The Mets have been a pretty nice little story on the field this season, for sure they have, managing to hover around .500 after an atrocious start with a depleted roster while tuning out the noise from the financial pages that portray a doomsday scenario for the franchise’s ownership.
It’s an achievement of some note that the team is even on the margins of the conversation about the playoffs with the guys they run onto the field every day absent David Wright and Ike Davis, and with a rotation thinned to the bone.
They’ve consistently put forth an honest effort. That might be the least required of a professional sports team, but anyone who has watched the Mets at all over the last few seasons knows that’s kind of been optional in Queens.
“Our guys compete,” manager Terry Collins said before the Mets fell at home to the A’s 7-3 last night. “Effort, desire and intensity are all things we need to have and have had, and that’s why we are where we are.
“[Without] David, Johan and Ike, we could have gone, ‘Woe is us,’ and we’d been eight, 10 or 12 games under [.500]. But our players have bought into the fact if they compete, they’re good enough to win games, and we’re doing that.”
All true. But let’s not kid ourselves. There aren’t many little stories that receive much notice in New York. No one comes here to be a nice little story. That maybe is for Oakland.
Last night’s story was an ugly one. Dillon Gee, who entered 7-0, could barely throw a strike, walking six in four innings. The top four hitters in the order went 1-for-18. Jason Bay did have three hits, including a loud home run and a crushed triple, but the man has been nothing if not a tease — at best — in two years as a Met, so let’s not proclaim too quickly that the page has been turned.
The season has all been about context, and the context is all about something else, mostly about the Wilpons’ catastrophic entanglement with Bernard Madoff, mostly about by how much the Mets will be forced to trim the payroll.
Carlos Beltran’s season is not viewed for his value in the order, but his worth on the trade market. And Jose Reyes’ special season has become all about whether the Mets will choose to afford to sign him to a new deal when it’s apparent the Mets cannot afford to let him go.
The narrative for the last month has been driven by Reyes’ impending free agency and the Mets’ need to do something about it. That story took a turn yesterday when general manager Sandy Alderson revealed he was informed late last week by Reyes’ agent, Peter Greenberg, that his client would defer contract negotiations until after the season.
Though this leaves the Mets blind, it was the right move for both Reyes and the organization. In-season mega-negotiations have a way of blowing up. Unless the Wilpons were set to authorize a slam-dunk offer that could not be rejected, say $185 million over 10 years (Uhh, suuuure), no good could have come of talks. A more realistic offer would likely have been resented by Reyes, thus altering the trajectory of both his season and future.
Of course, the Mets might get an irresistible trade offer for Reyes and deal him at the deadline. And if the team, which has lost four of their last five, bungle the next few weeks, the focus will be trained on potential packages offered by contenders.
But for the moment, the Mets have it within their power to shift the immediate focus to what goes on between the lines. The team, not the 2012 payroll and not the Reyes contract, can become the story.
Of course, too many more games like night, and it will be no story at all.
