Stream of Consciousness, Continued

By Metstradamus
Posted Friday, May 16, 2008

Note: Guided by a head of steam (and a touch of alcohol), your friend Metstradamus has been on a stream of consciousness all day since the Mets lost in brutal 1-0 fashion to the Washington Nationals. He got home, and started riffing on his own blog. Now he comes straight to Flushing University in a continuation of that riff.

You know what the worst thing was as I sat at my computer and let the rants and thoughts flow on the disgraceful performance by the Mets on Thursday? It's that I did it while watching the Philadelphia Phillies play one of the tidiest, most crisp ballgames you'll ever see. It was a 5-0 shutout for Cole Hamels, while Jimmy Rollins provided an exclamation point by starting a double play while on his back. This happens, of course, on a day where Billy Wagner (former Phillie) exposed the cracks in his own lockerroom by blasting his teammates for ducking the media.

Think about it for a second: Can you remember the last time that the Mets played a game like that? Can you remember the last time the New York Mets had a game where they fired on each and every cylinder? If you said 2006, you might be right. And that's wrong on so many levels.

I got this comment today from one of my regulars immediately after my Thursday recap regarding Willie Randolph:

"Metstradamus, it is not Willie's fault that our team did not score any runs today. In my opinion, he's just a convenient target for everyone's rage."

There's truth to that. Willie Randolph is a convenient target for rage just like most managers are convenient targets for rage. Heck, how much rage did Joe Torre get after winning four championships? A lot.

Willie hasn't won any championships. And his window of opportunity is closing for him before he can get a chance to win one. Is it his fault? Well, I've always believed that it's players that win and lose games while managers can only do the best he can to put his team in the best position to win. I believe that to be the case here ... to a point.

When you have pitchers ripping teammates after the manager tells you to keep that kind of stuff in-house, it means that the person who should be leading isn't leading. This is clearly a team that needs a kick in the pants, and Willie Randolph refuses to provide that. Without being redundant, there are certain times where a manager needs to cause a scene to protect his players, as he didn't do after Moises Alou was ejected from the ballgame Wednesday night. The fact that Randolph didn't even bother to come out of dugout shocked me. And if it shocked me, think of how his players felt.

We know how Billy Wagner felt.

The other part to this whole equation is something that has become the simplest rule of managing: After a while, people stop listening. Managers have a short shelf life as a general rule. And Willie Randolph's strength has always lied in the fact that he knew how to manage people and run a room with everyone on the same page. After today's rant by Wagner, how do you think that room is being run? Do you think that everybody is on the same page?

The worst part of all of this ... all this mess? Guess where the Mets are tonight? If you guessed the Bronx, right again. You think three out of four losses to Washington is bad, if the Mets go into the Bronx and get their doors blown off by the Yankees with their three best pitchers on the hill, how long will the lines be to jump off the Whitestone Bridge? How do you think the fans who haven't jumped are going to react then?

And how do you think the Wilpons are going to react? Will they remain in the thought process of not making an impetous decision to let a series against the Yankees be the final straw? Or will they make one final attempt to save their season, a season in which they made a bold move to go get Johan Santana, by giving the Mets a different voice? After the homestand the Mets just had, that's not such an easy decision anymore.