There are baseball gods, Mets fans. Otherwise, the plague that hit your team last year on the way to 70-92 would not have been answered a season later with Hisanori Takahashi and R.A. Dickey.
“You can’t get better than [9-2],” argued Jerry Manuel this weekend in Baltimore. “It’s difficult, regardless of who it is, to replace 5-2 [Takahashi] and 4-0 [Dickey].”
On the other hand, it wouldn’t be difficult at all for an owner to replace a manager who lobbies publicly for a better, more expensive team, particularly a manager in the final year of his contract. Not good form, never mind that arguing that Dickey, 26 lifetime wins versus Roy Oswalt’s 141, is good logic.
All this soft, fresh-baked bread falling from heaven, turning Oliver Perez into yesterday’s aggravation and making the once-essential John Maine a rehabbing candidate for long relief, has enabled the unpopular Fred and Jeff Wilpon to loosen their helmets. Now, we’ll see about their purse strings.
If the pitching wasn’t addressed with significant dollars last winter, the skeptic doesn’t see it happening now, not with self-congratulation being the order of the day following fine winter trash-picking by Omar Minaya. Dickey’s knuckleball is dancing, so the Mets likely will stay with the one who brung them for $600,000, instead of the $28 million left on Oswalt’s contract, counting a $2 million buyout for 2012.
Afterall, the Mets have three in Cleveland starting tonight against the 25-37 Indians to convince themselves they have turned the corner on the road, plus have all of four home runs and 25 RBIs from Jason Bay to reassure them that they will yet be vindicated for putting their money into left field rather than the rotation.
Why would they need an Oswalt, who has averaged 17 wins, a 3.23 ERA and 33 starts over a decade, unless it would be to strengthen the bullpen with Takahashi, or buy insurance on the less-than proven Jon Niese, or potentially line up for a best-of-five division series with a beat-this rotation of Johan Santana-Mike Pelfrey-Oswalt?
Coming off a disaster, still facing a long and likely frustrating re-introduction of a rusted Carlos Beltran after a virtual year away, it’s hard to believe we are even talking about adding, not subtracting. But Ike Davis came fast, Pelfrey grew up in a hurry, Angel Pagan has done the job and Dickey has been a revelation.
If this all seems too good to be true, often it is. Thus, we can understand management taking a few more weeks to pound the Indians, to claim another series of bragging rights against the Yankees, to win some games next week against contending American League team like Detroit and Minnesota to convince the Mets they will have staying power against Atlanta and Philadelphia .
Oswalt’s hefty contract will limit the competition for his services — and increases the pressure on Houston GM Ed Wade to dump it. The cost in prospects shouldn’t be severe. Whether or not the Mets have coveted ones, this is in their favor, as, probably, would be Cliff Lee’s expiring contract.
The climate has changed, even the big-market teams are reluctant to mortgage top prospects, so if the Mets get outbid for Oswalt and Lee, then so be it. But to convince themselves by mid-June that Niese, Takahashi and Dickey are going to get the Mets to October will not be convincing a still-skeptical fan base that they are trying to win.