AT a time when the only thing more grim than the proceedings on the field are the medical reports — and attendant slapstick — off it, the Mets yearn more than ever for a voice, a leader, a guide.
TONIGHT’S PREVIEW: Mets at Nationals
The tear in Jose Reyes’ hamstring is described as small, but the one threatening to shred the Mets’ season looms ever larger and ever more ominous. Now, more than ever, the team craves passion and energy.
Yesterday, it arrived from a source as surprising as it is imperative, out of Carlos Beltran, the Quiet Man, who returned to action yesterday with a double and a home run and seethed as he watched the Mets lose a third straight time to the Pirates at PNC Park, this time 11-6.
Beltran has long been a source of raging ambivalence for so many Mets fans, who seem both amazed and annoyed at how easy the game comes to him. His talent is unmistakable. And so is his low-key, low-volume approach. New York City loves a dirty uniform. That isn’t Beltran. But, then, this has never been Beltran, either:
“Personally, I feel embarrassed,” he fumed yesterday, after the Pirates dropped one final hammer on the Mets’ heads. “We have to take this personal, because this can’t happen. It can’t happen for us to come here and lose three games just like that. It can’t happen.”
It is good to hear that kind of edge, that kind of fury out of the one man who has delivered, day after day, game after game, for the Mets, especially now, with another of the Mets pillars officially reduced to dust for the time being. There have been times when it seemed Beltran was all alone in the Mets’ batting order, surrounded by fill-ins and whatever version of David Wright — red-hot or ice-cold — happened to be reporting for work that day.
Yesterday, Beltran rose from his sickbed and nearly cleared the fence on his first swing. He had missed five of the past seven games, two with a knee problem, three with a stomach flu, and he looked like he never had been gone. It’s just the rest of the team that looked that way, from Mike Pelfrey to J.J. Putz on down.
It has been an awful week from the Mets: a blown five-run lead Monday, a blown Johan Santana start Tuesday, a blowout loss yesterday, word that Reyes nearly blew out his hamstring. Yes, they have been decimated by injury. Yes, it is only the first weekend of June, and that means there still are an awful lot of ballgames left.
But none of that matters when you look so helpless against a team like the Pirates, who the Mets swept handily a few weeks ago at Citi Field. None of that will matter if the Mets similarly stink the joint out in Washington this weekend. And certainly none of it will matter beginning Tuesday, when they begin a stretch of 32 games in 34 days, with 28 of them coming against the Phillies, Yankees, Dodgers, Rays, Cardinals, Brewers and Reds, who started play yesterday a combined 58 games over .500.
That is the kind of stretch that can decimate a team and a season, and nobody is going to care that the Mets will now be playing without their leadoff or clean-up hitters for all 32 of those games. This is the adult-swim portion of the program. And no matter what lineup the Mets field, it has to be better than the last four days in Pittsburgh.
“Three games [to] this team,” Beltran said. “I know they’re a big league ballclub, but we’re better than them. We’re better than them. We know we’re better than them, but we have to do something about it.”
Maybe Beltran’s words really can be a spark. Maybe, coming from him, they can be just what his bat has been, the most valuable asset the Mets currently possess.
They’d better hope so. June 5 can turn into Aug. 5 in a hurry. Second place can become fourth in an eyeblink. It would be nice if Beltran’s anger was contagious. And even better if his performance was, too. Or else when Reyes finally heals, there may be no season left for him to return to.