Mets Hire Minaya

The Mets are supposed to announce today or tomorrow that they have hired Omar Minaya to be head of baseball operations, with Jim Duquette moving to more of an administrative role. Minaya worked for the Mets for several years before taking the front office job with the Expos.

Minaya is a good baseball man. But so is Duquette. The key question is whether any baseball man under the Wilpon regime will really be given the authority to run baseball operations and make the baseball decisions. Perhaps the Wilpons will have enough trust in Minaya to give him that control, because they apparently didn’t have that trust in Duquette.

The other big off-field news is the impending move (finally!) of the Expos to Washington D.C. Peter Angelos has been fighting this move tooth and nail, and I can’t say I really blame him. The value of the Oriole franchise will definitely take a hit. It looks like MLB will pay to assuage the Oriole owner.

You can follow this story, and other business-related baseball news, at the Field of Schemes weblog.