Meetings and Mind Games

Forgive me for being late on this, but so came this revelation that Jeff Wilpon flew to Atlanta where the Mets were earlier this week to have a meeting to discuss what’s wrong with the Mets.

 

You know, I have discussions about what’s wrong with the Mets all the time.  But when Jeff Wilpon has the same conversation, and when it’s done after an airplane ride, it’s a meeting.

 

Point being, this is a “meeting” that could have been done over a telephone call, especially if, as the organization says, “no firings are imminent.”  While that may be, if there was really nothing to this meeting, seems to me that it wouldn’t have happened in Atlanta.

 

Know this, one thing you get from being the C.O.O. of a baseball team in New York for years and years is savvy to the ways of the media.  If nobody wanted this meeting to be public knowledge, it wouldn’t have been.  But when Jeff Wilpon flies to Atlanta to have a conversation, it’s going to be reported.  I suspect he knows this.  And I suspect he wants certain people (the manager) to know that this meeting happened.

 

My question, and I’ve asked it all along, is this: Does Jeff Wilpon think that Snoop, or Omar for that matter, are going to get it together all of a sudden because there was a meeting in Atlanta?  It’s flawed thinking.  It was flawed thinking at the end of the ’09 season when instead of cleaning house, he put the management “on notice”.  It doesn’t seem to have done the trick up until now.  And this meeting isn’t going to do the trick going forward.  I’m a big believer in firing somebody if you don’t like the job he or she is doing.  I’m not a fan of having conversations or meetings filter down to put people on notice and make their loins quiver with fear.  That’s no way to provide an optimum environment to get the job done.  And that isn’t fair to Jerry Manuel or anyone else.  Take a bite of the turkey or get away from the dinner table.

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