The Acquaintance Pile

Lean back with a warm, alcoholic drink and a warm fire (if you don’t have a fireplace, do not turn up your stove for this … it’s meant to be metaphorical) and ask yourself this:

If you were introduced to a person, new friend, date, work colleague, what have you … and you heard a bunch of not-so-endearing things about them, but your initial experience was nice enough, you would want to form your own opinion of the person before discarding them to the pile of “acquaintances”, wouldn’t you?

And this is why I agree with the Alderson/Collins plan to take a look at Oliver Perez in the bullpen.

Look, I want Oliver Perez off this team more than anyone on earth.  But I also want it to be with no regrets on anybody’s part.  We, as fans, could cite chapter and verse about how Perez showed up to camp overweight in 2009 after signing that big deal, and refusing the minor league assignment in 2010, and about how his fastball has been up in post offices across the country the last few months, and about how there’s no possible way he could be a reliever because he needs a week to warm up.  But if we want Sandy Alderson to stay true to his beliefs without pandering to the fan base and to public relations which we’ve accused the Mets brass of before, then that has to stand for the unpopular choices too.

If they want to take a look at Oliver Perez as a reliever, fine with me.  We’ve gone this far with him … we’ve gone farther than I thought we should have gone with him.  Once he got hammered by Mexican League hitters, to me that should have been it.  And those were outings that Alderson certainly could have gone to see for his own eyes.  But now that we’re in this place, with Oliver Perez as a reliever, fine.  Let Sandy and Terry see this train wreck with their own eyes.

I know it worries you that Perez could luck into a couple of good innings here and there and convince the brass that maybe a lefty specialist role suites him.  Doesn’t worry me at all.  I have the utmost confidence that Oliver Perez is who he is.  You might call it “rooting for him to fail”.  I prefer to call it the opposite of letting the cream rise to the top: “May the sludge sink to the bottom.  it always does, right?  If it takes Perez 25 minutes to warm up, and if Perez is a train wreck as a starting pitcher after getting that 25 minutes to warm up, you expect him to have pinpoint control after 20 tosses in the pen?  Not me.  I’ll roll these loaded dice which are loaded with craps … or, multiple loads of crap if you must.

And then, we come to the other twin, Luis Castillo.  When last you left this blog I was defending Castillo, and letting you know of my belief that he’s had a bad rap here with fans blasting him for little sufficient reason for doing so.  I didn’t want to see a guy get blasted for showing up to camp on time.

Then today I read this from John Harper:

“Castillo, the incumbent of sorts, has annoyed Terry Collins by moping around in apparent protest of being forced to compete for the job, to the point where the manager called him into his office a couple of days ago to tell him he better start working harder if he wanted any shot at all.

Castillo didn’t even take pregame ground balls one day last week when he was in the lineup as the DH, as Collins has had to juggle playing time to get looks at all four second-base candidates. And that didn’t sit well with the new manager, who is not going to tolerate the laissez-faire attitude that permeated the clubhouse in recent years.”

I can’t hold the townspeople back any longer.  The gates are coming down.  Have at him, people.

Let me get this straight, he hit .235 last season, he couldn’t stay healthy, nobody will trade for his healthy contract and his sickly bat, and he wonders why he has to compete for a job?  People, you have your legitimate reason to hate him now.  And so do Sandy and Terry.  Because now they’ve seen it with their own eyes.  If this is what the brass has to put up with, then it’s only a matter of time before their eyes will convince them.  I’m completely convinced now.  Time to go.

But let the brass see it for themselves.  Forget giving Oliver and Luis a fair shot.  This is about giving Sandy and Terry a fair chance to make their own decision.  There will be plently of chances to question these two guys.  On this, I’m completely comfortable with letting them do their jobs.