A Different Tune: As Mets plummet, nobody is commanding the narrative the way Bobby Valentine once did
Former Met manager Bobby Valentine waves to the crowd while being introduced before the Old Timers' Day game at Citi Field on Saturday. Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
Before Friday’s series opener against the red-hot Rangers, featuring the long-awaited homecoming of Jacob deGrom, there was Carlos Mendoza at the pregame microphone, plodding through his routine media briefing hours before the first pitch.
The Mets had just been swept in Philadelphia and had lost seven of their previous eight games. The final wild-card spot was slipping away and Mendoza’s team was tied for the third-fewest wins in MLB in a three-month span (Saturday’s loss dropped them to 31-49 since June 13).
The two clubs below them were the historically awful Rockies (28-52) and the fire-sale Twins (29-50), who auctioned off half their roster at the deadline.
Still, Friday’s news conference with Mendoza lasted only six minutes and was limited to questions involving deGrom’s return, the health of the perpetually rehabbing Tylor Megill and the Mets’ trio of rookie starters.
In the back of the room, Bobby Valentine probably couldn’t believe his ears. The former Mets manager was famous for surfing the always-turbulent waters at Shea Stadium, and if the floundering team was in danger of going below those waves, Valentine was never hesitant to invite the storm right into the manager’s office.
But that was a quarter-century ago during a much different era in Mets history, when Valentine, general manager Steve Phillips and the team’s co-owners, Fred Wilpon and Nelson Doubleday, practically ran their own sports-talk radio channel, frequently sounding off on whatever was ailing the franchise.
Not just behind the scenes, either. Publicly, on the record, and nobody was a better maestro of the media than Valentine, who often used his daily pulpit to command the narrative — or at least bend the conversation until someone above him on the corporate ladder grabbed hold, frequently in a failed attempt to twist it back.
And given the volatile nature of those Mets, Valentine’s job status always felt in flux, whether it was because of the team’s underperformance or his own uncanny knack for self-sabotage. But here’s the thing about leading with your chin, as Valentine often did. Sometimes fortune really does favor the bold.
Take for instance, the 1999 season, when Valentine flat-out said in September he should be fired if the Mets fumbled the wild card even after Wilpon already had said his job was safe for another year. And it wasn’t even the first time that season he made that proclamation.
Earlier, in June, Phillips axed three of Valentine’s coaches — also his closest allies on the staff — during the Subway Series after an eighth straight loss dropped the Mets to 27-28. Valentine responded by saying he also should be fired if the team didn’t improve in the next 55 games. They wound up going 40-15 to capture the division lead (albeit briefly).
Managers wouldn’t dare make such crazily specific time lines these days, and aside from Valentine, they never really did. So it was entertaining Friday when Valentine followed Mendoza at the podium — he was at Citi Field to promote the next afternoon’s Alumni Classic Game — and offered his thoughts on the Mets’ current crisis.
“I was going to text Carlos a month ago and tell him to predict [going] 40 and 15 or I’ll quit,” Valentine said, laughing. “As we experienced as a team, collectively and individually, when things go wrong, it’s because distractions have entered the room. Sometimes it’s the room of the group and sometimes it’s just the room of a player.
“But when that distraction is there, somehow you got to eliminate it, and the biggest distraction you have in this town is winning — which happens after the game. It’s when it’s all that the winning occurs, and somehow you got to get them back to playing.”
Valentine cited Thursday’s sweep-completing 6-4 loss to the Phillies as the prime example. The Mets rushed out to a 4-0 lead in the first inning, using Valentine’s logic, because they were back to focusing on the playing part. Once the mindset switched to gripping that potential win too tightly, that’s when it began to get slippery again.
“That distraction of winning has to be combated,” Valentine said. “And in this town, it’s got to be dealt with more strongly, right? This is a tough place to play — unless you just go and play. Then it’s just the same game.”
Maybe the Mets should have listened to Valentine’s advice Friday before posting a new sign above the entry way between the clubhouse door and the dugout. In a spot that’s impossible to miss, the words “DO YOUR JOB. WIN TODAY” apparently were painted for the start of this season’s last homestand.
We’re not sure if any reminders were necessary for a $340 million roster, especially when delivered as stark instructions. But maybe someone figured that if it worked for Bill Belichick during the Patriots’ dynasty, it could resonate in Flushing for the next two-plus weeks (still, the Mets went on to lose to deGrom and the Rangers, 8-3, on Friday despite the new motivational sign before dropping a 3-2 decision to Texas on Saturday).
“You gotta believe,” Valentine said. “The end is what’s going to happen at the end — of the game, of the season, in life. But you got to believe, as you go on through it, that you got the right road map.”
It’s a bit ironic that Valentine mentioned “distractions” as the enemy to winning in Queens, because he often was the instrument of that Shea chaos, and ultimately it did cost him the manager’s gig. But not before Valentine engineered one of the most successful periods in Mets history with extremely rare back-to-back playoff appearances and that World Series showdown with the Yankees in 2000. It took a long while for the Mets to duplicate that prosperity, not until Terry Collins — another high-energy, straight-shooting throwback with a Dodgers pedigree — took the helm for the start of the 2011 season.
Collins was the next and last manager to pull off the same feat as Valentine, getting the Mets to the postseason in consecutive years and also losing the World Series.
Mendoza is trying to do the same, but the Mets are a half-game ahead of the Giants, 1 1⁄2 games ahead of the Reds and two games ahead of the Diamondbacks in the battle for the third wild-card spot.
Mendoza, to some degree, has leaned into the Valentine approach, publicly accepting the brunt of the responsibility.
“I’m the manager,” he said after the Mets were swept in Philadelphia. “I’m responsible. It’s my job to get these guys going. And I will.”
Not quite the same as predicting a .727 winning percentage over a 55-game span, but Mendoza doesn’t have that much runway left. The Mets have only 13 games left. For the record, Valentine’s team went 6-8 down the stretch in 1999 but won the final four games to finish with 97 wins — and still had to beat the Reds in a one-game playoff just to earn the last wild-card slot. Where the Mets currently stand, they’d probably sign up for that right now.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
