April Fools For Randolph?

By Mike McGann
Posted Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Here’s a phrase Mets’ manager Willie Randolph might find familiar: win or you’re gone.

While everyone claims to have put away the disappointment over last season’s historic collapse in the post-Johan Santana euphoria, it’s clear that not everyone in the Mets’ front office has — and they made sure this week to let Willie know in no uncertain terms.

Joel Sherman’s exclusive piece in the New York Post this week, suggesting that Randolph had lobbied hard for the Mets to hire Brian McNamee as a batting practice pitcher, tells us a lot more than just Randolph’s lack of connection to what was going on in the Yankee clubhouse. McNamee is in the center of the growing steroids scandal which may lead to perjury charges against once likely Hall of Fame pitcher Roger Clemens.

Since it was leaked from the front office, obviously, from someone in a position to know, Randolph clearly has enemies within the team management. Somebody up there doesn’t like him — and it’s clear that there are factions within the organization.

Maybe, then, it’s no surprise that Randolph is a “new man” this spring, laughing and joking with the media, working for the first time in his four-year tenure to cultivate a relationship with a group, that on the whole, doesn’t like him very much. If Randolph is on rocky ground with some in the front office, then he needs to get the media on his side, or at minimum, no longer hoping for his dismissal.

The short form is this: as in 2006, the Mets need to get off to a hot start, or Randolph will be gone before the All-Star break. Period. If the front office sees anything like last September’s swoon, the Randolph Era will end abruptly.

The funny thing, of course, is that Randolph has grown as a manager — he clearly did a better job in handling the bullpen the last couple of seasons and seems to have found his voice with the team and the media, last season’s swoon notwithstanding. But his advocacy of McNamee brings up some disturbing questions: did he not know what everyone else seemed to know about McNamee? Or did he not care?

Both are equally disturbing in a lot of ways, but you would hope he did know what was going on in the Yankee clubhouse. But you have to wonder with his growing confusion and frustration last September, when he seemed as unable to pinpoint what was going on in the Mets’ clubhouse, where it seems, some pretty odd things were going down.

So right now, it’s all smiles and optimism in Mets’ camp. Of course, the same can probably be said in Pirates’ camp, too, and we all know where their season is headed. They can “ooh and ahh” over the new CitiField logo, which looks alarmingly like the Domino’s Pizza logo (We’ll blow a big division lead in 30 minutes. Guaranteed.) but this is a team very much at the fork in the road.

In fact, we may see some Steinbrennerian moments out of the Wilpons — which is good, as both Hal and Hank seem to be acting like the Wilpons these days. (As an aside, aren’t there days you wonder if Jeff somehow got switched with Hal and Hank in one of those strange rich-people hospital accidents?) Fred and Jeff have put up big coin to stock this team with a bunch of All-Stars and losing just doesn’t fit with the marketing message, not to mention the $140 million bill.

So, one way or another, there will be a lot of fireworks at ol’ Shea this year — a fitting sendoff for our beloved, rusting, stinky heap of a ballpark. The only question is this: are they going to be the kind that satisfy, or the type that leave a kind of queasy feeling in your stomach?

So we get about a month of smiles, warm handshakes and optimism. That lasts until about 4 p.m. on March 31. Should the Mets drop two out of three to the Marlins, Randolph will head into Atlanta under fire and needing to win. While the team’s benchmark may well be “meaningful games” in October, none will be more meaningful for Randolph’s future than those in April.

Don’t let the smiles fool you. The long knives are out.