Free Willie! It's Time for Mets to Fire Randolph

Every fantasy player has faced the dilemma of what to do when your pitcher is going up against your favorite team. I had a different dilemma Sunday night. Pedro Martinez, a mainstay on my keeper team since I drafted him in 1992, was going for my favorite team in the second game of a doubleheader.

And I wanted him to lose.

A loss by the Mets in the game would have meant a sweep, a 2-4 homestand and the end of the Willie Randolph era. Instead, the Mets won when a critical in-game decision by Randolph worked out. The game was tied 2-2 and the Mets had two runners in scoring position and Martinez due to hit. With the fans urging Randolph to let Martinez hit, Willie sent up a pinch-hitter, who delivered a two-run single. The bullpen turned in three scoreless innings and the Mets emerged with a 4-2 win.

Nobody is acquitting themselves well for the Mets right now. Certainly the players underperforming deserve the lion's share of the blame. But, as the old saying goes, you can't fire all of the players, so you fire the manager and hope a change will do the team good.

Randolph isn't doing himself any favors, either. His biggest plus has always been that the players respected him but that no longer seems to be the case. Sure, David Wright is saying all of the correct things, but is there any other player on the team that has Willie's back? Not Billy Wagner, who pops off without thinking of the ramifications of what he is saying. Not Carlos Delgado, who seems unmotivated to play anything but token defense. Not Carlos Beltran, who speaks volumes by saying nothing at all about how the franchise should commit to the manager.

And we still have all of the problems with Randolph from last year's collapse. Horrid bullpen management? Check. Woeful reserves to fill in for injured starters? Check. Burying Ramon Castro behind an inferior starting catcher? Check. Unflagging commitment to washed-up veterans over unproven rookies? Check. Inexplicable desire to stock bench with former second baseman? Check. Refusal to shake up underperforming squad with anything resembling fire? Check.

Now, I much prefer the Walter Alston style of management to the Billy Martin one. But at some point the players need someone to get in their face and explain the facts of life, especially when they are underperforming for the second year in a row.

And here's where Mets management gets in on the poor performance. Rumors are circulating that when Randolph gets fired, they are going to replace him with bench coach Jerry Manuel. Now, making no comments about the wisdom of replacing the guy you find unsatisfactory with the guy who is the one advising him on in-game decisions, why on earth would you replace the stoic, flaccid Willie Randolph with the stoic, flaccid Jerry Manuel? The team needs a rah-rah Tommy Lasorda type or a kick you in the teeth Larry Bowa type at the helm, not Randolph lite.

Now it's up for debate how much influence both Willie Randolph and general manager Omar Minaya have over the construction of the bench. Perhaps they both deserve blame for what can only be described as woefully inadequate reserves. It's one thing if the bench comes up short for unexpected circumstances. But when entirely predictable things happen and the team is unprepared, someone has to take the blame.

The Mets planned to have Moises Alou as their starting left fielder. Alou is a great hitter but he's also 41-years old. Since 2004, here are his games played by season: 155, 123, 98, 87. It does not take a rocket scientist to see a pattern here. A good team would have been prepared for Alou to miss significant time this season. The Mets have already played eight different players in left this season besides Alou. These range from the barely acceptable Endy Chavez to the downright deplorable Brady Clark and Fernando Tatis.

Last season, Carlos Delgado showed signs of falling off a cliff. Especially noticeable were his struggles against southpaws, who he managed just a .704 OPS despite a .324 BABIP. It should have been an easy fix to put someone on the bench who was a lefty masher who could handle playing first base once or twice a week. Not only was there no lefty masher on the bench, there was nobody whose prime role was backup first baseman.

Instead the club began the season with a five-man bench comprised of two backup outfielders (Endy Chavez and Brady Clark with fellow reserve Angel Pagan (two years in the Majors with a 76 and 87 OPS+) starting for Alou, who began the season on the DL), two second baseman (Marlon Anderson and Damion Easley) and a backup catcher (Raul Casanova, for the injured Ramon Castro).

None of the reserves could hit, there was no backup corner infielder or shortstop and the two nominal infielders were at-best below average with the glove. This is a bench one would expect from a team with the bottom payroll in the league, not one that ranks in the top five.

Like every other team, the Mets have had their share of injuries, which has given the club the chance to address the imbalance of the bench. Currently, 22 different hitters have graced the roster so far this season. So the bench must be straightened out now, right?

The Mets currently have two backup catchers, two second baseman and Fernando Tatis as their reserves. At least with Ramon Castro back from the DL, there's one legitimate Major League bat on the bench, since Brian Schneider and his .315 slugging percentage is the starting backstop.

If Randolph didn't make this bench, he should be complaining to Minaya every day about it. And he should be begging owner Fred Wilpon to take his calls to see what he could do if he got nowhere with his general manager.

The Mets have Val Pascucci at Triple-A waiting for a call to the Majors. Pascucci is batting .304 with a .414 on-base percentage and a .620 slugging percentage in 158 at-bats for New Orleans. Pascucci is a righty-hitting OF/1B and would fill the need for a complement to Delgado and a power bat off the bench. Instead the Mets have Fernando Tatis with his .292 OBP and .333 SLG mark in New York.

In Double-A, the Mets have lefty-hitting Mike Carp, who is batting .361 with a .427 OBP and a .555 SLG while in New York we have Marlon Anderson with his .194 OBP and .246 SLG mark.

I've highlighted the bench but I could just have easily focused on the bullpen, where Randolph still trots out Aaron Heilman in high leverage situations despite an ERA approaching six. Or about how the Mets neglected to address the bullpen in the off-season, even after last season's collapse, adding only the forgettable (and hittable) Matt Wise to the mix.

The Mets had the horses to challenge for a 95-win season in 2008 but are instead two games under .500 in the middle of June. The starters seems unmotivated, the bench is poorly constructed and the relievers are disappointing again.

It's time to fire Willie Randolph. Maybe Davey Johnson would come back if we begged.