In recent months this website has been critical of Commissioner Rob Manfred for his farce of a program for minority hiring. While Manfred boasts of a desire and a plan to enhance minority hiring, he pushes the Milwaukee Brewers to hire a 30-year-old white guy, David Stearns, as their general manager, he oversees the naming of 15 white guys among a pool of 16 high-ranking executives and managers and he does nothing to secure even a solitary interview for De Jon Watson, the executive viewed as the most worthy minority candidate for the position of general manager.

I have previously made known my disdain for the commissioner’s empty efforts on behalf of blacks and Hispanics in their desire to achieve roles their white colleagues more easily attain. If Manfred genuinely wants to achieve equal treatment for blacks and Hispanics, he sure has a funny way of showing it.

In recent weeks, however, Manfred has been aided and abetted by members of the news media, who have ignored what he has done and even lauded him for what they see as an honorable effort to help minorities.

Before I get to that development, I want to update my scorecard on hiring of high-ranking executives and managers.

In the last four months teams have hired 14 high-ranking executives and two managers. Only one of those 16, general manager Al Avila of Detroit, is a minority. With two managing jobs open, the Dodgers could hire Gabe Kapler and the Marlins Don Mattingly, the scorecard would become 17 white guys and 1 Latino.

None of the columnists who have treated Manfred as they apparently think a commissioner should be treated have cited those figures. If they did, they would find that the figures compute to a .056 average. A batter with that average wouldn’t be welcome for long.

But Jon Heyman, for one, has nothing but praise for the commissioner, and he should know because he is, according to CBSports.com. the web site on which he appears, the Baseball Insider.

“MLB isn’t thrilled with the recent trend, but it also doesn’t blame the clubs,” Heyman wrote earlier this month, quoting Manfred as saying, “I am very comfortable that in each situation the club hired the person they felt was best suited for each job….I am concerned that we at Central Baseball have to do a better job.”

But does Heyman explain or ask Manfred why MLB isn’t doing a better job? Does he ask the commissioner why he pushed the Brewers to make Stearns their general manager (Stearns worked for Manfred in the commissioner’s office) but has not pushed any club to hire a minority as general manager?

He does not, even though he mentions Watson, a Diamondbacks’ executive, whom Heyman calls “highly respected” and asks “why shouldn’t Watson be a serious candidate anywhere?”

He should be, but unlike he did with Stearns, Manfred took no interest in Watson, who never worked for him.

The day before the start of the World Series Manfred held a news conference and the first questions were on the subject of minority hiring. They came from Ron Blum, an Associated Press reporter, and Michael Powell, a New York Times columnist.

I appreciate the fact that questions were asked, but they could have been more pointed and more challenging. One question could also have been better had it not suggested an answer for Manfred:

“Is it troublesome at all that next year could be the first year in decades with no black managers? And are more initiatives needed to get more candidates in the pipeline or is this just cyclical right now?”

“Well, first of all, I haven’t come to the conclusion that we’re going to get to next year with no black managers. It could happen.

“I do think that there is a certain cyclical nature to this. Obviously field managers are high turnover jobs. And you’re going to have peaks and valleys in terms of representation within what’s a very small sample; there’s only 30 of them out there.”

Cyclical? Peaks and valleys? Are white guys subject to cycles and peaks and valleys? I think not.

In reply to another question, Manfred said, “we are focused on the need to promote diversity, not just African American, but Latino, as well, in the managerial ranks. I am committed to what I’ve started to refer to as the “Selig Rule,” the interview requirement that Commissioner Selig originally imposed.”

At the strong suggestion of Leonard Coleman, the National League president, Bud Selig imposed the minority-interview rule in 1999. As time went on, Selig became less stringent on enforcing the rule and allowed clubs to evade it with the flimsiest of excuses. Manfred has followed the latter Selig in his enforcement.

In the past month Manfred has winked at what to this outsider was an obvious scheme to elude the rule. He approved minority interviews by four different clubs with candidates who had no chance to get the jobs for which they were being interviewed.

Four unheralded, mid-level candidates being interviewed for four different jobs – stamp them sham interviews, but Manfred approved them and no reporter or columnist questioned his approval, sanctioning what appeared to be an obvious act to elude the minority-interview rule

“Look,” the commissioner said in another answer, “I believe that our clubs go out pursuant to the requirements that we’ve imposed. They make sure that there’s diversity in the candidates that they hire. And I really genuinely believe that they hire what they feel to be the most qualified person for the job. And that is the American way.

“What we need to do is make sure that we work very hard to have diverse candidates who turn out to be the most qualified person for the job. And we are committed to that undertaking. We’ve expanded the program significantly and will be talking to the owners about that program again in November.”

Reading the transcript of Manfred’s news conference, I couldn’t help but wonder if stuff like that is where the phrase “talk is cheap” came from.

Meanwhile, reading the Powell column in the Times, I couldn’t help but wonder which major league team has a black c.e.o. that Powell mentioned. Michael Hill of the Miami Marlins is the highest-ranking African-American in Major League Baseball, and his title, president of baseball operations, has some e’s and some o’s, but I don’t see a c.

Don Mattingly said it once, twice, 10 times. I didn’t believe it the first time, the second time or the 10^th time. I just don’t believe Mattingly and the Los Angeles Dodgers split up because, in Mattingly’s words. “It became something that was best for me and best for the club.”

Listening to Mattingly on a conference call Thursday, I said, “There are 30 major league managing jobs. Why would someone walk away from that job?”

“I believe this is the right time and right move for both parties,” Mattingly said, adding, “I think it became clear for all of us.”

Declining to provide details of what both sides said were multiple days of talks, Mattingly made no sense on the conference call. But on Friday, a baseball executive, who was not involved in those talks, suggested something that if so, suddenly clarified everything.

“Maybe Donny wanted a contract extension and they didn’t want to give it to him,” the executive said. “Maybe there’s been contact with the Marlins and if not, it’s been through the media.”

Let me provide some background. Mattingly had one year left on a three-year contract, which he signed following the 2013 season. His 2013 contract included an option for 2014, which would vest automatically if the Dodgers won the 2013 division series, which they did.

A one-year contract, though, didn’t satisfy Mattingly, who said it would make him a lame-duck manager and undermine his ability to manage the team. Maybe, he suggested, he wouldn’t manage at all. Call it bluffing, call it intimidation, call it whatever you want, but the Dodgers caved and gave him a three-year contract.

Not this time, though, if that’s what he wanted. How could Mattingly walk away from the third year? He could do it easily if he had reason to know he could have the Marlins’ job if he were free of his Dodgers’ contract.

The Marlins are in the market for a manager because owner Jeffrey Loria decided last week that Dan Jennings would return to the front office and his job as general manager. Jennings went to the dugout and replaced Mike Redmond as manager 38 games into this season.

Mattingly‘s name has been the first one mentioned because he is available and he played for the New York Yankees. “Jeffrey has a love for anything Yankees,” an executive said, and he will very likely ignore the fact that Mattingly managed the Dodgers to three consecutive division titles with the benefit of $724 million in payrolls, highest in the majors. In those three seasons the Marlins’ payrolls totaled $156 million, lowest in the majors.

If any member of the Miami organization has contacted Mattingly to let him know of the Marlins’ interest while he was still under contract to the Dodgers, the Marlins would be guilty of tampering. Loria, however, probably doesn’t have to be concerned about facing a tampering charge. Major League Baseball doesn’t seem to pay attention to tampering anymore.

When Bud Selig was commissioner, he said he would investigate tampering only if a team filed a complaint. Teams never filed complaints very likely because they didn’t want other teams filing complaints against them.

In addition, in this instance, the Dodgers would have no reason to complain about tampering because they don’t want to retain Mattingly.

MINORITY MAN ENHANCES HIRING – WHITE HIRING

Commissioner Rob Manfred’s minority-hiring program for decision-making positions is working so well clubs can’t hire white guys fast enough. It’s as if part of Manfred’s policy includes a deadline after which clubs are not permitted to hire general managers or managers of the Caucasian persuasion.

Just the other day the Seattle Mariners named Scott Servais to be their manager. Reports surfaced Saturday that Matt Klentak would be named the Philadelphia Phillies’ general manager.

Only two days after the Los Angeles Dodgers take away Don Mattingly’s blue-tinged lineup cards, Mattingly is said to be coveted by the Miami Marlins. The Dodgers’ choice to replace Mattingly, according to word circulating in baseball circles, is Gabe Kapler, a former major league outfielder and the Dodgers’ player development director.

Nary an African-American nor an Hispanic among them. Not a woman either. Kim Ng, a former assistant general manager and current MLB executive, was widely rumored to be a serious candidate for the Phillies’ job, but there was no indication that she was even interviewed.

In the last four months teams have hired or named 14 executives to top-level positions and named two new managers. One of those 14, Al Avila, the Detroit general manager, qualifies as a minority. Maybe half a dozen minorities have been interviewed.

My favorite series of minority interviews – and I’d like to know who orchestrated them so I could commend him for being so clever – were the interviews four different clubs conducted with four different mid-level executive who were as likely to be named general managers as you and I.

They were sham interviews, but Manfred accepted them as meeting his requirement for interviewing minorities.

Not all minority interviews are sham interviews. The Washington Nationals interviewed Dusty Baker for their managerial vacancy, and while I think at his age – 66 – it’s unlikely that he’ll get the job, I think the interview was legitimate.

The Nationals job is one of the few that remain open. The Marlins, the Dodgers and the Nationals need managers. The general manager roster has been filled.

Some of the recent hirings fit established patterns. Klentak is a young – 35 – Ivy League graduate, who majored in economics. When Jerry Dipoto, under whom Klentak worked in Anaheim, got the Mariners job, for which he was also interviewed, Klentak told me he wasn’t upset because he thought he had a better chance of getting the Phillies’ job. He thought that because Andy MacPhail was the Phillies’ club president, and Klentak had worked under MacPhail there.

Servais, a former major league catcher, was named the Mariners’ manager because catchers make successful managers, he played with Dipoto and he worked under him in Anaheim’s front office.

David Stearns, a 30-year-old Harvard graduate, got his job as general manager in Milwaukee because he previously had worked under Manfred in the labor department of Major League Baseball, and Manfred urged the Milwaukee owner, Mark Attanasio, to hire him.

Blacks and Hispanics don’t seem to have those advantages. They also don’t get into positions as assistant general managers, from where they can be elevated to general manager, as Mike Hazen has recently been in Boston, David Forst in Oakland, John Coppolella in Atlanta and Avila in Detroit.

The most highly recommended minority executive without a general manager’s job is De Jon Watson, senior vice president of baseball operations under Tony La Russa and Dave Stewart in Arizona.

Watson is highly acclaimed by his own people and high-ranking executives on other clubs, but with 10 open positions in the last three months, he couldn’t even get an interview, not a single interview.

I’ve written it before and I’ll write it again. The only reason I can figure that no one will interview him is if a club interviews him and doesn’t hire him, it will have to answer embarrassing questions about why it didn’t hire him.

Meanwhile, Commissioner Manfred has never been honest and forthright enough to explain why, if he is genuine about his desire to enhance baseball’s minority hiring, he has not been able to get Watson an interview with someone. If he could get a job for David Stearns in Milwaukee, he should be able to get De Jon Watson an interview somewhere.

MONEY METER MEETS METS

If the trend holds, the New York Mets will win the World Series.

In eight post-season matchups this month, the team with the smaller payroll has won six times. The Mets began this season with a smaller payroll ($101.4 million) than the Royals ($113.6 million), though not be much.

The results of previous 2015 series (figures in millions, rounded to the nearest million):

• Astros ($71) over Yankees ($219)
• Cubs ($119) over Pirates ($88)
• Mets ($101) over Dodgers ($273)
• Cubs ($119) over Cardinals ($121)
• Blue Jays ($123) over Rangers ($142)
• Royals ($113) over Astros ($71)
• Royals ($113) over Blue Jays ($122)
• Mets ($101) over Cubs (($119)

Omar Minaya will not receive a World Series share from the New York Mets, not only because executives don’t get World Series shares but also because the Mets don’t acknowledge Minaya’s critical contribution to their advance to the World Series.

The fact is the Mets wouldn’t be in the World Series if not for Minaya, their general manager from 2005 through 2010. The Mets used to have class, at least their owner, Fred Wilpon, did. But then Wilpon unwittingly or wittingly became immersed in Bernie Madoff’s unprecedented Ponzi scheme and hasn’t seemed to be the same since.

I tried to talk to Wilpon and/or his son, Jeff, the team’s chief operating officer, Wednesday before the Mets completed their four-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs in the National League Championship Series. I was unable to reach father or son.

“Fred is not going to be able to talk today,” Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ spokesman, said.

Earlier, he told me, “Jeff is in meetings all day.”

If a translation is necessary, Horwitz meant, “They don’t want to talk to you.”

I would like to have asked either or both Wilpons how they feel now about the allegedly barren farm system Minaya left them with when they fired him after the 2010 season. I don’t recall that the Wilpons themselves included that criticism in their list of grievances against Minaya, but they never told reporters that the farm system wasn’t a problem or the target of unfair criticism.

When such criticisms arise, they have a tendency to linger, and there are probably New York reporters and columnists who today would still say Minaya and his staff didn’t build a farm system. Everybody talks about the players the Cubs’ minor league system has disgorged, but the Mets? Fuhgedda ‘bout it.

Where, though, would the Mets be without Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Steven Matz, Jonathan Niese, Jeurys Familia, Lucas Duda, Wilmer Flores, Ruben Tejada, Daniel Murphy, Juan Lagares, Hansel Robles and Kirk Nieuwenhuis?

They would not be headed to the World Series, that’s for sure.

These players all grew up in the Mets’ system, drafted or signed as undrafted free agents, and minus Tejada, who suffered a broken leg in the division series last week, those players await the start of the World Series next Tuesday.

Those players are a special group. They are the personification of the terrific, though ignored, work Minaya did for the Mets as their general manager for the 2005 through 2010 seasons. When the Mets fired Minaya in October 2010, he was maligned and criticized for expensive signings of free agents such as Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran, but worse, he was faulted for failing to build a farm system in his six years on the job.

There’s no question that the acquisition of Yoenis Cespedes by Minaya’s successor, Sandy Alderson, served as the catalyst for the Mets’ capture of the National League East crown, but they would not have been in position to take that step without the players from the farm system.

Even the Cespedes trade had a Minaya touch. One of the two minor league players the Mets gave Detroit was Luis Cessa, a Mexican pitcher, whom a Minaya scout signed at the age of 16 in 2008.

Similar trades used Minaya-signed players. Starting pitcher Noah Syndergaard and catcher Travis d’Arnaud came from Toronto in exchange for R.A. Dickey. Zack Wheeler, who is expected to join the starting rotation next season after he completes his recovery from elbow reconstruction surgery, was acquired from San Francisco for Carlos Beltran.

Minaya made one more move that has received little attention but has turned out to be instrumental in the Mets’ march to Kansas City or Toronto for the next and ultimate series. He hired a veteran major league manager in 2010 to serve as the Mets’ minor league field coordinator. And when Alderson came in as general manager and looked around for a new manager, he saw Terry Collins and decided he was the logical choice.

In the end, though, like everyone else, Collins overlooked Minaya’s impact on his lengthy baseball career. “Sandy came in five years ago,” Collins said in a post-series interview, “and knew he had to rebuild the team.”

But what did Alderson do to rebuild the team? He acquired d’Arnaud, and he signed Curtis Granderson as a free agent. In his first season with the Mets last year, outfielder Granderson hit .227 with a .388 slugging percentage. Last winter Alderson signed Michael Cuddyer as a free agent to bolster the offense, and the outfielder hit .259 with a .391 slugging percentage.

Alderson signed Bartolo Colon for the starting rotation in 2014 and added Michael Conforto, the team’s No. 1 draft choice in 2014, to the outfield late this season. And in July he traded for Cuban outfielders Cepedes, infielders Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe and reliever Tyler Clippard.

Those moves, however, did not constitute rebuilding. Duda, Murphy, Tejada and Flores became starting infielders and Lagares the starting center fielder. Contrary to the view of critics, all of Minaya’s minor leaguers became Mets’ major leaguers. Those critics cited Duda, Murphy and others as not being major league prospects. Some members of the Mets’ baseball staff were among those holding that view.

But Alderson basically stayed with what he had, what Minaya had bequeathed to him. As it has turned out, there was no reason to want anything more. About half of the players on the National League’s World Series team are Minaya’s legacy to the 2015 Mets.