You can’t fire the lineup. Sure it’s been underachieving, but Beltran WILL hit, Wright has yet to really settle into a David-esque groove, Church has been fantastic and there is no reason to believe he will do anything more than continue and improve with more playing time (look at the doubles he put up in split bad team bad ball park duty with the Nationals last year) and I defy you to find a Mets fan (over the age of 14) that didn’t think Delgado would have at best, a marginal year as he continues to decline.
The Mets used to be the most fun team in baseball to watch. Where have the fancy home run hand shakes gone? (maybe they’re hiding in the same storage space that the home runs themselves are being stored) Where is the smiling and laughing?
It’s gone. The Mets are playing flat, uninspired sloppy and inconsistent. At this point there is no place else to look but the manager. Willie’s lost the team.
When David Wright and Castillo both lolly-gagged around the bases to prevent a possible run in the heart wrenching loss to the Nationals, I would have liked nothing more than to see…well…something, SOMETHING out of a manager who has let the single worst end of the year collapse pass under his nose and then followed it up with a mediocre at BEST start to the next season.
Willie is a calm, level headed manager. So are the Mets. You’re not going to see Wright, Beltran, Delgado or their skipper get thrown out of a game…ever. The Mets are a talented, experienced veteran club with enough mature youth to win. They shouldn’t need to have a fire lit under them, they also shouldn’t be middling around .500.
They shouldn’t…but they are…and they do. Maybe the return of Moises and Pedro will help this in some way, they are the only two people left on the team (excluding Bill Wagner) that seem like they want to go out and kick the other team’s ass.
Not win, not squeak by…kick someone’s ass.
Willie brought the pride of the Yankees to Queens when he was hired, the stoic Torre model of keeping it cool. Well, maybe there’s a reason that neither Joe Torre nor any of his bench coaches have won a World Series in going on 8 years now.
Willie’s brand of sit back and watch, handle things in house work fine when its 2000 and Delgado can hit 30 home runs and Alou can stay in the lineup. It works fine when everyone’s playing as well they can and everyone is having career years.
But when your team and your fan base are the laughing stock of baseball and you reprimand one of the only players on your team with that fire in his stirrups for not handling a problem in house (Wagner for ripping Ollie in the press) and then it happens again after a tough loss, you’ve lost the clubhouse and you’re wrong.
Maybe its not the best baseball move, maybe you think it’s wrong, Willie but at least do it for US. The fans. Show us that you care that we’re playing like beige. This is a fan base that suffered Roger Cedeno and Shawn Estes, we know what a bad team looks like. We can even ACCEPT what a bad team is. THIS, however is NOT a bad team.
But that’s not how they’re playing. Something has got to light a fire here, and it just doesn’t seem fair to put that on David Wright (again) or Jose Reyes who is trying to find a groove this season, these guys are way ahead of the curve, they are not supposed to be leading the team yet. That’s why there is a manager and a core group of veterans.
But the best part is, they can still (and probably will) win the division with Willie. Pedro’s back soon and not only does that change the entire dynamic of the clubhouse but it also shores up a rotation that is looking better and better as Mike Pelfrey looks better and better.
The Marlins aren’t going to be there in the end, and the Mets have much higher to go than either the Braves or Phillies (how much longer can Chipper Jones keep playing like my video game character set on ‘rookie’ mode in The Show.)
Who knows, maybe Willie can take a page from a book of a peer. Tom Coughlin had a style, the opposite of Willie’s. It wasn’t working. He changed it. It worked, Giants won the Superbowl. Maybe the name on the manager’s door doesn’t need to change. Maybe the man inside does though.
The Mets will be fine, I just think they would be finer quicker with a different man (or same man different style) at the helm.
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