LOS ANGELES – When Steve Phillips decided, last Saturday morning, to address the team he had constructed in the offseason, he was in essence admitting his own culpability for this mess.
Although the Met general manager reportedly singled out two of his holdovers from last year’s disappointing 82-80 team, Rey Ordonez and Jay Payton, it was Phillips’ winter wheeling and dealing that brought this potpourri of impotency together.
That Phillips would feel the need to address the club is a concession that he sees the Mets’ ship moving in the wrong direction. He knows that the pilot light of the Hot Stove League champions has flickered out, so the Boss Man addressed the Local .241 Noosefitters from Flushing.
Based on this past weekend, Payton should report for work at Studio City instead of Dodger Stadium as the Mets opened a three-game series here last night. After all, it seems like there’s going to be a remake of “The Fall Guy,” with Payton playing Lee Majors’ old role.
If you take a half-step back, you can see Payton has about as much to do with this Mets team being 19-18 as does Tony Tarasco.
No, the center fielder – whose Met future is now in serious jeopardy – is the least of the club’s problems. As the Mets began their 10-game road trip last night having lost seven of their last eight, there are some more pressing concerns.
First of all, Roger Cedeno has been an unmitigated bust. Right now, the Cedeno who played for the Mets in 1999 seems as far away as the Age of Enlightenment. Phillips signed the 27-year-old Venezuelan to a four-year, $18-million pact this winter to play left field and bat leadoff.
There were only two problems there. Cedeno didn’t start a game in left field in 2001, and his annually slow start has gotten him kicked out of the top spot in the batting order. When Cedeno does play, he’s as likely to hit seventh or eighth as first or second.
His defense has been atrocious, as painful as watching Shaquille O’Neal shoot free throws. And he has just two stolen bases. For a fraction of what it cost to sign Cedeno, the Mets could have moved Payton to left and inked Kenny Lofton, whose 16 stolen bases are more than the Mets’ 14.
Mo Vaughn and Roberto Alomar have been hugely disappointing on the right side of the infield. Both were asked not to let the door hit them on the way out of their last stops, but the Mets were downright ecstatic to pay them a combined $18 million this season.
Vaughn, hitting .247 with two homers, has paled in comparison to former Met John Olerud. Heck, fans would even settle for Todd Zeile right now.
Alomar has yet to consistently show off his “best instincts in baseball,” a tag riveted onto him by Tony La Russa, Peter Gammons and others. His use of the adjective “great” on Sunday to describe one behind-the-back toss for an out in a game in which he made two key defensive mistakes was troubling. At best, it showed poor baseball instincts.
Defensively, the Mets have been abhorrent. And nobody’s been worse than Ordonez, who made his ninth error the day after blowing off Met fans for Picture Day. These are the same fans that pay his $6 million salary.
No truth to the rumor Jimmy Carter is brokering a deal to send Ordonez back to Cuba, however.
Space does not permit any lengthy discourse about the homerless Edgardo Alfonzo, the whiff-prone Jeromy Burnitz or the wildly inconsistent Shawn Estes (1-4), who was starting last night. But about that Payton guy …
DISAPPOINTING RETURNS
Hitting stats through the first 37 games of the Mets’ off-season acquisitions:
HR RBI AVG.
Mo Vaughn 2 11 .247
Roberto Alomar 3 13 .270
Roger Cedeno 0 8 .200
Jeromy Burnitz 7 20 .225