With Jeff Wilpon, Omar Minaya, John Ricco and others in the clubhouse there has been a significant amount of speculation about Jerry Manuel's tenure and who would be his successor if he was terminated.First let me start by giving Mr. Wilpon some advice, when your fan base wants blood and you travel, unexpectedly all the way to a visiting teams locker room for a closed door meeting, don't emerge from that meeting with status quo. Such an anti-climatic response was just another disappointment in a long line of disappointments.
Jerry's a goner, lets face it; it's a matter of when not if and all their doing is prolonging the inevitable, it seems like their waiting for the right time which really is just stringing this along. But as much as I dislike the decisions Jerry makes as a manager, this roster is serious flawed and that falls back on the GM. The rotation lacks quality arms and depth, while the offense is missing a center piece player.
I've heard many fans clamour for Bobby Valentine, saying that since the team doesn't have a player who is a leader they need a manager as a leader who can get the most from his players. I would be very surprised if the Mets ever even considered hiring Valentine back, at times they had a hard time controlling him and while it's true he had a roster that overachieved he also became bigger then the team.
I think it was the circus that surrounded the Bobby V. and Steve Phillips feud, that has steered the Wilpon's away from certain personalities. Let's face it; the Mets have had the same personality since firing Bobby V.; Howe, Randolph and Manuel basically had the same demeanor ( Jerry being the most out going but still nowhere near Bobby V.).
Most consider Bob Melvin the heir apparent to Manuel and while Melvin seems to be out of the same mold of his three predecessors he does have a little of Bobby V. in him.
Many people forget that Melvin's first major league managerial job was in 2003 with the Mariners. He was in the uncomfortable position of taking over for a legend in Lou Piniella who went to back-to-back ALCS (2000-2001) and in his final year won 93 games. That first season Melvin won 93 games with a 40 year staff ace named Jamie Moyer (21-7 / 3.27 ERA).
He would only stay in Seattle for two seasons and despite having a talented team their best record since Melvin's 93 win team was in 2007 with 88 games.
Melvin would return to the D-Backs where he had been the bench coach prior to accepting the Seattle job. Melvin was hired in 2005 when the team decided to fire Wally Backman after one day on the job when stories of legal issues surfaced.
In 2007 Melvin's D-Back team over achieved by winning 90 games and making it to the NLCS. There was not one player on the team who hit .300 and the Ace Branden Webb only won 18 games. Despite being the #1 seed that year in the playoffs, they only had one reserve positional player make the All-Star team ( Orlando Hudson) and two pitchers ( Branden Webb and Jose Valverde). Melvin was named manager of the year and Sporting News manager of the year.
By the way for those of us that feel Jerry is slow to respond to line-up issues, Melvin apparently is quite the opposite....
His nickname, given to him by Mark Grace, is "The Mad Scientist", which was derived from his tendency to use various different line-ups to a high (and somewhat surprising) degree of success. source Wikipedia
0 comments:
Post a Comment