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Inconsistent Consistency

Why was every one calling for change for change’s sake? I mean this particularly in reference to the idea that we needed a manager change and a shake-up. It seems that the biggest problem with this team this year is both the offense and the lack of consistency, both in-game and over an extended group of games.

So why would a shake-up, which by its very nature creates a disturbance and breaks up any consistency. On top of this, the move was made while the Mets were on a winning streak, which couldn’t have been what they wanted to shake up. Maybe what this team needs, or needed, was a steadier day-to-day regiment. A few weeks with the same lineup, healthy left and right fielders, the same manager and coaches, confirmed by Omar to be there all year. Surely giving Willie the okay for sure would’ve deferred some of the distraction, and it’s not like the statement would’ve been binding if Omar then decided, in July as things possibly grew more dire, to fire Willie and others anyway.

It’s too late for that, but now that Manuel is supposedly here all year, and Church is coming back, maybe this team can find a little bit of that daily regiment of monotony to start grinding out some real good streaks.

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Too Early To Worry or Overreact

Three Game Losing Streak

Doesn’t look good does it? The Sunday night game against the Phillies was probably just a result of Pelfrey not going to be excellent every single time out there, and Feliciano’s occasional streakiness. Yesterday was probably a result of using the B lineup, coupled with the remaining A guys slumping.

There are some concerns, but it’s still a little early to be panicking over them. Delgado has been declining, and it looked rather bad last year. The thing is, he had good stretches where he looked fine. So the ability is still there, and I suspect what he needs is some consistency, some warmer weather, and just some swings. For everyone screaming about Church batting 6th, you have to think that him hitting well in the 6th hole helps Delgado. As little as lineups matter when everyone’s not hitting, there are pluses and minuses to each of them.

Luis Castillo has been bad early, but he’s also still hurt. Maybe he’ll be hurt for the rest of his life and he sucks, or maybe, like Delgado, time will help. I don’t want to hear about the contract anymore. Stop thinking about 2011. If this was a one year deal, you wouldn’t be complaining about it, and since this is the very first year you can’t have a problem that he’s on the team in 2011. I liked Gotay too, but he wasn’t the greatest defensive player, and he only had a small small sample of hitting successfully. It’s smaller than the sample size people are using to bash Castillo and Delgado even.

So give it time. Some of these things may turn into big problems, and then it becomes Willie and Minaya’s problems to address, but for now they’re merely points of interest. You can’t fire the manager, bench your star first baseman, or promote question marks from Binghamton on April 22nd.