Anthony Rieber: Willie Randolph brings expertise, wisdom to YES Network Yankee studio job
Willie Randolph flexing at the 75th. Edition of Old Timers Day at Yankee Stadium on Sat. Sept. 9, 2023. Credit: Errol Anderson
You can never say never, but Willie Randolph’s last, best chance to get back into a major-league dugout might have been as a potential bench coach when the Mets hired Carlos Mendoza as manager before the 2024 season.
Mendoza spoke glowingly about Randolph, whom he called a “mentor” and “friend” from their days around the Yankees. It seemed like a perfect fit — Randolph returning to Flushing, where he was the manager from 2005-08 — but Mendoza and then-new president of baseball operations David Stearns went with Eric Chavez as Mendoza’s first bench coach.
Now age 71, Randolph last month agreed to go down a different path, one he had only dabbled at in the past, and not for decades. Randolph will join the YES Network as a studio analyst on a select number of games — about one series a month to start, Randolph told Newsday in a telephone interview — starting with a series against the Astros in late April.
Fans who watch the pre- and postgame shows often are the most diehard of the diehards. They want information about their beloved team, and they can spot a phony or someone who isn’t prepared in a New York minute.
Randolph grew up in Brooklyn. He has been around the big leagues since he debuted as a 21-year-old with the Pirates in 1975. He was a terrific player, with six All-Star Game selections, five of them with the Yankees, and was a coach on four World Series-winning teams under Joe Torre.
Randolph had a .544 winning percentage as Mets manager, which is second in franchise history to Davey Johnson’s .588. Randolph took the Mets to within one win of the World Series in 2006, and that he never got another chance to manage after getting brutally fired by the Mets in the dead of night in 2008 is a great mystery.
Mendoza could have benefited from Randolph’s experience and wisdom in the dugout. Now we’ll have to see if viewers will benefit from having Randolph explain what they are about to see on the pregame show or what they just saw on the postgame show.
“You have to be open and honest with the fans,” he said. “You can't fool New York fans and what they're looking at and seeing. I'll be fair, obviously, and just be me. The cool thing about it is that a lot of the players know who I am and they know there's hopefully a certain amount of trust in that. All I want to see is them do well.
“But if I have to be somewhat opinionated, if you will, I don't even see it as critical. It just says to me, what I bring to the table, I believe, is what a lot of people don't see, and conveying how difficult it is to play the game and what just transpired in front of your eyes, because a lot of people don't see what I see. I'm looking forward to tapping into some of that stuff. It's just more than anything just being me. Just being Willie Randolph.
“I've been so blessed and fortunate to be in the game for over four decades and being around some of the best players and managers and coaches to ever put the uniform on. All that knowledge and things that I've learned as a manager, a coach, is something that I want to share with the fans. That's really what it boils down to.”
YES earned the wrath of some of its fans this offseason when the network decided not to renew the contract of longtime analyst John Flaherty. It was a surprising move, given how versatile Flaherty was as a part-time play-by-play man, game analyst and studio talking head.
Having Randolph around should earn back some goodwill. Yankees fans see him as a link to the glory days of both the 1970s and the Torre years.
“I just want to kind of get things rolling, get my feet wet again,” Randolph said. “Looking forward to being a part of the team. The YES Network is an outstanding organization. The people that are there are Emmy winners and all that good stuff. More than anything, just super-excited about having the opportunity to talk about the game that I love, talk about the team that I love and the players that I love.”
Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.
