Keeping Manuel Will Be in the Cards (and D-Backs)

Okay, so the Mets stink. It’s not as if they’re not trying. (That makes me feel so much better). It’s just that they have trouble with breaking balls. Okay, sometimes they don’t get around on the hard heater either. But really, sliders, hard curves, splitters, those nasty hideous changeups, they’re enough to drive a team to distraction. And that’s what happened in San Francisco, Cincinnati, Arizona and Los Angeles.

My last column just killed Jason Bay. Shortly thereafter, Bay had the best game of his Mets career. Go figure. But then he reverted to form, more or less. He just doesn’t have any effect on most games. But he ran into the wall for his team in that incredible spectacle that Santana pitched late last week. And Beltran did nothing. Oh, and Wright did nothing.

Reyes made another stupid play in a game the team was supposed to be intent on winning. There are events in a game that just change the momentum. Some days teams deserve to win. Some days they don’t. Reyes sets the tone. Or doesn’t.

So who’s playing well? Obviously, Santana is. Dickey, Niese, Pelfrey….(notice any theme here?), yes! They’re all pitchers! Not only did the Mets lose all those games, they managed to waste all those good pitching performances. Pitchers are fragile and inconsistent, unless their name is Santana, and the good efforts can’t continue for too long.

The Mets have nothing going for them other than pitching and a couple of interesting rookies.

Jerry Manuel, the manager of course, is befuddled. Wouldn’t you be? He’s beleaguered. Omar’s in his corner but nobody’s in Omar’s corner. Omar’s got to deliver this year with the hand that he dealt for himself. That much seems clear. Howard Johnson, the batting coach, is under fire too, or at least could be expected to feel some heat.

It’s a bad team situation too, exactly the situation most Mets fans really feared, that Carlos Beltran’s return would influence team chemistry, which had seemed good and settled with Bay, Francoeur and Pagan. As inconsistent as they were, the fielding was great and they all seemed to contribute to that team feeling.

Then of course, Luis Castillo came back from his injury (which seemed to linger, he still doesn’t walk right). Alex Cora and one of those interesting rookies, Ruben Tejada, had been manning second base pretty adequately before his return.

So it wasn’t just Francoeur who was dislodged from the lineup. It was three of the “guys”.

To compound an already horrible situation, Oliver Perez, perhaps Minaya’s most storied and prominent failure in his Mets career, returned to the club as a reliever and gave up last night’s game-winning home run to James Loney. Ollie’s pitch was up and hittable.

Managing this whole situation required a lot of finesse. Manuel could have played Francoeur a little more or Beltran and Castillo a little less. He could have left Perez on the bench. And there were once again those game situations that could have been managed differently. He obviously zigged when he should have zagged throughout the entire road trip.

Minaya likes Manuel though. He’ll decide whether it’ll do himself any good to get another manager who’ll do better with this group. He’ll be thinking for this year only. There is still a slim chance that his team can come back. They are 7 ½ games out of first in the division and just 6 games from securing a wildcard. He may feel a shakeup is absolutely required for his moribund bunch. There are still 63 games left to play. They are returning home, a place they managed to win 30 out of 46 times throughout this year.

I wouldn’t change managers at this time. Doing that would just be one more shakeup of a team that’s been shaken enough, if not stirred. I would at least wait to see how the team plays in the friendly confines of CitiField, even if the opponents are the always tough Cards and then the D-Backs, who just finished pummeling Minaya’s team in Arizona.

But, as tough as those teams are, the Mets seem to have the advantage at Citi. It’s almost impossible to hit a homer there and that benefits the Mets. It’s a huge place that favors speed and that’s something the Mets have in abundance. Results don’t lie and 30-16 speaks volumes. They can throw a lot of arms at you, Santana and Pelfrey and Niese and Dickey….even Takahashi throws opponents a curve once in a while. Heh-heh.

Unfortunately, the Cards will open up with Wainwright on Tuesday and the pretty remarkable Jaime Garcia on Wednesday. They’ll be facing Niese and Takahashi. Wainwright has given up a few runs to the Mets in previous games but not Garcia, who gave them just one hit over 7 innings. The advantage for the first two games would seem to be with the Cards.

But Johan Santana starts on Thursday and he could be pitching to bring the Mets back to .500 if they lose the first two games. That he faces one Blake Hawksworth can only bode well for our Mets. Friday’s probable starters are Ian Kennedy against Pelfrey, and that game may turn out to be the pivotal game of the Mets future. Can Pelfrey and the Mets overcome Ian Kennedy at home, given Kennedy’s last dominant performance against the Metsies in Arizona, given that they lost that exact same pitching matchup 13-2?

If the Mets can split with the Cards and just take 2 of 3 from the D-Backs, they’ll have the confidence to face the Braves and Phils. If not, I think they’ll be done. If they can’t perform at home, how could they possibly go on the road again to have success against the division-leading Braves and then the Phillies?

Keep Manuel for now.