If there’s one thing on which we can all agree on when it comes to the Mets, it’s their need to add offense. So it really wasn’t much help at all when general manager Sandy Alderson started playing defense during a press briefing before Friday night’s game in Queens against the Phillies.
The question that sent the GM into an inelegant spin regarded the 90 wins-challenge Alderson had presented his organization during spring training’s early days. That’s when hope springs eternal for all teams, even the Mets, if not so much for a fan base that has become hopelessly demoralized since the hat trick of disappointment from 2006 through 2008 from which the franchise hasn’t been able to recover.
Anyway, the topic arose because the Mets entered play on Friday needing to sweep their final 28 games in order to attain Alderson’s lofty goal that, truth be told, was the object of ridicule the moment it became public.
Except, Alderson insisted while becoming exasperated before his club improved to 63-72 with a 4-1 victory (27 to go!), 90 wins hadn’t been set as a goal. It hadn’t been labeled an objective. No, sir.
“I don’t know how many times I have to reinterpret that for everybody,” the GM said. “It wasn’t a goal. It wasn’t an expectation. It was a reminder to all of us, including myself, that we need to think about that level of performance, that level of success, that level of excellence.
“That statement is no less relevant today.”
You know what? The Mets should have made that their goal. They needed to expect more of themselves. Needed to demand more of themselves.
And that statement is no less relevant today.
Daring to be great precedes the accomplishment.
Maybe there have been some accomplishments this season that will allow the club to credibly aim at 90 victories — or more — next spring. Maybe Friday’s effort that featured eight players age 26 or younger, including precocious 20-year-old second baseman Dilson Herrera, is a harbinger of better things to come.
Maybe the general manager won’t get more laughs than Robin Williams in his prime the next time he attempts to raise the bar.
And maybe Alderson won’t feel compelled to reflexively backtrack when called on his, um, uh, “reminder.”
The dynamic needs to change here every bit as much as the personnel. Maybe even more so. Nothing about this season needs to be reinterpreted. Alderson challenged the Mets. The team shrunk like Costanza in a pool. The Mets shrunk the way they did when Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel were in charge. They shrunk the way they have every year — four now — for Alderson and manager Terry Collins.
This is a vanilla operation, largely devoid of personality and charisma, and more likely than not by design of the decision-makers in ownership and management. There’s no edge to the Mets. This is as homogenized a group you can find in a locker room or clubhouse in pro sports, even given the disparate nationalities and backgrounds of the athletes.
Oh, boy, is Matt Harvey missed. He is missed on the mound every five days, but perhaps even more so he is missed as a presence with a Don Draper-like DNA that compels him to act on instinct, to question authority, to extend boundaries beyond those adopted by company men. Harvey’s mission is to take his teammates by the scruff of their collective necks and drag them across the finish line.
So he can sometimes be a pain for the company. So the Mets need to live with that. So the Mets need to collect more large personalities and encourage them to be themselves; to flaunt what they’ve got.
The best teams in pro sports dare you to beat them. The Mets don’t dare.
Back on opening day, Alderson was called upon to elaborate on his 90-win statement after it had leaked into the public arena.
“It wasn’t a guarantee,” said the anti-Joe Namath. “It wasn’t a prediction. It was a challenge; a challenge for us internally — how do we get there? What’s wrong with a hard standard?
“What I want to emphasize,” the GM said on March 31, “is that it’s important for us to change the conversation.”
Five months later, the Mets are on their way to a sixth straight September without meaning and a sixth straight losing season.
Five months later … six years later, the results are the same. So is the conversation.