What Else Can Happen?

I kept saying, “Well, what else can happen?”

So I found out. The Giants would miss the playoffs entirely. The Jets would lose the AFC Championship and look a little stupid in doing so. The Knicks would hit a losing streak. And the Mets, prized Mets possessions of the Wilpons lo these many years, could be sold, even if just partially.

If I understand this correctly, the Wilpons invested around 520 mill, got back about 570 mill, and somehow, almost magically so, found themselves liable for a billion dollars. Only in America. Only to Mets Fans.

You didn’t see the Steinbrenners making friends with crooks. (I find myself wondering what Billy Martin would have said to that). Sure, the Yanks have their own problems, like a GM starting to feel his oats in the last year of his contract, a new relief pitcher only the GM didn’t want, and an old shortstop that only the GM wants to make even older.

But only Mets fans could find themselves in this kind of situation. The injuries weren’t enough. The bad luck wasn’t enough. The ticket prices weren’t enough. CitiField couldn’t play longer, Ollie couldn’t be sent down, Beltran couldn’t be more pissed off.

So, just when the Wilpons seemed to be getting their affairs together, for example, hiring a GM who wasn’t an idiot and a manager with some good experience, they find themselves looking disaster straight in the eyeballs.

Just when they started to fill out their starting pitching with smart savvy guys like Chris Young and Capuano, just when they re-signed Pelfrey and Dickey, and just when it looked as they had decided to keep guys like Beltran and Bay (rather than sell them now at a sure loss), we have to find out about the vagaries of the legal system….the hard way.

Not that I mind a little ownership sharing, but can the Wilpons really be the shills in this Ponzi scheme? Can you just see Jeff Wilpon rubbing his hands together, sneering “HaHaHaHa” in a smoke-filled room, and happily encouraging all their friends to give all their hard-won assets to Madoff?

I mean, maybe they did encourage people unknowingly, but that’s not what the lawyers for the prosecution are saying. They seem to think an organization with that much money has to have enough intelligence and financial savvy to know when they’re involved in something a little fishy.

Come on, guys, these are the friggin’ Mets! It was easy. This could only happen to them.

I believe the Wilpons. Sure, they’re not the brightest lights in the sky but they’ve never shown any signs of being evil. I think they invested a lot of their money with a trusted friend, somebody who’d always been reliable. I think they saw financial statements and prospectuses and spreadsheets and graphs showing everything going up, and not even dramatically up. How many of us would think there was something wrong?

I guess it’s inevitable that they’ll wind up losing a lot of their original 520 million. That would only be fair, to distribute the total losses among all the clientele more evenly, and I’m thinking all the lawyers will even agree on some huge amount, like maybe half to ¾ of the original investment. But that will be all.

I think we’ve already seen the effects on the team’s acquisitional policy, which is to say, they’re not spending a lot of money. And I have no problem with that. If they had spent big bucks on another Ollie or picked up Carl Pavano, for example, that would have gotten me upset.

But the whole thing, this whole sick Madoff-Wilpon thing, is really kind of unsettling. It brings the real world too close to my psyche. If I wanted that, I wouldn’t be a fan at all. I’d spend a lot of time reading about Egypt, and Afghanistan and Pakistan. I’d be fretting about reducing corporate taxes and making bad electric cars. I’d be ecstatic about firing the whole damned Passaic Valley Sewer Authority.

I can’t control those things. I can only vote. And look what that’s got me.

We can’t control ownership issues either. We can just hope for the best. All the question marks of last year have to resolve in our favor. Jason Bay has to hit, Carlos Beltran has to excel, Angel Pagan has to keep it going, and Reyes has to have a nice year. Ike Davis and Josh Thole have to keep developing. Pelfrey and Niese and Dickey have to keep on truckin’.

It’s maybe a blessing in disguise that this non-acquisitional period just happens to coincide with the ascension of the Phillies and the Braves. Let’s watch their expensive pitching blow up. Let’s see what bad luck they can have with expensive arms.

And yeah, we’ll concede the pennant this year, and maybe even the year after that, but that second year could yield a wildcard. And this year this team could be a real pain in the butt to just about anybody.

I mean, think about it. Reyes, Pagan, Beltran, Wright, Bay, Davis and Thole. That’s 7 of 8 spots that can hit. We can deal with a bad bat at second base, not that Luis Castillo will be a bum or that rookie won’t possibly improve a lot. There’s a lot of speed and power in that lineup. And, with even just middling luck, that lineup should produce a lot of runs.

As for pitching, forget Santana for now. And Pelfrey’s not really an ace. Who needs an ace anyway? They only really make a difference in the playoffs, an atmosphere that always seems to bring the worst out of even better than average arms. If you can boast of length in a pitching staff, that’s something in and of itself. The Mets will be in every game.

So I think we’ve already borne the brunt of the Madoff-Wilpon saga. “What else can happen” may wind up being a lot of good things.

Santana Bad butJerry Manuel Worse

I couldn’t be more disappointed.

The Mets lost to the Phillies 11-5 last night after Johan Santana handed in the worst performance of his career, looking more like Jamie Moyer than did Jamie Moyer. Santana’s fastball had nothing, his changeup wasn’t much different from his fastball, and his control was non-existent.

I had a bad feeling about this game after I saw the lineup. In the biggest game of this season, the Mets played it as if it mattered not at all. The energy-sucking guys were back in the lineup, Tatis and Matthews, replacing the hot rookie Ike Davis and Angel Pagan, who had just begun to hit. It was as if Manager Jerry Manuel was letting Philadelphia know that this game just wasn’t that important.

It’s really a shame.

No matter how bad Santana was , I’m putting this loss squarely on Jerry Manuel. The lineup he put together was stupid, especially given the situation. He didn’t seem to care if his team lost and his players followed his lead. Wright hit a 3-run shot and Barajas homered too but it only mattered for an inning or so as Santana and Manuel quickly gave it all back.

I’m tired of watching Tatis and that infuriating uppercut swing of his. Matthews is just horrible. He doesn’t look right in a uniform. He doesn’t look like an athlete. He doesn’t perform like an athlete. He’s batting .139. Tatis is batting .212.

There’s a word for the way Manuel approached that game last night….chicken. Manuel played it like a gentle mother, having her boy avoid those big guys on the block. Just walk the other way. Don’t go near those people.

I know that Matthews supposedly plays better defense than Pagan. I know Tatis has more experience than Davis, but what about the feeling of the team? What about combativeness?

I want a fighter leading my team. Billy Martin wouldn’t have played Matthews or Tatis last night. He would have played his starting lineup. So would Piniella. So would Leland. So would Girardi. So would Randolph. (And it kills me to say so).

I’m disgusted with Manuel’s over-thinking in critical situations. There must’ve been a reason to leave Santana in the game last night, after he walked a 47-year-old pitcher. Nine out of ten managers would have taken Santana out immediately…..do not pass go….do not collect $200.

Manuel didn’t want to embarrass his ace. He embarrassed him more by leaving him in. Of course, there was nobody warming up so there really was no alternative. After a double, two singles and two walks, there was still no action in the Mets bullpen.

Once again, it was a gentle motherly type of decision. Most managers act more like fathers, fathers who understand the importance of winning over the niceties of saving face for your starting pitcher, fathers who’d have recognized that it was a big game, one for which you put in your best lineup.

Before this series even started, I maintained that the Mets were the more balanced team. And they are. But Jerry Manuel, in his infinite wisdom, didn’t take advantage.

His counterpart in the Phillies dugout, Charlie Manuel, acknowledged his weaknesses, avoiding his thin bullpen, allowing his 47-year old pitcher to hit with the bases loaded in that incredible fourth inning. If the pitcher made an out, the Phils would still have been down by two runs. But Charlie Manuel avoided that bullpen of his, at all costs, even that of losing the chance to take the lead.

That the Mets were playing their second team made Charlie’s decision easier. Moyer had been mowing them down. Surely Moyer was a good choice to face that weakened lineup until his arm fell off, or until his fastball dipped below 70, whichever came first.

You can pitch around a National League lineup, especially one with only six hitters in it. Taking Davis and Pagan out of the lineup left the Mets with only 3 real power threats, Wright, Bay and Francoeur. Pitching carefully to just three batters beats having to do so against five.

That was a bad loss, any way you look at it. Santana was awful. He’s the ace. He walked a 47-year old pitcher with the bases jammed. Even after that, the Mets still led by one. Santana was obviously rattled.

The Mets bullpen had shown that it was one of the best in the league. Just about any choice from that bullpen would have been a better one than that of leaving your rattled ace on the rubber in that raucous atmosphere of Citizens Bank Park.

As bad as Santana was though, Jerry Manuel was worse. He had no pitchers warming up. So that fantastic bullpen, with strikeout pitchers in it like Takahashi didn’t get an opportunity to face Victorino, whose grand slam put the Mets down by three, or Polanco, who singled before Utley’s two-run shot to right that put the final nail in the Mets coffin, a coffin designed and meticulously constructed by Jerry Manuel.

It’s a shame too because this was a key game. The Mets playing the importance of the game down doesn’t make it so. Manuel’s bad decisions both before and during the game cost them dearly, and the Mets may lose a few more games due to the letdown.

It was a huge loss. It was a 2-game swing in the standings. Instead of being 1 ½ games up, in first place in the NL East, they are now ½ game behind. All the good things about this season were largely erased last night, the holding together of Maine and Perez, the outstanding performances of Pelfrey and Niese and the bullpen, the sparkling play of Francoeur and newbie Ike Davis.

Jerry Manuel played his backups and made a bad pitching situation much worse. Never has a Mets manager been so thoroughly out-managed, not that I can recall.

Sometimes good things can come from a loss. This is not one of those times.

Whatta Relief!!

For a Mets fan, nothing could be better than this opening to the season. The first game could have been straight from the desk of Omar Minaya. Santana gets his 6 or thereabouts, Green gets it to Putz and Rodriguez. All was right in the world of blue.

After a day for us Mets fans to contemplate our good fortune,we got to witness a game that was probably indicative of many games to come. The starter was good but not great, or not careful, and Pedro Feliciano was his old self; that is to say he gave up two more runs before handing it over to any competent reliever. And then the competent guys, Putz and K-Rod again, were either tired or just unlucky and ran into lots of adventures before the game mercifully ended.

Luckily for the Metsies, they got some tremendous production on the other side of things, especially from the two Carloses. Nine runs is awfully hard for any team to overcome and certainly the Reds were not equal to the task last night. But they put a real scare into K-Rod. In fact, I thought he was giving us his best Aaron Heilmann impression. He looked as if he was afraid to put the ball anywhere near the plate.

Yeah, all you have to be is a little off, and a little unlucky, and you can easily lose. The first base umpire made a bad call, or a homey call I tend to think, ruling that Delgado had left the bag too early, before he had the ball, before pegging a throw over to third to try to nail Cinci’s new star Brandon Phillips. Replays showed the umpire was dead wrong and my letter to the Commissioner is on its way.

So, in lieu (does anybody say instead anymore) of two outs and a man on third with the score 9-7, it became one out and a man on first and third. Big difference! Especially for a K-Rod who was struggling to say the least. He went 2-0 on half the Cinci lineup, seemingly following the John Franco school of avoiding the plate at all costs, hoping the batter either swings or the umpire gives him the ol’ 6-inches off the plate strike.

K-Rod got neither the wild swings from the batters nor the corner calls.. Soon the bases were loaded. But K-Rod showed his toughness and smarts by striking out Gonzalez on a high hard one and then getting a little lucky when Nix blasted a pitch to the deepest part of centerfield.

So the Mets can win even when their starter doesn’t pitch well. And even when their relievers don’t knock anyone’s socks off, and that was definitely the case last night. And even when the horrible umpires in MLB do their best thing, which is to miss obvious calls.

And that will be important because the Mets starters just aren’t that good, despite some things I’ve heard to the contrary. For example, I’ve heard that Pelfrey could be a number 2 starter anywhere. That’s baloney. A number 3 or 4 starter maybe but not a legitimate 2. He may be the best of the rest though.

Just how bad are the rest? Given a choice of pitchers on a particular day, of the three, John Maine, Oliver Perez and Livan Hernandez, I’d pitch Livan. I have very little confidence in Maine, he’s with his head in the clouds all the time and Perez is just crazy, especially after the fourth or fifth inning. I’d gladly select Ollie to pitch a playoff game but not those regular season yawners, yawners to him anyway.

The bats won’t always be as prolific and the pitchers won’t always be good, but given last night’s game as an example, opponents will still have to either score a lot of runs or get by those last two stalwarts, Putz and K-Rod. And that won’t be too easy.

Yankee fans are dying right now, of course, what with CC’s inauspicious opener and Wang’s bashing last night. You can almost bet that A.J. Burnet will have trouble too, if not for the season, at least for Game 3. There’s a lot of pressure pitching for New York and none of these fellows will find it terribly easy to finally get comfortable.

As I’ve said before, Sabathia starts slowly and if the papers (I hate media, don’t you) beat him up in April, there may not be much of CC left for May through September, even as big as he is. And if he should have an extended bad period, which he has had before, it’s all over but the shoutin’.

Texeira’s done nothing yet either, and Colby Rasmus is not the stuff that dreams are made of. And I don’t like their batting order either.

Jeter is not a leadoff hitter. He’s not fast enough. He’s no real threat on the bases. Damon isn’t The Flash reincarnated either but he can lead off. Jeter should bat 2nd. He’s got that good bat control and he’s smart and unselfish. The 3-4-5 of Teixeira, Matsui and Posada is the best the Yankees can send up there right now, but it certainly isn’t an awe-inspiring middle. For example, I’d prefer any combination of Wright, Beltran and Delgado.

Then there’s the 6 spot though the 9 spot. Cano’s at 6 but he should probably move up in the order, Nady’s been at the 7 spot but he’s a bigger threat to me than Posada at 5, in the long run anyway. Then there’s Ransom and Gardner at 8 and 9 and I’d certainly have to agree with that for now.

But, until Arod returns, I’d like to see Gardner, Jeter, Damon, Teixeira, Matsui, Nady, Posada, and either Cano and Ransom or the other way around depending on who has less speed. Arod’s return will not only solidify the center of the lineup but tend to extend the strength through the order.

And how ‘bout some relief?