Time to clean house!

Since my last post focused on Jerry, now it’s Omar’s turn. Omar has been far from blameless in the debacle formerly known as the New York Mets. He has definitely had some bright spots with free agent signings, but there have been mistakes too. I guess we could chalk that up to human nature, but where’s the fun in that?

The reason why I believe that Omar should no longer have a job comes down to appearances. Is it superficial? Probably, but that’s the way it is. My confidence in Omar Minaya is long gone. When did this man stop understanding how to give press conferences? Even scarier, maybe he never knew how to give them in the first place. His handling of the Tony Bernazard/Adam Rubin fiasco alone was an all around embarrassment. How do you keep your job when you have forced your boss to make a public apology on your behalf? Minaya's good moves and signings have become obscured by behavior like that. He has lost the respect of the fan base through decisions like that and apparently giving up on our season this year. This is not entirely his fault, because he only has so much freedom with the Wilpons running the show. But again, this comes down to appearances – and it appears that someone threw in the towel on the 2009 season in June (just to be fair, I have no idea how big a role Minaya actually played in that decision) and that is beyond frustrating to me as a fan.

On top of that, this ridiculous coaching staff the Mets have assembled in recent years is getting a mulligan on this season. Part of me understands the argument that they their influence can’t be assessed properly based on the injuries. But then why were there ludicrous “shake ups” on the staff the day after the season ended? For the record, I do not believe that either Luis Alicea or Sandy Alomar was the problem for the Mets this year. But we should keep Razor Shines around. That guy’s a winner. How could anyone think it was a good plan to keep the man responsible for the poorly handled base running on staff? (I have zero confidence in Shines in any major league capacity. Hide him in Buffalo.) This team is run based on relationships. That’s a real problem because regardless of the fact that the objective is to assemble a group of guys to play a game, at the end of the day, it’s a business. It shouldn’t matter who you like the most because it’s not personal. It’s strictly business. At least it should be.

Lately, it just seems like incompetence is radiating from the Mets front office. Maybe it’s not something we’d really notice if the season hadn’t been a disaster on so many levels. I’m a firm believer that the Tony Bernazard mess would not have gotten anywhere near the amount of press that it did if there had been anything else to write about (which would have also had an effect on Omar’s public appearance). And I think that as much as I would like to see Jerry gone, Omar is definitely up there too. They are in this together, even though the manager in situations like these seems to take the brunt of the blame, probably because of his visibility. I’m tired of the Mets looking like they are out of their league in baseball. They put too much faith in too many question marks and expect that to translate into winning. And that just looks bad all around. Change the appearance of this team and give us someone who can restore our confidence in the Mets front office.