We start this week with Jerry Manuel about to hand the ball to R.A. Dickey and Hisanori Takahashi on consecutive nights against the Phillies, which is to suggest that the manager is quite unlikely to appear as smart as he did over the weekend when he sent Mike Pelfrey and Johan Santana to the mound 24 hours apart against the Yankees.
So when the week is over, if the Mets cannot somehow take two of three in the Turnpike Series the way they did in the Subway Series, the questions concerning the manager’s future are guaranteed to begin anew, and they will be questions generated by ownership’s studied failure to send the signal that it’s Manuel in whom the Wilpons have placed their trust.
Jeff Wilpon refused to address a small group of reporters in the corridor outside the media room on his way out of Citi Field following Sunday night’s 6-4 Mets victory that clinched round one of our annual New York, New York Baseball Festival. The COO then declined to converse with The Post yesterday.
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That, of course, is his right and general operating procedure. But he and ownership must recognize that these sounds of silence will be interpreted as a fundamental lack of support for the manager, who in essence is operating inning-to-inning, game-to-game and day-to-day as a temporary employee.
Manager of the Week may make for an intriguing reality TV show, but it sure doesn’t make for much of a baseball season.
This isn’t as much about Manuel — well, easy for us to say — as it is about the organization’s vision. From the time two years ago, when Willie Randolph found himself in a somewhat similar predicament, the Mets have appeared to lurch from one crisis to the next without a sure eye trained on the future and without an overriding guiding philosophy.
Understand this: The moment Manuel is dismissed is the moment all of the heat is turned on general manager Omar Minaya. The Mets somehow were able to get away with pinning all of the 2007 collapse and the mediocre first half of 2008 on the manager even after Randolph took his team to Game 7 of the NLCS in 2006 only two years after the end of the ignominious Art Howe era, but they’re not going to be able to pull off that trick again.
You have to wonder. Is Jenrry Mejia here as the youngest pitcher in the majors because Minaya and Manuel need to win games now, or is the 20-year-old right-hander in the Mets’ bullpen because it’s best for his ultimate development as a big-league starting pitcher?
Manuel has acknowledged that he’s “selfish” in wanting Mejia to remain in his bullpen, but that isn’t the manager’s call. It can’t be. It’s Minaya’s and upper management’s decision. It would be comforting to accept the motivation behind the decision as selfless and in the long-term interests of the franchise, but when an executive’s employment might hang in the balance between winning four of six and losing four of six, well, let’s be real.
This seems eerily reminiscent of Randolph’s Final Days, the 22 days between the well-publicized Memorial Day fact-finding meeting with ownership at Shea Stadium and his 3 a.m. dismissal in Anaheim on June 17 despite going 11-10 in the interim.
It seemed at the time as if the move was made in fear that the Mets would play well enough to keep Randolph in place, which apparently was not the idea. Now, if Manuel goes at the end of this week, similar questions will confront the franchise in light of Wilpon’s emergency trip to Atlanta last Monday during which he announced he was not there to fire anybody.
The fan base is perpetually angry at the Mets’ second-class citizenship in their own town and own division. Serving up the manager as a sacrificial lamb may provide instant gratification, but it does nothing to advance a vision.
Jerry Manuel is the manager for this series. That’s what we know. Apparently we all have to tune in to the first game in Milwaukee on Friday to see if he survives Dickey, Takahashi and the Phils.
That may make for good programming, but it’s a lousy way to go through a baseball season.