Two Teams with Two Very Different Managers

When the latest edition of the Subway Series began in New York this past weekend, Mets manager Willie Randolph was planted firmly on the proverbial hot-seat, his club meandering its way to a mediocre first month-and-a-half of the season. Following a rain-shortened, decisive two-game Mets sweep at Yankee Stadium, his pinstriped counterpart, Joe Girardi, finds himself in an equally precarious position.

As the Mets frittered away a seven-game lead over the final two-and-a-half-weeks of the 2007 baseball season, callers to New York’s sports-radio stations and anonymous commenters on the internet called Randolph to be more demonstrative and ditch his calm persona. They wanted Randolph to chew out his team after they played uninspired game after uninspired game. Instead, Willie stayed positive and supportive, walking around the locker room after games, shouting to himself, “We’re gonna win this thing,” even while his team hit rock-bottom. There was also an unfortunate quote about the champagne tasting sweet when the Mets eventually won the division.

Of course, they didn’t, and there was no champagne on that final Sunday in September. Randolph barely retained his job, and when the Mets entered their series with the Yankees at 20-19, and a clubhouse in turmoil, the back pages of the New York tabloids proclaimed that a bad series could cost Willie his job.

After a loss Thursday at home to Washington, Mets closer Billy Wagner commented to the assembled media that it was a “fucking shocker” that players like Carlos Beltrán and Carlos Delgado left Shea Stadium without taking questions, echoing Mets erstwhile catcher Paul Lo Duca, who told reporters last year that “they [referring apparently to the Mets’ Hispanic players] speak English, believe me.”

Lo Duca denied that his comments were racially-motivated, and Wagner made a similar statement Friday before Randolph called a team meeting to clear the air and try to right the ship. The significance of Yankee Stadium as the setting for the meeting was not lost on Randolph, the former Yankee.

“I will say this,” Randolph told the Daily News’ Bill Madden, “talking to them in this place I found myself getting very emotional, thinking about Thurman, Catfish, Reggie, Lou and all the others and all the winning we did here. We won because we played smart. We played the game right. We hustled. We were accountable to each other and, yeah, we even fought sometimes.”

“That’s what was missing here,” an anonymous player told the Daily News’ John Harper Sunday night after the Mets pounded the Yankees, 11-2. “We needed to care more about each other if we’re going to be the kind of team that wins a championship. I think we kind of took that for granted. The meeting made us realize that.”

And so, for now, all is right with the Mets, at least until today’s day-night doubleheader in Atlanta. Meanwhile, the Mets left their victims in the Bronx battered and bleeding. Joe Girardi, thus far, has not been able to provide the stability that has allowed the Yankees, 20-24 on the young season, to overcome slow starts during the tenure of this predecessor, Joe Torre. In 44 games this season, Girardi has, amazingly, used 38 different starting lineups.

Girardi has only one full season as a big-league manager under his belt, and it certainly was a turbulent one, winning the National League Manager of the Year award with Florida in 2006, and being summarily fired by ownership after the season.

The injuries to Alex Rodríguez and Jorge Posada have undoubtedly affected the Yankees, but as with the Mets, injuries are to be expected with veteran teams. The Yankees’ slow start has more to do with the ineffectiveness of their young pitchers—with whom they refused to part in the offseason for the Mets’ new ace, Johan Santana—and woeful starts from players like Robinson Canó and Jason Giambi.

Rodríguez returns to the lineup tonight, and the pressure could not be any greater. The back-page of today’s New York Post proclaims “Here Comes A-God!”

Joe Torre always succeeded in overcoming bad Aprils and Mays by keeping his team on an even keel, much like Willie Randolph tries to do for the Mets. Girardi seems to have a different philosophy, and it is unclear whether that will serve him well in the Bronx this season.