Strategery

It must be easy to manage against Snoop Manuel these days.  Just wait until he uses everybody by the tenth inning, then hit a walk-off home run.  I think Dusty Baker can handle that.

Seriously, answer me this: How can a manager go into a game with his “day game after a night game” lineup including Henry Blanco, Gary Matthews Jr (who I think this past week officially became the RP in VORP), and Alex Cora … and somehow have a worse lineup on the field by the end of a game that only lasted ten innings?

I get it.  Jose Reyes and Jason Bay are, as a friend of mine often says, sucking wind right now.  Reyes may still be physically off from all the off-season body drama.  And Bay has the whole world on his shoulders right now.  But y’know what, Bay is getting paid to produce with the world on his shoulders … so too bad.

But for crying out loud, how does every position player get used by the tenth inning?  How are Bay and David Wright out of the game in the bottom of the tenth?  Bay stinks, but Replacement Player Matthews stays in the game instead?  And despite the fact that Frank Catalanotto did get a hit when he pinch hit in the ninth, how do you use him and not Barajas who hit a dinger off of Francisco Cordero the night before?  Meanwhile, Wright gets taken out in the tenth to keep Fernando Tatis, the emergency catcher, in the game.  Tatis woke up this morning and figured he can’t play anywhere else but third base?  What in Bobby Valentine’s name is going on here?  Has someone been reading Three Nights in August on the flight from Philadelphia?  Or did Snoop, after being interviewed early in the game by SNY, all of a sudden realize “Oh snap, this game’s on television!  I better do something!”

It’s days like this I wish I lived on a higher floor. Because if I jump from here, I’m probably going to live through it, and the nurse will see my Mets shirt and say “Oh, let me put on the game for you” as I yell “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” But nobody can hear me from behind my full body cast as I’m forced to watch and listen to Snoop Manuel explain how David Wright, who had a home run today, had to leave the game because Tatis was in and he’s the emergency catcher and that everyone else on the bench was burned up.  And then he says to the reporter “He’s the third catcher!  Didn’t I teach you that already? HA HA HA HA HA!”  Yeah, funny.  Did you also teach the reporter how to leave your lefty specialist in the bullpen with the other team’s best lefty at the plate?  Did you teach America’s youth how to pull a double switch without pulling your groin?  Sorry, I missed the class where you taught us how to cut someone gangsta style, and then suture them with the chest drain stitch to heal them.

Cut me if you wish, Snoop.  But please … just let me die.