Sandy Alderson can do better than Lee Mazzilli for Mets manager

If the Mets want to energize their fan base, Lee Mazzilli as manager is not the way to go. I was surprised when Fox 5's Russ Salzberg made that suggestion last night after the World Series game and now Squawker Lisa has written about how the Daily News' Bill Madden has said the same thing.

I don't even want the real Joe Torre, much less another of his bench coaches after the unsuccessful tenure of Willie Randolph. The only person with a Yankee connection that would interest me at all would be Joe Girardi if he somehow became available. Unlike Randolph or Mazzilli, Girardi has actually been a successful manager, in two different places, and has a ring to show for it.

Girardi's bullpen moves in the postseason were certainly questionable, but after watching Jerry Manuel make questionable bullpen moves all year, I'd be more than happy to endure them in the postseason if it meant the Mets would actually have a postseason.

Plenty of managers were more successful the second time around, such as Terry Francona. Maybe Mazzilli deserves another chance. But it shouldn't be with the Mets.

I never understood why the Mets were considering Allard Baird for GM after his poor showing in Kansas City. And Josh Byrnes ended up getting fired in Arizona after some questionable moves.

In retrospect, the Mets should have looked more closely at Omar Minaya's record in Montreal, which included one of the worst trades in recent memory - a brief rental of Bartolo Colon for top prospects Grady Sizemore, Brandon Phillips and none other than a 23-year-old Cliff Lee.

The most important thing about a new manager is that Alderson be allowed to make his choice and show that he is his own man.

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As for Game 1 of the World Series, I don't think it's necessarily bad news for Texas, which had an even more devastating loss in Game 1 of the ALCS and came back to crush the Yankees. But San Francisco is looking like a team of destiny, getting great production from a patchwork lineup that has Aubrey Huff, Pat Burrell and Cody Ross in key roles. It sounds like something Omar Minaya would have tried, except that the Giants made it work.

With all the speculation about Cliff Lee, nobody ever stopped to think about what would happen if he did not pitch well. Suddenly, Lee has a career World Series ERA of 4.79. And it's not just from this game - as Lisa already noted, Lee gave up five runs in Game 5 last season against the Yankees. So that makes two straight World Series starts in which Lee has given up at least five runs.

Lee's overall postseason ERA is still great at 1.96, but he's no longer in the same statistical class as Sandy Koufax and Christy Mathewson.

The best thing for the Yankees would be if Lee gets shelled again, costing the Rangers the Series. Texas would be a lot less inclined to break the bank for him, and the Yankees could probably get him at a cheaper price than when he was being compared to Koufax and Mathewson.

Lee Mazzilli as the new Mets manager? Even Flushing doesn't deserve that!

Squawker Jon, now that your Mets have a new GM in Sandy Alderson, I saw that tabloid columnist Bill Madden is championing Lee Mazzilli for Mets manager. What's that all about?

Madden writes this today in the New York Daily News:

Now the big question is: Who will Alderson hire as his manager? Originally, it was believed the Wilpons wanted a manager who will excite their fan base, but this being Alderson's call and his alone, the primary criteria will probably be a manager with whom he's comfortable and who will not buck him. In that respect, he'll likely want a manager with major league experience because this is New York - no place to experiment with someone untested. I would expect Lee Mazzilli, who has a Met pedigree and had a modicum of success managing in Baltimore under impossible conditions, and Bob Melvin, who had 90-win seasons in both Seattle and Arizona before his teams went quickly south on him, will be on Alderson's list.

Now, I've heard Melvin's name bandied about as a Mets' managerial choice for a while now. But who would want Lee Mazzilli as manager of the Mets? He was fired from Baltimore for going 9-28, after being in first place for the first 2 1/2 months of 2005. He was a terrible bench coach for the Yankees, known mostly for being one of Joe Torre's guys than for any good decision-making skills. Mazzilli couldn't even hack it as an SNY analyst, showing zero personality. Is he somebody who can really turn the Mets around? I don't think so.

This isn't the first time Madden has written about Mazz for manager. Back in September, the columnist wrote this, pushing Mazzilli for the job:

So, if not [Wally] Backman, there is only one other candidate who fills at least two of the three primary criteria the Wilpons are looking for - difference-maker, experience, Met pedigree - and that's Lee Mazzilli, who, coincidentally, is also employed by the Yankees in a behind-the-scenes capacity. Mazzilli, one of the most popular Mets ever, managed the Baltimore Orioles for a year and a half in 2004-05 and might have been a difference-maker there if not constrained by the manic, deterrent ownership of Peter Angelos. Mazzilli's 78-84 third-place finish In 2004, is the O's best record since 1999. The following year, he had them a half-game out of first place as late as July 18 - only to be fired by Angelos two weeks later in the wake of Rafael Palmeiro's positive steroids test.


Mazzilli became the organization's unwitting scapegoat because he wouldn't give Palmeiro a public declaration of support.

Madden calls Mazzilli a "scapegoat" for the Palmeiro issue, but he fails to mention that not only did the Orioles, after being in first place for much of the first half of 2005, go 9-28, but they had also lost eight in a row, and 16 of their last 18 games, when Mazzilli was fired. No matter how much of a micromanager Angelos is, it's hard to justify keeping a manager around whose team collapsed like that, no matter how many injuries and issues the team faced.

Madden also writes that Mazzilli "is also employed by the Yankees in a behind-the-scenes capacity." It's so behind-the-scenes, that I didn't even know about it until now! And that's another reason why he would be a bad candidate for Flushing. I can't tell you how many times I heard Met fans gripe about Willie Randolph being a Yankee. We'd hear the same thing if Mazzilli became Mets manager. Surely the Mets can find somebody with a better pedigree than Mazz to run the team.

What do you think? Tell us about it!