MLB

Owner backs GM of his sagging Mets — again

The Mets’ patriarch isn’t ready to send his boys to their room without dinner.

Fred Wilpon, in his first public comments about the Mets since spring training, yesterday implied he plans to stick with Omar Minaya as his general manager beyond 2010, and at the same time praised the job his son, Jeff Wilpon, is doing as the team COO.

At a news conference in East Hartford, Conn., to help announce a new partnership between SNY and UConn athletics, Wilpon ducked reporters’ inquiries about his floundering Mets. But as Wilpon walked away, The Post asked if Minaya would remain the team’s GM beyond this year.

PHOTOS: METS IN JULY

“Is the sun going to come up tomorrow?” Wilpon answered.

Later, as Wilpon ducked into a chauffeured automobile, he was asked by The Post about the job Jeff Wilpon is doing, “Excellent,” Fred Wilpon said. “Everybody knows that.”

Asked for a reaction to his father’s assessment, Jeff Wilpon, through a team spokesman, said he had “nothing to add.”

Last August, in the midst of a nightmarish 70-win season, Fred Wilpon offered a similar endorsement of Minaya, answering “Absolutely. That’s a fact,” when asked by The Post if Minaya would remain as GM in 2010.

Now it would appear as if Minaya has more lives than Felix the Cat and Richard Nixon combined.

Though the Mets could be facing a second straight losing season, it would not come as a surprise to many within the organization if Minaya is retained as general manager, given the fact he is owed more than $2 million through 2012. The Mets could demote Minaya, but one industry source doubted the cash-strapped Wilpon is inclined to spend the dollars it would take to put another body in Minaya’s chair.

Likewise, any replacement for manager Jerry Manuel after this season would probably have to be willing to work for the $800,000 Manuel is earning this season in the final year of his contract.

Wilpon held steady yesterday in his refusal to talk at length about his disappointing Mets (54-54), who are 7 1/2 games behind the Braves in the NL East as they prepare to open a — last gasp? — three-game series tonight in Philadelphia.

The last time Wilpon spoke publically about the Mets was on Feb. 20 in Port St. Lucie, when he noted the number of “great” players on the roster and defended the organization’s decision not to add significant payroll for the starting rotation.

“Jeff and I don’t pick the baseball players, so that is what [the front office] wanted to do,” Wilpon said that day. “They think the guys we have will prove to be better than some of the guys we passed up.”

Wilpon, who has become more reclusive in the wake of the Bernard Madoff scandal and his team’s lackluster play, said he attended yesterday’s news conference to promote a new partnership between UConn and SNY and it wasn’t the time to discuss the Mets. Asked by The Post what would be a good time and place to discuss the Mets, Wilpon hesitated.

“I have a feeling that Jeff talks and he’s more talking about the Mets and the important thing is really Omar,” Wilpon said. “Omar is the person who represents the Mets from a baseball point of view.”

That appears as if it will be the case in 2011, too.

mpuma@nypost.com