The game, and the Mets’ season, was encapsulated by one inning yesterday, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing you want to put in a time capsule. There were two errors (and should’ve been three). There was indifferent pitching. There was what looks to be an injury straight out of 2009, to Jon Niese. And there were six Marlins motoring around the basepaths in the bottom of the third.
You can attach blame to any of the co-conspirators, if you like. But the Mets’ season is suddenly in grave danger of spinning hopelessly out of control, leaking feebly into the sewer. So there is only one person to identify as a culprit here, and that is the manager whose message no longer resonates and whose vision is no longer focused.
And it is time to make him the ex-manager.
POSITION-LESS MURPHY MAY SWING LATE-MAY RETURN
Jerry Manuel issued what has become a familiar postgame mantra, extolling his team for fighting back from an early 7-0 deficit, cutting the Marlins’ lead to 7-6 at one point before falling 10-8. And while the Mets have shown far more resilience and late-game gumption than teams of recent vintage, the truth is they have played 38 games and lost 20 of them. They are in last place in the NL East, with the Phillies (and everyone else) methodically chugging off into the distance.
Someone has to answer for that.
Manuel has to answer for that. No one would argue that he was handed the 1986 Mets out of Port St. Lucie. But he wasn’t handed a team currently on pace for 77-85 wins, either.
“I don’t think we’re in as big a trouble as it seems we are,” Manuel said after the Marlins had completed a four-game sweep and sent the Mets to their seventh loss in eight games. “I think we’re better than what we’ve been seeing.”
He’s right. And that’s the most damning testimony: Even Jerry Manuel thinks Jerry Manuel’s team should have a better record than it does.
“We fought back today,” he said, “and [Chris Coghlan’s] late home run really hurt us.”
You know whom Manuel sounds like when he constantly praises his team for not quitting? He sounds like Rich Kotite. Absent anything resembling a representative Jets team back in the day, Kotite made playing hard sound like a sacrament rather than a job requirement. It is of little consequence that the Mets play hard more often than not; they also lose more often than not.
It has taken them exactly 16 days to go from a game ahead in first place to six behind, in last place, and as depressing as that may be to Mets fans it is also indicative of just how quickly a baseball season can turn. The season is still salvageable, the wild card winner in the National League still projects to somewhere in the high 80s or low 90s in wins. But at some point you have to prove that an eight-game winning streak in April isn’t the best you’ve got.
“We have to make decisions and find the pieces that will get us going,” Manuel said yesterday.
Unfortunately for him, Manuel has become the piece most in need of replacing. He is a good and decent man, but increasingly his in-game decisions and demeanor have been maddening, his uber-reliance on small-ball, his puzzling lineup decisions. He was unhappy with that eighth-inning home run that Fernando Nieve surrendered to Coghlan? How much do you suppose his almost daily reliance on Nieve has helped speed along Nieve’s regression from dependable to deplorable?
Omar Minaya will make the trip to Atlanta, which might mean he’s following Brian Cashman’s itinerary from last year, when a surprise visit to Turner Field served as an unlikely turning point in the Yankee season. Or it could be his own blueprint from 2008, when he took an unexpected flight to Anaheim to personally hand Willie Randolph his vest with the fish inside.
For the sake of this season, it would be wise if he arrived with a new manager riding shotgun. Bobby Valentine is the darling of starving Mets fans, and he would be a dream selection, if an unlikely one. Bob Melvin is a blander choice, but a better option than status quo. Manuel is right. The Mets have to get things straightened out. And the question Minaya and Jeff Wilpon need to answer, and soon, is this: Is Manuel the man to do the straightening?
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com