Mets' Randolph needs bounce-back year in '08

Willie Randolph and the Mets are trying to put last year's collapse behind them. Doug Benc/Getty Images

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Willie Randolph possesses the qualities and credentials a manager in New York most needs: he's battle-tested, he's a winner, he's smart, he communicates well, and if you get to know him, he has a great sense of humor, which is a necessity at a time like this.

Randolph is a tough guy who rose from hardscrabble lower middle-class Brooklyn roots to become a superb second baseman and coach, and he's going to need to show all his best attributes in abundance to keep his job to the end of his contract that runs through 2009, and beyond.

Randolph insists he doesn't worry about his status now. "I'm a big boy," he says. "In my heart, I don't fear for my job."

Hard as that may be to believe, friends say he isn't acting when he says it, either, and that he really is still that tough Brooklyn kid.

Randolph has reason to be feeling better this spring. The acquisition of ace pitcher Johan Santana has brightened everyone's mood around Mets camp, but it also emboldened Mets owner Fred Wilpon to say out loud the other day that he expects to go "deep'' into October this year, publicly setting a high bar for his top baseball people, including Randolph.

Very likely, the manager has no more than a year to re-prove himself, and also to continue to repair a couple important working relationships that suffered at times during the team wreck that was 2007.

Randolph began the reparation project by quietly visiting franchise shortstop Jose Reyes in the Dominican Republic this winter and smoothing over their difficult existence during a year when Reyes reacted to Randolph's pushing him by pushing back. One time Reyes responded to a stern Randolph lecture by going back at the manager and pointedly suggesting that he should look at some of the other players who didn't hustle 100 percent of the time, either.

Reyes, who's considered a "good kid'' and hard worker by club higher-ups, including Randolph, is undeniably a special talent. So his stunning late-season slump depressed and baffled everyone around the team, including the manager. According to people around the team, the close Randolph-Reyes association became strained in 2007. But in what might be Randolph's first big victory of 2008, they also say they believe Randolph won Reyes back during that secret Dominican visit, in which Randolph, who considers himself something of a father figure to Reyes, also met Reyes' family.

"We have a great relationship,'' Randolph says. "I'm going to be as hard on him as anyone on the team. He understands that.''

But ultimately, Reyes isn't the only one Randolph will have to win over. Sources connected to the team say there are others in the organization that Randolph still has to convince that he's the manager they thought they saw in 2006, when he guided the Mets to within a few pitches of the pennant.

One famous trait of Randolph's is that he doesn't easily admit or show weakness. Yet, friends say he appeared slightly shaken at the press conference to announce that the Mets were retaining him two days after their season ended in historic collapse. Word is, the unexpected delay in the public airing of his status bothered Randolph.

He only admits to being "a little bit puzzled'' by the two-day postponement in the club's decision to retain him following the Mets' disastrous finish,. He chalks up the delay to New York. "Do I think I deserved that? No,'' he says, before adding later, "I don't take it personally.''

Jeff Wilpon, the team's chief operating officer, says top baseball decision-makers reviewed every single component of the organization after their disastrous and historic finish, and that it wasn't just Randolph's job status that was analyzed and discussed. Wilpon also said they all needed time to take "a deep breath,'' and that in the final analysis there was "never any serious consideration'' given to firing Randolph.

Perhaps it also didn't hurt the manager that two years and $4.25 million remain on his contract; it takes something extraordinary for the Mets to bail on a manger with two years to go, as they did with Art Howe, Randolph's predecessor, when the Mets ate two of the last four years on his contract.

Sometime later, Wilpon explained the delay to the manager and reassured Randolph that he is their guy, though Randolph has enough experience to know how ephemeral that can be. In a recent interview with SI.com, Wilpon said, "We're fully supportive of Willie. Everyone from ownership to Omar is here to make sure Willie is as successful as he can be because that's what's good for the organization.''

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