The simple and obvious thing to do is often, perhaps usually, the best thing to do. Whether because they are too clever or, more plausibly, because they are not clever enough, the Mets have rarely done the simple and obvious thing for many years now. This makes their hiring of Willie Randolph as manager almost shocking.

The reasons Randolph makes the best choice for the job should be evident to all. Over the course of a long career nearly of Cooperstown caliber, during which he was the best New York-bred ballplayer of his generation, Randolph was a sophisticated player on winning teams. He spent his career surrounded by great managers like Billy Martin and Tommy Lasorda, and players like Mike Scioscia, Don Baylor, and Orel Hershiser – men who would go on to be well-respected managers and coaches themselves.

As a Yankees coach for the last nine seasons, he’s been integral to the management of perhaps the greatest team of all time. He’s universally respected and comfortable in New York.

It can’t be overemphasized that all of this matters not because it gives Randolph some sort of winning aura – if he turns out to treat the players degradingly or overindulgently, to be incompetent at the mechanics of in-game managing, or clueless at running a pitching staff, his winning aura will quickly dissipate.

Rather, his experience matters because he’s spent the last 30 years as a key member of some of the most intelligently managed teams of their time, and because it has earned him the respect necessary to come into this job with a clear mandate to prepare for the future. It’s a role for which he’s well suited.

As much as anybody, Randolph has deserved the opportunity to manage for years. Beyond that, he has the potential to be genuinely exceptional, someone who will be able, like his old teammate Scioscia, to take a slightly above-average team and steer them into the playoffs.

What should be most exciting for Mets fans is that while Randolph arrives to oversee what is, however it is being sold, the beginning of a conscious rebuilding process, this is hardly the gloomy fate it might be with many another teams. It might actually be for the best that Randolph is coming in with the team at a low ebb, because it means he will have the chance to mold David Wright. The young third baseman clearly has the potential to be a perennial All-Star – he’s already the best player on the team – but with the right tutelage, he can become something more.

There are subtleties in the game that a player has to master to achieve his full potential. They’re the sorts of things that differentiate Derek Jeter from his peers – the ability to consistently hit the ball through the gap on the hit-and-run, to unobtrusively read signs, to steal bases without being caught, to adjust his swing from pitch to pitch and for different parks, and the like. They’re the sorts of things that Randolph knows as well as anyone; if he’d had power, Randolph would have been a better player than Jeter.

Mastery of these intricacies, of course, is no substitute for production. Jeter’s ability to cut off any throw anywhere on the diamond does not mean he’s better than Miguel Tejada. But a player of immense gifts who performs these little tasks is one thing most consistently dominant teams have.

If Randolph steeps Wright and Jose Reyes in this kind of rigorous fundamental baseball, he may well end up with two Jeter-type players. Art Howe, whatever his strengths, was simply never going to bring that out of anyone.

This sort of instruction, along with creating a positive, disciplined environment for the young players in which they might acquire good habits of play, is Randolph’s main task. He has not run a pitching staff; Rick Peterson is quite capable of doing so. Schooled in the American League, Randolph may occasionally blank when the chance for the double-switch presents itself; that’s what a bench coach is for.

Randolph has a more important task: to teach the game to talented young players and to create a dignified and victory-oriented team culture. This simply won’t happen anytime soon. There are too many flawed veterans whom time has passed by. For a long time this team has been unbearable, playing neither well nor hard.

The Mets won’t be any good next year. But I suspect the young players will have learned some new tricks by the time Opening Day arrives, and the veterans will have remembered some old ones, and I don’t think anyone will dog it under Randolph.

If Willie can merely prevent the team from making an embarrassing blunder every other inning, and to play as if they care, he’ll earn enormous good will from all. He might do quite a bit more, but simply bringing intelligence, self-respect, and a winning spirit to Flushing will be quite enough for now.