Pineiro pins down Mets: Cardinals 3, Mets 0

Joel Pineiro was brilliant against the Mets again.  It was eerily similar to his dominant outing back in late September during the 2007 season.  Last night’s performance was an omen of things to come though.

All I have to say is Fernando Tatis is hitting cleanup.  The same Tatis who got four pitches in three at-bats last night.  This is a guy with a .364 slugging percentage.  And he’s hitting cleanup.  I don’t think he’d be batting fourth for any other team in baseball right now.  I like Tatis because he hustles and occasionally shows some power, but he’s a guy who should be hitting seventh on a contending team.

And like I wrote before, Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya have to be counting their blessings that so many guys have gotten hurt.  They’re avoiding a lot of the blame that should be placed their way.  The team is lazy and has no fundamentals…that’s on both of them.

But let’s talk about Omar a little.  In the offseason, I guaranteed my buddy in the front office that the Mets would not have enough offense this season.  They needed another bat.  Now he’s using injuries as an excuse.  But I even said in the offseason there’s no way Reyes, Delgado, Beltran and Wright are all healthy the entire year.  They got so lucky last year and the offense still wasn’t good enough.  There was no depth, just as I said, and now the Mets have a journeyman hitting cleanup.

Sometimes I wonder if any intelligent fan could be a GM or a manager of their favorite team and do just as good of a job.  This year, I honestly feel like I would have been better and definitely not much worse.  I wouldn’t allow guys to jog around the bases and I certainly wouldn’t bunt everytime someone gets on base.  And in the offseason when there were so many guys willing to take next to nothing to play, I would have signed a few for insurance purposes.

What would have been a better investment?  Orlando Hudson (3.36 million), who’s hitting .309 with 5 homers and 38 RBI and plays an awesome second base.  He doesn’t drop easy pop-ups to lose games.  Or would you rather have Tim Redding (2.25 million), with a 1-2 record and 6.08 ERA.  You could have gotten someone of Redding’s caliber for the league minimum.  The same cannot be said for Hudson.  Now the Mets are going to wind up giving up prospects and overpaying for a bat they could have had on the cheap in the offseason.

Omar did a good job of fixing last year’s problem.  The bullpen was terrible and he improved it.  I would have signed K-Rod and traded for Putz.  I know he’s a disaster this year, but I don’t fault Omar for that.  He took a chance and I’m fine with that.  But he didn’t plan for what might be a problem this year.  What if one or two of the core guys misses significant time?  What if Daniel Murphy isn’t the next Pete Rose like we think he will be?  What if Fernando Tatis doesn’t produce like he did in 2008?  And what if Ryan Church doesn’t go back to being the player he was pre-concussion last year?  How do you not plan ahead and think about these things!?  No one thought those what ifs would all go against the team but you have to consider the possibility that they might.

Now the Mets are suffering because the lack of forward-thinking by their front office and we have to watch essentially a AAA team go up against the best in the league.  The team is 5-9 so far in this 32-game stretch and I don’t see it getting much better.  Not when Fernando Tatis is hitting cleanup.