Minaya-gate (or should it be Rubin-gate?) still getting lots of passion. The good news is that it distracted everyone from talking about Bobby Valentine announcing he’s leaving Chiba for sure.
So I asked….why fire Omar? Y’all said:
Sux2Lose has left a new comment on your post “Why Do You Want The New York Mets To Fire Omar Min…“:
I was pro-fire-Omar before yesterday. Lots of reasons-some you mentioned.
Organizational depth – you can’t dismiss it b/c Tony got fired. Its Omars shop-full autonomy-he’s responsible for the success of the people he hires.
Bad Contracts (mostly b/c of too many years) – Castillo, Schoenweis, Mota, Pedro (debatable), Perez
Injuries – Again, trainers report to him. I’m not convinced there is a problem there, but if there is, Omar is culpable.
Poor media management – Why can’t we ever come off as ‘classy’? We always look like buffoons–petty, childish and mismanaged. Apologizing about yesterday doesn’t absolve him. If I come up to your kid and kick him in the shin but follow it up w/ an ‘I’m sorry’, I don’t think you’d be too quick to let me off the hook. This is not an isolated incident. How bout the Randolph fiasco?
As for who should replace him? I don’t think its right to put the onus on fans to pick a replacement or offer solutions. Just because we smell a dead rat inside our house doesn’t mean we should have to tear up the walls to find it.
You want a reason? Here’s your reason. He has repeatedly not conducted himself with the competence, professionalism, and dignity for which his position calls.
Yesterday, lack of professionalism was reason enough for Minaya to fire Bernazard. The same bar should apply to him. That someone would get in front of a microphone and state he fired someone for inappropriate and unprofessional interpersonal interactions, and then in the middle of the same press conference, question the personal motives of a reporter–by name, and whose reporting proved to be accurate–is the height of irony.
Minaya mishandled the firing of Randolph, he turned yesterday’s press conference into a circus, and baseball-wise, his organization is in a shambles. While you can say specific things are his underlings’ fault and he addressed part of it yesterday, he’s the GM, and that’s where the buck stops. He can certainly and very fairly be held accountable for hiring incompetent people in the first place.
Who do they hire to replace him? Promote the next guy in the chain for the remainder of the season. Long-term plans can wait. While canning Minaya isn’t going to be a magic bullet cure-all, that doesn’t matter. You get the X-rays AFTER you stop the bleeding.
What I find interesting is that HR was supposedly already investigating Bernazard, however Omar said he had to think about Rubin’s article because of his past lobbying for a front office position. Something is amiss here. Did Omar not know about the Binghamton incident? How could that be so? He is either an idiot or a liar.
I’m still catching up on my blog post reading from earlier today, but I find it funny how everyone was posting what seemed like a simple piece of news for a press conference at 3:30pm today now knowing that it turned into a 3 ring circus.
looking back, you have the best line (so far) – “Only shocking because they didn’t get this one wrong.” you spoke too soon.
Keep ’em coming!
I’m mad at Omar for distracting everyone from my Mercury Mets post.
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The key question in regards to how this affects Minaya's future is "did Jeff Wilpon know Rubin would be targeted going into the press conference?" If it was, as Wallace Matthews in the Newsday asserts, a team decision to implicate Rubin, then Omar is safe, as he was just carrying out the plan. If Minaya did it on his own, then he's probably in the doghouse for creating a new scandal.
I'm actually leaning towards the latter. As I stated in an earlier comment, Wilpon appeared pretty uncomfortable in the pre-game conference Monday night. By corroborating Rubin's side of the story and saying in so many words that Rubin "did nothing wrong," Wilpon didn't exactly sound supportive of Minaya's implication. It may be that Wilpon was just trying to play "good cop" at that point to save face, but his appearance and words sure left something to think about.