I admit going in that nothing in this article is rational.
Oh, where to begin? Let’s start with the lineup. Can we PLEASE realize the lineup isn’t working. I mean it’s really really not working. To help Terry out I have devised my own.
CF Lagares (you may remember him from batting spring leadoff)
3B Murphy
2B Flores (he is 23. We can dick around with SS again next year if you want but there is no reason to do so now)
1B Duda
LF Cuddyer
RF Granderson (Swing the bat buddy, walks don’t help)
SS Reynolds
C Plawecki
Pitcher
Today Terry is playing Flores at SS and Tejada at 3B. Can anyone think of an easy way to make the defense better? Raise your hand if you can.
On to David Wright.
Before I get too far let me say that I hope the actual man is OK. I hope he lives a long healthy life.
Focusing on baseball, this is a disaster. He has five years left on his contract after this season. My fear is that he never plays again (or plays like a diminished Mattingly did) and the owners get even more cheap gun-shy about paying big contracts,
Wright going down shows why in modern sports you have to go for it every year. You can’t sit around waiting for 2015 and the pitching to arrive because you may have no bats when it does. Which brings me to
The Stupid 6 Man Rotation.
This is just going to mess everyone up again and make your undisputed star (now that Wright is invisible) unhappy. Why would you do that?
I know, conserving innings. How did that work out for the Nationals and Strasburg (who by the way is having an awful season.)
If you have a chance to win this year, then let Matt and Jake and the rest throw 700 innings. I don’t care. The Nats tried to do it “the right way” and didn’t win and now the guy they were protecting is awful. Tomorrow Never Knows. Win now.
Which brings me to…
The Standings.
If you bother to look, the Mets wouldn’t even be a Wild Card this morning.
You have to go for it if you are close. Let Matt throw every FIFTH day. Let the innings pile up.
If you are in it, pile on some more.
Or…maybe this solves itself and this 1.5 game deficit is 8.5 on August 10th. Then you can shut him down if you want rather than chase some fantasy that you are making up 9 games in three weeks (oh wait, the Nationals just did that to us.) If you’re in, pitch. If you’re out, hit the beach and see you in March.
We’re heading for not just one of those years but one of those decades. I doesn’t seem like there is any urgency in Flushing to do anything about it.
