Getting Worried Yet?

The Mets are making a lot of their fans grumpy these days.

On offense, they are firing on nearly all cylinders. They have a .283 team batting average and six of the eight regulars are performing at or above expectations when it comes to their slash stats.

There remains a perception that the Mets cannot hit with runners in the clutch, but the overall stats aren't clearly bearing that out. Their slash stats with men on base, with runners in scoring position and in so-called "clutch situations" are remarkably similar. They are all about 30 points off the pace of "non-clutch situations," which is not good but also is not an unusual difference. Some individuals are struggling more than others (hello, David Wright!), but there is no evidence of the team-wide malaise that some have suggested.

Last week, Adam Rubin of the Daily News suggested that continued ineptitude on the field might lead to some signficiant changes - both on and off the field. Winning 2 out of 3 against the dreadful Nationals this weekend may have stemmed that tide somewhat, but there are two important things to consider about the 2009 New York Mets:

* We are still only 18 games into the season, and firing coaches or demoting core players would look both panicky and vaguely amateurish. It's one thing to release someone like Darren O'Day, who was never being counted on to make a huge impact on the season. It's quite another to try demoting any of your front four starters. Even Oliver Perez, as awful as he's been so far, has no business in the bullpen or in Buffalo. When you make $12 million a year, you get more than four starts before getting bumped from the rotation.

Nothing has happened in the last four weeks that has led me to believe any coach should be fired or re-assigned, because nothing can be legitimately inferred about the Mets by such a small sample size. Oh sure, I have SUSPICIONS - that the starting pitching just isn't that good and that the bullpen is overrated. But I had those suspicions going into the season. Making changes now will just make everyone involved look incompetent for not having recognized these problems in the off-season.

* It may also just be that the Mets aren't playing that badly right now; it may just be that the Mets were never that good in the first place. This entire team was built on a wing and prayer and shockingly enough, not all of these hopes and dreams are panning out.

The only change to the rotation was adding Livan Hernandez - possibly the worst starting pitcher in baseball. The Mets re-made the bullpen by adding a closer with steadily increasing peripherals and a former closer coming off an injury-plagued, ineffective season. The only change to the starting eight was a hot-shot young hitter who was an infielder for his entire minor-league career. Perhaps handing him the starting left fielder's job in the absence of any legitimate alternative wasn't such a hot idea after all.

Omar Minaya was a lazy general manager this offseason. He decided to address only one of the three core areas of his team and simply assumed the other two would be up to snuff. That's a recipe for failure - and so far that's exactly what has been happening.

Alive

Well, I didn't see that coming.

If the Mets are still standing on Monday morning, it will be because of one of the ugliest plays in baseball you could ever hope to see. I don't know how Ryan Church evaded Koyie Hill's tag and I don't want to know. I will simply choose to think of that play as a small sign from the baseball gods that maybe, just maybe, this team isn't dead yet.

It's the type of play that becomes part of a franchise's folklore, something that fans flash back to years later when recalling their memories of a particular season. And of course, because these are the Mets, it has to be said that the play never should've happened in the first place.

Church brainlocked earlier in the inning and didn't follow Carlos Beltran on the back end of a double-steal attempt. Instead, Church had to try to score from first on Robinson Cancel's double and by all rights should've been a dead duck.

That's the Mets for you - why do things the easy way if there's a more difficult and agonizing path to take?

Church blows the double-steal and Luis Aguayo sends him around third base even though the throw home beats him to the plate by 15 feet. Somehow it works out. Daniel Murphy brain-locks in the ninth and tries to bunt three balls out of the strike zone, one of which was on a 2-2 count while Jose Reyes gets a tremendous jump on a steal attempt. Somehow it works out.

These are the games the Mets have been losing for the last two weeks or so. Last night they finally reached a point where, as hard as they tried to bumble away another desperately needed victory, they simply could not close the deal. For once, we can be glad about that!

So three games to go and the division is still realisitically in play. The Phillies are playing the Nationals and there's no reason to believe they won't take 2 out of 3. The Marlins are back in town to finish the regular season against the Mets and itching to play spoiler again. Everyone remembers how 2007 ended; the Mets have a unique chance at redemption against the team that delivered the final blow last season. Win all three games and the Mets clinch at least a tie for a playoff berth, and since I don't see the Brewers sweeping the Cubs this weekend, it will guarantee at least the Loser's Reward.

I'm supposed to have tickets for tonight's game, but I have little hope it's going to actually get played. From what I understand of the weather pattern, tomorrow's game is in jeopardy as well, which threatens the commissioner's office mandate to finish the regular season by Sunday night. Maybe Saturday's game turns into a 7:10 start and they play a single-admission doubleheader on Sunday?

It's been terrible rooting for the Mets for the last two weeks, but at least we're playing meaningful baseball this weekend. That's more than I can say for the guys on the other side of town!