Mets’ Omar Minaya recall reminds fans of their dysfunction

When Mets fans hear that the team has made a back-to-the-future move, they hope for Daniel Murphy or Justin Turner. Instead, they got Omar Minaya.

In a decision both awkward and tin-eared, the Mets announced Friday that Minaya was hired as a special assistant to Sandy Alderson.

Alderson replied “yes” in a text to whether he was in favor of hiring Minaya. But this felt from the “what else could he say” department. Alderson now has as special assistants the man he fired as manager, Terry Collins, and the man he replaced as GM, Minaya. Collins and Minaya share this commonality — they are beloved by Fred Wilpon, who may not talk much publicly these days, but still wields plenty of behind-the-scenes authority.

Minaya said he interviewed with Alderson and assistant GM John Ricco and that Alderson was “on board” with the hiring. But this would be like several years into his GM tenure, Minaya suddenly having Steve Phillips enlisted as an advisor. This feels like the Mets trolling their fans — at a moment when Alderson and the Wilpons are coming into particular rebuke by the faithful, why not hire a guy who was unpopular on his way out the door? This is Mets-ian, as if the optics were not fully appreciated beforehand.

That is why when I got a whiff that the Mets were trying to hire a veteran evaluator to help with scouting and development I reached out Thursday to Minaya, thinking actually that they would consult him on whom to pick rather than hire him. Minaya did not return my text inquiry, my strongest clue before the actual press release that he was getting this job.

Because Minaya, if nothing else, is cordial and not returning a text is not his way. To know Minaya is to like him. He is human positive energy. Minaya is particularly close to Ricco and even if part of his job is to help groom Ricco for eventual ascension — think Gene Michael sticking around after leaving as Yankee GM to help mentor assistant GM Brian Cashman — Minaya is loyal and will support Alderson, notably with his scouting eye. Minaya has the credentials for this job. Still, this is a bizarre marriage and strange timing.

You might remember a 2015 book, “Baseball Maverick,” that had as a subhead how Alderson “Revived the Mets.” Alderson did not write this book. But he did provide behind-the-scenes access and scads of hours of interviews to the author, whose take was that Alderson had created something beautiful from the mess that Minaya left behind, including a “barren farm system.”

It turned out Minaya actually left plenty behind, including Murphy, Turner and lots of the key pieces for Alderson’s 2015 NL champions such as Jacob deGrom, Matt Harvey and Steven Matz. Minaya comes back at a time when Alderson recently conceded his own minor league system “is not brimming with talent.”

The Mets need to add talent and, in theory, that is why Minaya is back. This is reminiscent of the 2003-04 offseason, the year in which Jim Duquette was the GM in between Phillips and Minaya. The Mets did not want to spend on talent, so instead they brought in veteran evaluators Al Goldis and Bill Livesey to either find more talent at the margins or — cynical view — give fans the perception that was what was occurring at a particularly tight-fisted moment in which upper management was being lambasted.

The Mets are there again, roiled in lowering payroll and general unpopularity. Minaya’s hiring will change neither. His phone conference with reporters actually did more to rekindle memories of Minaya’s penchant for non-sequiturs and errant comments. He, for example, thanked Alderson, Ricco and Paul DePodesta, when he clearly meant J.P. Ricciardi, not DePodesta, who has become one of the faces of the Cleveland Browns’ dysfunction.

Minaya said, “Great organizations take care of their alumni,” a day after a New York Times story depicted the estrangement between Ed Kranepool (the Mets’ leader in games played) and the franchise.

Alderson was not on the conference call. He told me he was in San Diego getting dentistry work. But his absence felt symbolic, as if he were detached from this moment — phone service, after all, reaches to the West Coast and Novocaine wears off. Alderson just re-upped for two more years and understands the Mets’ inner-workings, so he is not going to take Wilpon money and then speak ill of how the organization functions.

Or maybe in this case, the right word, is dysfunctions.