Rollins Was Wrong: Mets Were Team To Beat, They Just Got Beat

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October 1, 2007

Jimmy Rollins said before the season began that his Phillies were the team to beat. All Mets fandom scoffed at the comment. Today many people will give Rollins his due since his Phillies have prevailed to win the NL East. However despite the Mets dramatic fall (finishing a game out of first place after having a 7 game lead with 17 games remaining) I would have to disagree. The Mets were actually the team to beat, not the Phillies.

The problem for Mets fans is that in the end the Mets were beat. Not just by the Phillies but by all their opponents over the last month of the season. Worst of all they also beat themselves. There’s a whole off season to discuss what went wrong and how to address the various issues so there’s no point in going into it in detail here. The lowlights are as follows:

How could these things have been remedied? Is it a failure of manager Willie Randolph? Or pitching coach Dave Peterson? Or general manager Omar Minaya?

My gut reaction today (and this may change as time goes on and I begin to think more rationally) is to fire both Randolph and Peterson. The play of the team in the last few weeks was so uninspired that you have to at least take a hard look at the manager. And the pitching was sufficiently bad that you need to make the pitching coach accountable as well. Both men have played major roles in turning the team around from the Art Howe era (even though Peterson was an Howe hire) but after last years major success they were not able to get this team to the next level. It’s time to find people who can.

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