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Art Howe and the Wilpons

In today's Times, New York Mets manager Art Howe is quoted as saying:

"I signed a four-year contract because I knew this would be a process and I knew we wouldn't turn it around overnight. I thought it was understood that two years would not be long enough."

Really? The Mets had five straight winning seasons, from 1997 through 2001. After the team had a disappointing year in 2002, Bobby Valentine was fired, and replaced with Howe. The Mets brass insisted then that they could and should be contenders, with 2002 an aberration. Valentine was fired because John Franco and others advised the Wilpons that he lost the attention of the players during the Mets' late season collapse.

The hiring of Howe was greeted with mixed reviews. Howe was known as a player's manager and a number of columnists, including Murray Chass of the Times (himself a Valentine nemesis), Jon Heyman of Newsday and others strongly criticized the move, which they saw as Fred Wilpon's wrongheaded desire to hire a manager with a personality the opposite of Valentine's.

Now, the Wilpons are angry with Howe because he is too soft. As today's Star Ledger reports, Howe has been admonished for failing to tougher on his players, as though they didn't know when they hired him that his approach is low key and would not likely work on a team of apathetic overpaid veterans who lack leadership skills. Howe had been laid back as manager of the Oakland A's and Houston Astros, and there was no reason to expect him to change his approach with the Mets. The Wilpons' criticism of him now for just that reason is characteristic of their stupidity.
posted on 9/01/2004