Mets Fans Stopped Calling Minaya a Genius This Week

When you're up, you're a genius; when you're not, you're a fool. That's how it is at the gambling table, that's how it is for any con man, and that's how it is in baseball. So I'm not surprised that over the last few days, thoughtful, observant Mets fans have been writing me things like this:

"They are really hard to root for!"

"Too much shtick, not enough substance."

"Fire Willie at the end of the season and hire Manny Acta!"

"The bloom is certainly off the rose of Omar Minaya's ‘genius.'" The first of these is inarguable; the second two are understandable; the fourth is something else. Minaya, like all general managers, is hostage to circumstance. When Jose Reyes was playing like Joe Morgan and Oliver Perez was pitching like Randy Johnson, he was touted as the king of New York. Lately, though, older players like Orlando Hernandez and Moises Alou have predictably gone down to injury. Questionable acquisitions like Scott Schoeneweis and Paul Lo Duca have proved why they were questioned. Discards like Heath Bell and Brian Bannister have lit it up for other teams. People have begun to wonder if Minaya might not be less the king, and more like the clown.

What kind of genius does it take, after all, to spend a lot of money on Pedro Martinez, Carlos Beltran, and Billy Wagner? Didn't everyone warn that bringing on a lot of older veterans like Carlos Delgado and Paul Lo Duca would leave the Mets liable to swift collapse? And what if Perez and John Maine prove not to be as good as everyone thought they might be three months ago? Wouldn't that make Minaya look less like the brilliant architect of a dynamic team and more like a standard-issue operator who got a little bit lucky?

Further, how has Minaya used his power to make things better? At the trade deadline, he picked up a second baseman rather than a reliever. He's been publicly silent as Willie Randolph has repeatedly stuck to some very questionable decisions about which players he'll use in which roles. And some of the moves he has made, like dismissing hitting coach Rick Down and releasing Julio Franco, didn't really seem to address the team's most vital problems.

The problem for Minaya isn't that these are mainly reasonable criticisms; it's that the nature of his position makes it hard to defend him against them.

Good general managers, like good gamblers and good investors, have to be judged by longterm results. The best card player in the world might be up or down millions of dollars in a given game or over a given year; the slickest con artist can go months, even years, trying to match the right game to the right mark. To judge how they're handling a specific situation, it's better to ask whether they're using a smart strategy, and whether they're sticking to it. The question to ask a con man isn't whether he was able to pull off a scam, it's whether he was able to figure out whether the scam was worth pulling.

Some of Minaya's bets have paid off badly during the last week. Over the last three years, he's made it pretty plain that he doesn't think set-up pitchers are worth spending too much money on, and that it's all right to bring on older, injury prone players if you think you can back them up with a strong bench. No one can be surprised when critics point this out and blame him for what's gone wrong.

Minaya, though, can't be judged fairly this way. These are pretty sound principles he's stuck to here, and they've not only generally paid off well over the last three years, they're actually likely to continue to pay off in the future. It's fair enough to blame Minaya when Schoeneweis cranes his neck to watch yet another line drive scream into left field, both because he brought him on in the first place and because he hasn't used his power to make sure Schoeneweis isn't pitching when it counts; but what about the fact that spending tens of millions of dollars on middle relief is universally derided as stupid?

That's all well and good about his strategy, one might say, but what about the execution? Minaya has, though, executed his strategies pretty well. All told, the Mets have had pretty terrific bullpens during his time in charge, and they've gotten more than enough out of their older, injury prone veterans to justify the policy of bringing them on. His pricey free agent signings have all done exceptionally well, and even if Perez and Maine don't turn out to be Koufax and Drysdale, there are 29 other teams who would be glad to have them.

The areas where Minaya has been weakest have, in fact, conflicted with his long-term strategies. Letting Philip Humber rot while Guillermo Mota and Brian Lawrence take the ball is a terrible idea, and also goes right against everything Minaya has said about building from within and giving younger players chances. But even here, the conflict is with another, arguably more important strategy, which is letting the manager manage and the coaches coach. That might be the wrong position to hold, but it's certainly a defensible one, and there's nothing wrong with sticking to it even when things are going bad.

Minaya isn't a genius, and anyone who's called him one is just wrong. The measure of the job he's done, though, isn't to be taken in a bad week, or even over a bad few months. He can improve; everyone can.

Then again, circumstances could still end up making him the king.