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Mets waste game for Vargas and unfortunate fans

Wallace Matthews

May 15, 2008

Casey Stengel used to have a standard line for nights like last night, nights when his team played poorly, listlessly, stupidly or a combination of the three.

"We trimmed the attendance again," the Old Perfessor used to say, which was 1962-speak for ripping off the fans. But back then, tickets cost a buck or two, games were over in a merciful two hours and nothing was expected of those Mets teams anyway.

Forty-something years later, fans expect a bang or two for their 40 bucks a ticket and the three-plus hours spent shivering in a rusting junkheap of a ballpark. Mets fans have become notorious for their big mouths and short fuses, but last night, they booed loud, long and with plenty of justification.

"I came all the way from Jersey for this?" a father said to his young son as they passed me on the way down the ramp. That was one of the few printable comments that could be heard after the Mets' 5-3 loss last night to the Nationals, a loss that left them two games over .500, two games behind the Marlins, and one Mike Pelfrey start away from dropping three out of four at home to a squad one Met ridiculed just the other day as "the softball girls."

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Yeah, the fans are a lot tougher to please these days, sometimes unreasonably so, but last night, Mets fans had every reason to boo, every reason to tear up their tickets in a hot fist and storm out of the ballpark, every reason to curse like Sue Simmons during a station break.

The culprits were many - Aaron Heilman, of course, was the leader, but he was aided and abetted by his manager, Willie Randolph, with lesser assists going to Moises Alou and Jose Reyes - but mostly, the fans seem to be getting fed up with a team that for the past two seasons has promised everything and delivered next to nothing.

Last night, more than 45,000 paid for their tickets and no more than half bothered to use them. The ones that did left disappointed, angered and in the idiom of Casey, trimmed.

The Mets wasted a terrific start by Claudio Vargas, who turned in six of the best innings any Mets starter has thrown all season. Randolph, who said afterward Vargas could have thrown 100 pitches, chose to pull him for Heilman after just 87. Reyes singlehandedly killed what could have been a fourth-inning rally when he broke from second on Carlos Beltran's line drive that seemed headed for leftfield, but never got there, thanks to a leaping grab by Ryan Zimmerman. Instead of first-and-second, two outs and Alou coming up, Reyes' lapse led to an inning-ending double play. "That coulda helped a little bit," Randolph said.

Then it was Alou's turn for a brain freeze, getting himself ejected by slamming down his bat over a called third strike that looked too close to argue about. That one paid its dividend three innings later when, trailing 5-3 and with runners on first and third, the Mets had to settle for Endy Chavez and his .178 bat instead of Alou and his .343. Chavez popped out to end the inning.

In between, it was Heilman's turn to screw things up again, with the help of his manager. Wanting a righthander to relieve Vargas with one out, a runner on first and righty batters Wily Mo Peña and Jesus Flores coming up, Randolph had four options: Duaner Sanchez, Joe Smith, Matt Wise and Heilman. As soon as the bullpen door swung open and Heilman emerged, the boos began. "He was the right guy in that situation," Randolph said. "I wanted to get two innings out of him."

Heilman couldn't even get two outs. In fact, without a Brooks Robinson-caliber play out of David Wright against Peña, he wouldn't have gotten one out. But his real crime was committed against Flores, against whom he got two quick strikes on fastballs. Then, as is his habit, Heilman nibbled his way to a full count and had to come in with another fastball, which this time Flores stroked into left for an RBI single. Randolph stayed with Heilman as he walked the next batter and gave up two more RBI singles before finally coming out to collect him.

"You gotta finish that guy off there," Randolph said of the Flores at-bat. "That was a huge at-bat. But in that situation, you gotta let [Heilman] work through it. Hopefully, this won't set him back."

Certainly, it set his team back and sent the fans to the exits. Now, having made the decision to move Johan Santana back to tomorrow's series opener against the Yankees in the Bronx, the Mets must rely on the erratic Pelfrey tonight to spare them the humiliation of another loss to the Nationals.

Randolph at least saw one bright spot last night. "Vargas gave us exactly what we needed," he said. "He deserved better." So, too, did the fans who came out to support this team. But they got trimmed again. No doubt Casey would understand.