Saturday Seasons: In 2005, Minaya's Happy Return

Rescued from the purgatory of running a team in baseball receivership working its way out of Montreal and into Washington, Omar Minaya hit the ground running after being hired as the Mets’ director of baseball operations at the end of the 2004 season.

               He overhauled the coaching staff and the roster, making splashes on both counts and letting it be known that his Mets were intent on doing what needed to be done to turn around a franchise that had put up three consecutive losing seasons.

               In the end, 2005 will go down as a moderate success. The team won more games than it lost – 83 to 79. It remained relevant into the second half of the season, until first, injuries, and then, their patented September swoon, took them out of postseason contention.

               It all began in early November, when Minaya hired Willie Randolph to manage the team, a move hailed at the time because of Randolph’s Brooklyn roots and the fact that he became New York’s first manager of color. By all accounts, Randolph nailed the interviews, although unlike his predecessor who also nailed his job interview, Randolph managed to have more success than Art Howe despite his lack of previous managing experience. Randolph beat out two other finalists, Rangers hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo and former Astros and Angels manager Terry Collins, who would get his chance to manage the Mets six years later.

               At the news conference announcing his hiring, Randolph made it clear that despite his association with the Yankees, he harbored Mets loyalties going back to his teenage years, when he took his girlfriend and future wife, Gretchen, to a game at Shea. “I saved my allowance to take my wife to or first game. For all of you who think I wasn’t a Met fan, I was a serious Met fan. All my allowance,” Randolph said. And to make the hiring even more delicious to Mets fans, Randolph raised the ire of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner by stealing Rick Down from the Bronx Bombers as his hitting coach.

               A month later, Minaya created an even bigger splash by signing free agent Pedro Martinez to a four-year, $43 million contract. As the New York Times wrote, “In Martínez, the Mets executives knew, the team had landed not only a generational pitcher, but one who could change the franchise’s reputation.”

And the process the team employed to lure Martinez away from the Red Sox, where he had just helped them end the Curse of the Bambino, became the playbook for other free agent signings: a Thanksgiving trip to Martinez’ Dominican Republic home, where Minaya laid out the team’s vision, followed by calls from other team executives and ownership to seal the deal.

“We sold him on the idea of what we were trying to do with the Mets and how he was going to play a big part of it,” said Jim Duquette, who remained with the team even after Minaya was hired essentially to replace him.  “We wanted to go spend money on other people. We wanted to go get Carlos Beltrán and Carlos Delgado. He started to buy into this…Pedro basically gave credibility to what we were trying to do, and ultimately what Omar’s strategy was. He was like, ‘We can sign these guys. We can be a destination spot. But we have to be aggressive, and we have to sell them on a vision.”

And, in fact, that strategy paid off less than a month later, when the Mets signed Beltran to a seven-year, $119-million contract, the biggest in franchise history at the time.

“I really believe this is the new Mets,” Beltran said at his introductory news conference. From one point of view, Beltran fell into the Mets’ laps, after the Yankees – believe to be Beltran’s first choice – passed on the centerfielder’s offer to take less money to play in the Bronx. Instead, they pursued pitching, announcing their signing of Randy Johnson on the same day as the Mets introduced Beltran. But the signing also was the result of hard work by Minaya, his staff, and owner Fred Wilpon, all of whom flew in Wilpon’s private jet to meet with Beltran in his Puerto Rico home. “I wanted to get to know Carlos, to look him in the eye,” Wilpon was quoted as saying. “I think spending time together enabled both of us to be comfortable. Quite frankly, I’m not sure a deal could have been made otherwise.”

The downside to the signing: having Mike Cameron move from center field to right, a decision that would have serious consequences in August (more about that later).

There was a third piece to the puzzle: signing Delgado. But negotiations with the Blue Jays’ first baseman ended amid considerable rancor and Delgado signed with the Marlins instead (He would come to the Mets a year later in one of the Marlins’ patented fire sale trades). Instead, Minaya traded for another player who helped end the Red Sox’ championship drought, Doug Mientkiewicz, a Gold Glove first baseman with nowhere near Delgado’s hitting prowess. In fact, Mientkiewicz would lose his job mid-season to a hot-hitting rookie, Mike Jacobs.

The only other major change before the start of the 2005 season wasn’t on the field, but just behind it: the introduction of the Diamond Vision screen.

So the Mets began the 2005 season with an opening day lineup that had Mike Piazza catching in what would be his final Mets season, Mientkiewicz at first, Kaz Matsui at second, David Wright at third, Jose Reyes at short and an outfield of Cliff Floyd, Beltran and Eric Valent. Cameron was shelved with left wrist tendinitis and did not make his season debut until May 5. Valent, who had hit for the cycle in a 2004 game, barely hit at all in 2005 and he and his .186 batting average would be gone by the end of May.

As for the starting pitching, Martinez and Tom Glavine topped the rotation, followed by Kris Benson, who was inconsistent, and pitching coach Rick Peterson’s project, Victor Zambrano, who continued to remind fans that they could have instead been watching Scott Kazmir. Braden Looper proved equally inconsistent as the closer (perhaps due to an arm injury that required postseason surgery). Martinez and Glavine aside, the only other bright pitching light was Jae Wong Seo. The Korean hurler returned from the minor leagues and went 8-2 with a 2.59 ERA.

Beltran took some time to adjust to New York, hitting only .266 with 16 home runs and 78 RBI. But Floyd would hit 34 home runs and drive in 98, followed by Wright, who had 27 dingers and 102 RBI. Piazza, slowed by injuries, would only hit .251, with 19 homers and 62 RBI.

Beltran’s season also was marred by a horrific collision with Cameron in San Diego on August 11. Cameron, as you will recall, was a center fielder moved to right to make room for Beltran, and while he lost his physical position, he maintained his center fielder mentality – that is, the center fielder is the one to take charge on a play and the right and left fielders defer. So when the Padres’ David Ross hit a sinking line drive to right center both Beltran and Cameron went for the ball. Heads collided and both went down.

Here is the video of the play, as well as the Mets’ announcing team’s reactions. A warning to the squeamish: don’t click on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAsYOMukRkM

Beltran suffered a sore shoulder and a fractured cheekbone, as well as a concussion. Cameron had a concussion and multiple fractures in his cheekbones and a broken nose. “I don’t remember anything,” Beltran was quoted as saying in the next day’s newspapers. “I got hit in the head, and after that, I was kind of lost.”

“I couldn’t imagine being a paramedic going to the scene of a wreck,” said Marlon Anderson, who raced to the scene from his first base position, “because that’s pretty much what it was – a wreck. Personally, I haven’t seen so much blood. It was like a car accident.”

Five days later, Piazza broke his hand and was out almost a month

.

Even with all that misfortune, the Mets entered September 69-63, five and a half games out of first place but only a half game out of the wild card. But they went into a huge tailspin, losing 14 of 17, prompting manager Randolph to meet with his players individually to deliver the message: finish strong. They went 11-5 after that, but it was already too late.

So as the season limped to an end, the only cheering came as fans voiced their appreciation of Piazza’s seven seasons in New York. As Newsday’s Wally Matthews wrote, “At 37 years old, Mike Piazza’s future is well in the past. If there is any more baseball to be played by him, it probably will be in the American League [which had the designated hitter, while the NL didn’t].” (Piazza actually signed with the Padres and didn’t make it to the AL until 2007, the final year of his career).

In his final game in a Mets uniform, Piazza got standing ovations every time he came to the plate. And when Randolph pulled Piazza for a pinch hitter in the eighth so he could have a final curtain call,  the fans cheered loudly and then and booed pinch hitter Mike DeFelice.

“You look in the stands and you see grown men crying,” second-year third baseman David Wright said. “As a teammate, you go through a wide range of emotions. It’s obviously sad, I saw a tear come from his eye. But it’s also great to see the fans respect and support him the way they did.”

An interesting footnote: This is how Newsday’s David Lennon ended his game story: “Someday, that could be Wright in that same spot.”