the surprising thing about this loss, for me personally, is that I am neither surprised or disappointed. this team has disappointed me all year, so I am over it by now. they have played poorly all year but were winning. now they are playing poorly and losing. the common denominator is that they are playing poorly, and when you do it will catch up with you. Omar took for granted the team last year and thought the little changes he made couldn't make this team worse. Willie took it for granted and just figured the team was good enough to win on its own. both of them are responsible for the debale that is the entire 2007 season. with competant managing and a less argoant GM, this team should have run away with this division.
If the Mets go 6-4, Philly has to go 7-2 to force the one game playoff. Mets are still likely to win the division, if they can't go 6-4 against this remaining schedule, they don't deserve to make the playoffs.
I think everybody agrees with the last part of your post, but that analysis is a little less comforting when you realize that on September 12, the Phils would have to have gone 15-2 the rest of the season to force a tie if the Mets went 8-9. It's difficult to comprehend just how badly the last week has gone for the Mets.
This is what happens when you find someway to choke the last 7 games against Philly. If we played remotely close to where we should be the division would have been rapped up weeks ago.
I see Willie bashing is in full effect. I agree to a certain extent, he just isn't a good manager. But at what point do the players need to take the blame for this collapse? How about the SPs not being able to protect multiple run leads, how many times this week? The bullpen is just atrocious, Willie might have mismanaged the bullpen last night but you have a 3 run lead in the 9th, I don't care who is in there, they have to close out the game.
That ends the conversation. Players get bashed all the time around here for not playing well - have you seen the comments at various times about Reyes, Lo Duca, Delgado, the bullpen all year? Lots of players also get bashed in a way that I think is way out of proportion for what they've actually done or not done (Glavine and Green come to mind). Omar has also been criticized plenty for his complete inability last winter and this season to improve the team. But if all a manager can do is watch as his players either perform well or not, he's hardly earning his salary, is he? I'll ask again what I've asked many times before - what value added does Willie actually provide?
I am of the belief that a baseball manager is only as good as the players he has. Willie didn't look so bad last year when he had the best bullpen in baseball, a consistent lineup all year and pretty good starting pitching. I just don't think the manager has an effect on the overall outcome of the games as you guys do. It comes down to if the players perform, his decisions don't look so bad, if they don't he looks terrible. I don't think he is a good manager, he has pissed me off as much as the next guy, well maybe not but he has pissed me off this year. I just think that he is getting the majority of the blame for this collapse over the last week where as I think the majority of the blame should go to the pitching. To answer your question specifically, I don't think Willie provides much value but I don't think many if any managers really do. Look at Torre, what has he done differently over the 2nd half of the season than he did the first?
considering the Mets are 3-7 in their last 10, going 6-4 the rest of the way is extremely optimistic the way they are playing right now.
There is absolutely no question that managers have less effect on their team's performance than do coaches in other sports (especially football) - every analysis shows that. What that means is that all a manager can do is put his players and team in the best position they can to win, and then hope for the best. If he can't do that, he brings nothing to the table. I do not blame Willie for Perez, Maine, and Glavine coming up small this week, 13 errors in a four-game stretch, and so on. I do blame him for starting Brian Lawrence because "it was his turn." I do blame him for pulling Feliciano after one batter because the next batter is righthanded, completely ignoring that the following two were lefthanded. I do blame him for overworking some pitchers while completely ignoring others for weeks on end. I do blame him for never changing his strategy (e.g., never squeezing, never running the wheel play on defense, etc.). I do blame him for refusing to acknowledge that something needs to be changed, because his vast experience tells him that "this is the way pennant races feel," and "this will all seem far away when they're sipping champagne." I do blame him for not jumping all over the team when their fundamental play is absolutely horrible (they should be out there drilling on throwing to the right base two hours a day until they get it right; someone other than Glavine, Castillo, and Chavez should know how to bunt; etc.). Your use of Torre as a counterexample is to my mind very curious. Willie is, of course, an apple from the Torre tree. There are many people who think that Torre is not a good manager at all, and has just benefited from having players like Jeter, Posada, Pettitte, Rivera, A-Rod, Clemens, etc., on his team. His poor performance with teams that lacked talent (the Mets, the Braves) supports this belief. I don't follow the Yankees closely enough to have any real opinions on this, but it seems to me that the Yankee turnaround has come because the starting pitching started doing a lot better, Rivera started doing a lot better, they got great performances from some of the kids they brought up, and their lineup is ridiculously strong, not because Torre suddenly started doing a better job. Saying that Randolph reminds you of Torre would in many minds be damning with faint praise.
I sort of share that belief as well......but he (Willie) has made just too many glaring mistakes that have exacerbated the problems this team has been having.....jeff mentioned a few, I'll add the fact that he played the infield back in the ninth, conceding the run to tie the game when he has no one left in the bullpen to pitch? unreal......there are far too many to list......but at the same time D Wright doesn't make that error, maybe the whole game is different, so in the end player execution trumps all
I completely agree with your first paragraph, I'm really not trying to defend him as being a good manager. Some of his decisions are mind boggling, especially his use of Lawrence, which I called him out for numerous times. I'm just putting more of the blame on the players for this collapse over the last week, especially the pitching. Which leads to my comparison of Torre. The point is he hasn't done anything differently in the second half than he did in the first. Like you pointed out, the players just started to perform better & if the Mets players started to play better they could overcome Willie's deficiencies as a manager like they did last year.
I don't know the answer to this but when was the last time this team had back to back losing 10 game stretches? There is no doubt they have to play better and if they don't they deserve to live with the worst collapse in ML history for the rest of their lives.
I didn't know that he had built up any goodwill. Good teams don't need managers. Willie's biggest problem is his bullpen management and as good as the Mets pen was last year it would've been pretty tough to screw up. Also, I haven't been keeping track this year. As for why people blame the manager rather then the players at least in my case it's exactly what you said. Willie brings nothing to the table. No positives. Zero. Even the worst offenders in the Mets bullpen have done something during the season to help them win a few games. Call me crazy but I also think the job of the manager should be to help limit and help players overcome their deficiencies, not the other way around.
Well when I said goodwill, it was more about Willie not being a bad enough of a manager last year to screw things up but during these weeks of futility Willie has been as bad as I've ever seen
Thank god the rest of the world cares more about Yankees/Red Sox but if not for the that alot of people would be calling fo Willie's job in the media. IMO if this team doesn't at least go as far as they did last year Willie needs to be fired. When you have a team that has as many quality players as the Mets do and you take steps backwards people need to lose their jobs. Minaya needs to catch alot of heat for allowing guys like Bradford to walk and for trading Bannister for Ambrioux "The Royals are still laughing about this trade" Burgos. When the Royals dupe you in a trade that seriously calls into your skills as a GM.
Minaya better get heat for this bullpen, like resigning Mota, but the question is why the hell do we even have to pitch him in the 1st place. We have September callups, but with the way this team is managed you'd think that we have no one available whatsoever. I still don't know why Sele is wasting a spot on this roster because not only is he terrible, but evedryone knows that he is terrible and they don't use him
the mets brought up some AA closer today, another guy to sit in the bullpen and not be used, i guess.
