Last night the players finally weighed in on the changing of the guard in the Mets clubhouse, hoping they can finally move on from discussing the fate of their manager day in and day out.

Billy Wagner

“As a team, we hadn’t lived up to expectations. The bad thing is, the manager gets the blame. That’s the way the game is.”

Wagner spoke regarding the way Willie was fired.

“I don’t know if there’s ever a good time to do something like that. I don’t think any general manager likes to fire a coach.”

Jose Reyes

“I just feel sorry for the guy because we weren’t able to play good baseball for the guy. He’s going through a tough time right now, but when I get a chance, I’m going to call him and thank him for everything he’s done for me.”

David Wright

“(Randolph) took this team to a different level while he was here, but that being said, I’m excited about what Jerry can bring to the table.”

Carlos Beltran

“Jerry knew the players as the bench coach and communicated with us. I think he’ll do a great job. He’s communicates a lot and is always positive.”

Fans complaining about roster moves is nothing new. Generally, fans are cautioned to take a “wait and see” approach and not assume to know more than those in administrative positions. But one has to wonder about the recent roster moves the Mets have made.

SNY’s Ted Berg wrote a fantastic column about this issue earlier in the week. He argued that it didn’t make sense to bring up Abraham Nunez to the Mets because the Mets already have a utility infielder (Damion Easley), third base is a position the Mets don’t need backed up (David Wright has played in every game), and “everybody” was hitting better than Nunez in Triple-A New Orleans. These are all fantastic arguments and sentiments that should be echoed to end the lunacy of the Mets’ front office.

Not only all that, but the move is made worse by the fact that Ryan Church has been once again out of action. One could argue that playing Nick Evans was a bad move, but at least he’s an outfielder. Now the Mets are actually down one outfielder, unless the Nunez move was made to accommodate Easley starting more in the outfield. But why would you do that when there are multiple Triple-A outfielders within the organization that would contribute more than Nunez? Again, this all makes no sense.

I wrote an article earlier this week about how Raul Casanova has inexplicably gotten all the pinch-hitting opportunities, while Ramon Castro has gotten none. That made no sense. It got worse when Casanova went on the bereavement list earlier this week after the passing of his father. Desperately not wanting to lose that third catcher, the Mets brought up catcher Robinson Cancel.

Now, one might think, why do the Mets want these three catchers? But at least its temporary. And after all, there’s no way Cancel will actually see action. He’ll just be an emergency 3rd catcher, like Casanova should have been, until Casanova comes back.

But wait, Cancel did get an at-bat. There was a pinch-hitting opportunity in Friday’s Mets vs. Padres game. Not that it would make it acceptable, but this wasn’t a lead-off at-bat. Mets killer Randy Wolf had baffled the Mets all night. In a situation with two men on and one out in the 7th, Castro sat on the bench while Cancel took a bat. The journeyman catcher who has only 45 at-bats in his entire career grounded out.

This is where one starts to think that Mets fans could (possibly) make better decisions than this.

Cancel was on the roster for multiple games this week. He’s gone now, but Casanova is back. That’s the same dumb situation. It doesn’t make sense to have three catchers when Castro isn’t getting pinch-hit at-bats, and quite frankly, it wouldn’t be worth it even if he was. Brian Schneider has fallen to earth. Just have Schneider and Castro swap out starts as situations and match-ups warrant it. Keep only two catchers on the roster and use the other freed up spots for people who actually earn playing time.

I thought the Mets really progressed when they let Jorge Sosa go, despite his major league service, and kept the more effective Joe Smith, who has earned a roster spot. But with this bench mess, maybe the organization has regressed. After all, another bad roster move can be easily seen on the horizon. Hello, Jose Valentin. He brings just what the Mets need — more utility infielders.

With the signings of Billy Wagner and Moises Alou, the Mets have not had first-round picks in the past two years. Coupled with the various trades Omar Minaya has executed over the last two years, most notably the Johan Santana deal, the Mets’ farm system is depleted. Armed with three picks within the first 33 choices, the Mets have a great opportunity to help restock the system at Thursday’s Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft.

It might serve interesting to take a look at the first-round picks the Mets have had since 2000 and the varying degrees of success and failure the related moves have brought to the organization.

With the 16th pick in the 2000 draft, the Mets selected LHP Billy Traber. An article for the New York Times reported the Mets were going to offer Traber $1.7 million, but after seeing M.R.I. results on his elbow, Traber accepted the Mets’ new offer of $400,000. I would guess that is why he was so quickly dealt to the Cleveland Indians in the Roberto Alomar trade.

He did well for the Indians in 2002 and 2003 before having Tommy John surgery. He was out of baseball for the entirety two years before landing with the Washington Nationals in 2006, which is probably where Mets fans remember seeing him again. He got a chance to make both the Nationals’ rotation and bullpen but ultimately failed in both attempts. He was acquired by the Yankees for the 2008 season, where he began in the bullpen but quickly lost his job once again.

Obviously, looking back, Traber did not turn into the No. 3 starter the Mets thought he would become. He was a bust for both the Mets organization and every organization that has picked him up since. Ultimately, he just hasn’t been able to recover from the lingering arm problems.

Thinking back on the 2001 draft is much more fun because both players the Mets bagged in the first round of that draft are still on the team. After an early attempt at starting with mixed results, highlighted by a 1-hit shutout against the Marlins in 2005, Aaron Heilman has served as the Mets’ off-again, on-again set-up man. Heilman’s relationship with both the Mets fans and the set-up role is notoriously love-hate. Heilman is basically the Diane Chambers (from Cheers) of the New York Mets.

But all things considered, picking Heilman has worked out. He has definitely contributed to the major league club on more than one occasion, particularly down the stretch. The Mets didn’t really need to trade for a Roberto Hernandez at the trade deadline in 2006 because Heilman admirably stepped to the plate in the absence of Sanchez. Has he done well in 2008? No. Will he do all that well in the future? Still up for debate.

The other pick in 2001 was David Wright, a Gold Glove, MVP-caliber player. No real arguments needed.

(more…)

SI.com’s Jon Heyman was a guest of WFAN’s Mike and the Mad Dog today.

On the Heyman/Carlos Delgado incident:

“What happened yesterday is I asked a question I thought I’d get an answer to…This is before they announced that Willie Randolph was coming back. I had an inkling he was probably coming back. I asked him, should Willie be the manager? All he had to do was say yes or it’s not my place to answer. He started to say it’s not my place to answer. But then he gave me a big wink so I started to see he wasn’t too happy with the question and then he added If your gonna be an ass then I can be an ass. Then he started to tell me what a bad question it was. I said well it’s the question on everybody’s mind. Then later, I guess he wasn’t satisfied with our exchange, later he came up within one inch of me, he was like one inch from me, he was like eyeball to eyeball and again he was berating me about the question. But I’m happy with question because it got me the answer. The answer would be, yes I think Willie should be the manager and if he didn’t say that then I have my answer. Obviously he doesn’t love Willie Randolph as the manager, at least that’s the conclusion I draw, he probably doesn’t love me as a reporter either…Isn’t the obvious answer yes Willie should be the manager, we support him, we love him, we want Willie to be the manager. I didn’t get that at all. He gave me the it’s not my place answer, which is fine we’ll leave it that, which is what David Wright said basically. But the fact that he got this upset about it, he (Delgado) even said something like you should ask me when we’re not in a group. I guess he felt like I was putting pressure on him but you know this is a big city, what are you gonna do. I just think he was in a bad mood. Obviously he’s nearing the end of his career, he’s not playing well, he’s getting booed. I think it was just a bad moment for him. That’s the way I look at it. Maybe somebody thought it was a bad moment for me but I thought he shouldn’t of done that.”

On Willie:

“Well, I think what happened was the Wilpon’s want stability. They did a study, they had their people do a study about what it’s like when teams change the manager a lot and they found out that it’s normally not a thing that is conducive to winning. That it doesn’t usually help you too much. You may get a shot in the arm for a game or two but that’s about it. They realized that there was not an ideal candidate. I think Jerry Manuel was a guy who was a possibility but I think to them and probably to many people he’s reminiscent of Willie in many ways. He’s a low key guy. He’s a nice guy. I know he got thrown out of the game the other day which Willie didn’t do and I think the Mets people wanted to see Willie get thrown out. They’re just not happy. They’re not thrilled with Willie and obviously they’re not thrilled with the way things are going. There was no way they could fire him last year. They just couldn’t, this is a guy who won 83 games then improved to 97 wins. He was one bad change-up from Aaron Heilman from going to the World Series. Then of course they had the collapse but they still won 88 games. I was even surprised they let him twist last year but I don’t think they are satisfied with him as the manager but they feel they don’t have a better alternative. That’s basically what it comes down to. They don’t want to be seen as a team that keeps changing managers. I don’t believe it can be the money. They just tossed away Jorge Sosa, that was two million dollars right out the window. That’s a very small amount of money for a billion dollar company.”

On Omar Minaya

“Omar is the biggest supporter Willie’s got I do think there other are people in the front office that are not as big a supporter as Omar but Omar is the one making this call. You can look at it a couple of different ways, if Omar switched to someone else, say Jerry Manuel or someone else and the team played the same then the onus is on Omar. But then again if he sticks with Willie and things stay the way they are well its still on Omar. I don’t believe it was to save himself or to keep himself further away from the chopping block. I think he genuinely likes Willie he grew up a Yankee fan. He was one of his heros. He’s a likable guy. He did do good things his first few years but the problem with this team is its not a resilient team. I know earlier in the year they won a game, they came back from a bad defeat and won a game and Willie started talking about how resilient they looked but the fact is they have not shown any resiliency whatsoever.”

On why they didn’t commit to Willie for the whole season yesterday:

“Well, two things, first I don’t think they love Willie and they are not sure if he’s gonna be here for the year and they don’t want to lie. The other thing is they think holding something over Willie like this might trigger something. I don’t know, they’ve tried this before, during the subway series they told him you better turn it around and you better turn it around fast. He won the two games and then disaster struck. He had a horrible week, the comments that were made. That was discussed at the meeting. It was a very bad meeting for Willie I’m sure, very uncomfortable. They are just not pleased at all.”

For more on Reyes. Plus, Heyman tells a story about Rickey Henderson “taking” money from some players while playing cards last season that “guys were not pleased with”. Go to WFAN.com to listen.

On his ESPN.com Insider blog Buster Olney writes that Johan Santana might be “Showing signs of decline”.

“The Mets were asking around about that in spring training, about what his true [velocity] baseline was,” said one talent evaluator. “They were concerned.”

Said an AL scout who has seen Santana this month: “His stuff isn’t even close to what it was [with the Twins].”

The statistics Olney provides back up his arguement that something is different with Santana:

His ratio of strikeouts per nine innings over the last six seasons has been 11.38, 9.61, 10.46, 9.25, 9.44, 9.66. This year: 7.79.

Onley also adds:

As I wrote a lot about during the winter of Santana trade talks, rival talent evaluators saw a noticeable — not dramatic, but noticeable — decline in his stuff after his 17-strikeout performance against Texas on Aug. 19.

On to the possible replacements for Willie. Some people have brought up Gary Carter‘s name. Gary Carter is the new coach of the Orange County Flyers of the independent professional Golden Baseball League. You can read more about Carter’s doings here.

I found this answer to a question posed to Manny Acta interesting. Especially since some think Acta is a candidate to replace Willie and how some think Willie should be more boisterous:

MLB.com: How do you stay patient? It’s amazing how you keep your cool.

Acta: I have very good control of my emotions. I’ve learned that through the years…If I throw a phone around or turn over the spread, the score is not going to change. I have done a lot of research and have data to prove it’s not going to work. If I yell and scream at guys, it’s not going to make them play harder. So I think I get the best out of those guys by earning their respect, treating them fair and keep showing them that I do have faith in them.

Yesterday, Neil Best, from Newsday’s blog Watchdog wrote about Billy Wagner’s interview with Michael Kay on 1050 ESPN radio. Kay tried to find out why Wagner thought his remarks from last week were being interpreted as racist by some:

“When things like that get thrown out there, that doesn’t hurt Billy Wagner,” Billy Wagner said, “that hurts Billy Wagner and his four kids and his wife and his foundation and his charities he does and the people around him, and to me that almost gives me the right to say, ‘You know what, I don’t have to talk to the media anymore if you’re going to mistreat me when I’m there every day.’ I don’t have to be there every day.”…Wow. But who exactly was it who called Wagner a racist, Mr. Kay wondered, as he had not heard anyone accuse Wagner of that? …Um . . . Skip Bayless

Best added:

SKIP BAYLESS?! Billy Wagner is fed up with the media and might close his colorful mouth because of something uttered by Skip Friggin’ Bayless?

There is plenty of enjoyment in Atlanta and Philly over the Mets recent misery. The guys over at The 700 Level.com go after David Wright:

Anyway, even the infallible David Wright is jumping on the suck train. Wright was doubled up at first base last night to end the game and the Mets fans don’t really know what to say.

The Atlanta fans who brought us the Mark Teixeria song are at it again. This time they set their sights on the guys who put together the Johan Santana song and Mets fans in general. Watch it if you must at MetsBlog.com

Non-Mets related but interesting from MLB.com:

Angels manager Mike Scioscia plans to meet with the team in Chicago when a three-game series opens Friday night to discuss Major League Baseball’s initiative to step up the game’s pace by implementing several rules designed to eliminate some dead time during games.

“Just clean up some things within the game,” Scioscia said of the effort to reduce the average time of game by a few minutes. “Umpires … will try to get pitchers to deliver within 12 seconds, get hitters in the batter’s box, trim down some time.

Here was an extremely telling quote from David Wright last night that got overlooked:

“I just don’t think we have the fire I would hope we’d have. Losing like this, I hope, would ruin their nights,” Wright said of his departed teammates. “I want them to take it personally when we lose,” he said. “I want them to be ticked off.”

Additional quotes from Wright can be found from Marty Noble on MLB.com

This reads like a not so subtle jab at some teammates who Wright doesn’t feel is putting forth their maximum effort. Billy Wagner said the same thing but with much more colorful language.

We’ve suspected that the team lacks fire, but this is the first time I have actually heard the de-facto captain of the team acknowledge it publically.

Its time something is done about it, change has to come, and soon.

Enough is enough.

That’s how I feel as a Mets fan. I can’t speak for every Mets fan out there, and I’m not going to try. What I am going to do is tell everyone how I feel about this team at this point.

I’m a man that deals in facts. The fact of the matter is that this team has been playing like a .500 baseball team since June 2006. The record has shown them to be playing a bit better at times, but I’m talking about their style of play. Call it laid back. Call it what ever you will. However, for over a year this team has not played with the killer instinct that gave them a huge lead in 2006 and had them dominating and getting up for big games. I’ll give you an example.

Think back to May 5th, 2006. The Mets are playing the Atlanta Braves. A team that has cursed this organization for over a decade. A game in which the Braves had taken a 6-2 lead in the bottom of the 7th, we saw the 2006 Mets rally in the 7th to tie the game. The game would go on to the 14th inning, where ironically a Jorge Sosa gave up the game winning run to David Wright. The point here is that the 2006 Mets fought for that win. They didn’t take it for granted. Don’t be deluded that the team’s talent was better, because it actually wasn’t. Remember, the Mets had a rotation that was falling apart. The bullpen was being used every day. Floyd also had been in a funk and no one knew what Xander Nady was. Sound familiar? The difference here is that the 2006 Mets had no taste of championship. They wanted this win and fought for it. Now can anyone point to me a game in the past year where this team wanted to win as bad as the fans want them to win.

Now, I’m not a psychologist and I’m not going to attempt to be one. However, I can tell you this. The majority of the players on that team still play on this team. I honestly hope that last night in the closed door meeting, some form of this point was discussed. It’s one thing to lose, it’s another to completely give up. That’s exactly what we’ve been seeing over the past two months. The 2006 Mets played a lot of ugly games. The difference was that they overcame their mistakes and found a way to win

The mantra that this season is early is true and should give some hope to all of us. There are a lot of games to play and the Mets are one game back in the loss column. It’s not like this team is in the situation of the Yankees (heaven forbid). What better way to turn this season around than with your ace on the mound? This is more than wins and losses. This is about attitude.

I wish I knew how to adjust this attitude. There is no one reading this that can do anything about it to be honest. All the booing and yelling on the local sports radio won’t do anything to change the mind set of this team. Nor can a manager. Any manager. This is about the players. Plain and simple. Either they all want it or they don’t. Simple as that.

According to Bart Hubbuch of the NY Post’s Mets Blog David Wright told reporters that the Mets are going to have a players only meeting today at Yankee Stadium.

According to this post from Hubbuch and from Willie Randolph on WFAN today, Carlos Delgado and Billy Wagner already spoke about Wagner’s post game comments.

Since it was Wright who made the media aware of this pending meeting, I’m hoping it wasn’t Wright who called it. It will be interesting to find out who did.

From Bart Hubbuch:

6:25 P.M. UPDATE: It turns out that Willie Randolph and the coaching staff were also involved. The meeting lasted between 30-45 minutes, with Delgado and Wagner among the players speaking.

I am normally a glass half-full person, but after yesterday’s loss and the Mets pathetic showing in their series at Shea against the Washington Nationals, I’ve had it. I’m dumping the glass.

This team has no heart. Yup, I said it… NO heart.

Wags, DWright, Moises, Johan, Mainer, Ryan Church and Brian Schneider are the only ones on this team who have shown they are gamers; so let’s get that out of the way. I’d even put Nelson Figueroa in there.

However, guys like Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, Jose Reyes, and Oliver Perez aren’t getting it done. Reyes has become a shell of his former self and has reverted to that pre-2006 player than hacks at everything. He had a week and a half where he appeared to be getting on track, but now he’s off again.

We all know that Delgado has been hit or miss; it’s been mostly miss this year. I can’t say I’m too surprised after last year’s swoon. He told everyone that would listen in the spring that he broke down everything this off-season and re-taught himself how to hit. Unfortunately, his re-teaching has made Carlos Delgado into Wilson Delgado.

The most disappointing person, to me, is Carlos Beltran. He was very boastful in the spring, telling reporters that the Mets were this year’s team to beat. They sure are (as my Phillies fan brother keeps telling me); teams just keep beating them and beating them.

Beltran has done absolutely nothing this year, aside from his spring declaration. I especially enjoyed watching him yesterday; he swings at the first pitch with runners and first and third and two outs. Perfect opportunity to hit in the clutch and work the count; of course, that didn’t happen.

I’ll keep it short on Perez. I have zero confidence in him when he’s on the mound. Someone, anyone want to tell me where the passion is? Where is the hard work that this team was built on when Willie Randolph took over as manager in 2005?

I know Gary Grund has called for an overhaul of the coaching staff, but I can’t put all of the blame on Willie and Co. Is he the one that hits a wall in the 4th inning? Is he the one that can’t play fundamental baseball? The answers are no.

Sure Willie will take the fall, but you can blame Reyes, Beltran, Delgado, et al, for his ouster.

There will be some that believe that since it’s May 16 that there is plenty of time. It’s an excuse. This team is running out of time… and fast. Losing two of three, or getting swept by the Yankees, and

Billy Wagner said it best after Thursday’s game:

“We’re not earning our money.”

That is an understatement.