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Last night on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, Buster Olney said:
“I think this entire situation has illuminated a cultural problem that the Mets have had for years, for decades. They basically have a lot of infighting and back-stabbing and some times it takes the form of anonymous quotes in the newspaper. One classic example from the last year is that, it’s an open secret, that Willie Randolph has issues with Tony Bernazard, who is the Mets assistant GM, and the Mets never really solved this…It’s just one of those things that seem to fester in this organization.”
…the reported issue with Bernazard is now Jerry Manuel’s problem, i guess…
…as for comments regarding infighting and backstabbing, etc., well, as a Mets fan, i’ve been reading about this for years…i do not know how it differs from other teams, though…also, is this is a Mets thing, or a Mets + NYC thing…
Meanwhile, at ESPN.com, 1050 ESPN Radio’s Andrew Marchand quoted Fred Wilpon as saying:
“Omar is in charge. It was his decision.”
…first of all, i doubt this…i do…
…second, Andrew Marchand is fascinating to me…he gets the most bizarre, amazing and unique quotes and information in ways that make me laugh and yet impressive at the same time…
…my favorite was the time he got a quote from Pedro Martinez because he just happened to be sitting next to him on the same flight…
…i swear, he must have trained with the CIA, but, instead, uses his skills to report on baseball…
Well, that’s one way for the Wilpons to put Minaya’s head on the chopping block.
Eerie.
This whole organization does nothing but deflect blame. When, if ever, has one particular person/position taken full responsibility for this franchise’s futility?
Wilpons - “Omar’s in charge.”
Omar - “Team isn’t playing the way they’re capable.”
Willie - “I’m playing with team I have.”
ALL of them are blaming someone else. Stand up and be accountable.
And people wonder why the players lack accountability.
Let’s bring in Super Joe next season. At least everybody loves him.
“Omar is in charge. It was his decision.”
I don’t doubt this for a second. The Wilpons may be incompetent, they may spin, but they don’t lie.
The Omar apologists like to pin the blame on the Wilpons in order to deflect blame from Omar, but it won’t work.
If the Wilpons are guilty of anything it’s for letting this thing drag on and for maybe being the source of the leaks over the last few weeks.
But it was Omar’s decision to make, and this is how he did it. Very poorly too.
Then why is it all the leaked reported, which correctly stated which coaches would be fired and who would be brought in to replace them, said Omar was Willie’s last line of defense and the Wilpons were the ones who had already made up their minds? Maybe firing him last night was his decision but it seems like his hand was being forced.
The reports I read only said that the Wilpons gave their blessing to Omar if he wanted to fire Willie. None of the reports said they told Omar to fire Willie. NONE.
IOW, they left the decision entirely up to Omar. Either way, they weren’t going to veto him. And this is how Omar decided.
Again, if the Wilpons are to be faulted it’s for letting the thing drag on and for not telling Omar to do the firing in a dignified way. Omar should have fired them on Sunday or earlier in the week.
The infamous “one Met said”. Didn’t it turn out that for years that person was Ron Darling?
I thought it was Keith Hernandez.
seems more like a Keith thing to do…
I heard it was Randy Neimann.
The World’s Highest Paid Translator Bernazard is supposedly in the clubhouse so often they should have just hired him as the new manager.
Last night I went to sleep after the 7th inning, feeling we had gotten over the hump. Yes our bullpen has been bad, but not this bad. Things were beginning to turn around. Today, I wake up and I hear that Willie has been fired. The second we fired Willie Randolph, the second we were admitting that our team was in disarray, dysfunctional, and on the way down.
Personally, I think we had a couple of bad breaks the past few weeks. We had a hot streak, lost 3 consecutive 2-1 games, won some more, lost to the Rangers in a stomach punch kind of game in which nothing went our way, and then won some more. I think this team was about to break through.
Instead, we have now admitted defeat. We have admitted that we are going nowhere and don’t stand a chance. It is despicable the way this situation was handled. I am embarrassed. Everything we have accomplished over the past year- proving we are a respectable ball club, bringing up talent (Wright, Reyes), attracting free agents, seems to have vanished overnight. Once again, we are the overpaid and overachieving team of the early 1990s.
I did not want Willie fired. I hope everyone on these message boards is happy that they got what they wanted. I wonder how Cerrone feels that the NYC hysteria he despises now thrives and multiplies on metsblog. The funny thing is that by looking at these polls put out this morning, it is a 50/50 split on whether Willie should have been fired. Either the pro-Willies are becoming more vocal, or Metsblog.com is getting a bad case of nostolgia.
it’d be interesting to see one of the players step up and say something negative about how the situation was handled. They can’t be fired, so….. Maybe Wright, since he’s the golden boy who can do no wrong. I know it won’t happen, but I’d love to see it
I totally disagree with your idea that this move means they are going nowhere, and have admitted defeat.
If anything, this says that they feel that the team can, and should, be doing better, and the move was intended to get everyone refocused on winning, etc.
Besides, the whole Willie watch was a distraction that has now been eliminated. Maybe they can concentrate on playing and winning games now?
Anyway, Willie was no great shakes as a managr, so swapping him with Manual, is it really got any chance of being detrimental to the team?
GIve it a couple of days for the buzz and excitement to die down, then it will be back to normal: panicing over every lose, and speculating about Omar’s job!
Despicable. Classless, embarrassing, disrespectful.
I can understand wanting to fire Willie, Peterson, and Nieto, but how do you do it at 3 in the morning (Eastern time) with Omar being unavailable for comment? This suggests to me that Omar didn’t want to do this, but had his hand forced by higher ups.
The front office should be ashamed of itself. I know I am ashamed of it, and once again embarrassed to be a fan of a team that behaves in such a manner.
Willie probably had to go, but I wish him good luck. And I hope that Jerry Manuel has some ideas.
I actually find it amusing, after all the hatred thrown his way for being such a lousy manager and a drag on the team, that somehow Willie is coming across as the sympathetic figure in all this!
And even if this was not Omar’s call, he certainly can still be running the team and making decisions. SOmetimes the owners do get to make a call on something like the manager, since it is their investment. Hopefully Omar, if still the GM, gets to decide on who to replace him (which should be Oberkfell).
If it is Oberkfell why not just make him the manager now rather than hiring him as a coach and making Manuel the interim manager?
OK. We now have the technology, so lets use it!
Clone Joan Whitney Payson and bring her back in as Mets owner!
Instant back-to-respectability!
Funny, correct me if I’m wrong metsblog, but I still haven’t seen a picture of Tony Benazard or him on camera.
Recently he was shown on TV sitting next to Omar at some games during “Willie Watch”, and he sometimes appears on the SNY pregame show discussing the minor league players, but not often.
I was one of those fans that wanted Willie gone. But, over the course of a couple of weeks, my opinion changed. I wanted Omar gone as well as that Tony B. Seriously, a lot of people have mentioned Tony B’s name as a problem. Why is he still here? Get rid of that jack@ss.
In one of the earlier posts there was a comment that said Bill Madden was on Mike and Mike saying that Tony B and Jeff Wilpon have become friends and he’s now Jeff’s go to guy and there’s a power struggle between him and Omar in the front office.
Basically if you believe the reports our front office has turned into something straight out of a soap opera.
I guarentee if the firing was done after a loss, the poll would be completely opposite.
Willie has never been a good manager. He is a good guy and I’m sure can be valuable to any organization, but he had to go.
What was the confidence rating in him 2 weeks ago? 1?
Now the Mets won 2 games and all of a sudden everyone loves Willie. Baseball has it’s ups and downs. This team has proven over the past year that their downs are gonna be slightly worse than their ups.
A change was needed. I don’t applaud it, but I am happy someone did something.
I don’t think people disagree with firing him but they disagree with the way it was handled. Not just the firing him on a road trip but the weeks worth of leaked reports before hand and the awkward press conferences. It just seems horribly befuddled and I would expect a professional organization to be able to handle something like this much better. If there’s so much confusion in the front office that they can’t handle something as simple and common as firing a manager how can we expect them to run the rest of the franchise.
Why is Tony Bernazard still around!!! If it takes getting rid of Omar to solve this problem, then I say let’s just do it.
I agree that the Mets handed this in a embarrassing and classless way. But it is no surprise to me that the first person to rip the Mets is Buster Olney (a huge Yankee fan himself) . Any chance he gets he will rip on the Mets and it annoys me that he has to make it even worse then already is.