Ugh, welcome to the Joe Torre School of Pen Management. I like Willie, but I admit to not watching enough Mets games to know how he handles his players. If he's doing it like Joe Torre pre-July of this year, then I can see why guys want him gone. I've always hated the closer role. Sure, it's nice as a Yankees fan to have a guy like Mariano Rivera, but it's better to see Mo coming in to get a 5-out save because there are runners in scoring position, and whoever was on the mound at the time is set up to blow it. You have to give your players every opportunity to win, and if you're not going to make the moves that put your best players in the position to take advantage of those opportunities, then you are a poor in-game manager, and while it's great to have an out-of-game motivator, in-game decisions are more critical to the success of a club.
Listen, Willie is terrible as a manager and I have no problem with him becoming the scapegoat for this collapse but to blame him is ridiculous. This is the fault of the entire pitching staff being atrocious the last 2 weeks and the lineup not being able to hit in the clutch.
Hahahaha, been calling this for ages now. Hopefully this team collapses and Omar/Willie are fired. Omar's just an average GM with latin sources and a lot of money to spend. Willie is just outright horrible.
Yes. sort of. On Mike and Mike this am Golic made an interesting point. The players have not forgotten how to play, (I.E. the slide is not physical). It's become a mental thing. And the fact that it has gone on this long, is Willies fault. Three times at least guys have been caught attempting to steal third, at the wrong time. The first time is on the player, the next two are on the manager.
so if players aren't performing, what is the solution? get rid of all your players? that would be an awfully expensive solution, when simply removing one person can also change how players play. there are plenty of examples through baseball history in which a change in managers has led to a change in player performance, thus there is a correlation between Managers and player performance, both negatively and positively. congrats on another tremendously specious argument, I like how you jump to the extreme conclusion that by believing the Manager is responsible that the players are somehow being excused. nice to have you back. I don't understand this argument. if Willie isn't responsible for poor performances, he can't be responsible for great performances, meaning he is useless anyways. so, if he is useless, what is your argument not to fire him because you are inherently saying he doesn't affect performance either way.
Don't even bother getting into that argument with junc. We Yankees fans have been having it with him in regard to Torre for a long time now.
I do think it's ridiculous to say the team quit on him. With a week left in the season, you think the players just said, "Screw it, I don't want to make the playoffs, the last 150 games meant nothing"? No. However, he does deserve some blame just for how poorly they've been playing lately.
A lot of people say this. I happen to agree with them. Managers get too much credit when teams win and too much blame when teams lose. I honestly believe that over the course of a year a manager can't directly effect more then 10 games and those 10 games they can only lose by poor pitching decisions.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=brain/070928/randolph page 2's view on what goes through willie's head
You are a Phillies fan. Of course, you want the Mets to collapse. But why would you want Minaya and Randolph to get fired? I agree with you that Minaya is an average GM. He might even be less than average. He was not good in Montreal. With the Mets maybe he's been average (Maine, El Duque, Perez moves were good, other moves were bad or made just because the Mets have a shitload of money to work with). Remember last year when Hiker came out of the woodwork and pretended he was a Cardinals fan? What happened to that poster? Why is he absent from baseball threads these days?
If have now decided that Wille should be fired. This can not be happening to this team, it just cant be.
