I'm not excited about this Minaya thing at all. First off, this doesn't change the fact that the Wilpons will continue to run the ship and make stupid moves just to look good on the back page of the papers. Nothing's going to be solved until the Mets hire a real GM and let him run the ship.
The best thing I've heard about Minaya is that he's good as far as scouting Latin America. Sounds great if we were hiring him to be the "head of Latin American Scouting" or something, not to be the GM.
From everything I've read, it sounds like the Duquette didn't have much to do with the July 30 disaster, that he was in fact against making the moves. If that's the case, I think he's done a decent job, certainly not one bad enough for him to be fired after a year. Matsui hasn't lived up to expectations and they really should've picked up a 5th starter before the season, but Cameron and Hidalgo were good moves. And at least he didn't take on any absurdly bad contracts.

Minaya? Why should we be impressed with him?
Here are some of his major trades with the Expos:
-Traded Guillermo Mota and Wilkin Ruan to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Received Matt Herges and Jorge Nunez.
-Traded Jason Bay to the New York Mets. Received Lou Collier.
-Traded Scott Strickland, Matt Watson, and Phil Seibel to the New York Mets. Received a PTBNL, Bruce Chen, Dicky Gonzalez, and Luis Figueroa.
-Traded RHP Jim Brower and a player to be named for RHP Livan Hernandez, catcher Edwards Guzman and cash.
-Traded RHP Javier Vazquez for the Yankees' 1B Nick Johnson, OF Juan Rivera and LHP Randy Choate

Also, he rented Cliff Floyd and Bartolo Colon, trading them away soon after - here's the sum of those trades:
- Traded Lee Stevens, Brandon Phillips, Cliff Lee, and Grady Sizemore for Orlando Hernandez, RHP Rocky Biddle, and Jeff Liefer.
-Traded a PTBNL, Graeme Lloyd, Mike Mordecai, Carl Pavano, and Justin Wayne for Sun-Woo Kim and Seung Song.

Okay, obviously the Livan Hernandez pickup was outstanding, although he didn't start getting good until some other team's pitching coach gave him advice in the middle of the season and he changed his delivery, so there's some luck at play.
I liked the Vazquez deal at the time, although Nick Johnson has been hurt a lot.

On the negative side, he has traded Guillermo Mota, Jason Bay, Carl Pavano, and Grady Sizemore.