THEY are losers. That is how the Mets walk out of one stadium and into another. The Shames of Shea will march into the new Citi Field with the old stigmas: They cannot finish. It is like the spirit of Armando Benitez inhabited the uniforms down the stretch for a second straight year.
The final game ever at Shea, a 4-2 elimination loss yesterday to the Marlins, betrayed their identity again: They could not get a big hit and they could not register enough meaningful outs from the bullpen. It was a losing combination for losers.
So this group forever will be remembered for collapse. For not closing out Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS at home. For not holding on to a seven-game lead with 17 to play last season. For not holding on to a 31/2-game lead with 17 to play this season. On consecutive years they received one of the great pitching performances of their history on the final Saturday of the season – John Maine last season and Johan Santana brilliantly on three days’ rest this weekend. Then they were so inspired both times that they lost on Sunday when victory would have forced a one-game playoff.
That galvanized this era’s Mets’ identity forever: The losers who could not win a series against the Marlins in the end in consecutive years. Owner Jeff Wilpon tried to soften this disappointment by saying, “I feel totally different this year than last year. Last year I felt we underachieved. This year I felt we overachieved.”
He felt that way, he said, because of how close the team came to the playoffs despite losing Maine and Billy Wagner late to injuries, and being forced to play backups to backups to backups at second and in left. It is a loser’s lament. This was the Mets’ own fault.
They invested $26 million in Luis Castillo, who was healthy yesterday, but was so putrid that Ramon Martinez was playing second. They could have traded Bobby Parnell for Xavier Nady at the July 31 deadline to play left and didn’t. They made an ill-advised trade of Matt Lindstrom for non-prospects Jason Vargas and Adam Bostick, and it was Lindstrom who closed out the Met season in the ninth. He would have looked terrific as Wagner’s 97-mph-throwing heir apparent.
Yet all of that is loser talk by losers. Every team suffers dents and worse over six months. The Brewers, for example, essentially lived without No. 2 starter Ben Sheets for the last month, without No. 3 starter Yovani Gallardo for most of the season and with a bullpen just as untrustworthy as the Mets’. Yet Milwaukee figured out how to play one game better than the Mets. Which made them wild cards and the Mets losers. Again.
“I think we overcame a lot to get to this point to be in this position today,” Wilpon said. “But in the end, you have to say we weren’t good enough.”
They weren’t. So again they must examine why. Obviously, the bullpen must be reconfigured. Scott Schoeneweis and Luis Ayala surrendered homers to consecutive batters in the eighth that produced the final score, and that pair plus Aaron Heilman can’t be brought back and feed the negative aura from the instant Citi Field opens.
But do the Mets stop there? By spinning a positive in general, Wilpon was signaling interim manager Jerry Manuel will be back. And Omar Minaya indicated he wants to keep the core intact, as well, which means retaining Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado and David Wright. Yet an offense that had four stars at that level managed just five runs all weekend against Florida, going a combined 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position.
Two straight seasons of this kind of regular-season collapse signals there is something wrong in the Met culture. Minaya – about to receive a four-year extension – must diagnose what that is.
In the aftermath of elimination, Wilpon and Minaya tried to project a positive vision, probably because their behind-the-scenes media guru told them it was the right attitude to protect business moving into that new stadium. But there was no camouflaging the stench yesterday with upbeat words. The curtain closed at Shea on a group of losers.