Randolph Firing Raises Stakes for Mets
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On September 12, 2007, the Mets were a lock for their second straight division title; with a seven game lead and 17 games left to play, the biggest question facing the team was its playoff rotation. Nine months and four days later, the franchise is the biggest laughingstock in baseball. Late last night the first casualties were taken, as manager Willie Randolph, pitching coach Rick Peterson, and first base coach Tom Nieto were all fired hours after a 9–6 win over the Los Angeles Angels, in what will be remembered for years as a Monday night massacre.
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With a league-leading $140 million payroll, the team has struggled to a 34–35 record despite pre-season expectations that they would be the strongest team in the National League. The firings thus came as no surprise, especially as speculation over Randolph’s job status had been so intense in recent weeks that he and general manager Omar Minaya actually had to hold a press conference May 26, simply to announce that he wouldn’t be fired. The team went out and won five of its next seven, but after a recent 2–7 stretch, it was clearly just a matter of time before Randolph’s dismissal.
By far the strangest thing about the firings was the timing. Coming just after midnight Pacific time after a win on the first game of a road trip, the announcement seemed timed to keep the news off the back pages of the tabloids for a day. Whatever the team’s intent, firing Randolph and the coaches while most New Yorkers were asleep simply had the predictable effect of making team management look cowardly and making an instant martyr of the inept Randolph. Following on a long string of botched Mets firings dating back decades, this latest move invites comparisons between the Wilpon family, which owns the Mets, and the widely-loathed Dolans, owners of the Knicks and authors of many bizarre incidents revolving around the hiring and firing of coaches and general managers.
Stakes are high. With Citi Field opening next year and SNY, a still-new Mets-owned cable network, broadcasting the team’s games, another playoff miss could cost the Wilpons tens of millions of dollars in lost playoff revenue, and even more in lost brand equity. The team’s fate is now in the hands of new manager Jerry Manuel, until now the team’s bench coach and a former American League manager of the year with the Chicago White Sox, whom he piloted to a 95-67 record in 2000. Dan Warthen, pitching coach for the team’s Class AAA affiliate in New Orleans, will replace Peterson; New Orleans manager Ken Oberkfell and Mets field coordinator Luis Aguayo will also join the coaching staff.
The fourth-place Mets, 6.5 games behind first-place Philadelphia in the division race and seven behind St. Louis in the wild card race, are quite capable of making a strong enough run over the rest of the season to land them in the postseason. Whether even that would be enough to pacify fans outraged by the greatest collapse in regular season history, a half-season’s worth of mediocre baseball, and the surreal Randolph firing is now the great unknown.
tmarchman@nysun.com
