Saturday Seasons: 2010, the Quintessential Mets Season

If you tried to list the elements of a quintessential Mets season they would probably include: a splashy offseason free agent signing who would likely disappoint, spring training optimism, a fast start that raises hope that this might be the year, injuries (not all of them on the field) that dash that optimism, a midseason swoon and a late rally that creates hope but ends up breaking fans’ hearts.

               2010 was a quintessential Mets season.

               That it ended with a 79-83 record and signaled the end of the Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya eras is almost incidental, because along the way, the season had that brand of weirdness that is singularly Mets.

               Let’s start with the free agent signing: Jason Bay, who actually became a Met for the second time in his career, both times thanks to Minaya. Then general manager of the Montreal Expos, Minaya traded minor-leaguer Bay to the Mets in 2002. Four months later, then-general manager Steve Phillips packaged Bay in a deal with the Padres that brought hurler Bobby Jones to Shea.

               Fast forward eight years: Bay was a major league veteran, with six successful seasons in Pittsburgh and two in Boston that justified giving him a four-year $66 million dollar contract. At the press conference announcing the signing, the Mets made much of Bay’s Canadian heritage: hockey hall of famer Rod Gilbert was on hand to present Bay with a Rangers jersey bearing Bay’s name and his number, 44, on the back.

    Alas, Bay wouldn’t make it through the year healthy, suffering a season-ending concussion after hitting the wall at Dodger Stadium July 23 – although, in what was not a ringing endorsement of the Mets’ training and medical staff, Bay did not receive the concussion diagnosis until a week later, after the Mets returned to New York. Not that Bay was tearing up the league before then. He hit a disappointing .259 in 95 games, with only six home runs and 47 RBI.

               In fact, the most impactful offseason acquisition flew completely under the radar: knuckleballer R.A. Dickey, signed to a minor league contract. Dickey, who had bounced around with four other big-league teams over a decade, half of that time perfecting his hard knuckleball, dominated in AAA, including a one-hitter in which he allowed a single to the leadoff batter and retired the next 27. Recalled in mid-May, Dickey was a revelation. He won six of his first seven starts, allowing two or fewer earned runs in five of them. He would end up leading the team with a 2.84 ERA (slightly better than ace Johan Santana’s 2.98).

               But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We mentioned that injuries always play a large part in ruining Mets seasons, and we sort of foreshadowed some questions about the Mets’ medical staff. Well, those questions actually were first raised in January, when star center fielder Carlos Beltran chose to undergo knee surgery, by some accounts without the Mets’ consent.

We say by some accounts because what really happened is murky, according to press accounts at the time, with Beltran’s agent, Scott Boras, claiming the Mets, through team orthopedist David Altchek,  were apprised of Beltran’s plans and the team disputing that. Beltran was quoted in the New York Post as saying he spoke to Minaya  a day before the surgery and “he did not ask me to wait, or to get another doctor’s opinion. He just wished me well. No one from the team raised any issue until Wednesday, after I was already in surgery. I do not know what else I could have done.”

The surgery shelved him for the first half of the season; he would only play in 64 games. Later in the year, John Maine underwent season-ending shoulder surgery, choosing a Philadelphia surgeon over Mets team doctors at the Hospital for Special Surgery – a slap as much as the Mets’ on-field managers as it was at the Mer’s medical team. Maine had warred with both manager Manuel and pitching coach Dan Warthen, who had accused Maine of being a “habitual liar” in consistently trying to hide his physical condition.

“John Maine wanted the ball regardless of how he felt. And most of our discussion wasn’t me getting on John Maine. I was getting on John Maine for hurting John Maine,” Manuel told the Newark Star-Ledger. “And that’s what a lot of people don’t understand. When I confronted John Maine, it was about him hurting John Maine. It wasn’t anything about the team or anything like that….He’s finally got this thing rectified, hopefully, and be ready to come back. He was always tough on John Maine. That was my argument. ‘Why you so tough on John Maine? I like John Maine.’ You know? That type of thing. And that was kind of taken differently.”

But perhaps the most Met-like of injuries – that is, bizarre – was suffered by closer Francisco Rodriguez, who tore a ligament in his right (pitching) thumb while punching out his fiancee’s father outside the Citi Field family room after an August game. With the woman’s father being taken to Flushing Hospital and police called to the scene, Rodriguez was charged criminally with assault and given an order of protection that kept him away from his fiancée and their children. He would eventually plead guilty to attempted assault and agree to a year of anger-management therapy to avoid jail.

This was, obviously, not a good look for the Mets, and upper management and some of Rodriguez’ teammates responded appropriately, “Ownership and the organization are very disappointed in Francisco’s inappropriate behavior and we take this matter very seriously, chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon said in a statement. The team suspended Rodriguez and talked about voiding the last year of his contract.

“No one should act like that,” Beltran told Newsday. “He feels sorry about what happened, but it’s too late. Family issues should be addressed at the house, not the ballpark, not at the place where you work.”

Manuel, by then considered by the media to be playing out the string before being fired at the end of the year, didn’t help his case by essentially defending Rodriguez. “You don’t condone it but you can see why,” Manuel was quoted as saying in Newsday about the incident. “I think that’s what has to be taken into account with your frustrations and things…Well, I think as men, once you have all that information, as men I think we all would have reacted in some form. Maybe not in that form, but in some form. And I think I have to kind of leave it at that.”

So that’s how it went for the Mets all season. Not terrible, but never far enough off the ground to mount a serious pennant challenge. Which brings us to the final game of the season, a 14-inning affair that saw Oliver Perez on the mound for what would be his final outing as a Met. Perez had battled with Manuel and Warthen all season, refusing to accept a demotion to AAA to work on his mechanics. Sent in to pitch the 14^th because, basically, no one else was available, Perez – taking the mound for the first time in almost a month – struck out the first batter he faced, hit the next one and walked the three after that, plating what provide to be the winning run in a 2-1 loss.

The next day, both Manuel and Minaya were relieved of their duties.