Mr. Met Has Anger Issues
Funny stuff from The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien:
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Tonight’s Lineup 7/22/2009
| # | Name | Position | ||||
| 16 | Angel Pagan | CF | ||||
| 1 | Luis Castillo | 2B | ||||
| 28 | Daniel Murphy | 1B | ||||
| 5 | David Wright | 3B | ||||
| 12 | Jeff Francoeur | RF | ||||
| 19 | Cory Sullivan | LF | ||||
| 4 | Angel Berroa | SS | ||||
| 23 | Brian Schneider | C | ||||
| 34 | Mike Pelfrey | P | ||||
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Time To Fire Fighting Tony Bernazard
If ever there was a time to fire Tony Bernazard this is it. The guy rumored to have been pulling the strings behind the scenes of the ridiculous Willie Randolph firing (not that Willie shouldn’t have been fired but it obviously went down badly) has finally hit the point of no return.
According to Adam Rubin in Monday’s edition of the New York Daily News:
At a recent game at Citi Field, scouts had assembled in a row of seats behind home plate. Mets VP Tony Bernazard showed up during play and wanted a seat occupied by a young Diamondbacks scout. Bernazard’s deputy, already seated in the row, suggested to the Mets VP that he wait until the half-inning ended, to minimize the disruption. Bernazard then ripped into his Ivy League-educated deputy with a profanity-laced tirade, mortifying observers in the section.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Rubin reports in today’s edition that “Bernazard removed his shirt and challenged the Double-A players to a fight during a postgame tirade”. That’s right, ha actually challenged a group of minor leaguers to a fight.
Almost since his first day on the job there have been stories about Bernazard’s behavior. Until now the biggest one has been his rumored role in the way Randolph was fired but there have been many other stories of his unprofessional behavior. I think these latest tirades gives Omar Minaya no choice but to fire him once and for all.
Addendum: The fight story was picked up by MLB.com.
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When Life Gives You Lemmons…
MissBethAnn on Twitter asks the following question:
How do we remain optomistic in such dire times?
The Mets have certainly had more than their fair share of bad years through their 47 year history. It started from the very beginning. Only one team in history, the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, lost more games than the 1962 Mets team that lost 120. In fact the Mets lost over 100 games in 5 of their first 6 seasons. The year they lost less than 100 they still lost 99 games.
The Mets have also had many players whose play was of spectacular ineptness. From “Marvelous Marv” Throneberry to Jose Lima there have been many.
Times are particularly bad for the Mets these days. Following collapses at the end of the 2007 & 2008 seasons jaded Mets fans stuck by their team. A failure like this had not been seen since the failure of “Generation K” but still the fans persevered.
Now, as we move into the second half of the 2009 season, the fans have become more and more disenchanted. As the season unfolds and the worst rash of injuries in team history threatens to derail a team that should have been a contender and may have been a champion fans are asking themselves “what am I to do?”.
Tug McGraw gave us the medicine to cope with, but not heal, this kind of crisis. In 1973 the Mets were playing lackluster baseball when team chairman M. Donald Grant came down to the clubhouse and gave a motivational speech that inspired McGraw’s now famous rallying cry “Ya Gotta Believe!”. The Mets ended up winning 21 of their last 29 games of the regular season and win the division. They won the NLCS that year but lost the World Series. It should also be noted that the Mets were down by 10 games to the Cubs in August 1969 before going on a tear and winning the World Series.
The difference between this team and those teams is the number of injuries. Without replacing some of these injured players there is obviously no way this team will pull off another miracle finish. But as the season goes on and some of these players come back they should at least be fun to watch again. This is not by any means the way you want to look at a season that began with championship aspirations. But when things go bad you need to re-evaluate what you have and adjust expectation.
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Quote of the Weekend
The quote of the weekend goes to manager Jerry Manuel. Commenting on Gary Sheffield‘s leg cramp after Friday nights game Manuel let loose with this missive:
They’re calling it cramps… so, surgery on Thursday.
Sometimes Manuel is a little too loose with his comments but this time he just said what everyone else was thinking.
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Last Night: Perez, Santana, Sheffield
Johan Santana had 5 days of rest between his last start and the first game after the all star break. But for some reason the Mets chose to start Oliver Perez in last night’s game against the Atlanta Braves. Perez actually pitched a decent game allowing 5 hits and 3 runs in 6 innings. He struck out 6 but also walked 4 batters. He kept his team in the game through 6 which is about all that can be asked of him these days.
Perez also hit several points in the game that had me thinking he would implode. A double by Matt Diaz that plated Brian McCann for the tying run in the 4th inning is perhaps the biggest example. Perez intentionally walked the next batter, Casey Kotchman, then struck out the pitcher, Derek Lowe, to end the inning.
Despite what I consider to be a positive outing by Perez I still have to question why Santana wasn’t out there last night. He’s the teams best pitcher and he’s had adequate rest since his last start so why not put him up there and try that much harder to get a win to jump start the second half of the season?
Another issue I’m still confused about is why Gary Sheffield is still playing the field. His lack of mobility caused by his sore hammy. He should have been put on the disabled list right after interleague play ended to allow the injury to heal. I know how important he is to the teams offense right now but what use is his offense if he’s going to allow opponents to score because he can’t catch up to a base hit in time to keep a runner from scoring? That’s what happened last night in the fourth inning.
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Pedro Signs With Phils, Goes On DL
It’s official! Pedro Martinez has signed with the Phillies. He’ll get $1 million plus incentives for half a season’s work.
However he’s got a mild shoulder strain and will start his stint with the Phils on the disabled list. Sounds like the Phillies may be using the same medical staff as the Mets.
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Catching Up
Other events in my life have conspired to keep me from posting lately so here are some miscellaneous thoughts from the last week or so.:
- Ryan Church Traded for Jeff Francoeur – When I first heard about this trade it sounded mostly like a trade made for the sake of making a trade. Now that it’s sunken in my thoughts are not quite that bad but not much better. Both are good defensive outfielders but Francoeur is a bit better. Francoeur also has more potential upside from the plate. Let’s be real about Church. The great offense he showed early last year was far ahead of what he can do on a regular basis. And for some reason he’s been in Jerry Manuel’s doghouse. Francoeur, on the other hand, is a better hitter who needs to figure things out. If Francoeur’s hitting comes around then the Mets get the better of this trade. But it’s by no means a steal of a blockbuster.
- Pedro Martinez Signs With The Phillies – This signing doesn’t make much of a difference to me on the face of it. The Mets didn’t feel that Pedro could help their staff. Most fans agreed and we all know the Mets staff needs help. So why should it bother me that an opposing team signed a player we all thought was done? Yes, there’s always a chance that the extended layoff will put a little more life on his pitches than we saw last year. But overall he won’t give the Phillies everything they need. His stuff just isn’t as good anymore as it was when the Mets first signed him and he no longer has the stamina to eat up innings like the Phils will need him to so their bullpen can get a breather. Admittedly the Jets fan in me is disagreeing with that statement. “He’ll be lights out and we’ll look like fools”, he says. But my brain still thinks this is not as big a deal as many fans and my Twitter friends do.
- Mets in 4th Place, 6.5 games Out Of First – If someone told me at the beginning of the season that this would be where the Mets were at the break I wouldn’t have believed it. But if someone told me they’d suffer the rash of injuries they have had I wouldn’t have believed that either. The truth is that as dissatisfied as I am with their current place standings things could certainly be much worse. Though you can plan for injuries, you can’t plan for the number of injuries the team has had. And when you take that into consideration 6.5 games out of first place is not very bad at all. The problem is that the injuries place a major ‘if’ on the rest of the season. Three out of the team’s four core players (Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado & Jose Reyes) are still on the DL and it’s unknown when they will return. John Maine and J.J. Putz, integral pieces of the starting rotation and bullpen respectively, are likewise still on the DL. That’s 5 major ifs. You can’t be too comfortable with your prospects, even when you’re withing striking distance, when 20% of your roster is a question mark due to injury. Keep those fingers crossed, Mets fans. It’s going to continue to be a bumpy ride.
- The All Star Game – I like the All Star game but I don’t like what it has become. The All Star game is a good game for fans to see all (or most) of the best players from around the league play together. It’s particularly good for younger fans who may just be getting into the game. I also think it’s nice that there’s a rule that there must be a player from each team. What bugs me is the rule that the league that wins gets home field advantage in the World Series. It just doesn’t make sense. You can’t put a stake on a game that is played (and should be played) like an exhibition (which it really is). Pitchers only pitch one or two innings, managers try to get as many players in the game as possible, players compete but don’t necessarily go for the throat. These are all trademarks of exhibition and not a game that matters. So why put the stake on it? MLB will say that this is incentive so the players will play harder, the teams will have incentive to win so their Word Series representative will have a better chance to win, etc. But it’s not. It just adds a level of schizophrenia to the game. Either it’s an exhibition or it’s a competition. Pick one and stay with it.
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Make A Trade, Omar
“Let’s not get too excited about Fernando Nieve yet. He’s having a great run and should stay in rotation for now but he’s not a superstar.” – MostlyMets via Twitter
The quote above proved prophetic as after posting a 3-0 record with a 1.45 ERA in 18.2 innings (10 hits, 11 Ks, 9 BBs) in his first three starts Nieve allowed 11 hits and 3 runs in just 3.1 innings. It was bound to happen eventually.
But let’s not blame the whole game on Nieve. Good teams are supposed to overcome bad outings by their starting pitchers more often than not. This is just not a good team in it’s current state. The three core players that are currently on the disabled list (Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado & Jose Reyes) each have no clear timetable for returning and without them this team is sunk.
It’s not going out on a limb to say this team needs a trade to inject some life into the team. I agree with Omar Minaya’s idea of not overpaying for a player but disagree with his justification for not acquiring a marquee player. I heard him tell Mike Francessa on WFAN last week that he wouldn’t acquire a big name player because he still needs to play the injured guys when they return. One of the problems with that philosophy is that if you don’t get trade for the big name guy then you won’t be in contention when the injured player returns.
Say what you will about Steve Phillips but he had the right idea on this issue in 1998. You may recall that Todd Hundley, fresh off of two all star seasons in which he hit 41 and 30 home runs respectively, suffered an elbow injury. what did Phillips do? He traded prospects Preston Wilson, Ed Yarnall and Geoff Goetz to the Florida Marlins for Mike Piazza. Piazza, already established as a star, went on to be arguably the best catcher in Mets history and led the team to a World Series appearance in 2000. Hundley played some left field for the Mets after returning from his injury but after the season was traded for Armando Benitez and Roger Cedeno, two other players who played integral roles for the 2000 Mets.
The lesson learned is that you need to do what you have to do to survive now. In Phillips case that was to acquire Piazza. And even though that was not enough to help the Mets that year (they finished 18 games behind the Braves that year) it ended up paying dividends later. I’m not saying that the Minaya should haphazardly trade away everything to fill a position of an injured player. But if the right player becomes available he should pursue and not worry about doubling up on a position. Jerry Manuel will worry about that later… if the team is still in contention.
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Lost Weekend
I spent most of the weekend with a family commitment and attended a wedding last night. (Funny that the wedding hall had a view of CitiField.) All this kept me from experiencing anything Mets through this weekends subway series at CitiField until late last night. I started watching last night’s game just in time to see Francisco Rodriguez walk Mariano Rivera with the bases loaded. And while catching up on things this morning it seems like this was the right weekend for me to be away from the Mets. Now I can go on with my life as if nothing happened because for me it didn’t.
Just one note about last night: Congratulations wot Rivera on his 500th save.
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