Perhaps Newsday’s timing left something to be desired. The evening after the Long Island paper declared David Wright and Jose Reyes to be New York’s premier 3B/SS tandem (a claim the New York Times’ William Rhoden scoffs at this morning, at least in the case of Wright vs. A-Rod), the former struck out 3 times and misplayed a Bernie Williams bloop single down the 3rd base line. Reyes, merely continued his O-for-the-week stretch. A gutty effort from Orlando Hernandez was squandered while the Mets could only manage one hit — an Endy Chavez single in the 6th off Ron Villone. For the 3rd time this week, the Mets had a baserunner picked off (Chavez by Villone — Franco and Beltran were caught leaning the wrong way against Boston) on a night when they were struggling to muster any sort of offense.
All of this is to take nothing away from the Yankee bullpen. Villone, Procter, Fransworth and Rivera rendered the Mets’ bats impotent, though I can never quite undertand how on occasions where the entire lineup is incapable of reaching first, there’s never an attempt to lay down a bunt, particularly with the Princess or Andy Phillips positioned deep.
The former was booed heavily in each of his 4 failures to do anything at the plate. Had the turnout been 100% Yankee fans, the treatment of A-Rod might’ve been far worse.
While I don’t think the Mets ought to be in panic mode just yet, this has been a brutal week, and their carelessness on the basepaths is pretty uncharacteristic of a team that shown more fundamental competence than Mets squads of recent vintage. And life could be much worse — you could be the Phillies, looking up in the standards at the second-place Florida Marlins.