Omar Minaya to return to Mets

What in the world is going on? A couple of weeks ago, Fred Wilpon was on WFAN defending his front office against allegations that there were too many voices influencing the team's decision-making and asserting that Jim Duquette was in charge. Now he's bringing in the butcher of Montreal, inventing a job title and making Duquette answer to him. I would imagine there will be more to this story once the Mets make the official announcement, but assuming that Duquette remains on as GM, this move has to be taken as a commentary on his job performance. So the quetsion must be asked, is Duquette being used as a fall guy in the wake of the increasingly unpopular Scott Kazmir trade, or is this just another instance of the now legendary Wilpon impatience?

It seems that Duquette is, in effect, simply being demoted after slightly more than a year as the Mets' general manager, although I imagine Wilpon will try to spin this otherwise. But does he deserve it? Under normal circumstances, it would be easy to point to the more egregious mistakes made by the Mets under Duquette's leadership and blame the general manager. The Mets' much-publicized yet equally half-assed pursuit of Vladimir Guerrero, the team's completely inaccurate scouting regarding Kazuo Matsui's defense and the decision to trade Scott Kazmir for an injured, unproven twenty-nine year old pitcher would be enough to warrant any GM's firing. But with the Mets, there's always the question of who to blame for any particular decision. If Duquette were actually to be let go, we could take that as a signal that these blunders were in fact his fault, or at least that Fred Wilpon wished us to believe as much. But this course of action raises more questions than it answers and makes an already muddled decision-making process seem even moreso.

If Duquette hasn't performed poorly enough to be fired, that leads one to believe that the Wilpons either were involved in or at least agreed with the various controversial decisions made by the team in the last year. But if that's the case, Wilpon seems to be making an incredibly rash decision in removing Duquette from power out of disappointment with the team's results this year. When Duquette took over last year, it was clear that even a completely autonomous general manager would need more than one year to turn this franchise around, and during the offseason and the early portion of this season, both Wilpon and Duquette seemed to understand that. Before too long, the team apparently reverted to the patented Wilpon quick-fix strategy, with predicatbly disastrous results. Blaming Duquette for the team's poor finish and yet believing him to be valuable enough to retain in a lesser role is just a baffling decision that gives little indication of the true structure of the team's front office in the past year or its direction for the future.

So what about that future? Where does this Omar Minaya-led franchise go from here? This utter mess of a baseball team seems once again to be at a crossroads, needing to choose whether to seriously rebuild from within or to spend like crazy to try to compete for the division title next year. Minaya's history as the general manager of the Expos doesn't give one much hope that they'll choose the former approach. The way he systematically reduced a once-productive farm system to ruins doesn't bode well for the future of the Mets' minors. But you do have to consider the context somewhat, as the ever uncertain future of the Expos made it difficult to commit to building for a future that may never come. Minaya's experience in the areas of scouting and player development might give us hope that he won't ignore the need for a strong farm system. But the events of the past few months make it unlikely that the team will commit to a true rebuilding process anyway. Reverting to a patient, build-from-withing approach at this point would be a startling flip-flop that would make the Kazmir trade look all the more boneheaded.

So the fact that Minaya is being brought in presumably indicates that he's already on board with Wilpon-style team-building. This move may be just another step in the major shake-up of the team that Wilpon indicated was coming and which began with the firing of Art Howe, but at this point, it's hard to expect this to signal a major change in the team's direction. Kris Benson and Al Leiter, rather than Aaron Heilman and, say, Matt Clement, will be aomng the Mets' five starting pitchers next year. Magglio Ordoñez or J.D. Drew, rather than Victor Diaz, will be the team's starting rightfielder. Mike Stanton will be back. The Mets are going to continue their standard operating procedure of filling every roster spot that they can with a "proven veteran" and Mets fans will only be able to hope that they choose the right ones this offseason.

There probably is more to this story than we know so far and there will likely be further developments in the soap opera that is the Mets' front office as the offseason really gets going. It's hard to say what to make of this hiring right now, but one thing's for sure. This isn't going to reassure anyone that the Mets know what they're doing.  ¶ joe | 5:15 PM |