One day after the Mets disastrous season ended, Mets owner Jeff Wilpon offered the following to the fans:
"On behalf of Fred [Wilpon], Saul [Katz] and myself, all of us at the Mets are bitterly disappointed in failing to achieve our collective goal of building upon last year's success. We did not meet our organization's expectations -- or those of our fans.
"We will continue our commitment in providing the resources necessary to field a championship team. We will be meeting with Omar [Minaya] shortly for him to present his plan on addressing our shortcomings so that we can achieve our goal of winning championships in 2008 and beyond.
"Our fans deserve better results. We thank them for their record-breaking support this season."
However, the statement includes one of the problems in the solution: Omar Minaya. Can Minaya fix the problems that he created?
He's already taken a step in the wrong direction. According to an article that appeared today on the Mets Web site, "Minaya has privately has told people he has no plans to" dismiss Willie Randolph. That could be his first mistake.
Randolph might have been an excellent coach with the Yankees, but he didn't show that excellence this year as the Mets manager. The Mets upper management needs to do a serious review of Randolph's performance rather than just brushing it off, as Minaya appeared to do yesterday. And they need to do the same for his coaches, especially Rick Peterson.
If they don't do that, the Mets on-field performance next season could be even worse than it was at the end of 2007.
After yesterday's season finale, the only consolation Mets fans had was that the season was over. They didn't have to suffer another heart-wrenching loss from a Mets team that melted down faster than an ice cube on a city sidewalk on a 95 degree day.
In their season finale, Tom Glavine, the man who achieved the rare accomplishment of winning 300 games, couldn't win his 304th in one of the most important games in his baseball career.
He finished the season with an unlucky 13 victories.
Glavine had been on a three-game losing streak going in yesterday's game. His last win was on September 8. All he had to do was win one of his last four starts and the Mets would have been in the playoffs. But he couldn't do that. And yesterday, he couldn't even get out of the first inning. When he was pulled from the game with the bases loaded after facing nine batters, he'd gotten one out, surrendered five runs, and even hit a batter with the bases loaded.
The final two runs charged to Glavine came off Jorge Sosa. After striking out the first batter he faced, Sosa gave up a double to Dan Uggla, the type of player who should be playing second base for the Mets instead of Twins' cast-off Luis Castillo.
After the game, fans filled Mets discussion boards. The boards provided some consolation, a forum where fans could share their suffering and their cures for a sick Mets team.
On www.nyfuturestars.com, in a thread started by Nutsacjac titled "Offshoot from Glavine Must Go: Where are the fixes?" one fan wrote "This Mets team was horribly flawed and those warts became more apparent as the season progressed." The thread was begun yesterday. Today, at 9:10 A.M., it had already been viewed 679 times and received 42 replies.
Hopefully, the Mets front office will heed what the fans are saying on the boards.
Before the team can be fixed, the problems must be correctly identified.
If Wilpon retains Mets GM Omar Minaya, which is likely, Minaya's off-season moves will reveal his view of what the cracks of in the Mets foundation. Hopefully, he'll make the right ones.
Minaya needs to do a better job than he did in the past off-season when he weakened the Mets bullpen while failing to strengthen its starting rotation.
