Better Luck Next Year

This doesn't hurt as much, but it still sucks.  These players are too good to be this bad.  MVP candidates, Cy Young candidate, Gold Gloves, probably some Silver Sluggers..with players this good you can't be this bad.  The injuries to Wagner and Maine hurt, sure, but it's something deeper.  The bullpen had streaks here and there, so they definitely showed talent, even if it was rare.  I don't discredit Omar, he did a lot to shake things up from last year, but many of them failed, but plenty succeeded also.  

So what's left?  Management.  We all credit Warthon with Perez and Pelfrey turning around, but Pelfrey had already shown flashes.  Did Warthon speed that up? maybe.  Allowing Perez to be Perez was certainly helpful at first, but yesterday he pitched like April, excellent until the 6th inning.  The offense continually put pressure on the bullpen because they wouldn't score more runs, and then the bullpen continually put pressure on the offense because they couldn't put up zeros.  For such great players they struggled with situational hitting, except for some streaks and some guys like Castillo who had good numbers in key situations.  The batters often failed to hit the ball on the ground, or get a sac fly, or go the other way, or not swing for the fences, while the pitchers often failed to be able to induce a groundball, or throw a pitch that won't be hit out.  The manager and coaches are the people most responsible for creating these game plans, and they haven't worked.  Maybe part of it is the calling of the game.  Could Schneider be responsible?  Was he even calling all the pitches?  Was his almost-platoon status inhibiting his authority to call pitches and be respected by the pitchers?  Who knows, but something is wrong with the fundamentals, and I think Jerry Manuel is doing more harm than good. 

The farewell ceremony was touching and nice at least.  That's two stadiums I've closed out in two years now.  

Bad all Around

That game was miserable. Manuel's managing of it no better than the situational hitting. The crowd felt alive, energetic, excited..it was almost a borderline playoff feel. Until Sanchez let up the tying hits.

How can Manuel be so inconsistent? How can he use reliever after reliever when someone is in trouble in earlier innings, but leaves Ayala in there for two? Shouldn't he have gone somewhere else, or at least pulled him after the first hit, if not the second? Why did he pinch hit for Schneider, but leave Argenis in to bat when he already got his hit for the month? And then pull Argenis after the inning anyway!

Inconsistent Consistency

Why was every one calling for change for change’s sake? I mean this particularly in reference to the idea that we needed a manager change and a shake-up. It seems that the biggest problem with this team this year is both the offense and the lack of consistency, both in-game and over an extended group of games.

So why would a shake-up, which by its very nature creates a disturbance and breaks up any consistency. On top of this, the move was made while the Mets were on a winning streak, which couldn’t have been what they wanted to shake up. Maybe what this team needs, or needed, was a steadier day-to-day regiment. A few weeks with the same lineup, healthy left and right fielders, the same manager and coaches, confirmed by Omar to be there all year. Surely giving Willie the okay for sure would’ve deferred some of the distraction, and it’s not like the statement would’ve been binding if Omar then decided, in July as things possibly grew more dire, to fire Willie and others anyway.

It’s too late for that, but now that Manuel is supposedly here all year, and Church is coming back, maybe this team can find a little bit of that daily regiment of monotony to start grinding out some real good streaks.

The Only Way to Fire Him Badly

While I like Willie Randolph and didn't want him fired, I've long said I could live with it because I felt a change needed to be made for changes sake, and who knows what the problem is?

However, if Randolph was the problem, then undoubtedly so was Manual and Howard Johnson, but they are still here. Of course, the shoddy way the Mets handled this so far could mean they're gone when they wake up in Anaheim today. Ken Oberkfell is promoted from Triple A manager to first base coach, and I assume that the idea is he's the favorite for manager and Jerry Manual is truly an interim guy, but if the Mets go on to win in the playoffs like they are capable of, how can you fire him? And firing coaches/managers twice within a season is just an unneeded (for the players) distraction and disruption.

If they were going to fire him, Friday was the time after a bad stretch of games. Instead, now they've won four of six and three of the last four. They didn't make a huge move, bringing up triple A guys to fill the coaching spots, so why did they need to hold off on making this decision? I even went to bed last night thinking the Mets were on an upswing and Willie probably even had a days reprieve or so. To make a guy fly out to Anaheim and win a game well with a young pitcher on the mound, a game where he made the right bullpen moves to win the game, and then fire him after it is silly.

Maybe it was in deference to Randolph? If they fire him Friday and then the Mets start winning, he looks bad and like the cause of the Mets struggles. However, now that they're playing well again, it just looks like any other manager firing and maybe he doesn't get all the blame.

I know nothing about Nieto and have no reason to understand why he got fired, but Peterson I can live with an am almost happy with. I don't really know how much impact he has had, and how much impediment he has been. I tire of his babying pitchers and his pitch counts and what seems to me to be molding a pitcher to his philosophies rather than teaching the pitcher how to succeed with what he's got. I know nothing about his replacement though, and it'll be interesting to see how things go. The only guy I'm really curious about is Perez. Maine has progressed enough that I think he'll actually benefit with someone else's suggestions and only get better. Pelfrey to me was just a matter of confidence and practice, not necessarily who was giving it to him. Plus having Pedro here is worth as much as any pitching coach.

So we have all day and night to talk about this, and then it's time to move on and start/continue playing good baseball and get back to the ultimate goal of winning the World Series.

Does Willie still get to go to the All Star game? Also, I don't want to hear from Yankees fans on this. The Yankees totally mishandled Joe Torre (although at least it was in the offseason) and have a crybaby for an owner.

And in a game of what if?

Willie Randolph gets Jim Leyland's job, and manages the Tigers to a championship over the Mets. Then after asked "You've just won the World Series, what are you going to do now?" he returns to Anaheim where he was fired. "I'm going to Disneyland!"