Innocent

As you probably know if you're living and breathing, Omar Minaya has been getting a fair amount of blame for the Mets substandard record in 2009. And he should probably expect it.

The Mets have the highest payroll in the National League. To think that they are struggling right now, trying to ease their way up to .500 seems to show some significant mismanagement. It's hard to blame people for getting disturbed.

But, if you ask me, (and I know you didn't, but it's my blog) it's hard to blame Omar Minaya for this team's troubles.

Last year, the Mets won 89 games and finished 3 games out of first place.

They basically played with this team:

C Brian Schneider/Ramon Castro/Raul Casanova/Robinson Cancel (C+)
1B Carlos Delgado (A-)
2B Luis Castillo/Damion Easley/Argenis Reyes (C)
3B David Wright (A+)
SS Jose Reyes (A)
LF Fernando Tatis/Daniel Murphy/Nick Evans/Angel Pagan/Marlon Anderson/Moises Alou (B-)
CF Carlos Beltran (A+)
RF Ryan Church/Endy Chavez/Trot Nixon (B)

Those letters in parentheses are the grades that I gave to the positions. They are approximate. That's a pretty good team.

Here is what I assume Jerry Manuel figured:
1. Brian Schneider/Ramon Castro would continue their decent catching duties.
2. Carlos Delgado, who hit torridly the last 3 months of last year, as well as in the World Baseball Classic, would put up similar numbers to those of last year.
3. Luis Castillo would improve on last year's injury-hampered numbers.
4&5. David Wright and Jose Reyes would at least duplicate their numbers from last year, while possibly showing some improvement considering that they are both under 27.
6. Daniel Murphy would be able to play left field and hit rather nicely.
7. Carlos Beltran would be Carlos Beltran.
8. Ryan Church would, after full recovery from last year's injury debacle, play quite well.

Here is where Omar's luck went bad: Of his 8 rather reasonable assumptions, only 3 (1, 3, 5) came to fruition. Injuries bad ballplaying hampered 5 of the 8 everyday positions.

But there's more. It's not like the Mets had no decent backups. They had Fernando Tatis, who was great last year as a semi-regular ready to back up the corner infield and outfield positions. They had Alex Cora, a fine backup infielder. They had Gary Sheffield and Nick Evans, both of whom can seemingly hit a bit, and play a little (very little) defense. And Jeremy Reed, who is this year's Endy Chavez, was availabe to back up the three outfield spots.

In a nutshell, here is what happened. Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, Carlos Beltran, got hurt. Ryan Church, Daniel Murphy and Fernando Tatis (and David Wright, to a lesser extent) clearly underperformed. CLEARLY. Throw in an injury to JJ Putz, and you've got yourself a lost season.

Unless...they come back. And perform. And win.

* * *

I was holding a relative's (relatively) new-born baby today. It burped and spit up. The baby's mother asked "Oh, did it burp or spit up?" to which someone else responded something like "both."

I said, "I like that it burped and spit up. That's my kind of person."