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Yesterday, Willie randolph issued an apology to his team, SNY and the fans, while being interviewed on WFAN, which you can read about here, as well as on SNY in an interview with Kevin Burkhardt, which you can see here.
Having had a chance to watch both interviews, how would you say your opinion of Randolph has changed, since the two interviews?
[Poll=99]
For more on Randolph’s apology, check out NY Sports Day, the New York Post, Newsday, and the Star Ledger.
Lastly, in a fantastic column for the New York Post, Joel Sherman explains why it is wins and losses, not race, or TV coverage or fan perception, that has Randolph in hot water.
Where the heck is Omar? Is he hiding under his desk or something?
I don’t want an attention wh*re like Philips as GM, but is it me or has this guy become invisible?
And I definitely feel like this team is waiting for the “other shoe to drop” like HR said last night, you can almost reach out and touch it.
They are going to have to move fast and either cut Randolph loose, or let this team know soon that he is not going anywhere until the end of the year.
Someone wake up the GM, please.
I believe he will be on SNY tonight. My guess is the team wanted to let Randolph time for his apology, before Minaya went out and said anything to push the story.
Now, Omar can just cite Willie’s statements and let it be and move on.
Matt,
If possible, please post any Minaya interview video (or, if the video is difficult to do, a trascript) for those of us out of towners stuck outside the SNY network range if he appears in studio and stuck with an ATL feed for tonight’s game via Extra Innings even if he appears in the booth.
He has been rather quiet lately.
Wow, sorry for the run-on sentence.
I would imagine Omar and Co. know the clubhouse much better than we do. If Randolph has somehow “lost” the team, they should be the first to know it and that, to me, is the single most important factor in showing him the door. All the comments from the players appear to support him, I have not really heard any “anonymous” quotes or whispers, but who knows.
However, its tough to look at their play in ATL and the timing of Randolph’s comments/firestorm surrounding him and just wonder if they are related, and if keeping Randolph around is actually becoming an additional burden and putting more pressure on a slumping club. Or it could just be Turner Field, we have seen it before.
In any case, they do need to move past this, one way or another. I will be interested in hearing from Omar on the state of the team.
Omar has disappeared just like Delgado after games. Shocker.
Billy Wagner is on Metsblog!
Willie says he thought the Ian O’Connor conversation was off-the-record. Everybody knows that off-the-record discussions are used for players, manager, politicians, etc to get the truth or what they think is the truth out to reporters without it being quoted.
The subsequent apologies, mea culpas, etc are just spin and damage control.
If he thought the O’Connor interview was off-the-record, then what Willie expressed in that interview (the race card, the “hiding” mets fans, and his paranoid delusions about SNY) are his true thoughts.
It is time to end this nightmare. It is time for Mr. Randolph to go.
I am one of those who believes his comments weren’t all that bad, and were way too over-analyzed. If they were said in the off-season, it would hardly be a story.
However, the reaction is what it is, and has been very detrimental I think. Also, the fact that he gave this ridiculous interview, at the worst possible time, is a head-scratcher for sure.
RPsJacket,
We’ll have to agree to disagree as far as your first paragraph.
Your second paragraph is spot-on, though.
Yes, and it almost doesn’t matter what anyone thinks he meant or didn’t mean, the reaction and any impact on his struggling club is the only reality that matters.
Horrible judgement on his part, perhaps his biggest blunder to date.
I want him to go also but did feel a little compassion for him while he spoke…i just wish there was a really good person to replace him…freakin alou is too much…i wonder what it is going to take for mr randolph to be gone…if they lose the next 4 on this trip will that do it,,,just johann losing today should be enough…i want the mets to win but i want willie gone…i may need to go back into therapy duet this….i never thought i had MPD til now…
I don’t hate him at all. I think he is a good man, and I bet his players do too.
If they lose today, and sweep Colorado, they have a 5-4 trip. And its not like Turner Field has ever been friendly to ANY Mtes team.
I know, I sound delusional, but it could happen….coffee’s brewing…
I can see Santana winning today. The Braves are so lefty heavy that he can handle them single handedly and take the game to Wagner, or maybe Sanchez for an out or two.
if they win just 1 in Colorado, and do the same against the Marlins and Dodgers they will be close to 5 under .500 and the other shoe will have to drop.
This is turning into a circus.
It’s been a circus filled with tragic clowns since 07.
For me personally, I was instantly against hiring Willie Randolph. When word came out of his poor interviews at the time the job went to Art Howe, I thought that should have closed the door to his candidacy. On top of that, the thought that Willie interviewed poorly (reportedly unprepared) as a result of his believing the interview was a charade and that the job was already Howe’s actually cemented my resolve rather than softened it. To me, that was a good sign of how he responded to adversity and it would not have spoke well of his leadership temperment to fold in the tent, so to speak.
Both Eddie C last night and Adam Rubin today report that Willie said he reached out to the Wilpons to apologize directly before the media apology but he could not reach them.
Isn’t this startlingly bad, or at least telling?
Good question, either way its bad. If a manager can’t reach ownership or they don’t immediately get to him if they know he wants to talk to him, thats just sad. If they are playing mind games with him, that is sad as well.
Just do something, or let him know he’s staying. How do you not take calls from your manager?
The Wilpons never needed any additional ammunition to fire Randolph, they have had all they needed. They could have done it at any time prior to these comments, and they still can. They should let him and the team know where he stands.
They may just be waiting til he returns from the road trip to, er, sit down with him and do the deed. Or, they may be trying to hold to their previous commitment to wait until the end of May to assess the situation.
But the message does seem to be that they are letting him twist in the wind. As Howie said last night, this is a team waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The mets should bring in Barry Bonds and Pete Rose to complete this circus.
I’m more positive now, positive that his tenure as manager will be ending soon.
75% of the respondents have a negative view.
Willie is not a bad person, he is a bad manager.
For heaven’s sake cut the guy loose and let’s get on with then ext chapter.
Willie apologized….. time to move on from this subject.
It is time to move on…Willie must do so. Move on, Wille. Get going. See ya! Ciao! Smell you later!
I’m probably in the minority here, but as an early Willie critic, I thought he did OK on FAN yesterday. He should have said that from the beginning, “Look, I was frustrated and said some things I shouldn’t have”. Also a hattip to Fatso and Fruitloops, as they did not duck tough questions,, but were generally fair and supportive.
I think it is well past time to move past the “racist” comments, but we need to address the product on the field. It stinks. This team has no life, and once they get down, as Mike Nichols said, you know it’s over. That is not a good sign for a manager. Even after last night’s debacle, Willie came out with that monotone, “We have to play better”, “the guys are working hard”, etc. I’ll give him credit for pointing out Castillo’s horrid AB, but the message he is sending the team is it’s business as usual, keep working hard and everything will be fine.
But everything is not fine. This team has no life. As I’ve said many times, a lot of this is Omar’s doing; he has stocked the roster with low-key, quiet guys. If you’re going to do that, you need a more charismatic manager to take the press heat off the players, and to motivate them when they are down, and rip them when they are playing poorly. Think Bobby V with the ‘98-01 Mets. That team had a lot of low-key players, but Bobby’s charisma made him the center of media attention, and took the glare off the team when things weren’t going well.
I am not converned about “losing the clubhouse”. That really just means that the players don’t find him offensive, although they certainly could just be ignoring him.
Of more concern is the perception that they are unprepared for most games, mentally and situationally (such as having a plan of attack for the pitcher, then executing it).
To me, that is losing the team just as much as an open rebellion in the clubhouse.
my main issue is that they seem largely unmotivated most of the time. Willie said in his latest interview that motivation is his best quality as a manager (silently conceding that he isnt a strong tactician) and if this is the kind of motivation that results, it is clearly time for a new voice.
I thought the same thing.
After last nights debacle I spent some time really analyzing the situation. I came to an new understanding about Willie. Willie made many attempts at telling us how we the fans don’t know him or understand him. I agree for the most part and find it hard to vote in this poll now.
The thing is I don’t think I ever realized how sensitive Willie was. We the Mets fan clearly hurt his feelings and put him on the ropes. IMO, everything that came out about the fans is just him trying to hurt us back. And on a human level I understand this. I’ve been in that situation a few times in my life and know what that must be like. Maybe not to the extend of what Willie is going through.
The thing that bothers me the most is that as a person who understands pressure, sensitivity and a what its like to be criticized, I find it hard to separate those feelings from what I feel as a fan.
I do feel Willie has sort of an I’m Willie Randolph and your not attitude and a real inability to get on the same level as the fans and players. IMO he comes off as a guy that doesn’t allow you very close. So I feel that there is a major disconnect there with the fans and possibly even the players. IMO Willie isn’t a mans man. Not the type of guy you go out for drinks with or someone you can just let loose with. He’s wound up tight. Very defensive and very sensitive. I can’t imagine Wright or Wags sitting next to Willie talking about women or acting like guys do. Laughing and carrying on about nonsense. And I think sometimes especially in hard times you need your leader to be able to come down to your level. Be just one of the guys and excepted as a personality . Not just as an authoritarian.
I fully understand that I don’t know the first thing about who Willie Randolph is. This is just my outsiders perception and my opinion.
The thing is that Willie really isn’t getting the most from these players. His managerial skills seem average at best and he doesn’t seem to have the type of leadership skills that works with this makeup of players. One day Willie Randolph will be an excellent manager. But he has some things he needs to figure out first. I understand your a sensitive guy and someone that gets hurt very easily but that does not mean that you should be the Mets manager. Maybe one day you will be back here a changed man. But the time is not right anymore. If you could just flip a switch and start doing those things you need to then do it,, but I find it hard to believe you can or that the players will accept it. Your a good man willie but its time to go.
regardless of his comments (and the fact that they were off the record only speaks to the professionalism of the journalist, not the accuracy of the quotes), willie said last night that his record speaks for itself.
i agree. 77-79. it’s time.
all the arguments about who should replace him are clouding the issue. in this case it would be addition by subtraction.
This whole thing has even exhausted me, but here we go again. Willie needs to go. The problem here is that I don’t know if he will go. I’m getting mixed messages. First, why would he go on the “fix-the-image” tour if he wasn’t going to be kept? Why the Burkhardt interview, if not to soften his image to the fans? But on the flip side, you can usually sense when everyone is on board for a change when the announcers of games start to hint at things. Gary was just short of saying “Willie Sucks” last night. From what I have read here, it sounds like Howie mentioned things like its time for a change in the managerial office. The hosts on the FAN and ESPN radio who normally protect Willie (Benigno excluded) are even saying that maybe it is time for changes. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I do often think that they get hints at the directions of the team that we, the fans, don’t always get. So, if thats the way they are leaning, I always think that its because they are just sowing the seeds because ownership wants to get a feel for what the fan really wants.
Well…note to the Wilpons and Omar, 80% of the fanbase wants him out. I think its time.
These interviews do make things seem more positive and it makes Willie look better but the bottom line is, it’s all talk. He says there is a problem, he says, “we must do something about it,” but what is “something?” There are no answers, there are no solutions, there are no processes put into action to remedy this malaise. This is what bothers me about Willie. Maybe we are all wrong in our thoughts that Willie doesn’t throw things and kick things. Even if he does do that, even that doesn’t work. There is a technical problem and a mental problem and both need to be fixed. And Willie, as the manager of the team, needs to provide a solution to fix it. Unless he does this very soon, and the Mets get swept tonight, which they probably will, then he may be gone very, very soon.