Comedy of Errors

You gotta love DVR. Why kill yourself staying awake if you have to get up the next morning, when you can simply just record the game and wake up a little earlier and watch it the next morning over breakfast, Japan-opener style. I called it a night after an inning last night. The headline was going to be "Welcome back Steve Trachsel". That's who Tim Redding reminded me of in his first Met start.

Redding gave up two runs and made that first inning last what seemed like an hour, and included not one but two consecutive fake-to-third-throw-to-first moves. However what we saw was not the case at all the rest of the way. He settled down quite nicely and the game flowed along.

The story was the five errors the Mets committed. Where do you start with this one? It did not look promising just looking at the lineup. Angel Pagan was leading off and playing left field. Ramon Martinez, our down-the-stretch 2008 second baseman started at short. Martinez made two of those errors. Carlos Beltran was charged with one, but Pagan insisted to catch the ball after the center fielder in charge called him off ten times. Sean Green throws one away. To cap it off, outfielder Jeremy Reed, playing only a handful of innings at first has a ball find him in a key spot leading to the game-losing error, a throw intended for home that got away.

Then there's Ryan Church. A go-ahead run in the 11th was erased when an appeal play at third called him out. Church had missed third base on his way to scoring from second. Here's my take on Church. The guy is mentally screwed up and it's not his fault. With fifty outfielders on the roster, Jerry Manual had no choice but to get other guys in the lineup and pulled Church during his hottest stretch of the season. It's been downhill ever since. Never mind that the guy is one of the only pure outfielders on the team, aside from Beltran and Reed, who's playing first base instead. But it's clear from postgame reaction that Church will probably continue to be the odd man out. What's wrong with this picture?

Who's fault is it that we had an aging Carlos Delgado with hip trouble and no backup pure first baseman? Who's fault is it that the roster continues to get an influx of outfielders when the problem is in the infield? Ramon Martinez? Look I know you did not expect Alex Cora to get injured with Jose Reyes out, but Martinez with his second base arm is the best we can do as a third-string shortstop? Speaking of Reyes, I asked last week for a one-game benching, not a week with a mysterious calf-injury. It's obvious they need him back in the lineup soon, dumb mistakes aside. You only hope he learns from them, but it's been more than a few years now.