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In a Q&A with MetsGeek, the New York Sun’s Tim Marchman discusses ‘the collapse,’ among other things, as well as sportswriting, his vision for the Mets, and his opinion of Willie Randolph, of which he writes…
“I don’t know how much you can blame someone for not being a different person. He kept doing the same stupid things over and over again, like putting Guillermo Mota and Brian Lawrence in baseball games, but he did things like that last year and did fine. He’s astonishingly uninventive, and he won’t make his team better than its talent, but most managers are no different, and he actually does a lot of things well. I don’t know how much credit he should get for the way Reyes and Wright have developed, for instance, but the answer isn’t “none.”
I tend to agree with Marchman.
I’m not sure if calling things “stupid” is fair since hindsight is 20/20 and most people would have called running Jose Valentin out there over and over in 2006 “stupid” as well, but that paid some pretty big dividends.
It may be more fair to say that Willie sticks with his veteran players longer than many of today’s managers would, which based on player age is destined to fail more times than succeed.
Willie does run a clean clubhouse and he seems to handle the youngsters and bench well. His real struggles are with bullpen management.
I think you need to re-set your blog clock. I’m reading a 1pm post at 12:20. Go figure.
Your flux capacitor is slow.
This is an unfair criticism of Willie.
Who else was Willie supposed to use? Last offseason Omar did a terrible, awful, rotten, bad job with the bullpen. He traded away talent and signed mediocrity. If all Willie had was the dregs of the league’s middle relievers then he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. You can’t go a whole season running out the same 3 guys. at some point you gotta put someone else on the mound.
What’s more. Willie actually used his best relievers in the highest leverage situations. That may be due to Rick Peterson’s council. Or it might mean Willie knows to use his best guys when he needs them and use the other guys when he has to.
I don’t disagree with you completely here. However, Willie still is a bad bullpen manager. There’s not much he can do with the talent, that’s true…but you still have to manage the pen well, and he’s terrible. But that’s my biggest complaint about him.
No complaints on how he allowed the clubhouse to get complacent and feel a sense of entitlement that led to lackadaisical play?
mr.bmc,
i think the only stupid move was running Mota out there every other day. Anyone (even Sele) would have done a better job than Mota. It’s Willie’s job to make Omar realize that he has no desire to use Mota in any situation. Then it’s Omar’s job to convince the Wilpons to pay Mota’s buyout and deal with whatever fallout ensues.
As far as the notion of Omar trading away good relievers (I’m sure this is supposed to be read as Heath Bell, Matt Lindstrom and Henry Owens) that is 100% hindsight. There is no way anyone could have looked at these 3 and expected them to contribute to the Mets. Why not exchange them for younger bodies, Johnson, Adkins (since released), Vargas and Bostick.
Bell, had two big knocks on him within the Met organization.
1) He was awful in the majors until last season. Look at his #s as a Met, atrocious. He had an ERA near 5.00 and a WHIP near 1.50, oh and he was already 28. Any chance that pitching in the division with some of the best pitcher’s parks had something to do with Heath’s sudden emergence?
2) Peterson, who you just gave credit to, didn’t think Bell was any good. If your pitching guru thinks a guy isn’t going to cut it as a ML’er, you deal him. The fact the Mets got so little for Bell shows you how he was regarded by his former employers.
Lindstrom and Owens were also older minor leaguers, 26 and 27 respectively, who coud not get past AA for the Mets in 5 years. They were also considered to be going nowhere. Owens is injury prone anyway, I think he’s had three DL stints in the past two years. Why not turn these two older pitchers into LH starting pitching prospects?
First of all, Colorado and Arizona are not pitcher’s parks. So Bell had to get it done in some rough environments. But let’s just agree that for whatever reason he was not going to work out on the Mets.
Regarding Lindstrom and Owens. Owens was an older minor league because he was a converted catcher. So that is why it seemingly took him so long to reach the bigs… because he was basically learning a completely different trade.
Lindstrom, by a few accounts, had begun to put it together. I really don’t see why, regardless of age, you trade a guy who can touch 100 mph. Especially when there were some concerns about the bullpen.
I agree that “There is no way anyone could have looked at these 3 and expected them to contribute to the Mets” and this applies to B. Bannister as well. A big part of the reason, though, is that they were never going to be given a chance by Willie.
Bell always did very well in the minors when he was used regularly. Then he’d be called up, used sporadically, and inevitably have a poor outing. This would justify Willie’s bias against him and he’d never get the chance to show that he could be productive. It’s been the same story with several other young players who, for whatever reason, Willie doesn’t like.
Even when not used sporadically Bell stunk it up with the Mets. What revisionist history!
His problems were with Peterson. Not Willie. He said this himself.
And who are all these young players who, for whatever reason, Willie doesn’t like? I am not aware of them.
Maybe someone can enlighten us with examples?
BigHangWithEm,
It’s beyond the purview of this my point if Omar’s work last season made sense at the time. The fact that it turned out the way it did is on Omar and not Willie.
Be that as it may… Virtually every pitching transaction that Omar made last off-season backfired. I’m hoping that the odds are against that happening again.
I think Marchman is close, but misses the “march” (pun intended) a little here. Willie’s problem was that he “kept doing the same stupid things over and over again,” but not in terms of managing his bullpen or his roster. With those I truly believe he did the best with what he was given.
However, Willie kept doing the same things over and over in terms of his attitude. He kept telling his team that they were fine, instilling false confidence in them, subjugating expression. I understand that he is who he is, but no one is as one-faced as Willie was during the collapse. I understand that it’s a long season and you need to keep even-keel, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get mad when you’re team is losing every critical game at the end of the season. If he continues to act the way he did last season, I don’t see how this team will win with him at the top. He just doesn’t seem like a manager for a team that isn’t the Yankees.
Great post. I can understand where his sense of entitlement comes from considering he was on a team that made the postseason 12 straight seasons (9 when he left). That attitude is what probably led to the boredom (according to Delgado) that this team played to.
I definitely agree with this more than with Marchman. I think Willie was pretty inventive with what he was given. I actually like Willie’s philosophy of “I like my players and I’m going to trust them.” When the organization decides it has a better option it seems like a pretty democratic and well delegated decision making process. Willie does what he can with the roster he has, Omar puts the roster together, and the Wilpons provide the cash.
As far as being uninventive, I have to disagree with Marchman. How about that PH spot that Willie put Endy Chavez in with a runner on and down by a run late in the game with other bigger bats available? Endy hits a two run homer. Can’t give Willie all the credit, but it was an unconventional decision that worked extremely well. Willie’s benches have tended to work out pretty well as a whole. I don’t have the stats, but I’d surmise PH stats under him are above average. He puts guys in the right spots. And in 2006 when he had a deep bullpen he was quite inventive, using Chad Bradford and Pedro Feliciano against lefties and righties or Darren Oliver in the occasional late game spot.
I definitely agree that his problem was the kind of lack of personality that you describe. And who knows, from the “players manager” philosophy that may have been correct. It may have been more about instilling values in Wright, Reyes, Perez, and Maine and even someone like Delgado, who saw the postseason for the first time in 2006, or Beltran, who was receiving a mix of rave praise and harsh criticism from fans and the media. It really wasn’t until the last few days of the season that the Mets finally gave up the lead they had managed to cling to all season. I don’t think at that point it would have been to correct to change your temperment, especially when you’ve made such a point of keeping it the same all season, which until three games before the end of the season had been going reasonably well.
The thing we forget though is that Willie is still only in his third season as a manager. He’s learning this job as much as Wright or Reyes. He’s the managers version of a young third or fourth year player. What he did in 2005 and 2006 got him off to a great start, with the club improving by double digits in wins for two consecutive season. 2007 will be a large splotch on his resume, but its not as if he doesn’t have time to react to that.
We like to think of these people as these almost photographic images of what’s most fresh in our memories. But he has as much time to adjust what he does as Wright or Reyes do. I think we can all say for sure that “boot-camp” attitude will be right back there this Spring, as he kind of relaxed that before 2007. And maybe he will get a little bit more fiery. Who knows? Dispassion obviously didn’t pay off for him. I doubt we’ll see him fly off at some reporter during a press conference. But maybe he will try to show a little bit more fire in the dugout. Maybe he already does behind closed doors.
However, if these things don’t happen, and the Mets fail again next year, I completely agree that it will be time to look elsewhere. He obviously needs to make some adjustment. There is no reason a bunch that talented should have blown the lead they did against the teams they did it against. But there’s also no reason for me to believe he will or won’t do that. We just have to wait and see and try not to jump to conclusions based on what’s most fresh in our memories. Once something becomes a legitimate trend or habit, that’s when you actually need to start paying attention to it. Until then, lets just enjoy the ride.
I don’t know..these aren’t 12 year olds he’s managing. I don’t think they should be looking or even, were looking to him for confidence. As grown men I’m sure they weren’t watching Willie’s interviews and thinking that everything must be fine because that’s what he was saying.
Also, as has been pointed out many times here and other places, just because Willie never got mad for the media doesn’t mean he never was angry in front of his players.
What about that comment that came from within the clubhouse from an anonymous player (from Marty Noble in September) that said “We know Willie cares, but he doesn’t always show it.” That leads me to believe that what you see with the media is pretty much what you get in the clubhouse.
Okay…even if that is true(I’m not a fan of quotes in which someone won’t attach his name) that doesn’t mean that the players somehow became complacent BECAUSE of Willie’s demeanor.
As I said before, these are grown men who play professionally…this is their job. If they really need their manager to get angry or sad or whatever to motivate them to play hard then we need to scrap the whole team, especially the veterans. I mean, do you really think that Carlos Delgado NEEDS Willie to get angry to motivate him to win or to make him care about winning?
If that’s the case, we’re in big trouble.
It’s not that they needed him to motivate them to win per se, but rather they needed him to make them realize that they can’t just go through the motions because they were the defending NL East champs. But Willie kept telling them that everything is fine, “no big deal, getem tomorrow”, we’re the best team, etc. The more they keep hearing that over and over, that absolutely can lead to a sense of entitlement/complacency. The “We have so much talent, that sometimes I think we get a little bored” quote reeks of complacency like no other.
Wow, you’re blaming Delgado’s quote on Willie?
If these players can’t realize on their own that they have to play every inning of every game and that no one is handing them titles on a platter, then there’s something wrong with the players. I don’t care if they’re vets or rookies.
Get rid of the players that don’t care enough. They’re the problem.
Or maybe the pitching was just not quality enough to get them to the playoffs. It sputtered down the stretch.
Wow, he paints a pretty bleak assessment.
They can’t turn their roster over, but the Phils and most of the west teams are already as good or better than they are, in addition to them having a stupid, uninventive manager.
Thanks 2007 Mutts, your collapse may be the last time you even smell the playoffs for a long time
The Phils are overrated, and they also have a stupid, uninventive manager.
yeah, that overrated team SMOKED the Mets how many straight times at the end of the season? And that overrated team isn’t the one that had a historic collapse.
Maybe you shouldn’t dare to throw that label on another team, especially the one who BEAT US FOR THE DAMN DIVISION TITLE
I’ll take the Phils core over the Mets core.
The Phils got hot at the right time, and the Mets pretty much gave a way a few games, letting them have the crown. They then proceeded to revert to form.
They do have a couple of core guys tht are good, but not particularly young any more (that is, they are at least at their peak, not going up).
Rowand had a career year, and is probably gone. Who know if Burrell can stay healthy and productive again.
And the pitching still is very thin.
I guess by overrated, I mean that they are about what they showed (a mid-upper 80’s win team), but some people are making them out to be some kind of 100 win Juggernaut.
The Phillies were one game better. Whoopee!
I’m not too sure whether the teams in the west are really any better. Colorado was going to roll over anyone. The break before the WS hurt their momentum.
He did make one point that I harped on a bit last year about Pelfrey and the pen, but it also goes for Humber, and any other young SP (oh, and that Chamberlain kid in the Bronx!)
“I understand why no one wants to turn a 23-year-old who signed his first contract last year into a career reliever; I don’t understand why anyone thinks that giving a young pitcher a year or two in the bullpen is consigning him to the bullpen for life”
What a concept! Get valuable use out of him for the Mets, while he learns and improves. When he is ready, put himin the rotation.
Of course, you can make the arguement that Heillman is in the same position, and is ready to move back into the rotation.
Actually, if you read what he said, he doesn’t think Pelfailure will ever develop the pitches he needs for the rotation, and we’re going to have another 2-7 line from this piece of garbage that basically dooms us before they give up, realize he’s a bust of epic proportions, and throw him into the pen
I saw that part, but I think he was reaching a bit. The guy is what, 23? Maybe 24? 2 years in pro ball? And the coaches tried to rework his entire pitching arsenal and approach?
I think we can at least give him until age 25 or so before labelling him a complete bust or BP fodder for life!
Marchman doesn’t understand baseball very well if he doesn’t understand why Mota was used frequently since Schoeneweis is supposedly a LOOGY and Sele the long man … so how the heck is Willie going to complete innings 6-7-8-9 otherwise without imitating Torre and shredding the arms of his remaining relievers? Tim, someones got to pitch the innings after the starters exit.