The Mets Police

Graziano in the Ledger throws it out there that Selig is a great commissioner.   Whoa hold on there pal.

Yeah it's fun that the Rays are in the World Series and that the Brewers made the playoffs but let's calm down a little before we start ignoring the last 15 years.

Everyone knows the list but I wil bore you with it anyway.  In no particular order:

1.  Clemens.  Everyone kidded themselves.  All you had to do was look at him.

2.  Bonds.  Congrats, both Home Run records are now tarnished and we're hoping A-Rod of all people can be the home run king.

3.  McGwire.   Heads in the sand to sell tickets.  Ditto Sosa.

4.  Interleague Play.   It sucks.  Yeah it's halfway fun when the Mets play the Yankees and a bunch of similar matchups, but it's not more exciting than Yankees-Sox is or Mets-Phils should be.

5.  The dopey three divisions and Wild Card.   All the Wild Card does is allow teams that suck or are (undermanaged by Bobby Valentine) to stick around and kid themselves.   Oh, and it adds a lame round of playoffs.

6.   11pm playoff games.   Remember that one?

7.  5am opening day!  Remember those?

8.  The leagues still haven't reconciled the DH.   That should be solved in 5 minutes.  Flip a coin.  Expand the rosters to 26 to shut the union up.    Just decide.

Anyone of a certain age knows the game was much better in 1978 than it was in 2008.  Selig is horrible.

Graziano doesn't pull his punches:

You keep waiting for the Mets to surprise you and start acting like a big-league organization, and they keep making you wait.

Whatever they do, from the littlest decisions to the biggest, the Mets are a consistently, aggravatingly, disappointingly small-time joke.

When you're around the Mets all the time, your neck starts to hurt because you shake your head so much. Every day, the evidence of organization-wide incompetence hits you right in the face.

That's just the opener. Click the link

http://www.nj.com/mets/index.ssf/2008/06/randolphs_firing_is_a_joke_jus.html

Dan Graziano in the Star-Ledger joins the ranks of noticing this team doesn't play so well.

Mets have very little fire ... and the manager is to blameSince June 1 of last year, the Mets' record is 71-71.

Yes, really.

Right on the .500 mark, as mediocre as it gets. They like to brush off last year's collapse as two bad September weeks, but a fact like this one blows that excuse to smithereens and puts Willie Randolph right in the cross hairs.

When May of 2007 ended the Mets had a 34-18 record -- the best in the National League -- and a 4½-game lead in the NL East. They led the Phillies, who would eventually win the division, by 8½ games.

Since that time, they've been a .500 team.

"When you're 71-71, that says it all," Billy Wagner said Wednesday in Los Angeles. "We have not played to our potential."

That's one possibility. The other is that the Mets aren't as good as they and we think they are. But Wagner's assessment is the more likely one.

With players such as himself, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes, Moises Alou, John Maine and Oliver Perez, the Mets have the talent to be one of the top teams in the National League. A .500 record over 142 games means they're not playing up to their talent level.
And that's on the manager.

A person familiar with the Mets' thinking, who requested anonymity because he was relaying details of private conversations, said Mets management is planning a reevaluation at the end of this month.

The offseason acquisitions of Johan Santana, Ryan Church and Brian Schneider improved the roster, and if the team hasn't found a way to assert itself in the division by June, the Wilpons will look seriously at whether a change is necessary in the manager's office.

Now, this same person said that, unless the Mets fall completely out of the race, Randolph is likely to last through this season. GM Omar Minaya likely will stick up for him, and there's no clear-cut candidate, inside the organization or out, waiting to take Randolph's place midseason.

But the Mets' underwhelming on-field performance of the past 11 calendar months has ownership wondering if Randolph is the right man to manage their team, and it's a question they have good reason to ask.

People like to get on Randolph's case for lineups or pitching changes or in-game strategy, but that's all just noise. He's not perceptibly worse at bullpen management than any other manager is. Ripping him for specific moves is just a way for frustrated fans to blow off steam.
Where Randolph comes up short is in his failure to recognize what kind of team he has and manage accordingly. Randolph is a decent man who cares deeply about his team and his job and believes strongly in himself. But he's also stubborn, and that's what has him in trouble.
Randolph came from the Yankees, where the championship teams of the late '70s and the late '90s were packed with hard-nosed winners. He believes he shouldn't need to motivate or fire up big-league players, because his teams never needed that.

In principle, he's right. He shouldn't need to remind major-league players that it's important to raise their games in big spots, or not to take games or at-bats off.

But unfortunately for Randolph, his players are soft. His players are the types who don't raise their games in big spots, who do take at-bats off. His players coast through long stretches of the season, assuming their talent will carry them through without any extra effort or emotion on their part. His players are not self-motivators, and they are a group that might respond well to being scared every now and then.

That's not to say they need a Larry Bowa/Lou Piniella type of screamer. "Scaring" players like this would be as simple as letting them know their playing time isn't guaranteed -- that a long, languid slump by the $17 million-a-year center fielder isn't going to be tolerated when there's a hungry, energetic Angel Pagan around to man the position while Carlos Beltran gets his head together on the bench.

Randolph doesn't do that. He does what Joe Torre used to do when his veteran players slumped. He tells them he believes in them and will stick by them until they come out of it.
But in the case of these particular Mets, it doesn't work. These Mets get too comfortable. They can keep mailing it in at no threat to themselves or their lifestyle. You went 0-for-5 again, Carlos? No problem. You'll be back in there tomorrow, have no fear. We'll never embarrass you.

By now -- after the playoff flop of 2006, the historic meltdown of '07 and the sleepy start to '08 -- Randolph should understand this, and he should be doing something about it. He is not.
The players in the Mets' clubhouse remain happy and comfortable. For 11 months now, they've been perfectly comfortable playing .500 baseball. Something needs to change that, and it's the manager's job to figure out what.

If he doesn't, Willie Randolph could find himself out of a job with himself to blame.