Mets Play Pretty One Day

The great irony of baseball is that things are seldom what they seem. Sometimes things work out exactly as we expect; a game plan fastidiously crafted with meticulous attention to detail and ultimately executed to perfection by the guys in uniform. Rarely is such an ideal outcome realized; so many factors can intervene and cause even the greatest plan to go completely awry. The Mets' season to date is certainly an immediate example of the fickleness of the baseball fates (if you believe in that sort of thing; it's just the vicissitudes of the game to everyone else).

Three months ago the Mets looked as if they had a pretty good plan for this thing. Not a great plan, but a pretty good one. There were some problems: an unproven commodity in left field, a questionable back end of the rotation, insufficient depth at virtually every position. In spite of those question marks, the formula was pretty straight-forward:

1. Get great pitching from their ace
2. Get decent pitching from everyone else
3. Get terrific production at third base, shortstop and centerfield
4. Get average production at first base and at catcher
5. Take what you can get in left field, right field and at second base
6. When you get a lead, use your fortified bullpen to keep that lead

This plan wasn't expected to win 108 games or even 100, but it could have been good enough to win 95. Two months into the season -- a third of the games having been played -- and 95 wins looks like a fantasy. Innumerable injuries have exposed the aforementioned lack of depth, forcing the Mets to rely on retreads and career minor leaguers to fill in the gaps on their active roster that have been left by so many defections to the disabled list. The team's collective health problems have been exacerbated by a stubborn and frustratingly antiquated managerial philosophy which has often left the Mets' in a hole too deep for even a healthy club to pull itself from. Add to all of this a shoddy grasp of baseball fundamentals -- "fundies" -- and deleteriously aggressive baserunning that has seen more runners thrown out at second, third and home than I can ever recall seeing before, and it's no wonder the Mets are where they are.

We can accept that injuries happen; they happen in life and they happen in baseball and all you can do is prepare yourself for their inevitability by having reasonable contingency plans in place. Well, the injuries happened and the contingency plans, as it turns out, were not terribly reasonable at all. The backup plan for Carlos Delgado was: Fernando Tatis? The backup plan for Jose Reyes was: Alex Cora? And for Cora: Ramon Martinez? Or Will "The Spill" Valdez?

The terrifying part of it all is that things could be much, much worse. None of the Mets' three best players has been hurt (four if you count Francisco Rodriguez). What happens if David Wright gets hurt: Tatis again? Mike Lamb? Or if Carlos Beltran were lost for a stretch: Jeremy Reed? Cory Sullivan? This -- not Luis Castillo dropping an easy pop-up -- is what should keep you up at night. If not you, certainly Omar Minaya. No? He's sleeping fine? That makes sense.

Despite all of this, the Mets are still just four games back of the Phillies in the NL East, which perhaps says more about the Phillies -- and the rest of the division, and possibly the National League -- than it does about the Mets. Whatever blame we wish to assign to the Mets' training staff, there's little that can be done in the injury department that could affect the immediate future in any meaningful way. For the most part injuries are out of the Mets' control now. The other things -- the careless baserunning, slipshod defense and pernicious managerial decision-making -- are all well within the Mets' grasp. Unfortunately, Jerry Manuel isn't going to wake up tomorrow and suddenly be open-minded about all relevant pieces of data -- objective and subjective -- that could help him do his job better. So all the Mets can really do is pull their shit together and start playing like big leaguers.

Look, people make mistakes, ballplayers make mistakes. But what the Mets have been doing for the better part of two months goes beyond the occasional bad throw or baserunning snafu. Theirs are systemic, fundamental baseball problems that have occurred far too often to be merely unfortunate happenstance. I don't know if it's laziness or apathy or something else, but it's embarrassing for both the team and its fans. Carlos Beltran is right: the Mets should have beaten the Pirates. They also should have won the series against the Phillies and the Yankees. The talent was there but the execution was lacking. As a matter of necessity, the Mets have had to deviate from the pre-season plan. They've had to plug holes with little more than Mighty Putty. Lazy, uninspired play was never part of the plan, and quite frankly I think we're all sick of watching it.

I can accept losing, but there's no excuse for losing like this. Be better.