PANIC CITY, NY – Oh, come on, let’s be serious. We are way past Panic City. Panic City was a snapshot of the good times around the Mets. Panic City was the latest stab at humor — and hubris — from a tone-deaf general manager who seems positively addicted to alienating his own fan base.
Panic City?
Try Disgusted City. Try Appalled City. Try listening to the anger emanating from the folks who actually stayed to the end of this 6-1 fiasco of a loss to the Cubs on Thursday afternoon at Citi Field, the ones who greeted one more helpless wave of Lucas Duda’s exhausted bat with a chorus of boos that the workers putting the roof on Arthur Ashe Stadium could hear.
Though it’s unlikely they registered in the offices of the team’s owners or its general manager. There, the men who own the Mets hide under their desks, close their eyes, plug their ears, and keep a padlock on the franchise coffers, their relentless refusal to part with nickels and dimes bleeding the life out of another season.
There, the GM, Sandy Alderson, smugly waits to be proven the smartest man in the stadium, refusing to help a baseball team that is all but crying for help. Day after day, week after week, he has permitted this team to squander every ounce of its promising start. Day after day, week after week, he has forced his manager to play an everyday lineup that is often composed of one-third Quad-A players.
Day after day, week after week, the Wilpons and their chief henchman, Alderson, have allowed the good will of a hot start and the patience of a fiercely loyal fan base and the daily magnificence of their pitching staff to disintegrate to the point where there’s no longer rage as much as resignation — to another lousy season, another year when a little aggression and a little imagination might have made a difference.
But aggression — the kind that an ownership not buried by its own massive financial woes would approve — and imagination — the kind that would allow the GM to add major league hitters to replace the endless horde of .180 hitters presently disguised as major league hitters — are in short supply in Flushing these days. And so another summer fritters away. Another season burns.
And the owners’ vaults remained locked.
And the GM’s legacy takes another piñata hit.
It’s malpractice, is what it is.
And it’s the worst kind, too. The Mets had an opportunity this year. The Nationals have had their own chronic issues. They’ve had their own injury woes. Three of their best players — Ryan Zimmerman, Jayson Werth, Anthony Rendon — are on the DL. Yet they keep winning. They have depth, some of it provided by the minor leagues, much by the kind of advance thinking that well-run organizations always have: You can never have too much depth, can never have too many quality players.
A Post reporter stopped Sandy Alderson to talk about all of this Thursday. Alderson declined comment, saying he had to take his dog for a walk. No. Really. That’s what he said. His dog had to do on a grassy knoll on the outskirts of Citi Field what the dog’s owner has methodically done to this Mets season.
Honestly, you can’t make this stuff up.
Some would like to see the Mets’ team plane to Los Angeles make a brief stop in Vegas, where Terry Collins could be traded in for Wally Backman. And look, nobody will ever confuse Collins for Muggsy McGraw, and if things do keep spiraling south, it will be Collins who inevitably answers for it. And few will weep.
Meanwhile, the GM will continue to fiddle while Flushing burns. The owners will continue to operate (with the blessing of Rob Manfred, upholding the proud tradition of commissioners coddling and enabling these calamitous con men) a big-market club as if it were located in Boise, Idaho.
And the Mets will be forced to waste a year that could have — should have — delivered so much more, and will point anew to 2016. There was a time when “Wait ’til next year” was a romantic, wistful, wishful refrain that better times lie ahead; now it has become the Mets’ mantra whenever they lose interest in the current year.
Except the one thing the Mets haven’t factored into that plan is the Nats might be 50-28 after 78 games next year, not 43-35. Pitchers who are healthy now may not be this time next year. You strike when you can. They could have struck this year. Instead the owners pinched their pennies tighter and the GM took his dog for a relaxing, leisurely stroll.
In Panic City, just like everywhere else, there’s a word for that.
Malpractice.