The earth shook this afternoon in New York when a source told 7 Train To Shea that Omar Minaya will be fired as the Mets GM on Monday and will not be reassigned. And if that revelation wasn’t shocking enough, that same source also reported that Jerry Manuel will not be asked to stay on as the manager of the New York Mets.
The news sent shock-waves throughout the blogosphere as everyone scrambled to try and confirm the shocking development. I did my level best to try and get someone to comment on the situation or confirm the news, but as luck would have it nobody was willing to say anything on the record. Those inglorious basterds!
As surprising as it may seem, there may have been at least a sign or two that the Mets may have been leaning in this direction. Sure… there were some subtle murmurings at best, but who could blame the Wilpons for wanting to restore some dignity to the franchise, and set their organization’s path in a new and promising direction.
Okay, so much for the breaking news, now let me tell you how I see things unfolding in the next few days.
Now this is not based on any first-hand knowledge I may have gleaned from a team source or someone I’ll refer to as Deep Throat, instead it’s just my personal opinion… just an ordinary blogger who loves the Mets and has no aspirations of becoming anything more than that. I’m just carefully going out on a limb, and it’s not even a far reaching limb at that.
Let me begin by pondering the obvious… Why are Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya still here?
Well, as one of my astute readers pointed out to me in another blog post, Jerry Manuel is still here because:
1. He is still under a contract that expires after this season anyway.
2. Let the new General Manager, whoever that person will be, make that judgment and let him or her choose Manuel’s successor.
Sometimes, there’s just no getting around pure logic.
Well what about Omar Minaya, why not fire him?
I think I’ll just step in and answer that question for myself.
There is no reason for the Mets to wait until the end of the season unless their plan is to reassign him, that’s why.
There is no reason to reassign Omar Minaya now, then name an Interim GM for a month or a week or a day to replace him, then relieve the Interim GM of his duties, and then announce the new GM whoever that will be the following day. Whew…
Well couldn’t they have just reassigned Omar Minaya and then just name the permanent new GM now?
Well, yeah they could have done that, unless the GM they really want is still under contract…
Or maybe they don’t want to screw this thing up…
Maybe, just maybe, they want to take their time and choose the best candidate available…
Maybe they want to see how many GM candidates officially throw their hats into the ring at the end of the season and then choose a predecessor from a bigger pool of qualified candidates…
Makes sense, right?
So what is the final outcome?
The best answer is that nobody really knows, and I bet the Wilpons themselves don’t even know yet either. How can they make a decision when they haven’t even interviewed one candidate for the GM position yet according to Andy Martino today of the Daily News.
Would you place a billion dollar franchise in the hands of a new general manager sight unseen without so much as one formal interview? Lets not kid ourselves here.
The process is still unfolding, and something will could happen on Monday, but that’s not to say that it can’t happen on Tuesday or perhaps even Wednesday as well. Either way, it’s only a matter of days now.
Lets just hope that what ever change does happen, that it has a bigger and better impact than the change from Willie Randolph to Jerry Manuel. I think we can all agree on that.
