[...]The sheer number of top round pitching busts is beyond staggering. It is almost incomprehensible that one team could have SO MANY HIGH ROUND PITCHING BUSTS YEAR AFTER YEAR. For every Pelfrey (1st round) there are 10 1st round busts. ….. I don’t…

He might do better next time from what he learned.

He was a tad arrogant.

NY moves and grooves faster than any other City on the planet save Tokyo! And with everything that goes on around us we have very short attention spans! Either thrill us now or get out of my face!

Many work in a business enviornment (not a lot of manufacturing going on round these parts anymore) where lack of performance means you get sacked! Rarely is the reason for the lack of performance looked at or analyzed!
There are millions of people who MIGHT do a better job in NY! We live in a perform or get fired enviornment.

But It actually takes 2-3 years for a Manager or coach of any sports team to install his program for success. Maybe even longer in the Minors because they are not being coached by the Big League guys meaning you have to teach your coaches your approach as well!

First year gets you about halfway though the program. The next year the entire plan should be in place. The 3rd year is basically spent deciding who is working in the system and who isn’t, and then the GM has to go out and find talent to fit that program to fill the holes needed in order to win.

Willie got 2.5 years and basically had them in it till the very end where they folded. Shows how CLOSE he was to winning but also FAR AWAY because he didn’t have the players (and this is where the mental part becomes important) to take them the rest of the way.

Some here say that Oakland did a good job with moneyball because they were competing. Well wasn’t Willie competing as well?

How many times did the Braves NEARLY make the playoffs or did and fell short? If he was in NY not Atlanta Cox would never have won a WS he would have been fired long ago!

And I personally am going to reserve judgement on Omar and what he did until I see what they do this year!

Because if we DO manage to compete for something guess who will deserve the lionshare of the credit for it? It sure won’t be Sandy! You will however give a good dose to Collins! Not the majority of it though. It will go to (and deservedly so) to Omar!

If we have any success it will be wbecause of the guys he brought here to play! Unless Emaus wins the MVP or Capuano and Young tie for the Cy Young award the guys who will have won it for us are the same names we blame Omar for bringing here!

If they win a WS it would be a big “I TOLD YOU SO” moment for Omar!
He would be the hottest GM candidate in MLB!

What he did was not entirely wrong. What his probalem was he gambled and those gambles lost.

He knew Pedro was in shakey health when he signed him. He knew Delgado had issues as well. He had hoped they would carry him until he could build up some farm to replace them when the time came, and it came too quick.

But Davis is here now. Beltran is getting to the place where Pedro and Delgado were at when we were the ones who signed them. Kirk is almost ready, Pagan is here to fill, reyes’ heir is also in the system and we hopefully found someone to play catcher, no he’s not Piazza but he could be a Grote one day! Grote didn’t find his power till later in his career! Dyer NEVER had power!

Mejia could be the next Doc if he works at it, And Gee could easily be the next Darling or Ojeda.

So Minaya tried to stick to his original plan and play the kids instead of buy his way out and got crucified for it.

If Omar was really about buying as much as you think he was then he would have bought at the deadline, he didn’t he stuck to his plan and it cost him his job!

History hasn’t been written yet on Omar. they won’t (or at least I wouldn’t) write that chapter until we see what they do and who is here TO do it this year and next.

I never understood why so many people wanted Willie fired. I thought he did a pretty good job and if he was given the full backing of ownership would have provided that no excuses, get it done professionalism that works pretty well in the organization he came from.

It certainly wasn’t his fault that that Oliver, Hernandez and Bradford were ditched for Mota and Schowenweiss or that El Duque and Pedro were counted on for the rotation (along with a 40 year old Glavine) or that Alou was brought in at 40 years of age in LF and went down or that Wagner was unavailable when his team needed him the most.

Willie (and Peterson) did a great job regrouping when they lost Pedro before the playoffs and El-Duque and Trachsel IN the playoffs but to expect them to be able to do it again mid season is a little too much to ask especially with the s**t bullpen Omar put together.

Organizational continuity really is vital otherwise your just looking at things move by move and never the big picture. It would be like a business never checking to see just how many customers their getting from the yellow pages vs. bill boards vs. referrals vs. prospecting vs. existing customers.

You have to laugh when NY fans are considered to be sophisticated and educated fans and then want someone’s head cut off just to satisfy some frustration or say that spending just a little more money would fix this thing as if that wasn’t the only approach we have taken here at the expense of all others.
___________________________________________________________________________________________T, u hit the target with your first sentence, NY is the toughest & Willie wasn’t up to it, he sweated too much in the kitchen, his psychological yearning for stripes was too obvious, @ the time I often complained of feeling I was watching Humphrey Bogart’s rendition of Captain Queeg’s testimony(THE CAINE MUTINY) during his post loss pressers(esp durinf collapse). I was breathlessly awaiting his blaming Delgado for the missing Sugar or potted palm..(lol)
NB
PROBLEM:
’08 Delgado’s aging, slumping & fighting off admission of it

WILLIE SOLUTION, leave him alone, ignore him in the clubhouse & embarass him by dropping him in the order
JERRY SOLUTION:
set up early morning one-on-ones with Delgado, privately, to adjust his swing during extra BP sessions
While Willie’s solution was similar to NYY treatment afforded AROD with multi cleanup hitrter options, loss of just 1 is sustainable; but when u only have 1 u better invest what u have to to get him functioning as a #4 not a #6.
Willie, fulfilled every GM’s prognostication that bypassed him as a mngt candidate. Under the greatest pressure Willie succombed into a mental fetal position.
T, it wasn’t X & O related IMO
any of this ring any recollerction bells? I liked Willie, also. Just not as NYM mngr under those circumstances.

No amount of backroom boot licking (or booty licking) will make up for bringing in a fresh perspective.

I never understood why so many people wanted Willie fired. I thought he did a pretty good job and if he was given the full backing of ownership would have provided that no excuses, get it done professionalism that works pretty well in the organization he came from.

It certainly wasn’t his fault that that Oliver, Hernandez and Bradford were ditched for Mota and Schowenweiss or that El Duque and Pedro were counted on for the rotation (along with a 40 year old Glavine) or that Alou was brought in at 40 years of age in LF and went down or that Wagner was unavailable when his team needed him the most.

Willie (and Peterson) did a great job regrouping when they lost Pedro before the playoffs and El-Duque and Trachsel IN the playoffs but to expect them to be able to do it again mid season is a little too much to ask especially with the s**t bullpen Omar put together.

Organizational continuity really is vital otherwise your just looking at things move by move and never the big picture. It would be like a business never checking to see just how many customers their getting from the yellow pages vs. bill boards vs. referrals vs. prospecting vs. existing customers.

You have to laugh when NY fans are considered to be sophisticated and educated fans and then want someone’s head cut off just to satisfy some frustration or say that spending just a little more money would fix this thing as if that wasn’t the only approach we have taken here at the expense of all others.

T, another issue to consider is that save for just a few times the choices of GM replacements HAVE BEEN INBRED IN FLUSHING OUTSIDE OF#1 WEISS(NYY),#6 CASHEN(BALT) & #12 ALDERSON(OAK,SD)

You can blame Omar for a lot of things but everyone loved him when this team was in the playoff hunt until september.

It wasn’t until we had two years of injuries that people wanted him the manager and even ownership gone!

You can’t win EVERY year. All you can hope for is that you build a team that can be in it provided circumstances (like injuries) don’t ruin it.

And the fans seem to think changing managers at whims is the way to go.

It’s not!

Willie had us in contention and he got sent packing. Since then we have been injured and not even in the race.

If you want consistency you have to give the guy a chance to get there.

If Belichick and the Pats were here in NY he would have been run out of town his first two years where he was dead last in the standings.

And then again after the Spygate scandal!

If you want a consistent system to have to be prepared to sit through the bad times to get to the good times!

That simply doesn’t happen in NY!
I mean look at Torre! How many WS did he win for the Yanks yet one bad season and he had to go!

I too thought the GM job was a relatively stable one too. I never gave a lot of thought to it until Cashen and I do believe we had the right guy Joe Mcillvaine but there is no way to know for sure.

A clear organizational vision with a pragmatic long term view is long over due here.

I think you hit the nail on the head but I also feel the Wilpon’s preffered strategy is the January press conf and photo op to jump start ticket sales.

That has to end.

Consider, this, I personally always considered the NYM front office top job as relatively stable, imagine my suporise as I’m certain most everyone reading this is, so perhaps when thing stasrt to go awry, we should be a lot more reluctant to scream “off with his head”?

T, I certainly contend that this zig-zag directional course certainly bears a considerable portion of the blame for ALL the frustration.

Stop being rediculous and you wouldn’t have to repeat yourself if you stopped asking rediculous questions that deserve to be ignored!

So the answer is NO they were not hurt and no they KNEW they weren’t hurt.

What they were was CONDITIONED because you were expected to pitch a full game and because you did it on a regular basis you built up your body to take the pounding and did not get hurt!

Try to lift 200 Lbs of weights the first few times you might get hurt but do it every year for 5 years and at some point your body will build up so you don’t!

Stop being rediculous!

The point is we BABY the pitchers now and as a result we not only don’t get complete games they get hurt way more often than when they DID complete games! Because their physical conditioning only conditions them to pitch 7 innings at best before they know they are going to get pulled!

Did they get hurt less, or did they just not know they were hurt?

Also, how many of those pitchers were $100 million investments? Or were they just treated like a plough horse (ie worked until they dropped and then sold off to the glue factory)?

Also, how many of those pitchers were $100 million investments? Or were they just treated like a plough horse (ie worked until they dropped and then sold off to the glue factory)?

Guys used to have a ton of complete games and they didn’t get hurt as a result!

Now they pitch less and get hurt MORE!

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/pitching/picomg4.shtml