Beltrán Buries Randolph

[Edgy MD]

It's almost two weeks old, but a https://www.nj.com/mets/2023/12/ex-mets-manager-betrayed-teams-trust-his-former-player-says.htmlstory originating on a Spanish podcast features Carlos Beltrán, star of the Willie Randolph-era Mets, ripping his former boss by name.



Carlos' tale recounts Willie establishing a "just tell me if you need a day off" policy, and then, after Carlos Delgado comes in spent after staying with his wife through a marathon childbirth, Beltrán encouraged Delgado to do just that. Willie gave his player the requested break, but when questioned by reporters about the lineup card, told the press that Delgado had requested to sit.



Beltrán framed this as a manager feeding his player to the press, and saying he'd never do that. And for what it's worth, it sounds like classic Randolph — decent enough to always want to do the honorable thing, but often not sensible or aware enough to know what it was in real time.



For what it's also worth, Beltrán is kind of doing the same thing. Just as Willie could have given his player cover, and owned the decision to sit Delgado, Carlos could have told the story in a "one time this one manager ..." context and gotten the same point across, but instead leaves Willie twisting in the wind just as Willie left Delgado, and kind of does it in service to raising his own leadership profile.



So I'm not sure anybody looks too great here. Carlos Delgado looks pretty good I guess. And Delgado's wife, Betzaida García, totally. Otherwise, we have two generations of Mets managers putting their feet in it. And me.



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[metirish]

But he did ask for a day off, I get it, Willie could have chose his words better, maybe the Mets were in a skid ? Feeling the pressure, a bit rich of Carlos to bring this up I think

[MFS62]

We weren't in the room.

When he told that to the reporters, did they ask "Why? Is Carlos inured"?

Any competent reporter should have. It would have been big news if he had been.

And if they did, it would have given Randolph a chance to explain.

But we don't know if that happened from one side of the story.



Later

[batmagadanleadoff]

Was that a tournament game? I'll bet that it wasn't because if it was a tournament game, Delgado wouldn't have asked out.

[metsmarathon]

keep going. it isn't old yet.

[Fman99]

Non-story. Guy asked for a day off. Manager gave it to him. Then he told the press what happened. What's the issue then?

[Edgy MD]

The article continued with:

Beltrán simply filed that in his memory bank and promised himself never to do that should he land in the manager's seat someday. From that moment on, he never asked Randolph for a day off. He just waited to be told to sit, and his teammates followed. “Ask to see how many players went to Willie after that,' Beltrán said. “Nobody. We could be falling apart.”

On the one hand, the account is colored by Beltrán's own ambitions to be a manager and choosing to explicitly contrast himself with Randolph.



On the other, the team did, pretty literally, fall apart, putting into the books one of MLB history's all-time great first-place collapses down the stretch.