JEFF Wilpon apologized yester day only for Omar Minaya, not for still employing him as his baseball boss.
“Right now, the idea is Omar is our general manager, period,” the Mets COO said, the “right now” saying as much as the “period” about the continuing viability of a GM who had his contract extended last October through 2012 despite consecutive season-end collapses.
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Minaya’s meltdown at Monday’s press conference to announce his firing of vice president of player personnel Tony Bernazard should not be a survivable offense, not when it followed consecutive bad Septembers, bad contracts, a bad guy as a most trusted adviser, medical mishandlings and consistent failures to deliver a coherent message to an increasingly distrustful fan base.
Minaya is a good scout. We used to think he was an exemplary human being until he tried to deflect blame for his own negligence by smearing the character of the writer who reported it, then blew a chance three hours later to apologize. All this brought Wilpon out in front of the dugout yesterday afternoon to finally say the right thing in his GM’s place.
“He’s really hurt by this. I don’t know how to explain this any better,” said Wilpon. “He was visibly shaken yesterday and visibly shaken today.
“I spent a good amount of time with him today, he’s been on the phone with scout calls, still doing his job. He needs a day. I hope you understand and give him that space.”
Mets’ fans only hope the owner’s kid understands his GM’s credibil ity is shot for the failure to stockpile enough bullpen reserves to pre vent another black September, for the absence of a Tri ple- A callup in 2009 convincing anyone this orga nization has a future unless the Wilpons still have the money to buy one.
Nobody overcomes injuries to three of the team’s top four hitters and of a No. 2 starter as well. But in Year Five of Minaya’s regime, top prospect Fernando Martinez was overmatched and Daniel Murphy has been looking only like a good reserve, all the while a baseball industry almost universally recognizes the Mets do not have the prospects Minaya insists they do. If he did, there would have been one difference-making veteran or an intriguing kid on Citi Field last night, playing for a team above .500 in spite of it all.
Minaya hasn’t made one successful, forward-looking move for a young player since stealing John Maine from Baltimore four years ago. Instead he has bid against himself to lavish silly contracts on Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo that look ominous in the Wilpons’ post-Bernie Madoff world.
Really, the best Mets players, on the disabled list and otherwise, were either drafted before Minaya got the job or were acquired through ownership’s deep pockets while Heath Bell was put out in the trash and Minaya trusted the evaluations of a lieutenant taking off his shirt to challenge farmhands to fisticuffs.
In announcing that painfully overdue correction Monday, the steel balls were rolling around in Minaya’s hands while he obsessed about the strawberries. Not what an alienated fan base needed to witness, something the Wilpons will see later when they should see it sooner.
This organization needs an overhaul. The shirt-pocket GM inspires no faith he’s capable of accomplishing it, quite the opposite in fact.