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.

From Bad to Worse?

The Mets season is over. I’m declaring them dead.

They’re not the Mets anyway, not the Mets I expected and not even the Mets I foresaw if they had some bad luck. Even though I realized at the season’s inception that the Mets had been awfully lucky over the last few years from an injury standpoint, especially with their core players, I never thought they’d lose them all.

Even their ace pitcher can’t win these days. Santana has lost four of his last six. There is just no hitting usually, and last night the fielding went with it. It’s really too sad a story to stay with. You could liken it to hanging around a hospital. That’s not for me, especially when there are so many other stories, so many other channels.

For good reasons or bad, Omar has decided to stand pat with a AAA team. He’s done it too long. I’m tired of watching minor league ball. The only baseball-related things I can look forward to this year are the All-Star game and my fantasy team, which has been almost as unlucky as the Mets.

This somewhat stubborn refusal by the Mets to get better comes at a bad time. Oh sure, there has been Wimbledon and the U.S. soccer team, the NBA Draft and some other stuff, but really, it’s kind of difficult, y’know? I mean, how excited can I really get over the Williams sisters? The gracious Venus is as easy to root for as her younger arrogant sister is not. And unless and until an American man can break into the top echelon, it’s tough to follow the men’s action.

As for soccer, after cheering like a mad man for the likes of Donovan and Dempsey, Howard, Spector and Davies, only to watch their heartbreak in the final against Brazil, can I really stay motivated until the World Cup? I don’t think so. It was a great game though, and coming on the heels of their victory over Spain, they played valiantly for the full 90 minutes, even if their efforts were fruitful for only 45. They just seemed to run out of gas in that second half, especially after giving up that almost impossible to stop goal in the first minute or so of the second half.

But it’s the beginning of July and I shouldn’t have to amuse myself with other sports. The American pastime is still baseball, isn’t it? You wouldn’t know it from watching the National League action in New York though. Did I say action? I don’t know that you can call it that.

The Evil Empire is impossible to root for, at least for this fan, and maybe I’ll take notice if they should fire Cashman, or reduce ticket prices, or just shut up about how many pitches have been thrown, how many strikes, how many balls and on and on. They won’t catch the Red Sox anyway, this despite Papelbon’s failure to close out last night’s deal.

Besides, the team I can root for down the stretch is the Brewers. That became obvious to me last night as I watched those big dudes from Milwaukee, Hart and Hardy and Fielder and Braun. You even get sausage races if you’re a Brewer fan. They’ve got representative pitching, at the very least, and the players seem to have character.

In the American League, I’ll continue to pull for the Rangers, another lovable team that’s been together now for several years of mostly hard luck and is now coming of age, even without their superstar Josh Hamilton. The Twins are a nice team too, with lots of good pitching and a similar situation with home-grown guys making it big. And, last but not least, they pay absolutely no attention to pitch counts.

The Yankee obsession with pitch counts continued last night as Joba reached about a hundred pitches after 5 1/3 innings. The idiots on the bench took him out again, of course, and the Yanks relievers took over. Last night, they did the job and Bruney eventually picked up the win as Arod hit a gargantuan 2-run homer. But those idiots on the bench and in the GM’s office sure put a lot of pressure on Joba. You could look at each failed Joba performance as a self-fulfilled prophecy.

Aah! Who am I kidding? I’ll still be sucked in to the Mets action. Even now, I find myself with the tube in the background, watching Gary and Keith recap yesterday’s failures. Now Jerry’s talking about the need for them to relax a little bit, an almost impossible wish, given the whole Mash-unit situation.

Okay, my favorite blue and orange team is still only 2 games below .500 and just four games behind the Phils, a game behind the Marlins, a game ahead of the Braves. Is that really such a good reason to despair? After all, if we Mets fans know anything, it’s that big leads can be lost, and a lot depends on how the team plays in September.

And Beltran’s bone bruise is indeed just a bruise. Reyes and Delgado will be returning too. The pitching staff remains fairly strong, strong enough to compete in this weak NL East anyway. So I’ll wait and see. I’ll be a true fan.

But DeRosa was right there for the taking. And Holliday is supposed to be available. Couldn’t management see its way clear to picking up somebody? Wouldn’t even one addition to the roster help these guys out a little. When Church and Schneider are the glue holding a team together, that’s pretty sad.

Okay, that’s enough. Besides, Wright is up now. God willing, they’ll pitch to him.

Joba's Bad But Omar's Looking Good

Joba Chamberlain is a better pitcher than he showed yesterday. He would have to be, wouln’t he? I hadn’t seen such tentativeness since Aaron Heilman. Did he throw any fastballs? It surely didn’t seem so.

The Yankees, my Dad says, are not a good team. He just doesn’t think they’re that good. Well, I guess I’d have to agree, given this little information. If they keep babying Joba and making him neurotic, it would appear, their chances are all that much slimmer.

Maybe it’s Jorge Posada that doesn’t agree with him. Posada had missed a lot of the Joba action last year. There were surely a lot of calls for breaking balls. And if a catcher can’t call a good game, it doesn’t really matter that he hits a little bit. One thing is for sure. If Joba has another game like this last one, I’m going to hide my Joba tee shirt. He looked that bad.

But the rest of the Yanks don’t really look that bad. I really don’t like Cano but he sure has been knocking the cover off the ball. Jeter looks really good too. Teixeira is starting to hold his own. Damon hasn’t been bad. Matsui has looked a bit off. Anyway, I’m not sure I agree with Dad on this one. The Yanks look pretty good to me, if the relievers hold up at all.

The Mets, what can you say? They did just enough to win last night, thanks largely to Sheffield, whose 500th tied the game late. It was a big big home run. And then Luis Castillo wins it for them with a slap to the left side, to deep short to score Delgado with the game-winner.

In one fell swoop, Omar looks like a genius. There have been no bigger targets of derision for Minaya than his acquisition of Sheffield and his retention of Castillo, or, better put, his failure to pick up another second baseman. Well, Castillo is hitting .387 and has fielded the position pretty well so far, better at least than Murphy has fielded his. And Sheffield showed what he can do at the plate. Big time.

Sheffield is now just 1 for 5 but that big knock should count for 3 or 4 hits. What a shot! And what a shot in the arm for our local heroes. I know Livan Hernandez was happy. He was off the hook after pitching really well and making one big mistake. Well, everybody was happy. I know I was happy.

So the Mets are even again at 5 and 5. They’ve lost three one-run games so far though. They haven’t been hitting in the clutch and were lucky to win last night, lucky that two old guys both came through when the game was on the line. If not for those two fellows, there would have been still one more one-run loss.

The Mets starters just haven’t been good enough. Livan has been pretty good despite his giving up that big homer last night. And Santana has been himself, which is to say….great. Then there’s Perez, who’s been himself also, which is to say….crazy. Maine and Pelfrey haven’t looked good at all, but not overwhelmingly bad either. And now Pelfrey’s a bit knicked up. Maybe it’ll help.

That relief pitching sure looks good though. Green, Putz and K-Rod. Jeez. It’s really kind of refreshing. If the starters pick it up even a little bit, I think the Mets will be in good shape. They can live with average performances from the bottom of the lineup, which in recent days had seemed like a long,long, long, bottom, starting with Church.

But last night they weren’t bad. Church managed to walk twice, Castro and Castillo each got a couple of hits and Luis had the game-winner. If they can pick it up a little on a more consistent basis, anything’s possible.

But we probably shouldn’t count on that core being so strong all the time either. Delgado’s been amazing, Beltran too but not last night, and Murphy’s been better than expected. Reyes is always a threat when he doesn’t over-slide the bags. (I pick on Jose because he deserves it sometimes).

So even with sketchy starting pitching, the Mets should be tough. They should be better than a .500 team as they are now. They have two more to play at home with the Brewers before taking on the Cards for three more in St. Louis. Those five games will help me guage just how good or bad they are as a team.

Time to wrap this up now. Santana just struck out Fielder and Reyes stole second. It looks like a good Mets start today, and if Castillo and Sheffield, who are both starting today, can continue to help out a little bit, it should be the beginning of a nice winning streak.

And Omar will continue looking good.

For Want of an Outfielder...

As bad as the Mets looked against the Cards, there are a few reasons to look forward to the rest of the season. This feeling was reaffirmed after a close look at the differences between our locals and the best team in baseball right now, the Tampa Bay Rays.

Say "Rays" and most baseball people in the know will think "pitching", as Mike Lowell of the Red Sox did the other day when asked if he thought the Rays will be around for the entire season. The Rays' ace, Scott Kazmir, is now 7-3 with a 2.28 ERA . Their number 2 is hard-luck James Shields, just 6-5 but with a 3.70 ERA and one hell of a right cross. Three, four and five are named Garza, Jackson and Sonnanstine and have combined for a 19-13 record with an ERA around 4.00. Just those 5 guys have fanned 342 batters.

Say "Mets" and most people will think "mistakes", but their response earlier in the season, at the very start, would have been "pitching". And Johan Santana has been great halfway through with a 3.01 ERA but just a 7-7 record. Number 2 starter Oliver Perez, despite his ups and downs, is 6-5 but with a relatively high 4.98 ERA. Starters 3, 4 and 5 are currently listed as Martinez, Maine and Pelfrey. Their combined record is 15-14 and, if Pedro's currently anomalous 7.12 ERA isn't included, Maine and Pelfrey are just a bit above a 4.00 ERA. And those five have struck out 328 batters.

The Mets compare favorably to the Rays on the relief front as well. Billy Wagner has an ERA under 2.00 while saving 18. Troy Percival has one more save but sports an ERA of 3.54. The Mets main setup guy, if they can be said to have one, is Duaner Sanchez. His ERA is just 3.89 thus far. The Rays main setup guy has been J.P Howell, who sports a more respectable 3.00 ERA. The Rays other relievers, Wheeler, Glover, Hammel, Miller and Balfour don't outshine the Mets group, statistically at least.

Despite Aaron Heilman's problems, for example, his ERA is just 4.68. I would have expected a much higher number. But Mr Heilman has apparently thrown a lot of good innings too. I must admit to not recollecting those quite as well. In any event, the Mets have a nice mix of relievers, with lefties Feliciano and Schoenweiss and some quality in Joe Smith. All in all, the Mets relief staff outshines that of the Rays.

So the Mets staff compares pretty favorably as a whole with that of the Rays, on an overall basis, at the very least. So why are the Rays sporting the best record in baseball while the Mets wallow in the muck and mire of the NL East?

It's the outfield. The Mets have only two real live major-league outfielders. I'm referring to Carlos Beltran and Ryan Church of course. Most teams have three, never mind the Rays. Endy Chavez is a defensive specialist. He's batting .248 but has just 6 rbi's. That's ridiculous. Marlon Anderson is batting .196 with almost no production of any kind. There's hope for Fernando Tatis who, after all, can boast of a .283 BA but his production has tailed off lately. And then of course there's Moises Alou, the Carl Pavano of outfielders.

The Rays not only have three genuine outfielders, they're pretty good ones, among the best in the American League. Carl Crawford, BJ Upton and the tandem of Gross and Hinske, sometimes supplemented by Jhonny Gomes have scored 177 runs and driven in 166. Although Metsies Beltran and Church have combined for 93 runs scored and 89 ribbies, Chavez, Anderson, Alou and Tatis have combined for just 35 runs scored and 32 runs batted in.

The Mets picked up Trot Nixon, nice move but he's on the DL already. The Mets still need another outfielder desperately, one who can produce runs, not just a warm body opposing pitchers can target as a second pitcher in the lineup. The situation wouldn't be so critical, maybe, if the Mets were stronger at second and behind the plate. But they're not. The Mets lineup can definitely be worked, quite easily.

The Mets infielders compare favorably to the Rays from a production standpoint, Longoria vs Wright, and certainly Reyes vs the Rays shortstop Bartlett. At second base, Castillo's stats are about even with those of Iwamura and at first base, Delgado surprisingly has better numbers than does Tampa's Carlos Pena.

The Mets infield defense has been pretty bad though. Third baseman Wright's FPCT is just .942. Longoria's is .975. Shortstop Reyes is at .966, Bartlett at .972. At second, Castillo has a FPCT of .980 while his counterpart on the Rays, Iwamura, sports an incredible .997. Delgado's FPCT isn't really that bad at .988 but Pena's is ten points higher.

<>So, it comes down to picking up an outfielder, a real live outfielder who can produce and who is not named Alou. Or Caspar the friendly ghost. Not a defensive guy who’ll cringe with runners on base, or a retread from another decade. I’m talking about a man (or woman) who could legitimately expect to vie for a starting position on a major league club.

And the infield defense needs to pick it up, beginning with Wright. There is reason to believe that they will. Wright’s current .942 is 12 points lower than his numbers for the last two years. Reyes’s .966 is 16 points lower than his .982 from last year.

<>As for Delgado and Castillo, Manager Jerry Manuel has already outlined a plan to substitute Tatis for Delgado as a defensive replacement late in close games. That change should alleviate the lack of range shown by both men on the right side.

It seems relatively simple. The Mets need to make a trade for an outfielder. Maybe they could use one of those good relievers as bait. Come on, Omar, make a few calls

Better Late Than Never

Well, the timing was horrible, but then it would have been bad whenever the final decision on Willie finally came in. That the decision followed a great team performance is ironic at the very least. That it came at about 3 AM in the morning smells funny, like those stories of the Colts and Irsay leaving Baltimore in the middle of the night.

But they finally ANNOUNCED a decision. That they made the decision a week ago is perhaps indicative of what really ails these Mets, unprofessional management. To keep a good man hanging that long is despicable. While I'm sure there were reasons for the delay, they would seem to pale compared with the indignity they inflicted on a guy who did his best for them for three years.

Incredibly enough, some of the very players most responsible for Willie's demise were great last night. Aaron Heilman was especially good, getting two outs while leaving two Angels on the bases. Reyes was mercurial, scoring the first run virtually unassisted. Beltran, although he has been fine in other ways all year, smacked two home runs last night, helping cement his place in the Mets batting order. Sanchez and Wagner showed how to close things out.

This is a group that apparently needs constant pressure to bring the best out of them. Of course, that’s at odds with the reality of their fall from grace last year. The pressure of having a seemingly insurmountable lead in a pennant race didn’t prevent their 2007 disintegration. Maybe they just wanted to do something nice for their longtime mentor. I prefer to think of it that way.

And if they were feeling guilty, it was late in coming. Without singling out any individuals, their team performance was always just short of a win. And just unremarkable enough to send their fans off to the bar for a stiff one.

Some of you may recall Sparky Anderson’s style in leading one of those Reds teams to the pennant many years ago. Sparky was infamous for his pitching changes; he’d flash the hook with just the slightest provocation, sometimes just on a whim. But the quick hook worked for that team.

That’s what Willie could have used – a quick hook. And not just with the pitching staff. I really feel the Mets could have won ten games more this year if Willie just moved a little faster, faster to get a non-performer out of the lineup, faster to pull his relievers when it was obviously not their day.

Willie’s style would work only with a team that was solid, top to bottom. Willie constantly challenged each of his players to be champions. These Mets just weren’t. These Mets needed a riverboat gambler, someone who could maneuver a way to finish ahead, even with a bad hand.

Early reports seem to point to Bobby Valentine. While that would be nice, I don’t expect that to happen. But he’d be just the guy to revive this moribund group. This is a group that sits on its laurels, they win one or two games and think they’re world-beaters, then they revert to their old ways, the full swings when just a hit would do nicely, the stupid base-running when nothing fancy was required, the lack of focus in the field.

I hope the players don’t start thinking the pressure is off now. They need to start winning two out of three, and three out of four, to have a chance of making the playoffs at this juncture of the season. They have to climb over some good teams, Philly and Florida and Atlanta all present their special challenges.

Judging by management’s incredible bungling of the Randolph affair, I’d hope the new manager, eventually, is a strong personality, someone who can roll over obstacles coming from the front office. For now, we have a temporary fill-in, Jerry Manuel. It’s doubtful he can materially change anything unless the players buy in and start performing as they never did for Willie.

For now, it’s Omar’s show. Omar Minaya brought this group together and will be judged at the end of this season. We won’t see a permanent manager until a decision is made on whether a new general manager is needed. The new GM can then hire a permanent manager. The only thing this Wilpon Group has done right so far has been their decision to defer the naming of a new permanent manager.

Omar’s another one of those “good guys” whose force of personality alone brought the Mets players they otherwise would not have gotten, Carlos Delgado and Pedro Martinez for sure, and maybe a host of others.

This was a Mets team built to win a World Series, one that eliminated the risk of having any unproven players in the lineup or in the field. The only risk not eliminated was age. And age reared its ugly head. Just look around the clubhouse and see who’s missing, or who’s hurt again, or who’s too old to get motivated by a young upstart manager.

For this Mets fan, this firing is the beginning of payback, not for Willie really at all, but for all those players who wouldn’t perform for him. You can count on one hand the players who really did try their hardest all the time, or at least gave the appearance of doing so.

And, just maybe, these players were indeed trying their hardest and performing near the top of their capabilities. And, if so, then look to October and a new GM, a GM who’ll need a very large broom indeed.

Sometimes things just don’t work out. Look at the recent firing of Bavasi in Seattle. He had a team that won 88 games, so he brought in Richie Sexson and Carlos Silva. Any fantasy player could have told him those two wouldn’t have a positive effect. The good GM’s manage risk more evenly and don’t take huge risks unnecessarily.

The Mets risks know who they are. Hope they’re tuned in.

Omar's Home for the Aged

I've heard all season how much talent there is on the Mets. I myself picked these Mets to win the NL pennant this year, but it seems as if that prognostication may have been wishful thinking. In GM Omar Minaya's zeal to maximize experience on his roster, he may have forgotten just how much experience these old fellas really have.

Do you want adventure? Just hit a grounder to the Mets right side. Carlos Delgado, the erstwhile slugger and first baseman, will give that ground ball his best effort every single time. That usually means a swipe at the ball; his feet begin to move as the ball passes the lip of the infield.

Delgado’s bat, to be kind, doesn't inspire fear in opponents anymore. For a player who keeps and consults a hitting chart, he seems to be a slow learner. Pitch him outside, he'll try to pull it anyway, the result usually being a ground ball to second base into a shift. For the record, Carlos will be 36 in June and this is his 16th year in the majors. I wonder if his birth certificate shares a lot of the same characteristics as the one Miguel Tejada's been showing around.

Next to Carlos is already oft-injured Luis Castillo, who is a good little fielder but has become totally ineffective at the plate. Just for the record, Luis is just 32 but this is his 14th year in the major leagues. That's a lot of ground balls, a lot of bending, a lot of everything. It seems to have taken its toll.

We Mets fans anxiously await the arrival of Moises Alou. Moises will be 42 in July. This will be his umpteenth year in the majors and he does sport a .303 career batting average along with 332 home runs. But he played only 123 games in 2005 playing for his Dad in San Francisco, then just 98 games in 2006 for the Giants, then just 87 last year for the Mets. Does one detect a pattern here?

Then there is my favorite pitcher, Pedro Martinez. Pedro pitched a few innings in his first start before grabbing his hammy. He's now expected to return to the mound in 10 days. Which mound that might be I have no idea. Pedro will be 37 in October and, hopefully he'll be getting a World Series ring for his special day. For the money he's getting, though, why can't he make an appearance once in a while?

The long line of aging superstars continues. There is also El Duque, Orlando Hernandez. He'll be 39 in October. He just had surgery on his right foot but the boot won't come off for another two weeks.

I suppose I should be thankful that Delgado and Castillo at least play. If Delgado goes down for some reason, we're left with journeyman pinch-hitter Marlon Anderson, who is 34 years old. Of course, Marlon hasn't been too successful at pinch-hitting this year, but, what the hell, it's still only April, right?

There are only 10 current Mets players born after the year 1978. Six of them are pitchers. The position players are Jose Reyes, David Wright, Angel Pagan and the new backup catcher, Gustavo Molina. Pagan is supposed to be replaced by Alou. Is it surprising to anyone that the best performances thus far have been put in by these same young whipper-snappers. (Ryan Church will be 30 in October).

I should point out that Omar has done much better in the pitching arena. Johan Santana has been terrific as expected. Oliver Perez and John Maine are two other fine arms acquired by Minaya. They provide hope, as does Mike Pelfrey, another young starter, and even recently-acquired Nelson Figueroa. That's a pretty fair rotation, even if Pedro and El Duque never show their faces again.

So there is still hope for Mets fans. We have had our share of bad luck. Three grand slams have been given up by the relief corps. Even for a bad staff, that would be rather unfortuitous. Aaron Heilman surrendered one. Jorge Sosa surrendered the other two, and I suspect we'll be seeing less of Mr. Sosa in the near future.

The regulars, though, have to start playing to their potential. The chemistry has been bad. If not for Angel Pagan and Ryan Church, two of the most unlikely heroic figures one could imagine, we might have a much worse record. We could be the National League Tigers.

Jose Reyes, David Wright and especially Carlos Beltran have to be more consistent. Beltran has been somewhat hampered by his "new legs", I think, and it seems to have sapped some of his power. He also has hit a LOT of line drives directly at fielders. I think Beltran will get better and better, and, if he does, he is capable of carrying this team all by himself.

It is also entirely possible that Delgado has taken his batting problems into the field with him. But this is the Major Leagues. Life is tough. If Delgado can’t work his way out of his current funk, Willie will really have to start managing, starting with replacing Delgado for defensive purposes in close games.

Willie has been slow to react to situations. A perfect example of this is his hard-headedness with respect to batting Castillo second, despite stats reflecting the team’s total ineffectiveness and abysmal won-loss record when that is the case.

Willie has attacked Pagan for no good reason except to solidify Alou’s place in left field upon his return. He’s been insistent on keeping Heilman in his place in the relieving rotation despite every indication that that might not be prudent. Yet he’s been remarkably supportive of Brian Schneider, the oft-injured catcher.

Can Willie manage? A team this old needs a manager, perhaps a real gunslinger, somebody who’ll recognize when a change is needed and then make it. So far, he’s just dug in his heels, fighting the tide going against him.