Steve's Web Log

Minaya's Media Paranoia Rears Its Ugly Head

2009-07-27T21:11:00.004-04:00

This is not going to be a column about journalistic ethics, for two reasons. First, your humble diarist is wholly unqualified to pass judgment on that subject. And, second, whether or not Adam Rubin “lobbied” the Mets for a job is irrelevant to the dismissal of Assistant GM Tony Bernazard.

Mets GM Omar Minaya chose the press conference in which he announced Bernazard’s dismissal to set his sights on Rubin, the beat writer for the New York Daily News. Rubin had written a few stories on Bernazard’s more controversial actions, including an incident in Binghamton, where Bernazard reportedly removed his shirt and challenged the double-A players to a physical altercation.

The press conference began with the usual Minaya double-talk about Bernazard before it took a surprising, odd turn.

“Once the reports came out, you know, of course we had to expedite more the investigation,” Minaya said, rambling. “Early in the process, early in the process, when the reports came out, I had to kind of tell myself, ‘Wow, these things are coming out.’ And I say this because coming from Adam Rubin, okay, and Adam, you gotta understand this, Adam, for the past couple of years, has lobbied for a player development position. He has lobbied myself, he has lobbied Tony. So when these things came out I was kind of a little bit, I had to think about it. And I was a little bit, you know, somewhat, kind of, we gotta find out about this. We really have to do a thorough investigation of this.”

SNY, airing the press conference live, used an inset to show Rubin, who looked incredulous. Finally someone handed Rubin a microphone, leading to an equally strange interaction.

Rubin: “Is what you’re alleging that I tried to tear Tony down so I could take his job? Is that what you’re saying?”

Minaya: “No, no, I’m not saying that. All I’m saying was, that I know that when you wrote the reports, but I am saying, that in the past, you have, have lobbied for a job…”

Rubin: “If I were interested in working in player development somewhere in the major leagues at some point in my life, how did that impact this situation at all?”

Minaya: “I said, because, when the reports came out a lot of these things were cross… I said ‘Who's writing these reports?’ and… in the back of my mind, Adam, you have told me you have told other people in the front office that you want to work for player development in the front office.”

Rubin: “So what you’re alleging is that… the only conclusion I can draw from that is that you’re trying to allege that I tried to tear everyone down so that I could take their position. Is that what you’re saying?”

Minaya: “Adam…”

Rubin: “It seems pretty despicable to say that.”

Rubin said later he had approached Mets COO Jeff Wilpon and asked for advice about getting a job in baseball, but not specifically with the Mets.

Minaya tried to walk back his comments in a hastily-arranged press conference with Wilpon about three hours later, but he stood by his basic allegation that Rubin had campaigned for a position with the Mets while working for the Daily News.

“That was not a proper forum for me to raise those issues,” Minaya conceded.

The larger point, however, is why Minaya chose to raise those issues at all.

Either he was insinuating that Rubin fabricated all or part of the Bernazard story, or he and the Daily News chose to devote an inappropriate amount of attention on the story, because Rubin felt spurned by the Mets organization.

But Minaya never denied the Bernazard-in-Binghamton story, and Minaya is in no position to question the zeal with which the Daily News covered the story. It’s completely irrelevant to the story, and any mention of it on Minaya’s part reveals bitterness and/or paranoia.

Obviously, there is a he said, he said element to this story regarding whether Rubin lobbied the Mets for a job. Notably, Wilpon seemed to support Rubin’s statement that he was only seeking “career advice.”

But Minaya held to his claim that Rubin wanted a job with the Mets. If that is true, it definitely approaches an ethical gray area. But, again, it’s completely irrelevant to Bernazard’s firing and only serves to harm what little credibility Minaya may have had left.

Rubin said this afternoon that today’s events make it impossible for him to cover the ballclub. “I don’t know how I’m going to cover the team now,” Rubin said. “I’m absolutely floored. I asked, ‘How do you get a job in baseball?’ That's it.”

The Daily News, to their credit, is standing by Rubin. “This was a well-reported, well-researched, exclusive story,” said the News’ editor-in-chief Martin Dunn, “and it’s a shame that the Mets deemed fit to cast aspersions on our reporter instead of dealing with the issues at hand.”

“We stand by Adam 1,000 percent,” his statement said.

Today offered Minaya one more chance, an opportunity to shed some of the negativity in Flushing. Instead, today was yet another bizarre moment in a season full of bizarre moments – a season increasingly likely to cost Minaya his job.

My All-Star Ballot

2009-07-03T14:52:00.001-04:00

All-Star voting concluded last night, and the teams are set to be announced Sunday afternoon. As I do each season, I waited until the very last minute to vote. Here is my completed ballot, with starting pitchers added:

National League

Catcher: Brian McCann, Braves (.309 average, 8 home runs, 33 runs batted in, .898 OPS)
First Base: Albert Pujols, Cardinals (.335, 30 HR, 77 RBI, 1.200 OPS)
Second Base: Chase Utley, Phillies (.300, 17 HR, 52 RBI, .982 OPS)
Third Base: David Wright, Mets (.338, 5 HR, 42 RBI, .913 OPS)
Shortstop: Hanley Ramírez, Marlins (.348, 13 HR, 58 RBI, .985 OPS)
Outfield: Ryan Braun, Brewers (.328, 16 HR, 58 RBI, .981 OPS)
Outfield: Brad Hawpe, Rockies (.333, 13 HR, 56 RBI, 1.008 OPS)
Outfield: Raúl Ibañez, Phillies (.312, 22 HR, 59 RBI, 1.027 OPS)
Starting Pitcher: Dan Haren, Diamondbacks (7-5, 2.19 earned-run average, 0.81 WHIP)

American League

Catcher: Joe Mauer, Twins (.392, 14 HR, 44 RBI, 1.134 OPS)
First Base: Justin Morneau, Twins (.309, 19 HR, 64 RBI, .963 OPS)
Second Base: Aaron Hill, Blue Jays (.301, 19 HR, 56 RBI, .845 OPS)
Third Base: Evan Longoria, Rays (.297, 16 HR, 63 RBI, .935 OPS)
Shortstop: Derek Jeter, Yankees (.307, 9 HR, 32 RBI, .828 OPS)
Outfield: Carl Crawford, Rays (.320, 8 HR, 38 RBI, 40 SB, .838 OPS)
Outfield: Torii Hunter, Angels (.304, 17 HR, 59 RBI, .952 OPS)
Outfield: Ichiro Suzuki, Mariners (.370, 6 HR, 20 RBI, .903 OPS)
Starting Pitcher: Zach Greinke, Royals, (10-3, 1.95, 1.02 WHIP)

Caked in Brown Mud at the Black

2009-06-20T23:59:00.001-04:00

FARMINGDALE, N.Y. –

Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud;
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lies in sweetest bud.
All men make faults...
-- William Shakespeare

For about 45 minutes this morning here at Bethpage State Park, the sun made a cameo appearance in the Long Island sky, and the Black Course was basked in its warmth and glory.

But then, the clouds rolled back over the Island, and the rain began to fall again, ultimately scuttling play on this Saturday only slightly over an hour into the third round of the United States Open.

For all the storylines going into this tournament – Tiger Woods trying to repeat both in this tournament and at this venue, Phil Mickelson’s last tournament before his wife begins cancer treatment, the raucous and often well-lubricated New York fans – through the first three days here, the weather has stolen the show. It has now rained over Bethpage for 18 of the last 21 days, and this weekend’s bad weather seems likely to cause this Open to be the third Open decided on a Monday as a result of poor conditions. Puddles formed on greens and in fairways, and the galleries, caked in mud, looked like something out of Woodstock.

While the rain has been the main topic of conversation here this weekend, the golf has not been overshadowed completely. Woods, naturally, still commands a great deal of attention from the gallery, which built steadily after he began his second round today on the back nine shortly after 10 a.m. Mickelson saw smaller crowds, resuming his second round at 7:30 this morning and wrapping up by about 9:30 – after a dramatic birdie on the 17th hole. He didn’t take the course for his third round until some nine hours after fetching his ball from the hole on 18.

That’s because the inclement weather here on Thursday prevented a half the field from even starting their first round. The players who did wrapped things up earlier Friday, but those who had not yet started later Friday, when dry skies and soft conditions led to bountiful scoring opportunities.

Those golfers who began their rounds on Thursday averaged first-round scores that were 1.9 strokes higher than those who didn’t. Underscoring that point – while half the field began their rounds on Thursday, of the top 11 players on the leaderboard following the conclusion of the second round today, only one (Lee Westwood) saw the course on Thursday.

Woods (+3 after two rounds) was one of the unlucky ones who played Thursday. Mickelson (-1) was fortunate not to play on the rain-shortened first day. But both are looking up at Ricky Barnes (-8), Lucas Glover (-7) and Mike Weir (-6). Of that group, only Weir has the kind of experience that would portend success here. Barnes, a past U.S. Amateur champion, has never even finished in the top-ten in a P.G.A. Tour event; Glover is the 71st-ranked player in the world.

Last year’s epic Open at Torrey Pines featured a relative unknown, too, as Rocco Mediate went toe-to-toe with Tiger on a Monday playoff. While the U.S.G.A. should be commended for the way they have handled the adverse conditions, but one can’t help but wonder if the most-remembered thing from this Open will be the rain, and not what the players do inside the ropes.

For the Orioles and Their Rookie Catcher, Great Expectations

2009-05-29T23:59:00.001-04:00

BALTIMORE – Matt Wieters didn’t get a chance to ease into his major-league debut.

The Baltimore Orioles’ prized, 23-year-old catching prospect crouched down behind the plate and gave pitcher Brad Bergesen the sign for the game’s first pitch. Detroit Tigers leadoff hitter Josh Anderson attempted a bunt. Wieters sprang to his feet, pounced on the ball and fired a strike to first baseman Aubrey Huff. One pitch, one out in the major-league career of last year’s minor-league player of the year.

Embraced by Birds fans as a savior, Wieters went 0-for-4 at the plate tonight in a 7-2 romp by the Orioles. But neither the 0-for nor a thunderstorm that delayed the start of the game by 26 minutes dampened the enthusiasm amongst the 42,704 people here at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. The Orioles said they sold roughly 15,000 tickets after general manager Andy MacPhail announced Tuesday that Wieters would make his debut tonight, and the crowd cheered each of his at-bats.

Wieters is the most prominent member of an impressive array of young talent the O’s have assembled. Adam Jones and Nick Markakis anchor an outstanding outfield. The pitching will take a few more years, with the likes of Jake Arrieta, Brian Matusz, Chris Tillman and David Hernandez—who made his debut Thursday night—in the Baltimore system.

For now, Wieters carries the hopes and dreams of a last-place team’s proud fanbase. But the Orioles play in the ultra-competitive American League East, and their pockets aren’t nearly as deep as the Yankees or Red Sox. They are trying to follow the Tampa Bay model, and Wieters is their Evan Longoria.

Welcome to the bigs, hon. No pressure – even after the 0-for-4. “Hopefully,” Wieters told the Baltimore Sun after the game, “they’ll keep cheering me for a few more games.”

N.C.A.A. Tournament Viewers Guide

2009-03-18T21:09:00.002-04:00

It’s N.C.A.A. Tournament Time; your humble diarist knows this because his employer sent out an e-mail reminding everyone that using up loads of bandwidth to watch basketball over the internet is a violation of company policy.

My response: Come and get me.

Anyway, the first round of the Tournament is annually the greatest two days in sports, so let’s break down what the viewer can expect, by time-slot. Let’s first start with announcer pairings, by site:

Greensboro, N.C.: Jim Nantz, Clark Kellogg
Kansas City: Tim Brando, Mike Gminski
Philadelphia: Carter Blackburn/Dick Enberg, Jay Bilas
Portland, Ore.: Kevin Harlan, Dan Bonner
Miami: Ian Eagle, Jim Spanarkel
Dayton, Ohio: Verne Lundquist, Bill Raftery
Minneapolis: Gus Johnson, Len Elmore
Boise: Craig Bolerjack, Bob Wenzel

Now that we’ve got the voices set, let’s get to the games, starting with Thursday. All times E.D.T.:

12:20 p.m. – South Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 9 Butler vs. No. 8 Louisiana State (-2.5)
12:25 p.m. – West Region (Kansas City): No. 15 California State-Northridge vs. No. 2 Memphis (-19.5)
12:30 p.m. – West Region (Philadelphia): No. 9 Texas A&M vs. No. 8 Brigham Young (-2)

Like the 9s here. Though they’re not very significant, we can hope for a couple of close games to tip off the Tourney.

2:30 p.m. – West Region (Portland, Ore.): No. 12 Northern Iowa vs. No. 5 Purdue (-8)
(approx.) 2:50 p.m. – South Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 16 Radford vs. No. 1 North Carolina (-26)
(approx.) 2:55 p.m. – West Region (Kansas City): No. 10 Maryland vs. No. 7 California (-1)
(approx.) 3 p.m. – West Region (Philadelphia): No. 16 Tennessee-Chattanooga vs. No. 1 Connecticut (-20.5)

I don’t believe in the Big Ten. That being said, Northern Iowa is even less athletic. The game of the slot here is Cal and U-Md. If the good Greivis Vasquez shows up, the Terps should win.

(approx.) 4:55 p.m. – West Region (Portland, Ore.): No. 13 Mississippi State vs. No. 4 Washington (-5)

Ah, the Slot of Death, while CBS affiliates east of the Rockies are showing local news – though credit CBS for putting this game on CBS College Sports network. Good thing; this could be a good one.

7:10 p.m. – East Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 10 Minnesota vs. No. 7 Texas (-4)
7:10 p.m. – South Region (Kansas City): No. 10 Michigan vs. No. 7 Clemson (-5)
7:20 p.m. – East Region (Philadelphia): No. 14 American vs. No. 3 Villanova (-16.5)
(approx.) 7:25 p.m. – South Region (Portland, Ore.): No. 13 Akron vs. No. 4 Gonzaga (-12.5)

Welcome to the Big Ten Bloodbath. Honestly, I don’t see any of these games being particularly close, though at least one undoubtedly will.

(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – East Region (Greensboro, N.C.): No. 15 Binghamton vs. No. 2 Duke (-21.5)
(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – South Region (Kansas City): No. 15 Morgan State vs. No. 2 Oklahoma (-16.5)
(approx.) 9:50 p.m. – East Region (Philadelphia): No. 11 Virginia Commonwealth vs. No. 6 California-Los Angeles (-7)
(approx.) 9:55 p.m. – South Region (Portland, Ore.) No. 12 Western Kentucky vs. No. 5 Illinois (-4.5)

So U.C.L.A. has to come all the way across the country to play V.C.U.? I’m taking the points.

And now, onto Friday:

12:15 p.m. – South Region (Miami): No. 14 Stephen F. Austin vs. No. 3 Syracuse (-12)
12:25 p.m. – East Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 9 Tennessee vs. No. 8 Oklahoma State (+2)
12:30 p.m. – West Region (Boise): No. 11 Utah State vs. No. 6 Marquette (-4.5)
12:30 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 14 North Dakota State vs. No. 3 Kansas (-10)

As much as I’d love to see North Dakota State give the Jayhawks a game, I don’t see it. Everyone and their mother are picking Utah State. I am, too.

(approx.) 2:45 p.m. – South Region (Miami): No. 11 Temple vs. No. 6 Arizona State (-4.5)
(approx.) 2:55 p.m. – East Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 16 East Tennessee State vs. No. 1 Pittsburgh (-19.5)
(approx.) 3 p.m. – West Region (Boise): No. 14 Cornell vs. No. 3 Missouri (-13)
(approx.) 3 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 11 Dayton vs. No. 6 West Virginia (-8.5)

Temple can pull the upset only if Dionte Christmas goes off. I can’t wait for Sen. Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) tweets during the Mizzou game.

7:10 p.m. – Midwest Region (Miami): No. 12 Arizona vs. No. 5 Utah (pick ‘em)
7:10 p.m. – Midwest Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 16 Morehead State vs. No. 1 Louisville (-21)
7:20 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 10 Southern California vs. No. 7 Boston College (+2)
7:25 p.m. – East Region (Boise): No. 13 Portland State vs. No. 4 Xavier (-10.5)

No respect for B.C. or Utah here. Probably for good reason; those should both be tight games.

(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – Midwest Region (Miami): No. 13 Cleveland State vs. No. 4 Wake Forest (-7.5)
(approx.) 9:40 p.m. – Midwest Region (Dayton, Ohio): No. 9 Siena vs. No. 8 Ohio State (-3)
(approx.) 9:50 p.m. – Midwest Region (Minneapolis): No. 15 Robert Morris vs. No. 2 Michigan State (-16.5)
(approx.) 9:55 p.m. – East Region (Boise): No. 12 Wisconsin vs. No. 5 Florida State (-2.5)

I really like the Seminoles here giving just 2.5. Also, Ohio State would lose to Siena if the game wasn’t at UD Arena.

The Candor of Brandon Dubinsky

2009-02-22T11:15:00.001-05:00

Following yet another listless performance last night in Buffalo, the New York Rangers’ young Alaskan center, Brandon Dubinsky, managed to articulate the root causes behind his club’s recent struggles that now find the Blueshirts clinging to the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.

Following last night’s 4-2 loss to the Sabres, Dubinsky spoke to the New York Post’s Larry Brooks:

This was not even close to a 60-minute effort; hell no. We played 30 hard minutes, the first 10 and the last 20, and there isn’t any excuse for it.

We’ve got to be more accountable. We have to be more accountable to each other. It starts with each individual. I’m not excusing myself. There’s a responsibility we all have to ourselves and the organization.

There’s a reason each one of us is here. There’s a role each one of us has to fill. Whatever that role is, each player has to be his very best at it. We have to be tougher on each other; we have to make sure we hold each other accountable for getting the job done.

You know, we have a great group of guys, but maybe because we’re all such good friends, we don’t get on each other enough. Maybe we’re too willing to just go along with it and when that happens, it becomes contagious.

Your humble diarist can think of one good way to make the Rangers a little less comfortable in the clubhouse, and he’s in Hartford playing with the A.H.L.’s Wolf Pack.

Indeed, general manager Glen Sather’s decisions to cast away Sean Avery, Jaromir Jagr and Brendan Shanahan seem to have deprived the Rangers of the edge it takes to win in the N.H.L. Putting the club in the hands of Chris Drury, Scott Gomez and Markus Naslund has been an abject failure, a fact that has become clearer as the games have become more important down the stretch. When the going gets tough, the meek cower in the corner.

Bringing back Avery prior to the March 4 deadline may be too little, too late to help the Rangers stay in the playoff picture. Currently the occupants of the eighth and final spot in the Eastern Conference (and sliding fast), the Blueshirts hold a slim, three-point lead over ninth-place Carolina, with tenth-place Pittsburgh only a point behind the ‘Canes.

Avery was dismissed by the Dallas Stars—who still retain his rights—in December after only 23 games following his crude and misogynistic comments directed towards Calgary defenseman Dion Phaneuf and Avery’s ex-girlfriend, the actress Elisha Cuthbert. In order to join the Rangers, all teams with a higher waiver priority would have to pass on him. The Rangers, however, are reported to be the only team interested in claiming their erstwhile instigator.

Even if Avery’s presence isn’t enough to lift the team to the playoffs this season, it should signal an important change on Seventh Avenue: The clubhouse needs a shake-up. It shouldn’t just bother the Rangers’ players that their team is not winning. It should bother them that their teammates are not performing.

Bud Selig's Short Memory

2009-02-17T18:03:00.002-05:00

Somehow, through one embarrassing episode after another—José Canseco, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Alex Rodríguez, etc.—Bud Selig continues to defend Major League Baseball's response to rampant steroid use during his tenure. Somehow, he continues to be as delusional and out of touch as the cheating athletes he protected.

On the same day Rodríguez tried to explain away his steroid use as a case of curiosity and naïveté, Selig in an interview with Newsday’s Wally Matthews vehemently disputed that he was in any way complicit in the proliferation of steroids in his sport during the past 15 years.

“I don’t want to hear the commissioner turned a blind eye to this or he didn’t care about it,” Selig told Matthews. “That annoys the you-know-what out of me. You bet I’m sensitive to the criticism. The reason I’m so frustrated is, if you look at our whole body of work, I think we’ve come farther than anyone ever dreamed possible.”

According to Matthews, “Selig pointed to the reduction in the number of positive steroid tests among major- and minor-league players during the past three years, as well as the institution of amphetamine testing as evidence that baseball's 2005 drug policy is working.”

But the premier ballplayers listed above—and the others busted in former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell’s (D-Maine) 2007 report and elsewhere—were using performance-enhancing drugs well before 2005. Selig claims that it was just too difficult to negotiate for any kind of drug-testing policy prior to 2002 as a result of the players’ association’s obstinacy.

“Starting in 1995, I tried to institute a steroid policy,” Selig said. “Needless to say, it was met with strong resistance. We were fought by the union every step of the way.”

Selig says that, following the prolonged strike that canceled the 1994 World Series, he wanted to do everything possible to avoid another work stoppage. But that’s an awfully convenient excuse when he and his fellow owners spent the mid-to-late 1990s raking in money hand-over-fist while the likes of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa used chemicals to help them launch home run after home run and shatter the kinds of long-standing records that mean so much to the game.

The union, obviously, deserves its fair share of the blame, too. And if allegations that the union’s No. 2, Gene Orza, was tipping off players before their drug tests are true, the M.L.B.P.A. will have so blatantly crossed a clear moral line that the owners would be more than justified in demanding new leadership at the union before any negotiations regarding a new collective-bargaining agreement.

But the union is supposed to look out for the players’ financial welfare; Selig is supposed to be the game’s chief protector. As rumors of drug use began to swirl in the late 90s, Selig claims he consulted with baseball men he knew and trusted, such as Diamondbacks manager Bob Melvin (then a coach with the Milwaukee Brewers), Braves president John Schuerholz and Yankees general manager Brian Cashman to gauge the extent of the problem.

“They all told me none of them ever saw it in the clubhouses and that their players never spoke about it,” Selig said. “[Padres C.E.O.] Sandy Alderson, as good a baseball man as you’ll find, was convinced it was the bat. Others were convinced it was the ball. So a lot of people didn’t know.”

It’s difficult to believe that steroid use could be as rampant as we now know it was, and Selig knew nothing about it. More likely, rather than make other concessions regarding salaries or risk another work stoppage, the owners chose willful blindness over their responsibilities to the game.

This isn’t a “what about the kids?” argument. Your humble diarist will save that for those who have a right to their moral indignation. This is about The Steroid Era, its players, its teams and its records. This is about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens possibly going to jail for lying to a federal grand jury and a House committee, respectively. It is about Miguel Tejada pleading guilty to lying to congressional investigators. It is about each domino falling until an entire decade of a game so steeped in history and its records is nothing but a ten-year black mark.

Both the owners and players, under great public pressure, have done a commendable job in implementing as tough a testing regime as there is in professional sports over the past four years. But just because only eight major leaguers have tested positive for steroids since 2005 doesn’t mean either side gets a pass for the ten years that preceded that period. We’re talking about an entire era forever tainted with the stain of performance-enhancing drugs because Selig and the owners were either unwilling or unable to take a stand. It represents a complete and total failure of leadership over a ten-year period that will be remembered as long as the national pastime survives.

It was unadulterated greed on the part of the players and their union—who fought any effort to regulate drug use—that led to this. But it was also the greed of Selig and the owners he represents, who refused to draw a line in the sand in the face of all the ill-gotten profits that streamed in with the same frequency that baseballs artificially jumped out of stadiums across the game.

Selig can point to the good work he has done over the past four years to rid the game of steroids. But that doesn’t erase what happened before, particularly as we learn more and more about it with each passing day. Those stories and that era will be his true legacy.

A-Rod’s Non-Admission Admission

2009-02-09T22:20:00.004-05:00

“You know, one thing I’m learning as I get older, and hopefully a little wiser, is that honesty, the truth will set you free.” – Alex Rodríguez, Feb. 9, 2009.

Alex Rodríguez is guilty of being stupid and naïve, he told ESPN’s Peter Gammons today.

He says he doesn’t know what, exactly, he put in his body that triggered a positive test for testosterone and the steroid Primobolan. He says he doesn’t know who gave it to him. He says he didn’t even know he failed a steroid test until Sports Illustrated’s Selena Roberts—more on her below—told him about it on Thursday.

Rodríguez said he discontinued his steroid use after suffering a severe neck injury in Spring Training in 2003, but he reportedly failed the test during the 2003 season. It was after that season that Major League Baseball began drug testing players with disciplinary ramifications.

At least Rodríguez copped to it, which is more than one can say about Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. He could have denied the report, or he could have said that whatever triggered the positive test he took unwittingly. He took responsibility. Just not for everything.

He says he knew what he was taking was illegal—though he wouldn’t use that word, citing the “culture” in baseball at the time—but he doesn’t know what it was. That’s pretty difficult to believe.

But last offseason, Rodríguez sat down with Katie Couric on “60 Minutes.” Couric asked him a direct question: Had he ever used steroids, human-growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing drug? Rodríguez answered unequivocally: “No.”

Gammons asked him today: “You were asked if you ever used steroids, human growth hormones or other performance-enhancing substances. You said no, flat-out no. In your mind, that wasn’t a lie?”

Rodríguez’s answer revealed just how detached from reality he remains: “At the time, Peter, I wasn’t even being truthful with myself. How am I going to be truthful with Katie or CBS? Today, I’m here to tell the truth, and I feel good about that. I think my fans deserve that. I’m ready to put everything behind me and go play baseball. You know, we have a great team this year. I couldn’t be more excited about the guys that we've brought in, Mark Teixeira, A. J. Burnett and CC Sabathia. It’s an important time in my life to turn the page and focus on what’s next.”

He also, bizarrely, accused Roberts of harassing him and his family, a charge Roberts, in a statement, called “absurd.” Rodríguez said, “I mean, what makes me upset is that Sports Illustrated pays this lady, Selena Roberts, to stalk me. This lady has been thrown out of my apartment in New York City. This lady has five days ago just been thrown out of the University of Miami police for trespassing. And four days ago she tried to break into my house where my girls are up there sleeping, and got cited by the Miami Beach police. I have the paper here. This lady is coming out with all these allegations, all these lies because she's writing an article for Sports Illustrated and she's coming out with a book in May.”

SI and Roberts responded quickly. Roberts, in a statement, said, “The allegations made by Alex Rodríguez are absurd. I’ve never set foot in the lobby of Alex’s New York apartment building, never spoken to the University of Miami police, and never set foot on his home property or been cited by the Miami Police for doing so.”

Forgive your humble diarist if he believes a respected former New York Times sports columnist over Rodríguez, who has every reason to lie, and everything to hide. After all, he has been hiding and lying about his steroid use from the public for at least eight years.

To be sure, Rodríguez’s admission today is a start. It’s better than most of the more narcissistic players have done. But, beyond the surface, a lot of what Rodríguez said today rings hollow.

Santana Is the Man of the Hour

2008-09-27T23:59:00.001-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – Johan Santana is a prideful man. After throwing a career-high 125 pitches Tuesday against the Cubs, he volunteered to pitch on three days’ rest for only the second time in his career today against the Marlins. With the Mets down a game to Milwaukee in the National League Wild Card, manager Jerry Manuel relented.

Next to the Mets’ lineup in the clubhouse today here at Shea Stadium was a handwritten message reading, “It’s time to be a MAN.” The signature read simply, “Johan.”

Santana then took the mound and improbably threw a three-hit shutout that required 117 pitches to complete, pacing the Mets to a 2-0 victory over the Florida Marlins before slightly less than the announced crowd of 54,920 that, combined with a Milwaukee loss to the Cubs, brought the Amazins back into the first-place tie heading to the last game of the season.

“Wow, wow, wow, wow,” Manuel told the New York Times. “I think if I had to describe that one, I’d say that was gangsta. That’s gangsta. That’s serious gangsta right there.”

If this scenario sounds familiar, well, it is. Last year, the Mets went into the last series of the season tied with Philadelphia in the N.L. East. After Friday, the Mets found themselves a game behind. That Saturday, John Maine pitched a gem, taking a no-hitter into the eighth inning against these same Marlins. Later in the afternoon, the Phillies lost to tie the race yet again. On Sunday … well, you know how that turned out.

The Mets hope that Oliver Pérez isn’t Tom Glavine, even if he has a 6.26 earned-run average this month and he is pitching on three days’ rest for only the second time in his career.

“I hope that our offense takes the game,” Manuel told the Daily News.

In five starts this year against the Marlins, Pérez is 3-0 with a 2.03 E.R.A. Hotheaded southpaw Scott Olsen takes the mound for Florida. In Milwaukee, CC Sabathia will make his third consecutive start on three days’ rest against Carlos Zambrano for the Cubs, though Cubs manager Lou Piniella has suggested that he will only use Zambrano for a couple of innings.

Today’s game, however, gave Mets fans reason to believe. Santana commanded the crowd, and the Marlins, on a cool, misty day in the penultimate regular-season game at Shea Stadium. Knowing the Mets’ bullpen troubles, it seemed like the crowd tried to coax Santana through the entire game. How many times will the crowd stand for a pitcher’s at bat in the eighth inning with no one on base?

“There’s no tomorrow, there’s no tomorrow,” Santana told the Times. “The situation that we were in, there’s no tomorrow. To me, I don’t think about tomorrow. I’ve got to do it today. That’s the way you take care of business.”

There would have been no tomorrow at Shea had the Mets lost and the Brewers won. Since the opposite occurred, there will be a tomorrow here at this old, utilitarian stadium filled with so much promise, but laden with the specter of last year’s final game, which undoubtedly weighs so heavily on everyone’s mind. There will be no cheer louder at Shea than if Pérez can successfully navigate a scoreless first inning.

If the Mets win tomorrow, and the Brewers lose, the Mets will capture the Wild Card and face the Cubs on Wednesday evening at Wrigley Field. Should the opposite occur, the Brewers will head to Philadelphia for their Division Series on Wednesday. If both teams win or lose, there will be yet another game here Monday night between New York and Milwaukee to decide the Wild Card.

But for today, the Mets are back even, thanks to their star pitcher, who was, without question, a man today.

Johan Santana's Big Moment

2008-09-23T16:53:00.003-04:00

Tonight was made for Johan Santana. Surely, Omar Minaya hoped the Mets would coast to their second division title in three years, well positioned for a run to the World Series. But, in the back of his mind, Minaya had to be thinking: if only I had Santana taking the ball every fifth day last season.

Perhaps then, the Mets would not have squandered a seven-game N.L. East lead with 17 games remaining. Perhaps then, the Mets would not be suffering from yet another team-wide malaise that threatens to end their season before October once again.

As Wally Matthews put it this morning in Newsday, “If last year was the Collapse, this year is the Relapse.”

Like last season, the new version of the Mets’ late-season woes began with a shoddy, makeshift bullpen. From there, the poison ‘pen spread like a malignant tumor, until it has so damaged the psyche of the team that the starting pitching collapsed under the weight of having to carry the team, the offense did the same, and the defense crumbled.

Rookie starter Jonathan Niese failed to finish the fourth inning last night in a 9-5 Mets loss, getting the hook after surrendering a grand slam to Cubs starting pitcher Jason Marquis. Step one. The Mets now sit two-and-a-half games behind Philadelphia in the division, and more disconcertingly, only a game ahead of Milwaukee for the N.L. Wild Card.

Niese was tentatively scheduled to start the penultimate game of the season on Saturday, but, according to the (White Plains, N.Y.) Journal News’ Josh Thomson, the name “Staffinator” is currently listed as Saturday’s probable starter, likely a humorous way of saying “All hands on deck.”

Rather than the blind public optimism displayed last year by Willie Randolph—who could forget “The Champagne’s going to taste sweet?”—interim manager Jerry Manuel has embraced this role.

“That’s part of who we are. When you sign on with the Mets, you sign on with what happened last year, regardless,” Manuel told the New York Daily News. “As a manager of the team, my job is to separate that and to focus on what's going on this season. … But we have to exorcise those demons at some point, there’s no question about that. Some big ones, too.”

The schedule does not work in the Mets’ favor. Milwaukee opens a three-game series with Pittsburgh tonight at home, and while the Brewers have dropped 15 of their last 20 games, they have dominated the Pirates this season, going 10-1 against them. The Cubs leave Queens on Thursday and head to face the Brewers, but Lou Piniella is likely to take his foot off the pedal just a bit in those games to prepare for the playoffs.

After facing Sean Marshall tonight, the Mets will face Carlos Zambrano and Rich Harden for the Cubs. On Friday, weather-permitting, they welcome in the Marlins—who will likely be eliminated from contention by then—for the last series of the season. How did that work out last year?

“We have six games left, and I feel somewhat like a broken record, but everything we want to accomplish is right out there for the grabbing and right out there in front of us,” third baseman David Wright told the Daily News. “We have a week left, six games, and we’re in the driver’s seat.

“We knew it was going to be a tough road, but we need to play well for six games. Last year is over with, done with. It was a failed opportunity, but this year we have a golden opportunity.”

The Mets are counting on Santana being their stopper tonight. Since the All-Star Break, he is 6-0 with a 2.38 earned-run average. A win tonight puts the pressure back on the Brewers, who have been floundering worse than the Mets this season. A loss tells Milwaukee that despite their poor play, which resulted last week in the shocking firing of manager Ned Yost, the door is wide-open.

“As an organization you may think, here we go, blah, blah, blah, we’re going down this road again,” Manuel said. “But there has to be something good at the end of that road. If we keep pressing and pressing, something good’s going to happen.”

It helps to have a pitcher like Santana.

Hanging on for Dear Life

2008-09-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

For Team Tightrope, every game is an adventure, a crucible for the players, coaches and fans. Sometimes, they fall off, like Sunday, when they squandered a 4-2 lead in the ninth inning and—splat—hit the ground with a thud. But, occasionally, they manage to hold on, clinging for dear life as their bullpen threatens to unravel completely.

Such was the case tonight here before 25,019 fans at Nationals Park, as the Mets escaped with a 9-7 victory over the lowly Nationals, postponing—at least for one night—the Mets’ most recent late-season swoon. Carlos Beltrán slugged two home runs as New York’s offense continued to add onto their lead while the bullpen did its best to give it right back.

The Mets took an 8-2 lead into the bottom of the sixth inning, but a combination of Ricardo Rincón, Brian Stokes, Aaron Heilman, Joe Smith and Pedro Feliciano conspired to surrender five runs and jeopardize what should have been an easy victory. Luis Ayala was summoned from the bullpen to record the final out with the tying run at the plate, which he did, striking out Roger Bernadina to end the game. Mets manager Jerry Manuel tied a franchise record in calling upon eight different pitchers in the game.

“No, I’m not enjoying this, shoot,” Manuel told the New York Times after the game about having to call upon so many relievers. “Walking out there every three minutes, nobody wants to come see me. Shoot, they come to see the guys play. No, this is not the way we drew it up. But we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do to win. We’ll laugh about it hopefully in November at some time.”

The Mets have a ways to go there, trailing Philadelphia by a half-game in the N.L. East and leading Milwaukee by the same thin margin for the Wild Card.

Their bullpen woes, like last season’s historic collapse, are starting to take their toll on the rest of the team.

“It’s frustrating sometimes because you score some and you think, ‘Now we got them,’” Beltrán confessed to the New York Daily News. “I know they’re trying, but it’s hard to believe what’s happening.”

That mental state is something we’ve seen before from this club, and for many, it will seem all too familiar. Still, the Mets are in the driver’s seat over the final 11 games of the season, starting tonight when they will try to salvage a series split with Washington behind their ace, Johan Santana.

Manuel, when asked what he was hoping for tonight from Santana, quipped, “Hopefully nine innings, 170 pitches.”

Editor's Note

2008-09-04T17:27:00.004-04:00

Another N.F.L. season is upon us. A lot has changed since we last saw professional football: Brett Favre is a Jet, Joe Gibbs is back with his grandbabies (and NASCAR team) and Chad Johnson isn’t Chad Johnson anymore. Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Giants did actually win the Super Bowl seven months ago.

One other thing has change: my picks will no longer appear in this space. They are moving to the new Tee’s Weekly Blog. Last season, I abandoned the picks feature right before my Mets folded like a cheap suit. But I’m picking it back up again. In 2006, I went 128-121-6, and I’m hoping to improve on that performance.

You may know some of my work on Tee’s Weekly already, and in conjunction with the launch of the new blog, Tee and I will be picking the entire season there against the spread. So don’t forget to visit, and enjoy the football.

As August Ends, the Mets Find Themselves in a Familiar Position

2008-08-31T21:38:00.002-04:00

It is the end of August, and the start of September is upon us, and once again the New York Mets are in first place. At this point last season, they led Philadelphia by just two games. This season, it is even closer; just one game separates the two teams. The parallels are as unavoidable this week as the Bush administration’s response to Katrina and Gustav.

Last season, the Phillies faltered early last September, allowing the Mets to open up a seven-game lead with 17 games left in the season. The Mets, though, imploded, squandering that entire lead before the nadir on the season’s final day, when Tom Glavine allowed seven runs while recording just one out, and the Phillies took the National League East flag by just a game.

Both the Mets and Phillies won today, the Mets finished August 18-11, the Phillies at 16-13. They have only three games remaining with one another—this Friday through Sunday at Shea Stadium.

Pedro Martínez went six grinding innings for the win for the Mets today, but he knows the month ahead will be even tougher if they want to avoid befalling the same fate as last year.

“Until I see that last day when we’ve won the division, I’m not going to be relaxed,” Martínez told the Associated Press. “Hopefully things can be different. I don’t think this team is giving you any hints of showing what happened last year. It’s a different group.”

José Reyes bears a great deal of responsibility for what happened last year, and he hopes to make up for it this September.

“We cannot worry about what happened last year, because this is a new year for us,” Reyes told the A.P. “We’re playing good baseball right now. Hopefully we can continue that.”

In the short term, they will have their hands full with tough opponents, however. Before they return home to face the Phillies, they head to Milwaukee to face the streaking Brewers, winners of eight of their last nine games. The Mets do luck out because they will not have to face CC Sabathia, who is 9-0 with the Brew Crew since being dealt from Cleveland; he threw a one-hitter today that the Brewers are challenging, appealing that the official scoring of the only hit—a slow roller to the third-base side of the mound—should be changed to an error on Sabathia.

The schedule will get easier after Philly, as the Mets’ only remaining road games after Milwaukee are here in Washington and in Atlanta. Philadelphia has the same teams left on the schedule: all four division rivals and four games with Milwaukee at home.

It seems, with just one game separating the two teams, neither team has the clear advantage. Philadelphia has a great bullpen, but the rest of their team has been only mediocre. The Mets are hitting and getting great starting pitching, but they have been let down by their bullpen time and again all season.

The true X-factor is the lingering impact of last year’s collapse on the Mets. Will they be driven by it, or will it consume and overwhelm them as the days in September dwindle and that crisp autumn chill fills the air? Mets interim manager Jerry Manuel thinks it will be the former.

“It has been a motivating factor the entire year.”

Live Blog: Men’s Basketball Gold-Medal Game

2008-08-24T04:40:00.004-04:00

Greetings from my Capitol Hill couch, where I have been taking intermittent naps all evening in order to stay up for the men’s basketball final between the United States and Spain, shown live coast-to-coast by NBC (the only event to be shown live across the country during this entire Olympics). Tip off is at 2:30 a.m. Eastern.

2:23 a.m. – Jim Lampley, who has been working the daytime (overnight in Beijing) shift during this fortnight, but he seems to be in studio tonight instead of Mary Carillo. Maybe he just punched her in the face until she deferred to him.

2:24 a.m. – Wukesong. Hehe.

2:26 a.m. – The first appearance of the old “N.B.A. on NBC” music. John Tesh walks to the bank to cash his royalty check.

2:30 a.m. – Craig Sager is holding up the “LeBron James Gold-Medal Shoe.” LeBron is holding up the “Craig Sager Gold-Medal Sportsjacket,” which is made out of actual melted gold medals.

2:31 a.m. – LeBron then puts down the jacket to nail a three to start the game. Pau Gasol answers with a three-point play.

2:35 a.m. – LeBron picks up two fouls in the first two-and-a-half minutes. No word on whether he has a special “LeBron James Two-Quick-Fouls Shoe.”

2:38 a.m. – And a second foul for Kobe. Uh oh.

2:39 a.m. – Spain leads by four. Largest American deficit of the Olympics.

2:41 a.m. – Spain goes up by five, but Chris Paul responds in two seconds with an acrobatic layup through three defenders, and he adds a free throw.

2:44 a.m. – Chris Fucking Paul. Doug Collins says that Spain, while ahead, is “getting seduced to play a [fast-paced] game they can’t win.”

2:47 a.m. – The U.S. is starting to press, and they now have a four-point lead.

2:51 a.m. – Breen and Collins are complaining about the officiating. Breen: “The official from Finland warns Mike Krzyzewski.” I always wanted to hear that sentence.

2:53 a.m. – End of first quarter: U.S. leads 38-31 in a high-scoring affair. And, as I always say, if you’re going to have an affair, it might as well be high-scoring.

2:56 a.m. – Kobe hits a three to make it a ten-point lead. I may be going to bed at halftime.

2:58 a.m. – The Lithuanian official is described as a “Sting-look-alike” by Breen.

3:03 a.m. – After a sloppy stretch, Coach K remembers that Chris Paul is on the team and rightly puts him on the floor.

3:08 a.m. – Dwyane Wade has 18 points in eight-and-a-half minutes. The U.S. could put up 140 tonight.

3:12 a.m. – I’m actually napping between entries. You try staying up for this.

3:13 a.m. – D-Wade and Rudy Fernández are trading daggers. U.S. leads by nine.

3:19 a.m. – Wade (21) misses at the buzzer, but the U.S. leads, 69-61 at halftime. Just close enough to stay awake for the second half.

3:22 a.m. – The halftime show features Part II of the Costas-Jacques Rogge. Did you know that Jacques Rogge is a Count in Belgium?

3:24 a.m. – Costas is tough with him. Perhaps he wouldn’t be terrible on “Meet the Press.”

3:33 a.m. – Did you know the 1972 team never accepted their silver medals after being ripped off by the officials? Doug Collins never mentioned that before.

3:34 a.m. – The second half begins with Sager quoting Coach K: “We need to play better defense without fouling.” Sager Bombs!

3:36 a.m. – Hey, Olympic officiating is inconsistent. Who knew?

3:38 a.m. – The U.S. lead is cut to four. Can we get Chris Paul in the game now?

3:41 a.m. – Back down to four again, and Coach K wants a time-out. When do we start to panic?

3:44 a.m. – Spain goes to a zone defense, still leading by four.

3:46 a.m. – The U.S. just committed about six fouls on the most recent Spanish possession. The officials called nothing.

3:50 a.m. – D-Wade’s first point of the second half. U.S. back up by eight.

3:51 a.m. – Selected DU!AN comment: “alright coach k, time to bring in Lezak.”

3:53 a.m. – ‘Melo hits a three to make the lead 11. Time to pull away.

3:55 a.m – Navarro hits a lefty runner to end the third quarter. U.S. 91, Spain 82. Still to close to go to sleep.

3:56 a.m. – Hey, the gold-medal match in water polo is just underway. Think I can stay up for that, too? How long is a water-polo match, anyway?

3:59 a.m. – Hungary leading the U.S., 6-4, at the end of the first quarter in water polo. Whatever that means. Meanwhile, here, the U.S. is “in a fight for their life,” according to Doug Collins. The lead is back down to five.

4:00 a.m. – Now the U.S. is just jacking threes, and Fernández hits a dagger to cut the lead down to two.

4:01 a.m. – There are about five Spanish fans wearing dresses and wigs. The Euro-Trash version of the Hog-etts.

4:02 a.m. – Four fouls on the U.S.’ most important player: LeBron. Coach K is leaving him in the game with 7:40 remaining.

4:03 a.m. – “Gigantic” shot by Deron Williams brings the lead back up to seven.

4:04 a.m. – Kobe helps key a 7-0 U.S. run before Fernández hits a three and brings the lead back down to six.

4:05 a.m. – And Kobe answers. “You don’t get three championship rings without understanding what pressure is all about,” says Collins. Playing with Shaq helped, I’m sure.

4:06 a.m. – Rudy Fernández blows by Dwight Howard for the dunk and the foul. 22 for Fernández; U.S. up 103-95.

4:09 a.m. – Four fouls on Dwight Howard, who is the only player on the U.S. team with the size to guard Pau Gasol. Gasol makes both free throws, and Spain has the lead down to seven with four minutes left.

4:10 a.m. – Gasol hits a mid-range jumper to cut the lead to five.

4:11 a.m. – Kobe! Bryant hits a long three and draws the contact from Fernández, who fouls out. Huge swing.

4:12 a.m. – Kobe completes the four-point play; 108-99, three minutes to go.

4:13 a.m. – But back-to-back buckets from Spain cut it down to four again. This is way too close.

4:13 a.m. – But D-Wade answers! 27 for Wade, and the lead is back up to 7 with 2:02 to play. Timeout, Spain. What a game.

4:15 a.m. – Collins: “This might be the biggest possession of the game for Spain.”

4:16 a.m. – Kobe fouls Navarro, and Júan Carlos hits one of the two, but Ricky Rubio saves the rebound for the Spaniards.

4:17 a.m. – Spain can’t score, and here come the fouls.

4:18 a.m. – Two clutch free-throws for CP3, and this one could be over.

4:19 a.m. – Even with the fouls, David Stern—who is in attendance in Beijing—should take notice of how much more enjoyable the game is without a million time-outs being called at the end.

4:21 a.m. – With a ten-point lead with less than 30 seconds remaining, it looks like redemption for the “Redeem Team.” And a Gatorade bath for Coach K, who, surprisingly, does not suddenly faint or begin melting.

4:23 a.m. – LeBron is exhorting the crowd in Beijing in a chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

4:24 a.m. – Time runs out, and each of the players goes to shake hands with Breen and Collins. Hmmm.

4:30 a.m. – Did Kobe just say “Let that Mamba loose?”

4:33 a.m. – As much as I’d love to stay up for the medal ceremony, I can’t sit through the Michael Phelps retrospective right now.

Anyway, it wasn’t the greatest defensive performance in the world, but seeing these N.B.A. stars celebrate like schoolboys for their country makes it all worthwhile. Even though it’s after 4:30 a.m., and I’m still awake.

And, no, I’m not staying up for water polo.

The Yankees Are in an Unfamiliar Position

2008-08-22T23:59:00.002-04:00

BALTIMORE – Their explosion against an inexperienced and impotent Orioles bullpen tonight notwithstanding, the roller-coaster that is the 2008 New York Yankees’ season appears likely to end with the high-priced club failing to qualify for the postseason for the first time since 1993.

The Yankees, one night after getting drubbed in Toronto, 13-4, trailed Baltimore 4-3 going to the eighth before scoring two in the frame, and then adding another four more in the ninth to blow the game open. Bobby Abreu went five-for-five (all singles), and the Yankees twice hit back-to-back home runs: in the fifth (Robinson Canó, whose homer traveled 425 feet before careening off the awning of Boog’s Barbecue on Eutaw Street, and José Molina) and in the ninth (Cody Ransom, who is now two-for-two with two home runs since being called up from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, and Xavier Nady).

New York prevailed, 9-4, with Mariano Rivera earned a four-out save. Mike Mussina allowed four runs over six innings for a no-decision. It was the Yankees’ first win in the opening game of a series in their last eight tries.

“It’s huge,” manager Joe Girardi told the New York Post. “It’s the one thing we haven’t been able to do. To get this win is huge.”

The Yanks still remain 10-and-a-half games behind Tampa Bay in the American League East, and 6 behind Boston (and 5-and-a-half behind Chicago) for the A.L. Wild Card. Boston comes to Yankee Stadium next week (and announced recently that they will do so without an ailing Josh Beckett).

With 34 games left to play, the Yankees are in the most precarious of situations. Losing two out of three in Toronto this week was a step in the wrong direction. And being this far behind means that the Yankees cannot afford more missteps if they hope to avoid closing down Yankee Stadium for good in September rather than October.

“We need to win a lot of games, more than just the first one [of a series],” Derek Jeter, who recorded his 2,500th hit in the first inning tonight, told the New York Daily News. “It means nothing unless we come out and play well tomorrow. We need wins, whether it’s the beginning, middle or end of the series.”

Those wins haven’t been coming lately; the Yankees have a losing record in August thus far. But, in order to overcome this deficit, they have to play a lot better than .500 baseball, starting immediately.

For proof of how desperate the Yankees are at this point of the season: their starting pitcher here tomorrow night? Carl Pavano.

A Sweep Leaves the Mets atop the N.L. East

2008-08-14T23:59:00.001-04:00

The most tantalizing thing about the 2008 New York Mets—particularly since the removal of Willie Randolph—has been their remarkable propensity to play up or down to the level of their given opponent. Coming into this week’s series here in Washington, the Mets had a losing record against teams with losing records.

They took care of business in the nation’s capital, however, completing a three-game sweep of the woeful Nationals—owners of baseball’s worst record, 44-78—at Nationals Park tonight before 31,058 fans, many of whom came dressed in blue and orange (and, regrettably, black) to root on the road team. The Mets outscored the Nats, 25-6, over the course of the series.

Thanks to a four-game sweep by the Dodgers over Philadelphia out on the West Coast, the Mets now hold a one-game lead in the National League East.

Oliver Pérez took the mound for the Mets tonight, and, for six innings, he was unhittable. The Nats tagged him for three runs in the seventh—pinch-hitter Pete Orr drilled a two-run triple, then scored on a bunt single by Emilio Bonifacio—to creep back to 5-3, but the Mets tacked on four insurance runs in the ninth to pace a 9-3 victory. It was the Nats’ seventh consecutive defeat, and, on nights like these, their chances of victory seem worse than Teddy Roosevelt’s likeness in the presidents race conducted between innings.

Since last season’s collapse, when Washington and Florida decimated the Mets’ playoff hopes during the season’s final week, the Amazins have struggled against mediocre teams. The Mets are 16-9 against Philadelphia and Florida this season—second- and third-place, respectively—but only 10-11 against Atlanta and the last-place Nats. Pérez is a case in point: the Mexican southpaw is 4-0 with a 1.23 earned-run-average against Philadelphia and Florida this season.

“At this time of the year, every win is huge—no matter who [sic] you play,” Mets manager Jerry Manuel said after the game tonight. “Washington is looking to knock you off. They’re looking to make a mark for themselves.”

The Mets will need to duplicate that approach this weekend; they head to Pittsburgh now for a four-game set before hosting Atlanta next week at Shea.

“That’s been our weakness this year,” Mets center-fielder Carlos Beltrán said. “We’ve not been able to take advantage of teams under .500. Coming in here, we know that every time we come here, the Washington Nationals always find a way to play good baseball against us. This time, we really approached them the same way we approached the Phillies and the teams in contention.”

The Mets are still a flawed team, though the return of Billy Wagner next week will shore up their biggest weakness: the bullpen. If Ryan Church can come back from post-concussion syndrome, it will add a power bat in right field, despite the contributions of Daniel Murphy, who has been a revelation over the past two weeks.

If they can play as they did in this series, and as they have against the better teams, the Mets can emerge as the frontrunners in the National League East and avenge last year’s disastrous finish.

The Mets’ Bullpen Continues to Offer Little Relief

2008-08-12T11:44:00.005-04:00

When we last left the New York Mets, it was shortly before the July 31st trading deadline, the Mets held a precarious half-game lead in the National League East, and general manager Omar Minaya was examining his club’s most pressing needs.

Your humble diarist urged him to explore opportunities to improve the bullpen. He failed to do so, and the Mets’ bullpen has lost three of the team’s ten games since.

Yesterday’s 7-5 loss to Pittsburgh at Shea Stadium was the nadir, as four members of the Amazins’ patchwork bullpen—necessitated by Billy Wagner’s appearance on the disabled list with a strained left forearm—faltered over the final three innings, allowing the Pirates to score six unanswered runs. The Mets remained two games behind Philadelphia in the National League East.

The biggest obstacle in making up that deficit has unquestionably been the atrocious bullpen. In August, the bullpen has surrendered 23 earned runs in 28 innings, equivalent to a 7.39 earned-run average. Interim closer Aaron Heilman has been demoted; he has allowed six earned runs in four-and-a-third innings this month. He has been, by far, the worst of the bunch, and it was he who blew a one-run lead in the ninth inning yesterday afternoon.

The trouble is that manager Jerry Manuel doesn’t have a lot of options. “Everything from here on out is a possibility,” Manuel said after yesterday’s debacle, but what that actually means is unclear.

With Heilman no longer closing games, and Wagner a week away from returning, it is expected that recent call-up Eddie Kunz will be asked to close. Kunz was promoted from Double-A Binghamton on Aug. 4 and has appeared in only three games, all Mets losses, allowing one earned run over two-and-a-third innings. He went 1-4 in Binghamton this season, with a 2.79 E.R.A. and 27 saves.

“I don’t want to put him there in that situation,” Manuel said, referring to the closer’s role, “but he’s got to be considered.”

The Mets could use Brian Stokes, who was called up from Triple-A New Orleans as a spot-starter on Saturday night against Florida, in the bullpen. His bullpen history, however, does not inspire confidence. Last season, as a reliever for Tampa Bay, he went 2-7, with a 7.07 E.R.A. His W.H.I.P. was 1.84, and hitters batted an astounding .403 against him.

A third, more radical option would be to move a starter to the bullpen and call up Jonathon Niese or allow Stokes to remain in that spot in the rotation. Oliver Pérez or John Maine could be moved to the bullpen, but Pérez is 2-2 with a 1.77 E.R.A. since July 1, and Maine will make his first start tomorrow night here in Washington since July 28 after a short stint on the D.L. Messing with his arm by using him out of the bullpen could backfire, leading to ineffectiveness or further injury.

Over the course of the season, the Mets have outscored their opponents by 98 runs over the first three innings of each game. During the next three innings, however, that differential slips to +2. From the seventh inning on, however, the Mets have been outscored by their opponents by a staggering 51 runs.

“We can’t continue to perform this way late in the game,” Manuel said. “We’ve got to do better than that. I’ll just have to make some adjustments.”

The options for Manuel and the Mets, however, are few and far between. If Wagner returns healthy next week, that will help stabilize the ninth inning, but the seventh and eighth will remain in flux. Manuel will likely continue to ride the hot-hand; currently, that is Duaner Sánchez, and, to a lesser extent, Pedro Feliciano. Moving Maine or Pérez to the bullpen at this point in the season, barring a scheduled turn through the rotation that requires only four starters, would be a foolhardy overreaction.

This is largely the same bullpen that helped the Mets squander a seven-game lead over the last two-and-a-half weeks of the 2007 season. Other than relying on the return of Sánchez, Omar Minaya did little to improve this glaring weakness, even during the course of the season. (In all fairness, Wagner was injured on Aug. 2, two days after the trade deadline.)

The Mets’ next 14 games are against clubs with losing records, but the Mets are only 30-33 against teams under the .500 mark. They begin a three-game set tonight against the woeful Nationals at Nationals Park. Failure to reverse some of these disturbing trends will almost assuredly lead to the same kind of disappointment the Mets suffered last season.

At the Trade Deadline, Assessing the Mets’ Myriad Needs

2008-07-29T16:37:00.004-04:00

With only 48 hours remaining before baseball’s non-waiver trade deadline, and the Mets holding a precarious, half-game lead in the National League East, general manager Omar Minaya is examining the club’s most pressing needs and looking for potential answers to them among the players on the trading block.

Following last night’s bullpen implosion—leading to a 7-3 loss to Florida that moved the third-place Marlins to only a game behind New York—Minaya would be well-served to address his team’s relief woes first and foremost. According to ESPN.com’s Buster Olney, the bullpen is indeed Minaya’s top priority.

Statistically, the Mets’ bullpen is around the league average. Their earned-run average is 3.99 (N.L. average: 3.96), they have allowed 1.33 walks and hits per innings pitched (1.38), and their on-base-plus-slugging allowed is .708 (.728).

Billy Wagner (0-1, 2.00, 26/32 saves) has been their best reliever, but he has been experiencing shoulder pain recently. He was unavailable last Tuesday when the Mets blew a three-run lead in the ninth inning against Philadelphia.

Mets manager Jerry Manuel anointed Duaner Sánchez (5-1, 3.97) his set-up man about a month ago, but Sánchez has struggled recently, allowing 20 baserunners (hits and walks) in 10.2 innings this month.

Scott Schoeneweis (1-2, 3.02) has also been effective, but he had a nine-inning scoreless streak broken last night, allowing three runs in the pivotal eighth inning.

Joe Smith (1-3, 3.56)? He has allowed four earned runs in his last two-and-two-thirds innings pitched. Pedro Feliciano (2-2, 4.10)? He has a 12.60 E.R.A. in July.

Aaron Heilman (1-4, 4.76) has fallen into some bad luck this month, posting a 5.02 E.R.A., but also striking out 17 batters in 14.1 innings. Ironically, Heilman may be the best major-league trade bait the Mets have, as a few teams still regard him as a potential starter, something the Mets do not. The Mets may look to move Heilman, and possibly Schoeneweis, for an outfielder, while making other deals to overhaul their bullpen, according to the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger’s Dan Graziano.

Some of the names suggested for this overhaul include: Oakland righty closer Huston Street (2-3, 4.00, 18/23 saves), Seattle lefty Arthur Rhodes (2-0, 2.53), San Francisco southpaw Jack Taschner (2-1, 2.95), and Texas lefty “Everyday” Eddie Guardado (1-2, 3.49). Guardado has been unlucky; his W.H.I.P. is only 0.98.

Minaya’s second priority is the outfield, though that will be affected by the availability of Ryan Church. Church suffered a concussion in Atlanta on May 20, and since that time, he has been shut down and re-activated twice as a result of post-concussion syndrome. The Mets have been taking it very slow with Church; he last played on July 5. Church is expected to make a few rehab starts in Port St. Lucie, Fla., over the weekend, but it’s difficult to guess how his body might react to that kind of activity.

The Mets’ outfield today consists of Carlos Beltrán (.266/.364/.460) in center, Endy Chávez (.272/.315/.329) in right, and Fernando Tatis (.322, .373, .533) in left. Tatis has been a godsend, but he has already played more games this season—55—than in any season since 2002, when he batted .228 for Montréal. His defense is suspect, too; prior to this season, he had played a total of 30 innings in the outfield in the majors.

If the Mets knew they could count on Church to be healthy and productive in right field, perhaps a platoon of Tatis and Chávez in left—particularly using Endy for late-inning defense—could suffice. But if Church is limited or unable to play, the Mets may not be able to squeeze enough production out of their existing corner outfielders.

The big names are out there: Matt Holliday, Jason Bay, and the troubled Manny Ramírez. Whether the Mets have or want to part with the requisite prospects to acquire one of these players is unclear, but Church’s availability will certainly impact Minaya’s thinking. A more realistic possibility might be Seattle’s Raúl Ibáñez, who could be shopped in a package-deal with teammate Arthur Rhodes.

As for Ramírez, if Boston is really desperate to unload him, the Mets may be able to acquire him for the rest of the season while surrendering little talent in return. Perhaps a trade away from Boston and to his hometown of New York would—at least in the short-term—placate the enigmatic slugger.

The starting rotation also may be a concern for Minaya. John Maine left last night’s start with shoulder soreness in his throwing arm, and he is scheduled for an M.R.I. today. Pedro Martínez is scheduled to make his first start since July 12 on Friday, and even when healthy, he hasn’t been very effective this year.

There are certainly a lot of questions on this Mets roster—bullpen, outfield, and rotation—and Minaya will be charged with answering them over the next 48 hours. If Church and Maine are going to be available, he should make the bullpen his top priority. If not, the Mets will have to decide to what extent they want to make a run this year or hold back and protect the long-term health of the franchise.

A Late-July Showdown in the National League East

2008-07-22T14:26:00.001-04:00

First-place in the National League’s East Division is on the line tonight at Shea Stadium, with the surging New York Mets, a little more than one month removed from replacing Willie Randolph as manager, and the brash Philadelphia Phillies, who, after leading the division all year, now find themselves dead-even with their streaking rivals.

Last season, of course, ended with the Phillies overtaking the Mets on the season’s final day after the Mets squandered a seven-game lead over their last 17 games. Thus far this season, it was the Phillies who opened up a significant lead over the Mets, and the Amazins who have engineered a charge, going 19-12 since firing Randolph and installing Jerry Manuel as interim manager.

The Phils and Mets will meet for three games: tonight’s contest will feature newly-acquired Joe Blanton (5-12, 4.96 earned-run average in the American League for Oakland) against Mets ace Johan Santana (8-7, 3.10); tomorrow night pits the recently-recalled Brett Myers (3-9, 5.84) against the struggling John Maine for New York (8-7, 4.22); and a noon start on Thursday means the aged Jaime Moyer (9-6, 3.90) will be able to make the early-bird dinner after facing the Mets’ Oliver Pérez (6-6, 4.36), who has surrendered nary a run to Philadelphia in 18 1/3 innings this season.

The Florida Marlins, incidentally, sit only one game behind the co-leaders, setting up a riveting, three-team pennant race over the 2008 campaign’s final two months.

The rivalry between the Mets and Phillies has definitely reached critical mass over the past three years, even though they have been separated by just 90 miles or so for the past 46 years. There were Jimmy Rollins’ comments last spring about the Phils being “the team to beat,” The Collapse, Carlos Beltrán’s retort this spring about how the Santana trade made the Mets “the team to beat,” and now this race.

This upcoming series has stoked the fire even more, with Myers telling the Cherry Hill (N.J.) Courier Post today that he “can’t think of a better team… to come back against. I hate them.”

Mets closer Billy Wagner—questionable for this series with a muscle spasm in his left (throwing) shoulder—urged the Shea Stadium faithful to ride the rival Phillies hard.

“I hope our fans wear them out,” he told the New York Post.

The Mets seem to have the pitching advantage, especially with Santana on the mound tonight. The southpaw is looking forward to the opportunity to contribute to the Mets’ pursuit of the divisional crown the squandered last year.

“That’s what I’m here for, these kind [sic] of games,” Santana told the New York Times. “We put ourselves in this situation, and that’s where we want to be.”

Santana will take the mound tonight in precisely that situation, a function of the Mets’ improved play over the past six weeks or so. The offense is clicking, despite missing Moises Alou and Ryan Church in the outfield. Endy Chávez, Fernando Tatis, and Damien Easley have all played important roles in filling in the gaps in the Mets’ lineup.

While Maine has struggled, Santana, Pérez, and particularly Mike Pelfrey have pitched well since the managerial change, which also included replacing pitching coach Rick Peterson with Dan Warthen. The bullpen has also improved vastly; they were 7-11 with a 4.10 earned-run average under Peterson—8-2 with a 3.23 E.R.A. since Warthen took over.

Their improved play has the Mets tied for first, with an opportunity to put some distance between them and the Phillies, starting tonight.

“This is all you can ask for, to control your own destiny,” David Wright told the Times on Sunday. “Everything we want to accomplish is right there in front of us, so we have to go out there and grab it.”

Six Straight Wins for Manuel’s Mets

2008-07-10T23:59:00.002-04:00

FLUSHING, N.Y. – On the same day the Mets learned that they had likely lost sweet-swinging, injury-riddled outfielder Moises Alou for the season, one of Alou’s unlikely replacements keyed the Amazins’ sixth consecutive win with four runs-batted-in, including a go-ahead home run.

The Mets completed a three-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants here before 48,755 on a glistening summer afternoon at Shea Stadium. Their victory today, by the score of 7-3, kept them only a game behind Philadelphia in the loss column for first-place in the National League East only a weekend before the All-Star break.

They overcame a poor start by John Maine, who lasted only four-and-two-thirds innings, allowing three runs, two hits, eight strikeouts, but also five bases-on-balls. Maine said after the game that it was “a wasted start.”

“I had nothing all game,” Maine told MLB.com.

Maine left after allowing a two-out double to Randy Winn in the fifth that tied the score at three runs a piece. The Mets bullpen threw four-and-a-third scoreless innings.

David Wright led off the seventh with the first of his doubles, and Fernando Tatis—having driven in two runs already in the third inning with a double—launched a home run into the left-field bleachers to double that total. The Mets added two insurance runs later in the inning.

“It was a good day for Fernando Tatis to have a good day,” Mets general manager Omar Minaya told the Daily News, alluding to Alou’s setback.

The Mets will get some help after the All-Star break next week when Angel Pagan and Trot Nixon are expected back from the disabled list, but neither can replace the sort of production a healthy Alou can provide. And with Ryan Church’s situation remaining uncertain—he was placed back on the D.L. earlier this week after migraine headaches forced him out of the lineup last weekend in Philadelphia—they can use all the help they can get in the outfield.

“When you lose [Alou and Church], you think of replacing them with like pieces,” Mets interim manager Jerry Manuel told the Daily News. “If you look around, you might have that piece staring you in the face.”

Tatis, who is hitting .463 this season with runners in scoring position, has even taken some pressure off Minaya to acquire a more established outfielder. “Right now we’re going to go with our guy,” Minaya said yesterday.

In winning their sixth straight, the Mets not only established a season-high, but it is their longest winning streak since 2006. They are now 48-44, the first time since April 19 (10-6) that they are four games over .500.

More importantly, the Mets seem more confident over the past few weeks.

“We’re getting that attitude back, that swagger, that confidence back that we haven’t had all year,” David Wright told reporters after the game.

The Mets are now 14-9 since firing Willie Randolph and installing Manuel as skipper. While it’s difficult to ascribe that reversal of fortune completely to the managerial change, the Mets players seem to responding to Manuel in a different way.

Billy Wagner told ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark:

I don’t want to bash Willie because I liked him. But before, it was more of The Yankee Way. It wasn’t The Mets Way. There was no facial hair. You could never have music in the clubhouse. You couldn’t have kids around. Believe it or not, some of us in here actually like kids…We’ve found out it’s pretty easy to play when you stop playing for stats and just go out and play hard and play to have fun.

In less than a month’s time, Manuel seems to have brought a different attitude to the Mets, and the team has played better, perhaps as a direct result of it. Approaching the All-Star break, the Mets are in the thick of this divisional race and playing their best baseball in two seasons.

Each day Manuel is at the helm, the Mets seem closer and closer to putting the uninspired play of the past season-and-a-half behind them.

At the Halfway Point, the Mets Are Treading Water

2008-06-30T16:51:00.002-04:00

The New York Mets are 6-6 since Jerry Manuel took over for Willie Randolph as manager two weeks ago. They were 34-35 under Randolph, but because of some woeful play by the rest of the division, Manuel’s squad sits only three games back of first-place Philadelphia on the last day of June.

Since Randolph was fired in the wee small hours of the morning of June 17, the Phillies are 2-9, the second-place Marlins are 4-7, and the Braves are 5-7 and now sit a game back of New York in fourth. With a win tonight in St. Louis, the Mets would become the only team in the division to play .500 baseball in the month of June.

Just because the Mets continue to play at the same winning percentage doesn’t mean that nothing has changed. Manuel has deviated from Randolph’s approach in a few noteworthy ways. David Wright had been the only player in either league to play every inning of every game, but, in his first game as interim manager, Manuel started Wright at designated hitter, and then benched him for an entire game last week after observing “fatigue.” He has used a stronger hand in dealing with José Reyes and Luis Castillo. Interim pitching coach Dan Warthen made a few adjustments in Oliver Peréz’s delivery that he credited to his fine pitching in a Mets win yesterday over the Yankees.

Manuel’s most difficult challenges have been related to the media. Perhaps out of loyalty to Randolph, members of the press have targeted the interim manager, making mountains out of every molehill he creates. Last weekend, when he said that the Shea Stadium fans were the “fertilizer” that helps the players blossom, the New York Post suggested that Manuel was comparing Mets fans to manure. Today, after Manuel expressed yesterday that the Mets played second-fiddle to the Yankees in New York, both tabloids mocked him and his club.

His comments:

We’re kind of like the second team… The Yankees have won 26, 27 [sic] championships. They’ve been here longer, I would think… That’s just the way it is. That’s just my opinion now. I don’t speak for everybody else. That’s my opinion. And being a baseball person all these years, from the outside, I’ve seen it that way. In Chicago, if you asked me, “What was the favorite team in New York?” I would have to say, “The Yankees.” I don’t have a problem with that. I love playing them… Shoot, use that as motivation. If you want to be first, win. Win some world championships. Don’t be first just by popularity, or who wears what jersey. Win some championships and you can claim first. I don’t have a problem with that.

They were innocuous comments that epitomized the attitude the Mets ought to have, particularly at the ownership level, but the press ran with it, splashing “We’re No. 2!” across the back-pages. On the day the Mets won this year’s incarnation of the Subway Series from their cross-town rivals, it was their manager, said the media, making them look like second-banana.

Manuel and the Mets, however, have bigger fish to fry than the Yankees and the media right now. They open up a four-game set in St. Louis tonight before traveling to the first-place Phillies over the holiday weekend for four games. It is an eight-game road-trip that has the capacity to make-or-break their season.

Even though the Mets have only played .500 ball since firing their manager, there are reasons to be encouraged other than the horrendous play of their competitors. Ryan Church returned to the lineup yesterday, and the Mets hope to get Moises Alou back for the weekend in Philly. Barring any further setbacks or other injuries, it would give the Mets their complete, Spring-Training lineup for the first time this season.

David Wright, after two-week-long slump, is hitting again, and Carlos Delgado drove in a team-record nine runs Friday afternoon at Yankee Stadium. Peréz was dominant yesterday. The Mets, believe it or not, do have reason to be optimistic about their chances in the National League East.

The next eight games will go a long way in determining whether the Mets can truly contend.

The Court’s Gun Ruling Makes D.C. Less Safe

2008-06-26T12:44:00.003-04:00

Residents of the District of Columbia—and the entire nation—became less safe today when a five-to-four majority of Supreme Court justices ruled for the first time that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.

Justice Antonin Scalia, in an expansive and characteristically-dismissive opinion, wrote that the poorly-written sentence adopted in 1791 ought to void a long-standing ban on handguns in Washington by applying an antiquated idea to modern-day society.

Of course, Scalia isn’t just a conservative; he’s also an originalist, so his interpretation was expected, and may even be the legally-sound one, even if it seems to contradict U.S. v. Miller, the 1939 case that represented the High Court’s last foray into Second Amendment issues. In that case, the Court ruled that a sawed-off shotgun was not protected because it was not a weapon commonly used in a militia, which seemingly upheld the right to keep and bear arms as a collective one, not an individual right, as the majority have done today. In Miller, however, the Court never directly addressed the meaning of the Second Amendment, and it was that opening that led to today’s decision.

Scalia goes further, however, in declaring that legislatures cannot mandate that guns be kept locked or disassembled inside the home. “The requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock,” he writes, “makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.”

This seems to strike down Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws that require adults either to store loaded guns in a place that is reasonably inaccessible to children, or if they decide to leave their guns left out in the open, to use a safety device to lock the gun, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading gun-control advocacy group. According to the Brady Campaign, the risk of homicide in the home is three times greater in households in which at least one firearm is present.

Justice Scalia, true to his public persona, turned prickly a few times during his majority opinion, using some ironic language. He declared Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote one of two dissenting opinions, “dead wrong,” at one point, and later said that the dissenters’ logic “would be rather like saying ‘He filled and kicked the bucket’ to mean ‘He filled the bucket and died.’ Grotesque.”

In a decision that is likely to lead to a higher murder rate in this city, perhaps Scalia, even if his constitutional reasoning is correct, should tone down the death metaphors. Or perhaps he’s just trying to ruffle some feathers.

Scalia does strike a concillary tone in the very last paragraph of his 64-page opinion:

We are aware of the problem of handgun violence in this country, and we take seriously the concerns raised by the many amici who believe that prohibition of handgun ownership is a solution. The Constitution leaves the District of Columbia a variety of tools for combating that problem, including some measures regulating handguns… But the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table. These include the absolute prohibition of handguns held and used for self-defense in the home. Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.

Of course, the Second Amendment is outmoded, and while it is regrettable that the Court could not find a way to balance the individual right to keep and bear arms with the safety of D.C. residents, it is not surprising.

Justice Stephen Breyer tried to do just that in his own dissent: to balance common-sense gun-control regulations against an individual right to self-defense. He does so admirably, showing that laws were enacted just after the ratification of the Bill of Rights in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to regulate the storage and usage of weapons. He also makes a persuasive argument for gun-control, but his argument is more pragmatic in nature, not constitutional.

This decision is hardly the final word on the subject, and legislatures across the land—including the D.C. City Council—will try now to find a way to draft effective gun-control legislation that complies with these new guidelines. Pray that they can because, while this ruling may be constitutionally correct, holding other factors constant, a greater prevalence of firearms can only increase gun violence.

And, to those who see today as a victory for liberty, remember that these Supreme Court justices are confirmed by the United States Senate, a legislative body in which residents of the District of Columbia have no voice or vote. Taxation—and judicial activism—without representation, indeed.

Bowden Should Bear the Blame for the Bumbling Nats

2008-06-24T23:59:00.001-04:00

In their fourth season in the nation’s capital, and in their first season in their glistening new riverfront ballpark, the Washington Nationals are the National League’s worst team, and they seem further from contending now than at any point since the team moved down from Montréal.

In an 8-3 loss to the Angels tonight before 28,531 at Nationals Park, the homestanding Nats made a whopping four errors, as they allowed six runs to score in the top-half of the first inning. They have dropped four straight games and are just 30-49 nearly halfway through the season.

Their struggles this season—on pace easily to be their worst since moving to Washington—can be traced to their history in this city.

The situation general manager Jim Bowden inherited four years ago was not an enviable one. The team at that time was owned by Major League Baseball, and the owners had disincentives in making the Nats competitive, both to save money and to provide more wins for their respective teams. The Nats were still funded better than the Marlins or Devil Rays, for example, but it is fair to say that Bowden did not have much with which to work.

During the first two seasons in R.F.K. Stadium, Bowden sought to keep the Nats from floundering in an effort to raise interest in the team. If they were at least mediocre, attendance would be respectable, and the franchise might have some value to potential owners. And since M.L.B. owned the team, it was in their best interest to keep the short-term value of the club high, with little regard for the long-term, to increase their profit margin.

Bowden, serving two masters, really, signed Vinny Castilla and Cristian Guzmán in his first offseason, surrendering two compensatory draft picks. Castilla was 37 years old at the time, and Guzmán batted .219 in his first season in D.C., before missing all of 2006 and most of 2007 with a shoulder injury.

Since the Lerner family took control of the team in July 2006, however, Bowden has been forced into rebuilding by team president Stan Kasten, late of the Atlanta Braves organization. His history, and some of the moves he has made thus far, suggest he is ill-suited for that role.

The Lerners took over and found a barren farm system, due to the tight purse-strings of M.L.B. and some of Bowden’s short-sighted trades and signings that robbed the organization of its draft picks. The Nats, however, have done little to address this issue. They have been saddled with Guzmán, but they also resigned Dmitri Young this offseason to a two-year, $10 million contract after a successful season last year, when he was a minor-league free-agent.

He signed Mets castoffs Paul Lo Duca and Johnny Estrada as catchers in the offseason, blocking Rule V selection Jesus Flores—another catcher acquired from the Mets. Flores has won the job anyway, and the Nats even experimented with Lo Duca in the outfield here tonight in an 8-3 loss to the Angels, an experiment that lasted only an inning-and-a-third, and included a throwing error, before Lo Duca left with dizziness.

[The new blog, Fire Jim Bowden, looks at Trader Jim’s transactions in far greater detail, and your humble diarist recommends it highly.]

Bowden also traded for Lastings Milledge and Elijah Dukes, two young men with a history of legal problems. So far, neither has played well this season, but both are athletic and talented. Their acquisitions, however, represent a big gamble: having two very good African-American ballplayers on the team would be good for the organization, especially in this city, if they can stay out of trouble.

The Nationals have an opportunity to build something in this city. The new ballpark is fresh and fan-friendly. But outside of Milledge and Dukes (and possibly Flores), Bowden has done a poor job assembling this roster, and the Nats would be well-served to make a change before their window of opportunity closes in Washington.

Minaya and the Mets Face a Media Backlash

2008-06-19T16:31:00.004-04:00

If the Mets’ intention in firing Willie Randolph under the cover of darkness early Tuesday morning in Southern California, 3,000 miles from home, was to minimize attention, it is safe to say that the Wilpon family and general manager Omar Minaya grossly miscalculated.

Instead, the Mets find themselves a national laughingstock. Jon Stewart and David Letterman are lampooning them. The New York tabloids have clearly taken Randolph’s side and are taking shots at the Mets at every turn. Minaya’s press conference on Tuesday afternoon from Anaheim, Calif., was dissected that evening on “Sportscenter,” as quotes involving which flight he chose to take out west the day prior were parsed.

The consensus is nearly unanimous: the Mets could not have handled this situation any worse. As discussed in this space Tuesday, firing Randolph where and when Minaya did was a classless, disrespectful, and undignified act. But no one could expect the sort of public backlash that has ensued.

Willie Randolph—from his years as a player with both the Yankees and the Mets, and his time as a coach on Joe Torre’s staff in the Bronx—has a lot of friends in the New York media, and they came out for him over the past few days. In doing so, they have colored the coverage in a way that is almost surreal, though not terribly surprising in its only-in-New-York sensationalism.

Bill Madden’s column ripping Minaya ended up on the front-page of the Daily News yesterday under the headline “Cowards in the Night.” Today’s front-page headline calls Randolph a “class act.”

The Post, as one might expect, took it to a whole other level of outrageousness. Yesterday’s covers featured a dismayed Mr. Met, and Fred Wilpon, his son Jeff, and Minaya wearing clown noses. Today’s back cover even more blatent, as it features interim manager, and Randolph’s bench coach, Jerry Manuel wielding a knife behind Randolph, with the headline “Stabbed in the Back.”

That headline stemmed from a conversation last week between Manuel and Tony Bernazard, vice president of development for the Mets, and Omar Minaya’s right-hand man. Randolph confronted Manuel just a few days before his termination about the meeting, and Manuel denied that it had anything to do with the manager position.

“He asked me, and I understood completely, what with the way things have been around here the past few weeks, and with my name out there all the time as his successor,” Manuel told the Post.

“Friends” of Randolph told the Post that he now believes that Manuel was undermining him and angling for his job as Minaya and Bernazard schemed. Not to say that it isn’t justified, but Randolph’s paranoia was a recurring problem during his three-and-a-half years at Shea.

That sort of mentality seemed to manifest itself in Randolph’s comments to Ian O’Connor of the Bergen (N.J.) Record about how he thought he was the victim of a racially-tinged double standard about his management style. Those comments probably had as much to do with Randolph’s firing as the team’s uninspired play thus far this season.

But it’s clear that, in the three days since he was given his walking papers, Willie Randolph is winning the battle of Perception, a word Omar Minaya used frequently Tuesday. The perception of his firing has been framed by the media as a dark deed that could only be done at 3 a.m. New York-time. Randolph embodies class, and the Mets organization showed none of that when they summarily dismissed him following the team’s third win in four games. The perception of Tony Bernazard “as giddy as a schoolgirl,” as Newsday reported, in the minutes after Randolph was let go lends credence to Willie’s paranoia.

In the end, as the joke goes, it’s not paranoia if they are really out to get you. Whether Randolph was the victim of a secret, Wilpon-Minaya-Bernazard-Manuel cabal is unclear. But the perception is that he got a raw deal. Fans are sending their tickets back to the team. One Long Island businessman is sending Fred Wilpon frozen chickens in the mail as a form of protest.

With this change, the Mets hoped they could turn the page from last year’s collapse and this season’s difficulties. But sometimes perception is reality, and the perception, as framed by the media, is that the Mets bungled this move and mistreated Willie Randolph. Today, in the New York media, Omar Minaya is the puppet and Jeff Wilpon the puppeteer. Tony Bernazard is Gaius Cassius, and Jerry Manuel is Marcus Brutus.

Between the acting of a dreadful thing
And the first motion, all the interim is
Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream.

Meanwhile, on the field, the Mets won for the fifth time in eight games last night.

Minaya’s Midnight Massacre Claims Randolph

2008-06-17T08:01:00.004-04:00

At each and every juncture, it was as if the Mets were trying to jerk manager Willie Randolph around—right up until the very end, when general manager Omar Minaya fired him early this morning, one game into a West-Coast road trip.

It was shortly after 3 a.m. back East (midnight in Anaheim, Calif.) when the Mets announced the shake-up—in which Randolph, pitching coach Rick Peterson, and first-base coach Tom Ñieto were dismissed—which is, undoubtedly, the way Minaya wanted it: quick and quiet, and too late to make the morning tabloids back in New York. Minaya flew to Orange County secretly as the Mets won the first game of their road-trip, a 9-6 victory over the Angels, and their third win in the last four games. After the game, when the team returned to its hotel in nearby Costa Mesa, he met with the three coaches. Bench coach Jerry Manuel was then named interim manager.

The team issued a bizarrely-worded press release after midnight to announce the move to the media. It was by-lined “ANAHEIM, Calif., June 17, 2008,” and entitled “Mets Name Jerry Manuel Interim Manager.” Talk about burying the lede.

The whole thing was sort of Nixonian. It is speculated that the Mets did not want to fire Randolph on Father’s Day. How they came to the conclusion that the following night, 3,000 miles away, was somehow more appropriate is baffling.

It was emblematic of how Randolph and his coaches had been treated during this entire process. For weeks now, as rumors swirled about his job status, the Mets allowed Randolph to twist in the wind, holding organizational meetings, and then refusing to guarantee his job security. The implication was Steinbrenner-esque: turn this around now, or you’re done. But the Mets—Minaya and his bosses, owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon—were too cowardly to come out and say that.

It created a peculiar situation in which the players and coaches were fighting to turn their season around while the guillotine hovered overhead. The Mets had just come off taking two out of three from Texas at home, and their win tonight moved them to 34-35, within a game of the .500 mark.

The timing of the move, of course, suggests that this decision had been made days ago, although a team source told Newsday that it wasn’t made until Monday morning. Still, perception counts for a lot, and, to a man, this move—at this time—seems classless, chaotic, and cowardly.

It also reportedly led to surreal scene in the lobby of the team hotel, as players were told of Randolph’s firing by media members as they returned for the evening. Carlos Beltrán and Carlos Delgado “seemed indifferent to the news,” reported Newsday. Ramón Castro told the paper, “I’m in shock. I don’t know what to say.”

The news was shocking only in its timing. The “Willie Watch” had been ongoing since Opening Day, especially considering the collapse last season, squandering a seven-game lead to the Phillies over the season’s final three weeks. It was clear that Randolph’s job would be threatened by a poor start to the season, and so it was.

Perhaps it really is the right move. Perhaps a shake-up will enliven the clubhouse. Perhaps Jerry Manuel—whom your humble diarist knows as a good, fair baseball-man—will speak to these players in a way that Randolph could not, though the importance of the manager in baseball is often overstated.

Looking at the situation, it is difficult to shake the unctuous way in which Randolph’s dismissal took place. Moreover, it wasn’t handled the right way throughout this entire process. And now the focus shifts to Minaya, the man responsible for this move, and for this aging, flawed roster. If the Mets continue to play inconsistent, uninspired baseball, he ought to be next on the firing line.