On the Mets beat

Willie Randolph spoke to reporters here at the winter meetings this afternoon on a variety of topics, everything from the Mets' moves so far to the maturation of Lastings Milledge.

He also expressed his frustration over finishing second to Joe Girardi in the NL Manager of the Year balloting. Here's what he had to say about that:

Q. How disappointed are you that you didn't get Manager of the Year? Was there some personal disappointment for you based on the year that you guys had?

RANDOLPH: Yeah, from an organization, team standpoint, yeah, it was disappointing because I thought we were the best.I thought we deserved that.

Q. Do you think it's underestimated a little bit the kind of job a guy can do? You guys did make it to the last game of the NLCS. Do you think that worked against you because people assumed you had a great team?

RANDOLPH: I'm just totally dumbfounded on how it works obviously. All I can do is continue to stay focused on getting this teamto where we need to go, and that's really all I can do. You've known me a long time, and I can only
try to control things I can control. If we start trying to figure out what the criteria is and why people vote for what they vote for and what they see, that's not my concern.

Like I said, I'm proud of where we've come in a short period of time, and again, these types of awards I would accept as a team anyway. The coaches, players, the organization, it's a collective thing. I feel like we deserved it. It would have been nice, but having said that, we came one hit away from the World Series, and that's really what my main concern is. That's not really who I am or define what I've done. It's always nice to kind of get those props, because it's a way you can talk about what the award means to me.

I was looking forward to giving it up to the Buck O'Neals and the Jackie Robinsons and the Omar Minayas and those type of people, and I wanted to use that platform as a way to talk about that. I can still do it, I guess (laughter), but it would have been nice to stand up in front of a lot of people and give it up to people that deserve that kind of praise. But I'll just have to maybe do it in the future sometime. Again, like I said, being where we are right now is way more important than any type of personal -- any type of award.

You can check out the full transcript of his comments right here.

Headed out to speak with GM Omar MInaya in a few minutes. Check back for an update from that briefing. Otherwise, it's been a painfully slow day here at the Dolphin.