Omar and the Future

Some months ago, I was talking with Sip about his time with the Diamondbacks and their GM Josh Byrnes. We both agreed (which as regular readers know, is a rare thing) that signing Byrnes to an 8-year contract was a really important thing for the DBacks. A GM has to make long-term decisions for the team, yet his incentives are often misaligned to "win now" in order to save his job.

Enter the 2008 Mets. A month ago, I felt strongly that we needed to fire Willie in order to try – likely unsuccessfully – to jumpstart this team. I'd still like to see him fired. If everybody is on board with the roster – and at the start of this season, everybody was – then the manager should be responsible for performance. They've obviously underperformed, and so Willie should go. In addition, he's a terrible strategic manager.

An example: here are Scott Schoeneweis' splits over the last two years:

2007 vs Righties: .316/.390/.574 = .963 OPS
2008 vs Righties: .286/.392/..452 = .845 OPS

2007 vs Lefties: .204/.308/.247 = .556 OPS
2008 vs Lefties: .130/.226/.196 = .422 OPS

Yet, in that time, 56% of the hitters Schoeneweis has pitched to have been righties. Talk about putting your players in a position to fail.

But I don't really feel strongly about this. In fact, I don't really feel strongly about anything about the 2008 Mets. Mainly because I don't know what to think.

Here's the one thing I do feel strongly about: The Mets need to decide whether Omar is the right person for the job and tell him in the plainest terms possible. If they feel he's the right man, they should tell him, with no stipulations, that he will be the GM for the next 5 years.

If he's not, he needs to be fired ASAP so that somebody they do have confidence in can make the crucial decisions about the team's future that need to be made in the next 7 weeks.

It's a decision that we the fans don't really have enough information to make. Putting together a ball club is going to be different in the post-steroid era. Players will revert to their old form of improving through their 20s, peaking between 27-29, and then declining.

Some teams have built themselves for this reality. Look at the Rays. They've signed Evan Longoria until he's 30, James Shields until he's 34, and Scott Kazmir until he's 28. The steroid era model of signing free agents in their late 20s and reaping multiple years of peak play are over.

Can Omar adapt to this new model? I don't know. None of us do. But Mets management needs to find out ASAP. Hopefully the Mets flip the switch and get hot in the next month rendering this discussion moot. But if they're around .500 in the middle of July, what does Omar do?

Can he trade Billy Wagner if he knows the only way to save his job is for a mathematically improbably run in the last 2 months? You certainly need Wags, and not prospects, for that to happen.

If Beltran heats up, or if a team is willing to gamble that a change of scenery will let him play a major role in a pennant drive, can Omar trade him? Or will a torrid Beltran be key to saving Omar's job?

I'm not in a position to judge if Omar is the right guy for our team's future. The team he's built this year doesn't seem to be right for the post-steroid era.

I do know that a GM without job security this July could be disastrous for the Mets.

Food for thought.

- Nails