PORT ST. LUCIE – The thing I like most about Mets manager Willie Randolph is that he is not afraid of pressure. Bring it on, he says.
Well, here it is.
The pressure was on Carlos Beltran last year, but this year the pressure is squarely on Randolph’s shoulders to deliver a winner. The talent is in place to take the NL East, Randolph made clear yesterday in his address to the media – provided Pedro Martinez’s toe heals.
Just as he did as a young player, Randolph will make the necessary adjustments as a young manager. Tom Glavine has the unique distinction of working 15 years for Bobby Cox, one of the best managers in the business. He believes Randolph will grow by leaps and bounds as a manager this season.
“Willie did a good job handling players and handling the game,” Glavine said yesterday, “but there’s no question it’s all going to get better.
“He really has a desire to work at managing and get better at it. He’s not going to tell you that he was perfect and did everything right. There’s definitely that aura about him as a player that he is striving to manage the game better.
“When you see a manager working that hard, as a player, how do you not work hard?
“Willie did a good job of handling the guys and keeping the guys positive,” Glavine added. “We had some pretty bad stretches that he was pretty solid and that makes a big difference.
“More than anything else it’s just managing the game and anticipating the game. Until you are the guy calling those shots, it’s hard to be really prepared for how fast the game happens sometimes. To me, that was one of the things that Bobby was so great at, he always seemed to be one or two moves ahead of where he needed to be . . . I think, in time, Willie is going to be- come a lot more natural with that kind of stuff, but for a first-year manager it wasn’t like you sat there and said, ‘Oh, my God.’
“There were a few times when you thought, ‘Well, maybe we could have done that or maybe have this guy up [in the bullpen] a little bit sooner, whatever,’ but you have all those questions no matter what, during the course of the year.”
In New York the questions are always bigger, the results more magnified. In only his second year managing, expect Randolph to pass his biggest test yet.