That picture must seem like an eternity ego for Willie Randolph. If you haven't heard by now, the Mets fired Willie Randolph late Monday night after the Mets beat the Angels 9 to 6 in the first game of a west coast road trip.
Personally I think the Mets handled this entire thing horribly. It is a sad reality in sports that when a team isn't performing up to expectations the coach or manager takes the brunt of the blame. This is the reality because in most cases players make much more than coaches and there are obviously more of them. So in order to make some kind of change to hopefully spark your team, the coach is really the only easily changed position. I completely understand why the Mets fired Willie, even if I don't agree with it, but the way they did it is just despicable.
What I can't figure out for the life of me is why they would let Willie fly out to California and then fire him after 1 game. Why not just let him go before the trip? What changed? They didn't have an awful performance, in fact they won. So it wasn't like this game was the straw that broke the camels back, the writing had been on the wall for quite some time for Willie. Ever since the Mets monumental collapse last year, Willie's job has been in question. If the Mets would have cut ties with him then, no one would have questioned it, but after the roller coaster ride they just put him through the Mets should feel embarrassed. Every time the Mets lost a few in a row this season there were calls for Randolph's head, obviously helped by the intense New York media, and when they went on a winning streak no more than a month ago, things seemed to settle down. Recently however, the Mets have slumped back into their lackadaisical play and players from the top to the bottom of the roster have under preformed and the Mets are sliding under .500.
So there have been many chances where the Mets could have cut ties with Willie and no one would have thought anything of it. Even if they would have waited for him to get back from this road trip, there probably wouldn't have been nearly as much negative attention. How could Omar Minaya not have known, or made a decision, on Sunday instead of Monday. Nothing relevant happened between the two dates. So the GM dragging his feet on what he claims was completely his decision has brought an abundance of negative attention to the organization. What it makes me wonder, how long does Omar have left?