57 Is the Loneliest Number

Honestly, last night was a joke. I hope the team feels embarrassed; half the time I'm embarrassed just watching them.

Last night wasn't just one game, it was a microcosm of our entire season. Fernando Martinez tripping and falling in the outfield was just the latest in a string of dropped fly balls (Daniel Murphy in Florida), missed bases (Ryan Church in Los Angeles), failed slides (Carlos Beltran in St. Louis) and dropped pop-ups (you know who against you know who).

Johan Santana must hate this team.

You know what I love about Johan? I love how in the top of the fifth inning, Johan struck out swinging on a ball in the dirt, and he immediately darted out of the box to run to first, eluding a tag attempt from the Brewers' catcher. How many other players on the Mets would have even made the attempt?

It gets me thinking, you know what the worst part of Luis Castillo's dropped pop up in the new Yankee Stadium was? For me it was the near certainty that had the roles been reversed and had a Met been on first base, he would have been jogging around the bases and he wouldn't have scored. That's just the way this team plays the game.

Except one guy: Johan. Johan plays the game the right way. He plays the game like he lives and dies with every pitch, like every moment he's out there is a potential game-changing moment.

No one else on this team plays with that kind of urgency. And that's why they fail season in and season out.

- A.F.O.M.G.

The Stopper

Last time I posted I wrote about Johan Santana. The Mets were coming off a victory against the Cardinals and we needed Johan to power us to consecutive wins for only the second time in June.

"When we think of the role and importance of an ace, we often think of his position as the team's 'stopper', the guy who doesn't let a 3-game losing streak turn into four games," I wrote. "When Johan Santana goes to the mound today, he'll assume a different mantle. His role will be to act as the team's extender, not their stopper."

Sure enough, Johan did his job that day, pitching 7 innings and guiding the Mets to a 3-2 victory. The win was the Mets' third in four games against St. Louis, a good team. You liked what you saw.

But then you watched what happened over the weekend and you watched what happened last night and all the positive vibes vanished. Talk of a renaissance disappeared. The question on SNY last night was whether it was time to push the panic button.

I was speaking with the newly-engaged Lister (congrats man) last night, and he made an excellent point. The Phillies being a deeply flawed team, the Mets could find themselves in a position where two hot weeks toward the end of the season are enough to propel them to a division title.

Now, we don't have a great track record of producing hot weeks in Septemeber, but the point stands. The Mets aren't buried yet. So long as they're not, it's not time to hit the panic button.

They just need to stay afloat. They've played piss poor baseball, that's for sure, but they're still in the thick of the division race.

In order to stay there we need Johan to step up today. We need him to act in that traditional ace role, we need him to be the stopper. We need him to halt this 4-game losing streak right where it is, clean the slate and get the team pointed back in a positive direction.

It's a heavy burden but that's why they pay him the big bucks. Let's do it.

- A.F.O.M.G.

The Extender

When we think of the role and importance of an ace, we often think of his position as the team's "stopper", the guy who doesn't let a 3-game losing streak turn into four games.

When Johan Santana goes to the mound today, he'll assume a different mantle. His role will be to act as the team's extender, not their stopper.

The Mets have won consecutive games only once in the month of June. On it's face it's a pretty remarkable stat, but when you consider how badly the Mets have played this month, it becomes a lot easier to believe.

The Mets desperately need some positive momentum. For the past month all the talk has been of injuries and losses, one day the story is Johan getting shelled at Yankee Stadium, the next it's Carlos Beltran going down with an injury.

We hear soundbites from Alex Cora that kind of encourage you, then you hear others from Jerry Manuel that are a bit more realistic.

We've been hearing all season about this difficult stretch of games, with only one opponent with a sub-.500 record. To post a series win against St. Louis, a first place team, would be a real shot in the arm going into the weekend set against the Yankees (who incidentally have been playing pretty poorly themselves).

Yesterday's game was great. We haven't seen the Mets pull off an 11-0 stomping in what feels like an extraordinarily long time. Honestly, I can't remember the last time the Mets cruised to a victory the way they did last night.

Coupled with the Phillies' latest loss, the Mets are still in the thick of things at only 1.5 games out of first. During this stretch of injuries and tough opponents, the goal was to stay in the thick of things, and, more by luck than by skill, they've done that to this point.

A win today though would be a big sigh of relief for everyone. It'd show that we can still win series', that we can still play with some of the big dogs, that we can defend our home field. We've got our ace on the mound in the role of extender. Let's make it happen.

- A.F.O.M.G.

Jerry Manuel: A Year in the Life

On the one year anniversary of his appointment, I think the man said it best himself: "I feel like I've been here for 10 years," Jerry Manuel said before the game yesterday.

He was kidding, of course, adding quickly that "time flies when you're having as much fun as I am."

A lot of people are buzzing about David Wright's talking to with Mike Pelfrey, but the real leadership story today is Manuel. Since taking over for Willie Randolph, Manuel has led the Mets to an 88-67 record.

If you're anything like me, the first time you read that stat in the Daily News you had to jump over to the Post to make sure it was accurate. 21 games over .500 since Manuel started?

Between all the bullpen meltdowns last year and the injuries and careless losses this year, it sure feels like the Mets shouldn't be 21 games over .500 for their last 155 games, but sure enough they are.

A lot of people are critical of Uncle Jerry. They don't like his bullpen management or other in-game decisions. I myself have asked where the blame belongs for our mental error-prone team.

But at the end of the day I like Jerry; certainly, I'm a lot happier with him than I was with Willie Randolph (even if I feel that ultimate responsibility for this club's failings sits in the General Manager's office).

Willie was just too defensive for my taste; it wasn't a problem when the Mets were "running roughshod over the National League," but after the collapse in 2007 and the poor start in 2008, there was simply no room for his "I've always been a winner so don't doubt me" demeanor.

The problem was, Willie was never a winner with the Mets. When his teams blew it in 2006 and again in 2007, he still called himself a winner, as if nothing had ever happened. It was completely unrealistic for one thing, but more importantly it was completely incongruous with where the fan base's head was at.

In my opinion we needed a guy like Jerry who challenged his team to consider its failures and try to overcome them. It didn't quite work out in 2008, but here's hoping about 2009.

So here's to Jerry. Criticize his methods all you want but the team's .567 winning percentage during his tenure is pretty shiny, and rather impressive when you consider its shortcomings across 2008 and 2009. Apply it over a 162-game season and you're talking about a 92-win ballclub; I think we'd all take that in 2009.

Now let's go make it 89-67 tonight.

- A.F.O.M.G.

The Kinds of Losses that Doom Playoff Runs

So yesterday was pretty unbearable, but provided there's nothing wrong with Johan Santana, that's not the game from this past week that we're going to remember.

Games like yesterday happen. Sometimes you get blown out, sometimes you blow the other guys out. What matters is what you do with the swing games, and this past week the Mets pissed away three of them.

What more can you say about Friday night's debacle that hasn't already been said? I'm not going to kill Luis Castillo for it. It's a play he should have made (god knows) and it's a game we should have won, but, you know, it happened. In making himself available to the media Luis did everything right (after the play that is) on his end, and the team responded nicely on Saturday.

I had mostly moved on from Friday after we won that middle game 6-2, but as I watched yesterday I couldn't help but recall that this shouldn't have been a rubber game, that we should have had our two wins in the bag already.

From there I couldn't help but recall the game in LA where Church missed third or the game in St. Louis where Beltran didn't slide or the game in Pittsburgh we were leading 5-1. Those three games and Friday's are four losses we'll never get back. Right now we're 32-29, 3 games over .500 and 4 games out of first. If we'd won those four games like we should have, we'd be 36-25, 11 games over .500 and tied for first.

It's a dramatic difference. It's the difference between a middling season and an inspiring one. And those were just the gimme games I could think of off the top of my head. You want to throw at least one of those Phillies losses in there (i.e., Beltran's missed catch, Wright's defensive error) and then were' 13 games over and in first place.

We're not good enough to give wins away. I remember 2006 when Billy Wagner came in with a 4-0 lead against the Yankees at Shea and proceeded to completely melt down. We came out the next day and we were back on track; that charmed team could get away with the occasional crippling loss.

Not this team. We're just not good enough on the whole, so we need to be better on the margins. Unfortunately, that's exactly where we've struggled.

If we're going to make the playoffs, we can't keep giving games away. Simple as that.

- A.F.O.M.G.