Earlier this season, a club executive lamented the practice of firing staffers early in a season, which, he believes, makes a franchise look ridiculous. You spend many hours together in meetings during the offseason, evaluating players and developing plans, and then you have two months together in spring training.
"Then you have a few bad weeks and you fire a guy?" he asked rhetorically. "What you're really saying is that your process was [flawed]. If you're ready to fire someone in April or May, then that means you had doubts about him during the winter, and you should've made your move then.
"It just comes off as an excuse, finger-pointing."
But that's where the New York Mets might be soon. Both current buzz and Mets history suggest Mickey Callaway's job is in jeopardy, and with one more bad stretch of game results, he might be on the way out. And let's be clear about this: Word about this sort of stuff emanates from the Mets more than any team in baseball, and an in-season firing of Callaway would be in keeping with a long-standing Mets tradition.