Carlos Beltran and David Wright are going to switch spots in the batting order on Thursday, because Jerry Manuel wants Beltran to get to the plate a little more often. He's also going to sit down Luis Castillo, Ramon Castro and Daniel Murphy in place of Alex Cora, Omir Santos and Gary Sheffield. That may be day game after a night game stuff, you'd hope so in the case of Castillo and Murphy, but Manuel's clearly trying to catch a little fire.
There are worse ideas, until you realize that Livan Hernandez is still going to be on the mound. That's not quite fair, because Livan's been perfectly respectable in each of his starts. Respectable is about all that the Mets can hope for when Johan Santana isn't on the hill, and that's a much bigger problem than anything that's going on with the offense or the defense. Manuel himself said as much following the game.
"We can’t continue to perform or pitch in this manner and expect to be champions of this division," Manuel said. "We have to figure out how to pitch a lot better than what we’re doing."
Manuel has identified the problem, but his solution seems beyond current capabiliities. Oliver Perez has been a puzzle for longer than Manuel's been manager, John Maine is either still recovering from injury or he's a changed pitcher and Hernandez is what Hernandez is at this point. At their best, all three of those guys are going to put a lot of heat on the bullpen, which leads to overwork, break down and, well, results familiar from the past two seasons.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
