Mets Equals Mess

Frankly, the Mets should be ashamed of themselves.

It's not just about losing one game either. It's about playing embarrasingly bad baseball for two straight Septembers, about coughing up a three-and-a-game lead over your last 17 games, about losing six of your last nine to conclude a summer of disappointment, and about scoring a grand total of six runs in the final series of the season. Six runs. The Mets had everything to play for over the weekend, the Marlins had nothing to play for but pride, and yet the Mets could muster only one win--supplied almost single-handedly by the great Johan Santana on Saturday.

Other than Santana and Carlos Beltran, few of the Mets seemed to show up over the weekend. With the season hanging in the balance and capacity crowds on hand to bid farewell to Shea Stadium, the Mets played with all the intensity and effectiveness of a B-team in spring training. The main culprits? You can certainly point to the offense, which garnered a grand total of four hits in Sunday's finale, and you can certainly point to that dreadful bullpen. At a time when the Mets needed two or three relievers to step up in the absence of Billy Wagner, only Subway Joe Smith provided a boost to Jerry Manuel, who tried just about everyone he could lay his hands on. As much as some observers want to pin goat horns on Omar Minaya for failing to acquire an effective reliever down the stretch, I'll place most of the blame on Aaron Heilman and Pedro Feliciano. If those two had pitched remotely close to their potential--let's say the level we saw from them two years ago--the Mets, not the Brewers, would today be wild card winners.

A second straight September collapse must sting badly for Mets fans. I hope it stings just as badly for the players. After all, they are the ones responsible for this mess of underachievement. They blew it, plain and simple.