A day after principal owner Fred Wilpon indicated Omar Minaya would return in 2011, the GM reacted nonchalantly.

"It's nothing new," Minaya said before the Mets' series opener in Philadelphia. "The fact of the matter is I have a contract beyond this year -- two years beyond this. It's nothing new. I'll continue to work hard and continue to do my job to the best of my ability."

The Mets enter the wekeend trailing the first-place Atlanta Braves by eight games. Asked about his responsibility for that deficit, Minaya said: "I always feel as a general manager, when the team does well, I always say the players are the ones that should get the credit. When the team is not playing well, as the general manager, you've got to take the responsibility."

The Phillies currently have Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Shane Victorino on the DL, yet have won 12 of 14 games and are 60-48. Last year, the Mets finished 70-92 with the team having lost core players to injury. Yet Minaya suggested anyone drawing parallels is off-base.

"I don't know if they're exactly going through the same thing," Minaya countered. "When you have [Roy] Halladay, when you have [Roy] Oswalt, when you have [Cole] Hamels, and when you have Howard for most of the year -- when you have those kind of guys -- I disagree with you. I don't think they're going exactly the same thing we went through last year."