Here’s a brief video from ESPN of Dave Howard introducing Sandy Alderson to the media as the Mets new general manager today. He said all of the right things but so did Omar Minaya when he was hired. His deeds will mean more than his words.
I think one thing that we can expect is that he won’t have the kind of public meltdown that Minaya had last season when Tony Bernazard got fired.
Here’s the video:
http://espn.go.com/videohub/player/embed.swf
http://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/PicAppPIS/JavaScript/PisV4.jsThe Mets 2009 season was basically a season of misery on the field. And off the field it was a complete soap opera. The biggest story of the 92-loss season turned out to be the behavior and firing of Tony Bernazard as their VP of player development.
Among the accusations against Bernazard were:
In the strangest firing of all time, Omar Minaya announced the firing last July 27 and then blamed it on Daily News writer Adam Rubin and his jealous desire to work for the Mets. Or something like that. It was difficult to understand exactly what Minaya was implying. Continue reading “Report: Tony Bernazard Was Mets’ Scapegoat”
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
Since the 2009 season was a complete bust for the Mets and there hasn’t been much to get excited about since May, I decided to try something new during this downtime for Mets fans. I’m going to run some posts that highlight opinions from other Mets fan like me. I may ask other Mets fans that have blogs of their own but I decided to start by asking some of the fans that frequently leave comments here.
Everyone is welcome to leave comments on this site but I wanted to put the spotlight on some of the fans that really make this site fun for me to write. If you feel that you’re up to the task of being in the spotlight, contact me and we’ll work something out. I wanted to start with Robin Schwartz, whom you know as RobinTheBoyWonderingWTF in the comments here.
Here’s an interesting story from Adam Rubin of the Daily News. Basically, he writes that the Mets have a plan to replace GM Omar Minaya with assistant GM John Ricco. Rubin goes on to write that the Mets haven’t decided to execute that plan… yet.
Beyond the story itself, you have to look at the reporter that wrote it. Rubin is the one that broke the story of Tony Bernazard’s bizarre behavior. Then Rubin was blistered by Minaya at his press conference announcing Bernazard’s firing. And then Minaya apologized for killing Rubin in public.
Now that we’re caught up on the whole drama, it gets even more interesting that Rubin writes about the Mets plan to replace Minaya with three years left on his contract. Jayson Stark was on ESPN Radio this morning and said that he believes that the Mets need to think about whether they want Minaya as the face of the franchise after his very public meltdown.
Personally, I have a hard time believing that the Mets would eat three years of a contract for anyone other than a player. You just don’t do that for front office people. I don’t have a problem with replacing Minaya. Having a GM that’s responsible for one of the worst trades in MLB history has always bothered me. Think about it. In 140 years of baseball, Minaya made one of the dumbest player moves ever. How can you trust him to control the future of the Mets?
Mets COO Jeff Wilpon met with the media before last night’s game against the Rockies to express the organization’s dissatisfaction with Omar Minaya’s meltdown during Monday’s press conference. Mets fans are well aware by now that Minaya implied that Daily News reporter Adam Rubin wrote damaging reports about Tony Bernazard because Rubin wanted a position in player development with the Mets.
Wilpon said that Minaya apologized to Mets ownership for making a “very, very large mistake”. He went on to say that Minaya is well aware that he put the team in a bad spot with his comments about Rubin.
Rubin has received a voice mail from Wilpon apologizing on behalf of the Mets team and he hopes that Rubin will accept a call from Minaya to apologize.
Clearly, the simple firing of Bernazard has turned into a complete disaster for this PR-challenged team. I always thought of Minaya as fairly media savvy despite his lack of command of the English language. But this episode has exposed Minaya as easily shaken and a poor communicator.
All of this has left the Mets, and us fans, as the laughing stock of the league. Definitely take a look at Ray Ratto’s column for CBS Sports. He describes the Mets dysfunction in the front office and goes on the say that fans of the Royals, Nationals, and Pirates are thinking that it could be worse. They could be Mets fans.
Listen to Jeff Wilpon’s meeting with the media here:
After Mets GM Omar Minaya attempted to discredit NY Daily News reporter Adam Rubin at a press conference today, he thought better of it and issued an apology. Interestingly, COO Jeff Wilpon was by his side looking like an adult forcing a child to apologize for bad behavior.
You can see the original press conference here. Oh, by the way, the press conference was to announce that the Mets fired VP Player Development Tony Bernazard.
Rubin quickly became the focus of the press conference to everyone’s surprise. This just goes to show that the Mets can make a bad situation even worse. You can see Rubin’s response to Minaya’s accusations here.
It’s been a bizzare day, even by Mets standards. This kind of bad PR just can’t be doing Minaya any good right now. Unbelievable… Does the embarrassment ever end?
The Mets finally fired VP of Player Development Tony Bernazard after several stories of misdeeds came out like this. It’s not a big surprise considering the transgressions that we’ve heard of. Minaya said that Mets human resources was looking into complaints about Bernazard prior to the NY Daily News publishing damning stories about him. Minaya said that inter-personal communication problems by Bernazard were the reason for the firing.
The bombshell came when Omar Minaya implied that the journalist that broke the stories about Bernazard, Adam Rubin, had an ulterior motive for writing his stories. Minaya said that Rubin has spoken to him and other people in the Mets organization about getting a job with them in player development.
Minaya said that he “scuffled” (whatever that means) when he read that Rubin was the person writing the stories. SNY showed Rubin on camera during the press conference, who appeared to be shocked by this public revelation.If this is true, it seems to be very unprofessional of Rubin. I can’t wait to read what Rubin has to say about this.
Instead of Bernazard, Rubin became the focus of this press conference. Amazing! It was another great moment in this season’s Mets soap opera.
The Mets Report 