Standing Amongst the Ruins
Let me begin by saying I am a New York Mets fan. A die-hard Mets fan. I've stuck by them through good times and bad over these past 20 years... two decades that have seen a lot of disappointment. I've lived through Orel Hershiser derailing the "dynasty" in 1988, "The Worst Team Money Could Buy", Vince Coleman throwing the M-80 at that 3-year old, the colossal bust that was "Generation K", Kenny Rogers walking in the NLCS-deciding run in '99, losing the Subway Series, 3 straight last place finishes earlier this decade, and Yadier F---ing Molina.
But this tops all of them. The season we were supposed to win it all, the season we as Mets fans expected nothing less than a World Championship, ended by the worst September collapse in baseball history.
If you aren't up on the details, here's the Reader's Digest version: after winning 97 games and tying for baseball's best record last season, the Mets got off to an expected 34-18 start by the end of May. From there to the end of the season, their record was 2 games UNDER .500. And yet, despite all the worries that the team was underachieving, that certain players were on the downside of their careers and others were disappointing, there we were on September 12, 17 games to play, with a 7-game lead. We went 5-12, the Phillies went 13-4. End of season.
So today, the blame game is being played, the fingers are being pointed, people are coming up with all sorts of reasons why the Mets fell apart, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those in New York, who believe that when things go wrong you fire the manager, want Willie Randolph to get the ax for this. That's just plain stupid. This is not Willie's fault. People want to say he's not fiery enough, he should be sticking his foot up certain players' asses... well that's just not what you do when you're a respected skipper of a veteran team. When your team is losing like crazy and you cannot explain why, well, it just brings you down psychologically, it gets to you, you start pressing, which makes it worse. Teams have downward spirals like this; they just don't do it in September and not when they've been leading their division since May 15.
So who is to blame? Well, for starters, how about we consider the fact that Mets pitchers couldn't get ANYONE out to save their lives for the last 17 games of the season. Plain and simple, the bullpen was lousy all season long, and whatever psychosis they had spread to the starters at the end. Any starter whose name wasn't Pedro Martinez had at least one terrible outing in September. Unfortunately for Tom Glavine, his had to come on the last day of the season, when in a must-win situation, he gave up 7 runs in ONE-THIRD of an inning. He's getting a lot of the blame too today; ESPN keeps saying that's the defining start of his Mets career. Sorry to break up the pity party, but no it's not. He had been lights-out since the All-Star Break, and it just happened to be yesterday when he came due for a bad outing. That's life. He won his 300th game in a Mets uniform, he went 28-15 the last two seasons, he pitched his ass off when we needed it last postseason. That's what I'll remember. My worst fear, of course, is that he now goes back to Atlanta and beats us in a pennant-deciding game next September.
The bullpen? Atrocious. Every starter for the Mets would've had at least 3 more wins this season had the bullpen actually been able to hold leads. El Duque finished with 9 wins... he should have had 15. Glavine should have had 17 instead of 13. When Aaron Heilman has 7 losses as a reliever and blows 5 out of 6 save chances (and he's NOT the closer so this is 8th-inning "blown saves"), he should not be on your team anymore. When Pedro Feliciano, great as he was last year, keeps getting put into important situations where he just has to retire ONE lefty and then proceeds to walk him every time, he should not be on your team anymore. When it's clear that Guillermo Mota only had great numbers last year because of performance-enhancing drugs, he should not be on your team anymore. Furthermore, Heilman pitched most of the season with elbow tendinitis and Scott Schoeneweis had a detached ligament in his leg. NEITHER was put on the DL. Billy Wagner? Yeah, he was lousy at the end too, but given the fact that he was virtually unhittable for the first 5 months of the season, I have to give him a free pass.
Jose Reyes hit .200 in September. He's only 24 years old; he'll get better. David Wright went from hearing "M-V-P" chants every time he came up to blowing several defensive plays down the stretch. He's still young and getting better as well, so he'll be okay. Carlos Beltran had an off year by his standards; his 2006 numbers tell me he'll be okay. Carlos Delgado had an off year; give him another year before you call him "over the hill", he deserves that. Missing Moises Alou for 3 months hurt, but that happens every year. Shawn Green? He's done. Get rid of him. Paul LoDuca is a great team leader and you want someone like that on your team, but his 2nd-half numbers were pretty lousy. I don't think we can resign him. Ramon Castro should get a chance, his home run to at-bat numbers this year were phenomenal and he's a good clubhouse leader as well.
Pedro's back next year, Maine and Perez will continue to get better, Pelfrey looked good in September, and Lastings Milledge will be our right fielder next year. GM Omar Minaya needs to blow up that bullpen... just clean house. Start over. Open auditions for everything but the closer spot next spring. There's gotta be someone we can get or who is coming up through the minors who can string together enough effective outings. Bring back Joe Smith, cuz he's still young, bring back Wagner, the rest have gotta go. Eat the contracts if you have to.
In terms of hurt, to be honest, this doesn't hurt as bad as last year. Last year, I was convinced we had the NLCS won right until Carlos Beltran looked at that last strike. This year, it took 2 weeks of downward spiral where you just knew the ending was inevitable, so it was a slow and grating feeling. Losing to the Phillies hurts because of Jimmy Rollins and his whole "we're the team to beat" line before the season. He didn't say "I told you so" yesterday, but the back page of the New York Post said it for him today. The Phillies haven't won much in their history, so congrats to them I guess. At least it wasn't the Braves... I don't think I could live down having my friends who are Braves fans lord it over me for an entire offseason.
So if I could say anything right now to Mets Nation, I guess it would be: we've been here before and it sucks but at least we can deal. I still remember 1998 when we had the wild-card locked up and we lost the last 5 games to choke that away. The next year we almost choked again; it took a wild pitch and a one-game playoff to get us in. Our friends who are Yankee fans will laugh and smirk about this... then we'll piss them off by telling them we're rooting for the Red Sox. And as for me... the Buffalo Sabres' opener is in 4 days... speaking of fans who have suffered more than their share of heartache and disappointment...
But this tops all of them. The season we were supposed to win it all, the season we as Mets fans expected nothing less than a World Championship, ended by the worst September collapse in baseball history.
If you aren't up on the details, here's the Reader's Digest version: after winning 97 games and tying for baseball's best record last season, the Mets got off to an expected 34-18 start by the end of May. From there to the end of the season, their record was 2 games UNDER .500. And yet, despite all the worries that the team was underachieving, that certain players were on the downside of their careers and others were disappointing, there we were on September 12, 17 games to play, with a 7-game lead. We went 5-12, the Phillies went 13-4. End of season.
So today, the blame game is being played, the fingers are being pointed, people are coming up with all sorts of reasons why the Mets fell apart, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those in New York, who believe that when things go wrong you fire the manager, want Willie Randolph to get the ax for this. That's just plain stupid. This is not Willie's fault. People want to say he's not fiery enough, he should be sticking his foot up certain players' asses... well that's just not what you do when you're a respected skipper of a veteran team. When your team is losing like crazy and you cannot explain why, well, it just brings you down psychologically, it gets to you, you start pressing, which makes it worse. Teams have downward spirals like this; they just don't do it in September and not when they've been leading their division since May 15.
So who is to blame? Well, for starters, how about we consider the fact that Mets pitchers couldn't get ANYONE out to save their lives for the last 17 games of the season. Plain and simple, the bullpen was lousy all season long, and whatever psychosis they had spread to the starters at the end. Any starter whose name wasn't Pedro Martinez had at least one terrible outing in September. Unfortunately for Tom Glavine, his had to come on the last day of the season, when in a must-win situation, he gave up 7 runs in ONE-THIRD of an inning. He's getting a lot of the blame too today; ESPN keeps saying that's the defining start of his Mets career. Sorry to break up the pity party, but no it's not. He had been lights-out since the All-Star Break, and it just happened to be yesterday when he came due for a bad outing. That's life. He won his 300th game in a Mets uniform, he went 28-15 the last two seasons, he pitched his ass off when we needed it last postseason. That's what I'll remember. My worst fear, of course, is that he now goes back to Atlanta and beats us in a pennant-deciding game next September.
The bullpen? Atrocious. Every starter for the Mets would've had at least 3 more wins this season had the bullpen actually been able to hold leads. El Duque finished with 9 wins... he should have had 15. Glavine should have had 17 instead of 13. When Aaron Heilman has 7 losses as a reliever and blows 5 out of 6 save chances (and he's NOT the closer so this is 8th-inning "blown saves"), he should not be on your team anymore. When Pedro Feliciano, great as he was last year, keeps getting put into important situations where he just has to retire ONE lefty and then proceeds to walk him every time, he should not be on your team anymore. When it's clear that Guillermo Mota only had great numbers last year because of performance-enhancing drugs, he should not be on your team anymore. Furthermore, Heilman pitched most of the season with elbow tendinitis and Scott Schoeneweis had a detached ligament in his leg. NEITHER was put on the DL. Billy Wagner? Yeah, he was lousy at the end too, but given the fact that he was virtually unhittable for the first 5 months of the season, I have to give him a free pass.
Jose Reyes hit .200 in September. He's only 24 years old; he'll get better. David Wright went from hearing "M-V-P" chants every time he came up to blowing several defensive plays down the stretch. He's still young and getting better as well, so he'll be okay. Carlos Beltran had an off year by his standards; his 2006 numbers tell me he'll be okay. Carlos Delgado had an off year; give him another year before you call him "over the hill", he deserves that. Missing Moises Alou for 3 months hurt, but that happens every year. Shawn Green? He's done. Get rid of him. Paul LoDuca is a great team leader and you want someone like that on your team, but his 2nd-half numbers were pretty lousy. I don't think we can resign him. Ramon Castro should get a chance, his home run to at-bat numbers this year were phenomenal and he's a good clubhouse leader as well.
Pedro's back next year, Maine and Perez will continue to get better, Pelfrey looked good in September, and Lastings Milledge will be our right fielder next year. GM Omar Minaya needs to blow up that bullpen... just clean house. Start over. Open auditions for everything but the closer spot next spring. There's gotta be someone we can get or who is coming up through the minors who can string together enough effective outings. Bring back Joe Smith, cuz he's still young, bring back Wagner, the rest have gotta go. Eat the contracts if you have to.
In terms of hurt, to be honest, this doesn't hurt as bad as last year. Last year, I was convinced we had the NLCS won right until Carlos Beltran looked at that last strike. This year, it took 2 weeks of downward spiral where you just knew the ending was inevitable, so it was a slow and grating feeling. Losing to the Phillies hurts because of Jimmy Rollins and his whole "we're the team to beat" line before the season. He didn't say "I told you so" yesterday, but the back page of the New York Post said it for him today. The Phillies haven't won much in their history, so congrats to them I guess. At least it wasn't the Braves... I don't think I could live down having my friends who are Braves fans lord it over me for an entire offseason.
So if I could say anything right now to Mets Nation, I guess it would be: we've been here before and it sucks but at least we can deal. I still remember 1998 when we had the wild-card locked up and we lost the last 5 games to choke that away. The next year we almost choked again; it took a wild pitch and a one-game playoff to get us in. Our friends who are Yankee fans will laugh and smirk about this... then we'll piss them off by telling them we're rooting for the Red Sox. And as for me... the Buffalo Sabres' opener is in 4 days... speaking of fans who have suffered more than their share of heartache and disappointment...
posted by Dave | 4:44 PM
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