Reyes Proves His Value
One night after being removed in the first inning as a precaution to protect one of the most valuable players on the team Jose Reyes proved that value. Reyes led off the game with a single, stole second, advanced to third when Angels catcher Jeff Mathis‘s throw to second went into centerfield and scored when David Wright grounded to second base. Then in the third inning he tripled and scored on a Marlon Anderson sacrifice fly.
In the middle of the fourth the Mets were leading 3-0 (the third run was due to a solo homer by Carlos Delgado) when the wheels began to come off as the Angels took over the lead 4-3. The big hit was a two run single by Vladimir Guerrero.
It remained that way into the 9th inning when Reyes took over the game again. This time he singled, moved to second on a wild pitch and scored on a Wright single to left.
The Mets eventually won the game 5-4 in 10 innings. The winning run was scored on a Damion Easley homer.
This game really underscored an important point for this teams offense. How Reyes goes so goes the team. He is a rare player whose intensity and play making ability (especially offensively) can create opportunities for his team to win.
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Quotes: David Wright On The Managerial Change
Everybody in here obviously loves and respects Willie. With that being said, we have to move on for the sake of making the playoffs. And Jerry is extremely capable of doing that. He’s got the respect of this clubhouse.
– Mets third baseman David Wright on Jerry Manuel taking over as Mets manager from the fired Willie Randolph
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Video: Reyes Leaves Tuesday’s Game
For those who missed Jose Reyes‘s tantrum when being pulled from the game on Tuesday night here is video courtesy of MLB.com. As a side note Jerry Manuel’s handling of the situation has been universally accepted. He’s been praised for the way he handled the situation right down to following Reyes to the clubhouse to talk about it at the risk of missing the game he was supposed to be managing.
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Mets Coaching Shuffle
In the wake of the firings of Willie Randolph, Rick Peterson and Tom Nieto the Mets coaching staff was obviously shuffled around. Sandy Alomar Sr. moved from third base to bench coach, Ken Oberkfell and Luis Aguayo were brought up from New Orleans to coach first and third respectively and Dan Warthen was brought up from New orleans to be pitching coach. In the end the Mets coaching staff looks as follows:
| # | Name | Position | ||||
| 53 | Jerry Manuel | Manager | ||||
| 2 | Sandy Alomar Sr. | Bench Coach | ||||
| 20 | Howard Johnson | Hitting Coach | ||||
| 59 | Dan Warthen | Pitching Coach | ||||
| 55 | Ken Oberkfell | First Base Coach | ||||
| 51 | Luis Aguayo | Third Base Coach | ||||
| 52 | Guy Conti | Bullpen Coach | ||||
| 90 | Sandy Alomar Jr. | Catching Instructor | ||||
| 56 | Juan Lopez | Bullpen Pitcher | ||||
| 54 | Dave Racaniello | Bullpen Catcher | ||||
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John Stewart on Willie’s Firing
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Mets Lose Manuel Debut
Looks like the managerial change didn’t spark the Mets. In the first game since Jerry Manuel took the managers reins from Willie Randolph the Mets lost 6-1 to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Team could field behind Johan Santana. They couldn’t support him with runs either.
On other bad news Jose Reyes hurt his hamstring in the first inning. Manuel pulled Reyes from the game. Reyes was visibly unhappy and went to the clubhouse to cool off. After Manuel talked with him in the clubhouse Reyes returned to the dugout to apologize to Manuel for losing his cool when he was pulled from the game.
The Reyes incident was a good one. Not because he hurt his hamstring but because it tested Manuel in his first game as manager. It gave him a situation he needed to assert himself as the skipper of the club and he came through by telling a player that he behaved unprofessionally and he wouldn’t have that on his team.
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Omar’s Press Conference
Watching Omar Minaya’s press conference. He didn’t say anything earth shattering. It was more or less “this was my decision, we needed a change”.
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Questions About How Willie Was Fired
Many questions are surfacing in Mets-land now that Willie Randolph has been fired as manager. Here are a few.
- Was it fair to fire Willie? Randolph had little to do with player acquisition. He had no control over injuries. He was simply trying to do his best with the roster that was assembled for him. So shouldn’t the person who assembled the roster have gone first? – No, it’s not fair for Willie to be the fall guy. But it’s rarely fair when the manager gets fired. The way the business works is first you change the players, then you change the manager, then you change the general manager. The first part (changing players) was skipped in this case because the Mets are an older, overpaid team and quality players are hard to come by when that’s what you’re selling. So the organization went straight to step 2 (changing managers). Managers know this when they take the job. Willie knew it too. He knew that there was significant heat on him. He may not have seen it coming last night but he knew that it would come soon.
- Was it cowardly of the Mets to fire him overnight? – This one cracks me up. This question is coming mostly from newspaper reporters. The timing of the firing meant that these guys didn’t get to have their headlines and Willie postmortems in this morning’s edition. They accuse the Mets of purposely timing the firing for a time when the team could minimize the press. What both sides overlooked is that news is now a 24/7 medium. With 24 hour sports and news networks and bloggers all over the world who are not tied into any specific schedule for publishing you have to fight to get your word in and have it sound original. These newspaper beat writers and columnists are upset that amateurs like me will get first crack at this story. So rather than just continue with their lives writing proper stories for their papers websites they chose instead to complain about it and throw accusations at the team. I’m not saying that the move wasn’t timed to cut some writer’s out of the immediate fallout of the firing. But these writers need to behave as professionally as they expect the team to and stop calling this “cowardly” or a “massacre”. If a player complains publicly that a writer wronged him the writers would be all over the guy. Grow up and cut it out. Do what you’re paid to do and stop complaining.
- Was it disrespectful to fire Willie the way they did? – Absolutely. Regardless of what I just said about the writers needing to grow up the fact is that the team handles this poorly. They obviously had planned this firing and didn’t need to wait until the team was on the west coast to do it. They could have fired him after the previous night’s game at Shea. This way Willie would not have had to fly out to the west coast to lose his job, the organization could have faced the music on the move in a more timely manner and the writers would have had their stories in yesterday’s paper. Everybody would have been happy, at least as far as getting it all over with is concerned.
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Fired: Randolph, Peterson, Nieto
It finally happened. After the beating the Angels 9-6 general manager Omar Minaya finally dropped the ax on manager Willie Randolph. The win was the fourth in six games so one has to believe that there was something else going on. Either Randolph was resistant to suggested changes from ownership or Minaya was just waiting for a final piece to be worked out before making the move. Either way it looks like this firing was previously planned but delayed for some reason. The move was announced at 3:14 AM eastern time last night so details are still a little sketchy.
The team also axed pitching coach Rick Peterson (as I had been suggesting recently) and first base coach Tom Nieto. As expected bench coach Jerry Manuel was promoted to manager. AAA New Orleans manager Ken Oberkfell, a member of the 1986 Astros team that nearly ousted the Mets in the NLCS, was promoted. He will probably be the bench coach. ‘Nola pitching coach Dan Warthen will fill the same role at the major league level and field coordinator Luis Aguayo will probably be the first base coach.
Randolph had been in trouble through most of the season. It seems like the team could not shake the feeling of the great fall of last season. Part of the problem was age, lack of depth and injuries, which are things that Randolph could not be faulted for (that falls on Minaya). But Randolph was not able to shake the doldrums of last years collapse off of the players despite the acquisition of Johan Santana. It was just a matter of time and that time came last night.
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Saved By A Rainout?
With all the speculation about Willie Randolph’s status one has to wonder if yesterday’s rain out may have helped Willie keep his job through the weekend. Ownership has apparently given up their support of the Mets manager and general manager Omar Minaya has given the vote of confidence that history tells us is usually the kiss of death.
But after the good Oliver Perez showed up on Friday night to stave off a firing all speculation moved to Saturday’s game as the possible last game for Randolph as the field manager of the New York Mets. But then that game got rained out and rescheduled as part of a doubleheader today giving Willie at least one more day.
So now what? I have to believe that a split will be good enough for Randolph to keep his job going into this week’s visit to Anaheim to play the Angels. Even under the best circumstances you can’t expect to sweep a doubleheader. No, I’d venture to guess that the only way Minaya could fire Randolph before the weekend is out would be if the Mets lose both games or Willie does something detrimental to the organization. The latter is out of character and highly unlikely. The former, though, is a distinct possibility.
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