Randolph Receives a Stay of Execution, But the Mets Falter Again

FLUSHING, N.Y. – Willie Randolph escaped the gallows here today, but after his New York Mets played yet another sloppy, flat, uninspired game, one must wonder just how long his reprieve will last.

Hours after a two-hour, closed-door meeting with owner Fred Wilpon, his son Jeff—the team’s chief operating officer—and general manager Omar Minaya, Randolph’s squad fell to first-place Florida, 7-3. The last 15 Mets were retired in order, and by the eighth inning, isolated chants of “Fire Willie!” could be heard here in pockets of a near-deserted Shea Stadium.

If today’s meeting was intended to “clear the air,” as Randolph and Minaya put it at a late-afternoon press conference before batting-practice, it did little to accomplish that, at least publicly. Despite Minaya’s double-talk, Randolph’s job seems to be in serious jeopardy, and his status remains a distraction in the clubhouse.

“There is no limbo—period,” Minaya said. “Willie is the manager. As I said this weekend, Willie has the support of the general manager, has the support of the ownership.”

But when Randolph was asked if the Mets assured him that he would remain as manager through the end of this season, he replied, “No, they didn’t say that.”

Minaya also said that the meeting was more about Randolph’s comments in last Monday’s Bergen (N.J.) Record, in which he complained of unfair treatment and suggested that racial bias could be affecting the public’s perception of him as a manager, than about the team’s poor play. Randolph apologized publicly for those comments Wednesday, and also placed a phone call at that time to the Wilpons, but they never called him back, according to published reports.

“Ownership was disappointed in the comments,” Minaya said, adding, “But they’re also very disappointed in how the team is playing.”

As well they should be. The Mets are now mired in fourth-place, six-and-a-half games behind the Marlins. They host Florida for two more games before welcoming Joe Torre’s Los Angeles Dodgers into Shea for a four-game weekend set.

Before and after tonight’s game, the team offered unanimous, if tepid, support for their embattled skipper. Sports Illustrated’s Jon Heyman asked first baseman Carlos Delgado directly if he feels Randolph should remain as manager.

“I’ll tell you what I think: we need to play better,” Delgado said. “This is not about the manager. I’m not in the position to think or not think. They don’t pay me to think. They pay me play baseball.”

Asked more pointedly by Heyman to answer the original question, Delgado turned snarky.

“If you want to be an ass, I can be an ass, too,” he said.

Carlos Beltrán was asked why more players aren’t coming out in unqualified support of Randolph.

“That’s not in our hands,” Beltrán said. “It’s not my decision.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

And if the Mets don’t feel strongly about wanting to save Randolph’s job, it certainly showed here tonight. José Reyes made a two-out error in the first inning that led to two unearned Marlins runs. Reyes got one back with a leadoff home-run, and the next two Mets, Luis Castillo and David Wright, followed with hits.

Beltrán, batting cleanup with little protection behind him due to injuries to Moises Alou and Ryan Church—the latter of whom is only available to pinch-hit—inexplicably laid a bunt down the third-base line for an infield single. It was the type of play that comes from trying too hard.

Delgado hit a shallow sacrifice-fly to plate one run, but light-hitting catcher Brian Schneider grounded out weakly to first base, and rookie outfielder Nick Evans, playing in his third big-league game, flied out to right field. Considering the lineup, Beltrán should have been trying to drive the ball. The top-four in the Mets’ lineup tonight (Reyes, Castillo, Wright, and Beltran) had 8 hits in 16 at-bats; the next four (Delgado, Schneider, Evans, and outfielder Endy Chávez) went 1-for-14.

Reyes added another home-run the next inning to give the Mets the lead, but starting pitcher Mike Pelfrey, after retiring the first two hitters in the third inning, allowed a hit, a walk, and a hit batsman to load the bases with two outs. Veteran outfielder Luis Gonzalez drove in three runs with a bases-clearing double that bounced behind a diving Carlos Beltrán in shallow center-field that gave the Marlins a lead the Mets would never seriously challenge.

That rally seemed to take the life out of the Mets, an all-too-familiar sight these days. When they fall behind, they seem to lack the will to fight back. Some would like to blame that on Randolph, but, as one anonymous Met told MLB.com’s Marty Noble, “It’s pretty hard to manage when no one’s on base.”

That gets to the heart of the issue. It is difficult to argue that the Mets’ struggles this season—or even back to the second half of last season, particularly in September—are Randolph’s fault. And while this is also a flawed team in a lot of ways, nearly every one of the Mets is also underachieving this season, from young stars like José Reyes and David Wright, to veterans like Beltrán. So while Randolph may not be to blame for the team’s lackluster play, it is reasonable for ownership to feel compelled to do something.

“I can understand the front office wanting to shake things up to jump-start us,” Wright told the New York Post. “I’m not opposed to that, but we, as players, need to step it up. For me, it’s unfair for Willie to be taking the brunt of this when we’re not getting the job done.”

Someone is going to take the brunt of this if the Mets continue to play as poorly as they did tonight, and Randolph is the easiest scapegoat—or so the front-page of tomorrow’s New York Post proclaims. It isn’t fair to the Mets’ skipper, but as the old baseball adage goes, you can’t fire all the players.