Marchman Wants Willie Booted. Discuss.
I like Tim Marchman’s work; today, he’s saying it’s time to fire Willie Randolph as Mets manager. Faith And Fear In Flushing.com agrees, and it came up on Michael Kay’s radio show yesterday, although I got so irritated with Kay’s comments about how Girardi had to play nicer with the local media that it blocked out any memory of whether he agreed. I do remember Kay and one of his studio cohorts saying that the team just looks flat out there — that the fans boo Delgado because it’s easier to boo one guy than to boo an endemic problem.
Your thoughts, Mets fans? I don’t follow the team so closely that I could really have a meaningful opinion, but my feeling last year was that, if Randolph bore any responsibility for the end-of-season half-assing and subsequent collapse, Minaya should have sacked him to send a message, and it’s kind of hard to see how he didn’t bear responsibility for it, at least in part. If one guy isn’t trying, that’s on him; if several of your guys aren’t trying, that’s on you.
I can’t speak to Marchman’s points about Randolph’s in-game managerial shortcomings, and I wish he’d furnished more specifics, because the piece didn’t give me a real sense of them. But if this is a clubhouse issue only, then yeah, looks like he’s got to go.
So, go on. Let it out.
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The thing is, Willie’s over .500 in his time with the Mets, the team is currently 1/2 a game out of first in a division nobody’s expecting them to run away with anyhow, and it’s only the start of May. For all the cries of “they didn’t live up to their talent!”, they outplayed their projected win-loss record by a game last year. Yes, they’ve been looking kind of flat a lot of the time, and yes, the end of last season was a nightmare, but I don’t know if it makes sense to ditch the manager right this minute.
I’m a Red Sox fan, so I have no opinion about the Mets other than “Wow, Carlos Delgado is hot.”
I’m not a Mets fan, but just to put things into perspective, the Tigers were 0-7 at the start and I didn’t hear anyone really calling for Leyland’s head. Just a thought.
Not a Mets fan, but God bless you for listening to Michael Kay. I can’t stomach him, myself, and wish he would never again mention the fact that he is a Fordham alumnus.
I’m not a Mets fan, either, but I am often made to watch them. For one thing I think it’s too early for their place in the standings to mean a whole lot; the real issue seems to be that they don’t seem to have quite shaken the malaise that led to their epic collapse last year. They’re playing flat a *lot* of the time, and even when they win, it’s often kind of meh. I like Willy and I don’t know that firing him is actually the right move or the kind of fix they need, but *something* is hanging over that team that didn’t get cured in the offseason, and sometimes there’s just nowhere to look but to the manager.
I like how every comment so far seems to start with “I’m not a Mets fan but” – I can’t decide if I should go with “I’m not a doctor but I play one in internet comments” or “I’m not a feminist but …” Perhaps neither.
I feel like Hardball Times or someone has done studies and tried to measure just how much difference a manager really makes to a team’s performance. At the same time, even if it’s only a margin of 2 or 3 games over the course of a season, how many games did the Mets lose the division by in 2007? Eh, it’s probably worth a look at Randolph.
Oh, FloridaErin, they weren’t calling for Leyland’s head, but there was definitely rumbles. Starting to rumble really loud.
Well, I saw the Mets for the first time last night against my Bums, and I can’t say I found them impressive. Oliver Perez dishing up Blake DeWitt’s first major league home run was pretty much the exclamation point on the Met-suck. (Not that I’m complaining. I’ve fallen in love with DeWitt, as a player. But he wasn’t exactly tearing up the Southern League before he got this job.) Then they got one run off Chad Billingsley, who is notorious for not being able to pitch solid fifth innings or not walk people. I think twice they had runners on second and third against him, and didn’t score.
I know. One game. But wow. We’ll see how they do against Hiroki Kuroda tonight.
So one game means I really can’t offer actual analysis, but just generally speaking, I do think it’s a little early — or late, thinking back to last season — to start calling for Randolph’s head. I basically agree with Kat’s comment. I mean…it’s May. Does anyone think September’s standings will look like this? San Francisco has a better record than Colorado and San Diego, for crying out loud. Let’s wait ’til the All-Star break; that’ll give everyone a better idea of what’s what, I think, not just in New York but everywhere.