At the start of the offseason, the Mets addressed their disatrous baserunning by removing Razor Shines as third-base coach and Luis Alicea as first-base coach. Here was Jerry Manuel's take at the time:
[Manuel] said, 'The traffic on the base paths was not what we wanted it to be,' when speaking of Shines and Luis Alicea, who was let go from the staff entirely.
So how will the Mets upgrade their coaching situation on the bases? From Metsblog:
According to an on air report from WFAN, Razor Shines will move to coach first base, Chip Hale (previously with the D-Backs) has been hired to coach third, and Dave Jauss (previously with the O's) will be Jerry Manuel's bench coach.
So Shines, who helped run the Mets out of numerous scoring chances while coaching at third, now gets to work his magic at first?
Last year, the problem was that Met runners kept getting thrown out at home by 15 feet. This year, the Mets won't have that problem - the runners won't be in a position to score from third base because they will have been thrown out at second trying to stretch singles into doubles.
Moving Razor Shines from third-base coach to first-base coach is like removing the trainers because of all the injuries - and making them strength and conditioning coaches.
The 70-win Mets need to make a lot of changes. Is it too much to ask to keep baserunners away from Razor Shines?
I think this move shows just whats wrong with the Mets, I honestly believe that most of our problems start at the top, and go all the way down, The guys at the top seem more interested in saving face than putting a winning team on the field, How else can you explain Manuel and Minaya BOTH still having jobs? Brilliant moves like moving Shines to first. trying to distract us from a poor product on the field by annoucing name changes to entrances at CitiField.
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