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New Mets? Nah, loss shows its just same old club

Wallace Matthews

June 24, 2008

They're sowing the seeds of something out there at Shea Stadium, tilling that fertile soil, in the now-infamous description of Jerry Manuel, hoping something wonderful will bloom.

But the place remains a Field of Screams, on the field and in the stands, and no change of gardener - er, manager - is going to improve it any day soon.

Everything was set up for a triumphant homecoming by the new-look Mets last night - fresh face in the manager's chair, fresh attitude in the clubhouse, the worst team in the major leagues across the field in the visitor's dugout - and Johan Santana on the mound.

That, and Willie Randolph's job. What more could a man want? Problem was, he also had Willie Randolph's team.

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If anyone was believing the hype that opening the trapdoor under Randolph would open a stairway to heaven, or at least first place, for the Mets, last night's lifeless 5-2 loss to the Seattle Mariners - 23 games under .500, 19 1/2 games out of first place, 5-14 in June and taking orders from a brand-new manager themselves - should come as a reality check.

So much for the energizing effect of a new manager. Now, Manuel's record stands at three up, three down - same as his team for most of the night.

Manuel tried to inject his own brand of Jerry Ball on the Mets - Carlos Beltran stole a base on the first pitch! - and his boys even went gangsta for a moment, taking the blade to the youngsta pitching for the Mariners, but with the exception of a mild ninth-inning rally, these were the same Mets you came to know and loathe under Randolph.

The Mets who sleepwalk through half the game, don't get the clutch hit, do make the clutch error, and manage to lose in the least imaginable way possible.

Last night it was Santana, the crown jewel of the offseason recovery program, surrendering a first-pitch second-inning grand slam home run to Felix Hernandez, a pitcher but not just any pitcher, an American League pitcher with all of eight major-league at-bats to his credit. And this was no cheapie, down-the-line paint-scraper of a home run, but a rocket blast over the right-centerfield fence on a pitch clocked at 94 mph.

For their $137.5 million, spread out over seven years, the Mets have now gotten seven wins, six losses and a 9-7 record in the games Santana has started. Worse than that, he has now surrendered 14 home runs in less than half a season, putting him well on pace to match and perhaps exceed his major-league leading total of 33 bombs from last year, which may indicate his subpar 2007 season was not an aberration, but an omen.

Manuel, still in his honeymoon period even if he did spend half the pregame session defending his use of the word "fertilizer" in describing some Mets fans on Monday, contended Santana had in fact pitched a good game. Santana backed up his manager, and in the process backed over his third baseman, whose two-out error allowed the inning to continue and Hernandez to bat.

"Personally, I felt pretty good," Santana said. "We didn't make routine plays that you make to win games, little things that make you a winner."

Presumably, that includes retiring the opposing pitcher. Santana's seven innings, seven hits and just one earned run was the most misleading line since Don Imus claimed he was actually defending Pacman Jones.

But Santana wasn't the worst performer of the night; that honor goes to the Shea crowd, which started the night chanting Manuel's name during batting practice, but was booing as if Randolph had just summoned Scott Schoeneweis after Santana gave up Hernandez' home run.

But the crowd reserved its proudest moment for the fifth, when it cheered the sight of Hernandez hobbling around in obvious pain after Beltran slid hard into him to score the Mets first run of the night. The jeers continued when Hernandez, who had pitched three straight terrific games and was on his way to a fourth, stumbled off the mound while attempting a warm-up pitch to see if he could remain in the game.

At that point, the crowd seemed worthy of the rather dubious spin one local paper put on Manuel's "fertilizer" line, and the game which so much promise of providing a fresh start to a team badly in need of one, turned into one more ugly, depressing three hours of bad baseball.

By the time the game ended, with the tying run at the plate and the bat on Damion Easley's shoulder as a third strike zoomed past, the scene, and the question it raised, had become sickeningly familiar.

You can fire the manager, but how do you fire up the club?