On the recent managerial ongoings regarding the Mets, A's, Mariners and Devil Rays...
Regarding Lou Piniella ending up in Tampa Bay, Joel Sherman writes:

An NL GM said Piniella will find working for the hopeless combo of Tampa owner Vince Naimoli and GM Chuck LaMar is "baseball hell . . . I can't believe he wanted to go to Tampa Bay regardless of how much money was given to him. The guy who is the GM there has no idea what the [bleep] he is doing. If Chuckles [LaMar] is still really in charge, Piniella is [bleeped]." . . .

I think nicknaming a general manager of a major-league baseball team "Chuckles" qualifies as an insult.

On the Mets' hiring of Art Howe, Jon Heyman sums it up:

Beset by panic and poor taste, the Mets have settled on the worst possible man for an impossible task. Good luck to Art Howe, a nice man with a misleading resume, misguided confidence and almost no chance to succeed as Mets manager.
...To get away from a boss whom he believed disrespected and underpaid him, Howe dived right into a hornet's nest without insecticide. The only possible result is that he'll get stung. It is only a matter of time.
...For some reason, the Mets believed they had to have a manager with experience, so they took a manager who has managed 12 years, won a bunch of games and impressed almost no one. They didn't want to be left standing with no one, so they panicked and took Forrest Gump, an earnest man who lucked into the best team west of the Yankees.
A partial listing of men who would have made better Mets managers: Baker, Piniella, Ken Macha, Dave Righetti, Joe Maddon, Ron Wotus, Robby Thompson, Bud Black, Willie Randolph, Kevin Kennedy, Terry Francona, Bobby Valentine.
We'll produce the second installment of names after we give it another few minutes of thought.
The first clue that Howe isn't exactly Joe McCarthy should have been that his boss, esteemed A's general manager Billy Beane, spent the past few weeks begging someone to take him. Too bad for the Mets that Beane is a wonderful salesman, and Mets GM Steve Phillips is a bad shopper.

I don't agree with all the names on Heyman's list, but his overall points are accurate. As many have pointed out, the Chicago White Sox offered Jeff Torborg to the Mets in 1992 despite coming off two very good seasons. the Mets eagerly snapped up Torborg, to their regret. And Billy Beane's track record is even better than that of the White Sox in the early 1990s.