Alderson Not Looking for Puppet Manager
There’s been a lot of talk about Sandy Alderson’s strategy of picking a manager who is going to follow through on the front office’s plans. Most people have been critical of this position because they feel it means the manager won’t have a head on his shoulders and will have limited power. They feel the new manager will not have any teeth and will only be Alderson’s puppet. I see it differently.
I’ve had situations where I’ve put together teams for particular work projects. In these situations it’s always helpful to have people who buy in to the strategies I’ve chosen to get the project done. This doesn’t mean that I won’t listen to suggestions that may get things done better and it certainly doesn’t mean the people I choose for the project are my puppets. Quite the opposite. If they’re buying in then they’re more likely to fill their roles more efficiently. If they’re not buying in I still trust that their professionalism will lead to a job well done but I’ve found that buying in usually leads to better results.
This experience can be applied to Alderson’s managerial pick. Alderson is not necesarily looking for someone he can control and who will do what he says. He’s looking for someone who will buy in to his strategy for building a team and whos managerial style will support that strategy.
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Alderson Hired As Mets GM
Though it hasn’t been made official the rumor mill has it that the Mets have hired Sandy Alderson to replace Omar Minaya as the team’s new general manager. Alderson gives the Mets instant credibility with a World Series championship under his belt and the respect of other general managers around the league. (I just hope he was hired for his credentials and not because a tired Fred Wilpon thought he was hiring Sandy Koufax. insert rimshot here.)
Ted Berg of SNY.tv has a great post on his TedQuarters blog describing his feelings on the matter. Berg’s thoughts echo mine so well that I won’t write too much here for fear of being redundant.
Suffice it to say that I’m satisfied with this hiring. I think it will bring some semblance of order to what has been a chaotic atmosphere. It also gives me a feeling that the person in the GMs chair actually knows what he’s doing. I don’t mean that as a kick to Minaya while he’s already down but Minaya lost a lot of credibility with me when he brought back Jerry Manuel as manager after the 2008 season. Though Manuel wasn’t as much to blame for not making the playoffs in 2008 as (arguably) Willie Randolph was for the collapse in 2007 I felt removing the interim tag from his title was the beginning of the end for Minaya. (Or maybe the way the Randolph firing was executed was the beginning of the end.) I didn’t have as much confidence in him after that as I had before.
Alderson’s first steps in his new position will not be easy. He’ll need to pick a new manager who echoes his own baseball philosophies, figure out how to unload overpaid, underachieving Luis Castillo & a lockerroom cancer with an ego in Oliver Perez and untangle the knotted mess that is the pitching staff. (Not to mention deal with John Ricco in a way that makes him feel better after having been passed over for the general manager position he coveted and has been filling on an interim basis. I know from personal experience that being hired from the outside when there was a viable candidate inside can make for a sticky situation sometimes.)
Sure the team has a long way to go. It could take a few years to bring this team back to respectability. But with Alderson at the helm I feel a step has been taken in the right direction.
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Rubin: Why Keep Minaya?
Adam Rubin of ESPNNewYork made a point this morning (through his Twitter account) against keeping former general manager Omar Minaya in the Mets organization. I must say that I agree.
Can someone explain why Omar’s player-evaluation skills are so indispensable to the organization that he must be brought back in that role?
Adam Rubin
AdamRubinESPN
Or is it the fact he’s owed about $2.2 million?Adam Rubin
AdamRubinESPN
And before someone cites Dickey and Takahashi, I’ll see you Catalanotto, Matthews, Jacobs and note that if you sign volume, someone rises.Adam Rubin
AdamRubinESPN
And I’ll see you Igarashi, who got the two-year deal.Adam Rubin
AdamRubinESPN
My point being: How about just an absolute clean break with new, fresh ideas — no matter which GM candidate emerges?Adam Rubin
AdamRubinESPN
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Mets Undefeated… Sort Of
According to Mark Simon at ESPN the Mets have gone 12-0 on Tuesday home games this season. Too bad they couldn’t spread that around to some other days as well. More interesting stats from Simon can be found in his post on ESPN.com’s Mets Blog.
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Fire The Training Staff!
If ever there was an excuse to fire the Mets training staff it was last night when Jose Reyes was removed from the game in the second inning after tweaking his oblique injury. The Mets have called it “mild” but Reyes will be shut down until he is pain free.
The fact that Reyes was removed after tweaking a previous injury would not be a big deal if taken out of context. But you’d think the training staff would learn from experience. That experience can be taken from the entire team over the last couple of years but can also be taken from Reyes alone. Reyes has come back from injuries three times over the last two seasons only to aggravate the original injury.
Furthermore Reyes said after last night’s game that the pain from the original oblique injury, suffered around the All Star break, never fully subsided. Why is a player allowed to play if the pain from an injury that was suffered over a six weeks ago has not gone away?
Obviously Reyes was playing in large part because he wanted to play. A player with his enthusiasm was probably lobbying to get back into the lineup the day after the injury occurred. But the training staff is not there to cater to the players desires. They’re there to be sure the players are healthy which serves the players careers as well as the team. Playing it fast and loose by letting a player play when his injury has not properly healed serves neither player nor team.
I understand the idea of playing through the pain. I also understand that some injuries simply nag for months and can be played with. This injury probably falls into both of these categories but is hard to accept given the fact that this kind of thing seems to happen so often with this training staff.
I know I’m repeating the obvious but something must be done to improve the handling of injuries on this team. The current training staff is clearly not getting it done.
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Stupid Is As KRod Does
Earlier this season Philadelphia Phillies relief pitcher Ryan Madson committed one of the stupidest acts a professional athlete can commit. After blowing a save in the 10th inning of a game against the San Francisco Giants Madson threw a temper tantrum during which he kicked a chair. Proving that the chair is mightier than the foot Madson ended up on the disabled list with a broken toe. Madson was filling in as the Phillies closer due to an injury to regular closer Brad Lidge.
This type of injury is just plain stupid. Everyone understands how it feels to have had a bad day on the job. But when you make a living with your physical prowess you need to find an outlet for that anger that does not threaten the well being of your body. Such an injury is not only harmful to the player and his career but also to the team which must now find a way to fill the players spot on the roster with a capable replacement.
Madson is not the first player to cause his team damage by incurring a self inflicted injury. And he won’t be the last. We hear of these types of injuries several times a season.
Bust as stupid as this type of injury is a Met, as usual, has found a way to make it more stupid.
Francisco Rodriguez has taken this type of injury to the extreme. Though he’ll be out for the rest of the season it’s not the length of his absence that makes it so dumb. It’s how he incurred the injury.
Instead of kicking a chair and breaking his toe Rodriguez suffered a torn ligament in his thumb while beating up his girlfriend’s father, the grandfather of his twin children. (Details of the incident have been covered ad nauseam in other venues.)
In doing so K-Rod not only cost the team but may have done irreparable damage to his personal life and put his career in jeopardy. His girlfriend and her father have already gotten restraining orders that will keep him from his own house. As the situation develops his legal rights to see his own children could be in danger. Additionally, it’s expected that the Mets will be looking to void his contract. At the very least they will seek to make his stay on the disabled list an unpaid affair.
In other words, letting his temper get the better of him for just a minute may lead him to lose everything or at least a large chunk of it. After this episode it all changes for him.
Stupid indeed.
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Mets Need To Add To Player Leadership
During last night’s game between the Mets and Phillies ESPN’s Jon Miller and Joe Morgan made the point (more than once) that the Mets team needs to man up. (That’s my interpretation. They didn’t say it exactly that way.) This is not a new concept. I’ve seen countless blog posts and Twitter messages saying the same thing and I agree. This idea is the driving force behind the call by so many Mets fans to hire Wally Backman as the team’s next manager. And while I don’t necessarily disagree with the call for Backman (I’m actually on the fence on that issue) I think the bigger issue is the kind of player leadership this team has.
Whenever people talk about this team the two names that come up first in the conversation as leaders are David Wright and Jose Reyes. Their names probably come up more often than Johan Santana and Carlos Beltran (or, as Miller would say, Beltron) because Wright and Reyes are home grown players. Whether being home grown or not is proper criteria for becoming a team leader is a separate argument but it was definitely a factor in their status as team leaders.
The problem is that this team needs a slightly different kind of leadership than these guys are giving. As Miller & Morgan and many others have noted this team’s leadership is too soft. This is not the fault of Wright and Reyes. They can only lead the way they learned how from the team leaders that were around in the early stages of their careers. Unfortunately the tough, rugged, in your face kind of leader has been few and far between on the Mets roster during the Wright/Reyes era. The closest they got was Paul Lo Duca and his day is long gone for various reasons. (I’m still convinced the Mets knew his name would turn up in the Mitchell Report before they traded him but I digress.) And this is why the favorite refrain of many Mets fans today is “we want Backman”.
Though I think Backman is an option that should be investigated and strongly considered when the team finally looks for it’s next manager (he will make the players more accountable than they seem to be right now and add some fire that seems to be missing) it’s going to take more than a change of managers to change the teams fortunes. They’re going to need to augment their team leadership by adding a player whose personality brings a bit of Backman to compliment the way Wright and Reyes go about their leadership roles.
No matter how good the management and player personnel the Mets will continue to be a soft team until this kind of addition is made to their roster.
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Jets Twitter List
In preparation for tonight’s premiere of Hard Knocks I created a Twitter list of all Jets players on Twitter. The Jets players Twitter list lists all 17 players. Follow the list to follow them all or click the players name below to visit their Twitter feed:
Nick Mangold
Dustin Keller
David Clowney
Santonio Holmes
Braylon Edwards
Mark Sanchez
Antonio Cromartie
Bart Scott
D’Brickashaw Ferguson
Damien Woody
Darrelle Revis
Donovan Warren
Erik Ainge
James Ihedigbo
Jason Davis
Jim Leonhard
Mike DeVito
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The Sun’ll Come Out Minaya!
I’m amazed at how few words had to be changed to make this work. Here’s a Fred Wilpon inspired version of the song Tomorrow from the Broadway show Annie:
The sun’ll come out
Minaya!
Bet your bottom dollar
That tomorrow
There’ll be sun!
Just thinkin’ about
Minaya!
Clears away the cobwebs,
And the sorrow
‘Til there’s none!
When I’m stuck in a day
That’s gray,
And lonely,
I just stick out my chin
And Grin,
And Say,
Oh!
The sun’ll come out
Minaya!
So ya gotta hang on
‘Til tomorrow
Come what may
Minaya! Minaya!
Fred loves ya! Minaya!
You’re always
A day
A way!
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Fred Wilpon Is An Ass
Fred Wilpon is an ass. When asked today if Omar Minaya will be the Mets GM next season Wilpon responded “Is the sun going to come up tomorrow?”.
Oh, he’s not an ass for keeping Minaya as GM (or maybe he is, but that’s a different rant). It’s the way he answered the question. While I realize he was giving emphatic yes couldn’t he given us just that? An emphatic yes?
I understand the silliness of the question. I mean, what owner is going to answer “no” to that question unless a move had already been made and was about to be announced? (I bet Mike Puma is collecting high fives from his New York Post colleagues for getting a scoop despite the silliness of the question.) But why the wise crack? As a Mets fan I find his response an insult.
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