Who's Driving This Bus?

The past week for the Mets would have been a mild success had they went 3-3, given the quality of the opponent and the state of the team itself. Though the 2-4 record they posted deserves an asterisk considering how badly they gave one of those games away, it's hard to imagine how those 4 losses could have been much worse, perhaps not so much for the psyche of the team, but for the psyche of the fans.

If nothing else, you have to at least admire the fact that the Mets will not quit. They won't just roll over and die, even with the mounting injuries and the complete lack of consistency they've displayed over the first 2 1/2 months of the season. But this team, no matter how hard they fight and scrape for victories, has proven themselves to be only good enough to get to the precipice and then come up short. And I don't see how this season will play out any different unless some major changes are made. I brought it up after Friday's game and I'll say it again: Every time there's a crucial spot, or a key play or a close call in a game, it seems like it's going against the Mets. Whenever there's a game decided on an error or a balk, it's going against the Mets. Whenever a lead is blown, it's blown by the Mets. And it's happened repeatedly over the course of the season. There are teams that are good and those teams are the teams that catch the breaks. The Mets catch none of the breaks, and that's the sign of a team that just isn't very good. They may well catch fire in July, that's certainly possible. In fact, it's easy to look at where things stood exactly a year ago and you'd see that things weren't that much different. But while the Mets might have caught fire in July last year, we know how it all turned out. Whatever the Mets might be able to pull off, it's only enough to get everyone to believe in them, only to have the rug pulled out from underneath.

There are surprise good performances by no-name pitchers followed up by Aces getting torched. What the hell is going on with this team? Fernando Nieve comes out of nowhere and shuts down the Yankees for 6.2 innings. It's just enough to inspire some confidence in you, especially with Johan Santana pitching on Sunday. But Sunday comes and Johan Santana is a pitch away from getting out of a 2nd inning jam, and then, all of a sudden, Francisco Cervelli hits a dinky little flair that just drops in for an RBI single, and that opens the floodgates for a flogging of insane proportions. I don't understand how or why this happens to the Mets continually, but it does. Jerry Manuel looks half-asleep sometimes, and then gets thrown out of a game when the game is grossly and ridiculously out of control. That's when you argue? That's going to somehow fire up this team? I'm a bit confused as to what sort of logic Manuel follows at times. There's no direction with this team. You have no clue who's driving the bus.

You'd like to think the day off today will allow the Mets to regroup and retool for this week, but I don't know if a day off is what this team needs right now.