Willie Randolph and Omar Minaya sat side by side at the press conference. The issue, though, is whether the Mets’ GM and manager are really together.
The Mets announced their new hitting coach yesterday, naming first-base coach Howard Johnson to the position to replace fired Rick Down. But Randolph and Minaya had to answer questions about their professional relationship and whether Down’s firing has strained it.
Down was fired Wednesday, and Minaya and Randolph disagreed on that call. The GM exerted his authority, with Randolph on Thursday calling the firing “an organizational decision.” He also said Thursday he told Minaya: “I said that if you want to make the decision, you’re the general manager. You can make that decision.”
Minaya and Randolph each insisted yesterday their relationship was strong, with the GM denying there was any strain.
“No, not at all,” Minaya said. “The bottom line is, it’s simple. We make decisions here and sometimes we agree. Sometimes [we] don’t agree. We make decisions and move forward.”
Randolph said, “Everything’s fine,” adding, “It doesn’t have to do with our relationship.”
Actually, it does. It wouldn’t be beneficial if Minaya and Randolph began having problems, and Minaya seemed to try to publicly show yesterday that Randolph had a strong voice in choosing the new hitting coach. When Minaya announced Johnson’s promotion, he used the phrase, “Willie decided to go with Howard Johnson.” That may have been true, but the fact Minaya said it was noticeable, because the decision to fire Down, of whom Minaya was never a fan, was the GM’s.
As for Johnson, Randolph explained his decision to go with him over Rickey Henderson, who’s now the first-base coach, by saying, “Howard’s here. He’s been on our staff. He knows what we want to do.”
Johnson worked with David Wright and Lastings Milledge in the minors (he was the latter’s hitting coach at Triple-A last year), and both Mets gushed about Johnson yesterday. Wright called him “like my baseball father,” and Milledge said Johnson helped him “not a little, a lot.”
Johnson said, “We want to be somewhere as an organization offensively and we’re not there right now.”