disgrace. The should be totally ashamed of themselves. It is beyond embarrassing. Ugh!
fatt, you summed up all aspects of it precisely.
Minor league field coordinators have an unheralded but important job. They have an important role in evaluating minor league talent, placing organizational policies in effect, and overseeing training schedules. They’ll also do some on-field instruction.
I’m not sure how much of this was to blame on Omar. Certainly the Wilpons were consulted before Willie was fired, and they should have stepped in when all this shit started. That’s not to say Omar’s blameless, but I’m literally unsure how much he is to blame.
Exactly.
you just don’t treat a human being like that. i feel absolutely awful for willie. how would wilpon/omar like this done to them?
I agree, custer….Willie wasn’t the greatest field manager, but how humiliated he must feel right now after swaying in the wind for weeks, then flying out to LA to get fired - and trust me, imho this decision was made over the weekend, not during last night’s game
Because the Wilpon’s are terrible owners. Always have been and always will be. There’s not an original thought there. All they are is reactionary and unoriginal.
Only the Mets fire their manager one day after flying him to the West Coast and in the midst of a winning streak. Only the Mets.
It was a move that needed to be made, though obviously it was handled in an embarrassing fashion
Shameful. Make him fly all the way across country, win a game. Get the team on a high and fire him. Classy, hope your happy now Jeffy. Omar don’t get too comfortable, you assembled the team with the leaky pen and old useless vets around the core. You’ll be next.
Perfect timing, actually. I think everyone in the FO gave themselves the best chance to look good in the long run. They waited for:
1. the team to show some life
2. an acceptable replacement OF (Nixon) to become available, making the lineup/bench less of a joke
3. Church to be “close” to coming back, making the lineup less of a joke
4. deal season to start, with the big wheeler-dealer still at the helm
5. the baseball
vampiresgods to show some sign that they’ve stopped feeding on the fans’ despairIf the team does turn it around, even a little bit, the enduring perception will be that Willie was the problem. Even on the Geek, perception is reality.
That said, a big hearty fuck you to Jeff and Omar.
I’ve never been embarrassed to be a Mets fan because of anything the team has done on the field. I love this team and understand that the heartbreak of collapses and near misses are part of the game.
But man, this franchise. I’m ashamed to admit that I support this organization right now.
This franchise is so inept.
Stay classy, Jeff.
thanks for the info Alex
I’ve never been embarrassed to be a Mets fan because of anything the team has done on the field.
Apparently, mookie, you haven’t been a Mets fan very long. Stick around.
Apparently, mookie, you haven’t been a Mets fan very long. Stick around.
Well. I cannot express how sadened I am to hear about the way the FO humiliated Willie and made him fly out to the West Coast for nothing. But I am very relieved this whole mess is over and done with. Best of luck to Willie.
Ramon, if you think this whole mess is over and done with, you haven’t been paying attention. You are 1,200 miles away from the eye of the storm. This is far from over. The fallout from this will hang over this team for the forseeable future.
My first thoughts were why now in LA and after they have been showing signs of improvement…than again this was a long time coming. Bad cooth but hey its the Mets right.
Damn, I didn’t think I’d be this sad when it finally happened. Good luck, Willie. You’ll get another job soon.
EXACTLY. I got to work and my doorman said the same thing. this was handled with ZERO class.
It was obvious to see after a lot of the blown games it couldnt all be put on Willie. Something needed to be done just not this late in the game. Omar had the final say on this and the Wilpons wanted this done ages ago.
It was obvious to see after a lot of the blown games it couldnt all be put on Willie. Something needed to be done just not this late in the game. Omar had the final say on this and the Wilpons wanted this done ages ago.
The FO had ample chance to fire Willie. End of last season, Memorial Day, after SD series and Friday b4 Texas, and they pick 3 am on the west coast and make wilie and staff fly out to LA. Plus they’ve won 3 of 4 and have played noticeably better since Memorial Day, especially excluding that 4 day debacle in SD. Its flat out disgraceful to treat Willie this way. The fallout from this will last for a while. If you are a player today, how can you respect this organization. The players generally liked Willie, he went to battle for them and the FO just crapped all over him. im not sure this provides them much incentive to try to improve. Anyway, I dont think they can play any better than they have the last 3 weeks. If you throw away the Wagner ugliness, the record would be decent. Just an overall embarrassment.
All I will add is that this was the right move at the wrong time handled in the wrong way.
Willie should have been axed after last season.
The biggest plus in all of this is Obie getting promoted to the big league staff. He should have gotten the job the first time…..we is 10 times the manager Willie was…..
Manuel and the new staff (and the FO by extension) will look brilliant when this team catches fire here immediately….consider this:
1) Wright, Reyes, and Beltran are all performing below (to way below) career norms and expectations. Beltran is starting to catch fire, once Wright does the offense will start humming.
2) Church will be back and healthy in 4-5 games.
3) Heilman has been pitching damn awesome this month (with the notable exception of the D-Backs game, he hasn’t given up a run in any other appearance)
4) With Church in RF, LF is manned by Nixon and Endy, making the team and bench seriously deeper.
5) Pedro is just rounding into form.
6) Pelfrey has been pitching well lately (last night aside)
I think this team is poised to get very hot between now and the AS break, and I think the FO new it.
Are you serious. Did you forget the Dodger game?
Exactly.
Mets have always been a bush league organization. It continues. Maybe Willie and Gotay can stew together. RIP Jacket.
I think we can do better than Willie, but I don’t think this firing will do anything unless we find out that Willie had been personally blocking a trade of Carlos Delgado for James Loney Tiananmen Square style.
I am getting very tired of this team.
It will die faster than you seem to think Shea. People forget very fast.
Lew’s hypothesis that this is timed at the front end of what seems likely to be better play (and, thus, the illusion of justification) is very provocative. Props, Lew!
The problem with that theory is that if the Mets FO wanted to make a decision that was justified they had a more ample opportunity to do back during the Subway Series when Willie made his ridiculous comments to the press.
A challenging season takes a turn for the worse.
I thought the way many Mets fans whined, griped and often cursed their home team this season to date was shameful, a public embarrassment (heartily ridiculed on a national scale) that left me in many a dicey situation in the bleachers (”Hey jack-ass, Schoeneweiss is good this year! Enough with the booing!”). The Willie hate on the radio, on the web, did have more than a whiff of bias in my nose, as I found the most ardent antagonists were often the ones who had been calling for his head since he was hired.
But this now takes the cake.
When things were going tough the last few weeks for the Mets — and come on now, fans, you have to admit the baseball gods were testing us more than any lack of effort on the field — instead of rallying around the team many more fans decided to pile on the ill will.
But if you didn’t feel the Mets were going to get better — the old “Believe” mantra that used to define our fan base — you had better lower your voice when the Mets climb the standings in September. I actually thought Willie had survived the hysteria, I believed he would manage the ship back to the playoffs, and I even could see a day in the future when we would look back at this juncture, breath a sigh of relief that we held steady, that we held on to the manager with the best record in team history.
All good feeling about this season has just been washed away. Terrible move, Minaya, Wilpon, terrible move of the likes of M. Donald Grant, that old bat Payson, terrible sating of the weak-kneed new-fangled Mets fans’ whiney lust for attention.
I think we’ll still go to the playoffs — the team’s simply too good — but to the fan who thinks it has anything to do with this debacle, choose your words well, or I will bite off your nose.
Lighten up, Francis.
Touche, Mister Oates!
I really have no idea why people are so upset about the flight out to LA or the “late” timing of the move. I just don’t see the issue with that honestly.
I agree that Willie needed to be fired at this point. He had lost the team and while he wasn’t as bad as some of the vitrol he got in the press and radio, that is kind of par for the course in NY (and I don’t buy the bias bit one bit, anyone remember what was said about BV when he was on his way out?)
My problem with Willie is that he never seemed to allow for the fact that some players do not play like he did. Some players are not just a stoic no-emotion “just do the job” guy. He tried to squash the game for players like Reyes and Lastings and never let them breathe and find their own way. He also never seemed to learn as he went on, he just seemed to push harder to get his players to adopt his mentality.
He was not a “horrible” manager, but he simply wasn’t working for this team, and with all the stuff in the papers etc this simply had to happen.
I could care less about the flight to LA, or the 12:15 AM timing.
First, I’m never comfortable calling for am man’s job. Its obvious the Mets were under performing and something needed to be done. I just can’t bring myself to end someone’s livelihood.
I was critical of Willie’s handling the of the pitchers and the way he treated the younger players vs the older, but I just won’t go that far.
Second, this was an awful, tactless way of handling it.
Do you think the FO had the hotel throw Willie’s stuff out on the street while he was at the game? Maybe have the desk clerk hand him a note saying “you’re fired”.
I can’t believe we just fired one of the best pitching coaches in the game.
I was surprised by dismissing Peterson. That I agree with.
I’m embarrassed to be a Mets fan today. Maybe this was the right move, time will tell, but one thing is clear - Wilpon doesn’t have a Billy Martin to run to. This ownership and FO carries the stink of Steinbrenner’s Fort Apache Yankees.
He deserved to be fired… at the end of 2007.
He was a comically poor strategic manager, his vision of how the game worked was stuck in the early years of his own career, he had zero on-field fire, was far too deferencial to veterans, far too dismissive of young players and had no idea how to handle the media when things weren’t good.
But for God’s sake, a rabid dog deserved a better send-off.
The conspiracy theory, of course, will become… did the bullpen purposely throw/shave a string of games just to finally push the guy out?
Barring miracles, Minaya follows him in October and… I suppose… that’s for the best as well… but one hopes they don’t botch it this badly.
Just unbelievable.
The Mets FO is just spectacular at finding ways to cock things up in the most embarrassing ways.
Once again, they are the laughing-stock of the league. Pathetic.
They’ve accomplished one thing though — their mishandling of this situation has made Willie a sympathetic figure — a scapegoat for the shortcomings of others, and a symbol for the way this organization can’t get anything right.
I also can’t believe that the most incompetent of all the coaches remained — Sandy -send em at the wrong time, hold em at the wrong time — Alomar, who should have been the first to go. Oh, but of course, he’s Omar’s bud.
Hopefully, Omar won’t be far behind in following Willie out the door. He’s done some good things, but he really doesn’t seem to comprehend how a team and an organization should be built.
You don’t do that to people. Put yourself in Willie’s shoes. If your job took you 2000 miles away from home on a regular basis, I’m sure you can see that if you are going to be fired, either do it before you leave on your next business trip, or after you get back. In the middle of a trip is just bad business, it leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. And it’s bad business, just like you don’t reneg on contract agreements, bad business like that gets around, and you have a harder time hiring top notch people, because nobody wants to work for someone who will disrespect them.
I firmly believed that Willie was gonna make it to the AS break, because the FO wouldn’t show up a guy selected to the AS coaching staff. I clearly underestimated how badly the FO could handle the situation.
Sure it was not ideal the he was let go in CA after a long home stand. Would of been easier to do it there. But who cares. Thats life. A company fires someone and security shows up at your desk and escorts you out the front door. It is humiliating for everyone - all the time.
People are incredibly sensitive aren’t they. I used to like willie. On a personal level I am SURE he is a great guy. But willie was a mediocre manager at best. He had to go and is now gone. Fine.
this whole attitude about how NICELY willie should of been fired is crap. doing it away is easier from a mangerial perspective.
It was a gaffe from a PR standpoint. Only because it gives crybabies and Met haters another reason to moan.
All I can say is - what could they possibly have been thinking?? The front office can’t possibly be this stupid…can they? How could they think that firing Willie in the dead of night after flying him across the country is a smart move?
They absolutely set themselves up for every ounce of criticism that is going to be thrown their way now.
who is this new pitching coach Dan Warthen because honestly I still think Peterson is one of the better pitching coaches out there.I dont understand that fire
My company once had someone get on a plane fly from Atlanta to New York come into a meeting for 15 minutes to be fired and then put him back on another flight 3 hours later back to Atlanta. **** happens.
Would I have preferred the Mets did this on Sunday night instead of last night? Sure, I can see a bit of merit about it. But the 1000s of posts and calls and complaints about it? Unbelievably trivial. Willie is going to make 4.25 Million sitting on his couch watching TV the next couple of years, he can take a flight from LA to New York because Omar wanted another day to get his replacements into place.
I think there is no circumstance where they wouldn’t have been blasted by the media about this regardless of what. That is how NY. If he did it two hours after an East Coast game this is a complete non-issue. He does it two hours after a west coast game and ohh my god stop the horror I had to wake up last night to write a story.
Typical non-issue. Those that are posting about this “hanging” over the Mets for a long period of time? Please. I think if this is being talked about a week from now I would be surprised.
Please, everyone, give me a break.
This guy engineered the worst collapse in the history of major league baseball, and is getting paid $3M or something for doing nothing the next year and half, and poor ole Willy has to fly out all the way to LA in order to get fired.
The Wilpons FINALLY showed some small whiff of a possibility that they may actually care a little about us long suffering, therapy seeking, suicidal Mets fans.
Nobody asks me to root for a claims adjuster working for Allstate Insurance, and when the claims adjuster is fired it doesn’t make the nightly news. Sure you can be a jerk when you fire someone, but don’t expect people to root for you when you do that. And, sadly the Mets business is getting people to root for them. It’s bad PR, and a MLB baseball team is primariy two things, playing the sport and marketing the team. This shows that the FO isn’t doing well with latter.
I disagree. I’m sure the NY media would have found some negative things to say, but overall I don’t think anyone would have blamed management for the act of firing Willie, with the collapse and the slow start it may have been inevitable. They set themselves up for a complete shellacking with the way they handled things, and while you may say that stuff happens - there was no need to fire him this way.
It’s not just flying him out and firing him in the middle of the night after a win, they dragged this out forever, and just last week Omar was insisting that Willie’s our manager.
I would not want to work for a company that did something like that. I’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t. And I sure as hell wouldn’t *cheer* for a company that did that.
And Omar can’t get his replacements before a road trip? That’s incompetance of a different sort, if that’s the case. Just to be clear, this isn’t the worst thing ever in the history of man. It’s not. Yes, it’s trivial, but so is baseball. We cheer for a triviality, and in the context, it had a direct impact on what we cheer for.
Again, it is not the end of the world. But it is a bad move, and one that could *easily* be handled better. Simple as that.
This I agree with. It’s a bad move, but the team and org will move on.
I threw out the getting the managers in place because I don’t really care why it was done. Whether they made the decision Saturday but didn’t want to fire him on Father’s Day or it was a timing issue, or maybe it was because Omar thought we were in for a good streak as one poster suggested and didn’t want to deal with the press of firing Willie after he had presumably “righted the ship”.
Press writes for drama, I have seen dozens of articles about Willie being a “victim” in all this when I don’t see that at all. Could it/Should it have been handled before the road trip? Sure why not, but do I really care that it happened Monday night instead of Sunday night? No. And I doubt any of those managers really care beyond a ironic chuckle.
But boy the press likes their drama…
As for the firing at my company, no it wasnt the greatest move and I think it was a bit personal issue for the person that did it, but it still wasn’t that big of a deal.
If they fired him on Father’s Day they would have bemoaned that as well. I agree about dragging it out forever, but I think Omar really did want to give Willie a chance. Willie and the team knew they needed to do something special to keep his job. They didn’t even come close
Going back to my blog 5 weeks ago now:
http://www.metsgeek.com/articles/2008/05/08/the-managerial-pendulum-shift-time-to-go-willie/
Wouldn’t ripping off the bandaid back then be better than this whole time of “tug tug tug.”
At 3am last night the bandaid finally lost the last of it’s glue and hair and fell off, revealing a gaping, infected, stinky hole.
I hope the Mets at least pay for the plane tickets back to NY for the guys…
The 3AM timing for Willie’s firing meant that tomorrow’s papers will have the press conf with Jerry Manuel and that becomes the main backpage story, as opposed Willie being fired being the story.
The way this thing has dragged out, one has to wonder if there was some dispute between Omar and the management about how many people to let go.
By firing Willie and two key coaches, it does put more of the spotlight on Minaya, which may be a good thing. Maybe Minaya didn’t want to get rid of too many them for that reason. Similarly, Minaya may have been arguing with ownership as ownership may have wanted to blow the whole thing up and get rid of everybody.
I am not crazy about Minaya at this point, but I would rather have him making decisions than Wilpon Jr.
I am not sure where this notion that Peterson is a great pitching coach comes from. Peterson is as culpable as Minaya for the Kazmir trade, after all, he was the one who said “I can fix Victor Zambrano”. And this year’s disastrous bullpen- it doesn’t seem to me he has done much for them.
Baseball Prospectus Postseason Odds sez that it will take 94 games to win the East, meaning that the Mets will have to go on a 103 game win pace to achieve 94 at the end of the year.
The odds are not good. If the Mets don’t go on a winning streak soon, it’s definitely time to cash in some chips for next year.
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/statistics/ps_odds.php
So I guess that means he has no responsibility for it?
I’m not sure why they fired Peterson, I thought Rick did a great job with what they gave him. Who is the new pitching coach, is it Conti or whatever his name is. I’m really shocked to see Howard Johnson still have a job with how the Mets have been looking. I think Willie has to be feeling a lot better now that the Media are killing the Wilpons and Omar over this move and how it was handled. I don’t understand why not fire Willie after the Rangers series, to let him fly all the way to California and then fire him after a win was pretty stupid.
Wasn´t it Jim Duquette who traded Kazmir? That one´s not on Omar.
Interesting timing: Willie was fired shortly after a wild finish to the U.S. open and after news that the Yankees #1 pitcher will be out for 6-8 weeks. Willie’s firing is just one of three major topics that will be discussed in the NY Media. I wonder.
I wasn’t the biggest Willie fan, but I am pretty depressed that he is gone; and I am especially depressed that Rick Peterson is gone. It always seemed like Rick was working hard with each individual pitcher to get the most out of him–at least that is my perception from watching a limited number of games.
Oh, not to mention at 3 a.m. Eastern Time.
This pity for Willie is total spin, and I can’t believe everyone is so easily falling for it. You could easily think of the situation in the exact opposite manner — firing Willie on the west coast when the press is asleep lets him avoid the indignity of the media circus. If they fire him in NY after a losing streak, he has to face all those reporters during one of the worst moments of his career. The front office could have had classiness in mind the whole time, but you can craft anything to fit the “Mets are inept” storyline.
The Mets have been under .500 for over a year, and they’re too talented a team for that. It had to happen, and no timing would have been perfect.
The only thing that makes me upset is that we hired Manuel to replace him — Willie 2.0. They definitely upgraded the processing chip, but they’re still running an old version of Windows…
As poorly as this was handled - and it was handled with a remarkable lack of judgement, grace, and class - it’s nothing compared to what I see coming.
Omar Minaya in full-on win-now-to-save-my-job-at-all-costs mode. Does the phrase “All-In” mean anything to anyone here?
I have a strong sense that somewhere out there is a guy who will be hired to do what Donnie Walsh is attempting to do right now - try to dig a franchise out of an unholy mess.
as a knick fan also, I would pray not to think the mets are in the same situation than the knicks. The Knicks mess is of biblical proportions while the mets have some sort of shot
as a knick fan also, I would pray not to think the mets are in the same situation than the knicks. The Knicks mess is of biblical proportions while the mets have some sort of shot
You know the anti-Omar sentiment is getting too strong when we are now blaming him for Kazmir…
I agree with everything said above (not always the case!). I’ve always said the wilpons are losers and what better way to show it. What schmucks. Can’t believe I’m sad to see willie go… he showed a lot of class the way he handled the fred & jeff show over the past few weeks.
a managerial change is supposed to fire up a team, this is going to deflate them even further. who the hell wants to play for this kind of an organisation.
I do not know what you are talking about Jon Garland is one of the best pitchers in the MLB. If you dont remember he beat John Lackey ine the 2005 play offs, and it was no fluke winning 18 games back to back and he would of won more games in 2007 if the White Sox played a little better behind him!!!! I think the White Sox were stupid for trading him and keeping that loser Mark Buehrle . Jon Garland is the best pitcher on the Angels and he was the best pitcher when he was with the White Sox !
Talk about FBB feast/famine….I have my 3B Aramis Rameriz and OF Milton Bradley both facing two of my SPs Kazmir and Hudson each with the bases loaded.
Willie is going to get over 3.5 million dollars to do nothing for a year and a half… poor poor willie.