For the night owls who can't wait for the morning, here's today's game story.
By STEVE POPPER
STAFF WRITER
PHOENIX – Was it the inspiration provoked by Billy Wagner’s
criticism? Or was it just the sight of the hitter-friendly confines of Chase
Field?
Either way, the Mets were more than happy with the results.
Reeling from a one-sided loss that percolated the frustration to the surface
Wednesday, the Mets rebounded to beat the Diamondbacks, 7-2 in the first game
of a six-game road trip.
For one day, all was right once again. Moises Alou returned
to the lineup. Jose Reyes provided the spark at the top of the order and Ryan
Church remained undefeated in the second spot. And Chase Field was better than
home for the Mets as they improved to 14-1 over the last 15 games here – with
less booing than they hear at Shea Stadium.
And maybe Wagner’s words were taken to heart as John Maine
did what Oliver Perez couldn’t two days earlier. Roughed up early and with his
pitch count rising, Maine managed to fight his way through six innings and 107
pitches to get the win. Reyes was as perfect as he could be, spectacular in the
field and igniting the offense by tripling on the first pitch of the night and
adding three more hits, including a second triple.
If the Mets were trying to avoid overthinking, they were
also trying to avoid thinking at all. With Micah Owings on the mound, bringing a 4-0 record into the game, the Mets shrugged off the Diamondbacks sparkling rotation and worried about themselves instead.
“We talked about it in our meeting,” Willie Randolph said. “We
didn’t even talk about their starting staff. Do what we want to do.”
“That’s a good sign,” Reyes said. “When everybody swings the
bat good we’re dangerous. When we start to hit like we used to this is a real
good lineup. We’re going to be good. We will play better than we did in April –
no doubt about it. We have the talent.”
It’s easy to say when everything is clicking as it did on
this night. Can one game turn their fortunes and erase the problems that
surfaced this week? The Mets tried to iron all of their issues before this trip
began.
Wagner had said his piece – very publicly – Wednesday,
criticizing the Mets’ effort in a 13-1 loss to the Pirates, and specifically
pointing to the game’s starting pitcher, Oliver Perez. And when he was done, he
knew that Randolph was going to say his piece, too.
Randolph met with Wagner privately and while he may have
agreed with the gist of Wagner’s message, he didn’t like that Wagner had said
it to the media rather than keeping it within the clubhouse.
“I just told him what I felt about it and he told me how he
responded,” Randolph said. “He can respond the way he responds, whatever. I
just told him that I thought that was something better kept in house, that’s
all.”
It might not be that easy, though. Wagner got the message
and was quiet and cryptic with most inquiries of the matter, not even admitting
that the two had met, instead just saying, “Everything’s been taken care of.”
But just saying it’s in the past may do as little to move past it as a critique
of Perez does to change his erratic nature.
What Wagner said wasn’t wrong – about Perez or the team. And
while he might not have been the best one to say it and he didn’t choose the
best venue to voice it, Wagner is all too often the only one to say what is
clearly the truth. Randolph has protected his team – though the struggles of
last year’s collapse and through the up and down first month of the season. But
even Randolph admitted over the winter that he should have changed his approach
with the team in September.
David Wright is still too young and too politically correct
to criticize – and to absorb the blowback that Wagner cares little is exploding
back at him. But Wright is the type of player who will outlast Wagner, Perez –
and likely Randolph if the Mets don’t turn things around soon – one of the real
young building blocks of the franchise along with Jose Reyes.
“It’s not about having a fiery leader,” Wagner said. “It’s
nothing about that. We want to take care of our own business. The lucky thing
is that we’re a veteran team so you really shouldn’t have to say anything. It’s
all taken care of now and we don’t have to really worry about it. Everybody
knows where I come from and where our team comes from.”
But is just having a veteran team enough to solve the
problems? Or is that a bit of the problem? While Wagner insisted that a veteran
team shouldn’t need prodding, when he was asked if this group of veterans needed
the poke, he couldn’t – or wouldn’t – say.
“That’s yet to be determined,” he said. “You don’t know how
people will respond. You have to just wait and see. I can’t answer that. You’d
think not. Honestly, you would think not. But that’s – I don’t think what I was
saying was pointed at all the people. It was just something that I thought
needed to be said and that was it.”
Moises Alou, activated before Friday’s game, expressed
confidence that things will turn around. His return to the lineup certainly
didn’t hurt, delivering an RBI single in his first at-bat and roping another
line drive that was caught in left field..
“I mean, we need guys to play who know how to play this
game,” Alou said. “It takes some guys longer. Some guys have been hot since the
beginning of the season. If you look around this team and look at the kind of
stats we’re going to have at the end of the season – put it this way, you know
what kind of year Carlos (Beltran) is going to have, (Jose) Reyes is going to
have, Billy Wagner’s going to have. Once they have those years, then this team
is going to be a great team. Look at the positive side. Maybe we haven’t played
the way we expect in the first month of the season and we’re in first place.”
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