Mets injury woes

As Fernando Nieve was being helped off the field, one can certainly begin feeling for the Mets (I see you Phillies/Yankees/Met haters). A season that held much promise in the beginning has quickly dissolved in a bad mix of injury, misfortune, mismanagement and mistakes. Fact is, no one can put their finger quite on one thing that has ailed the Mets but this season would be the asterisk on a three year brutal stretch for the Metropolitans and their fan base.

While Mets fans have had to bear more bad news than a grim-faced doctor, what most can’t tolerate is mishandling. That’s the biggest swing and mis- of it all.

The Mets medical team’s woes started last season when thanks to an OK by its brass of brain surgeons, they allowed Ryan Church, the recipient of a concussion just a few days earlier, to take a cross-country flight despite the common sensical ramifications of putting a guy 30,000 feet in the air with head problems.

But this season’s casualty list can partly be faulted by the Mets constant mis-diagnosing of Mets injuries that had Jerry Manuel, in a sarcastic yet truthful manner, poking fun at the medical staff by saying “they’re calling it cramps….surgery on Thursday.” While the joke went over well with the crowd, who erupted in laughter, he quickly realized that he had made a mistake.

As much of a joke it was meant to be, the saying goes that there’s truth said in jest and in this case, that’s not an opinion, that’s fact.

Week after week, the Met medical staff has had a different case and a different star showing up to their offices, and week after week, its an optimistic and encouraging news followed a week later by an announcement that the player is being placed on the 15 day DL or having surgery that will keep them out for 2 months.

It’s the kind of misinformation that puts both Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya in a difficult position constantly having to answer questions that they don’t have definitive answers to. The simple solution of course is that the medical staff be sure about every injury by taking the precautional MRI anyway for every injury but that would be too much.

It’s the effect of laziness that has permeated to every facet of the Met organization. Only, now its become so apparent and so blatantly obvious to the outside public that fans have demanded answers. Its gotten so bad that fans aren’t even willing to believe in what is legitimately a hard luck situation that the Met team has been forced to deal with. With every incorrect diagnosis under their belt, its becoming painfully clear to Met fans that perhaps its not just hard luck and its more just another boneheaded decision to let a player clearly injured continue to play and risk further harm. When that happens, the Mets can’t hide behind the built-in excuse of a team being too injured to really compete.

Of course it begins with management all the way up top. The Wilpons, owners of the Mets, would have you believe that despite losing anywhere between an estimated $350-$700 million in the Bernie Madoff scandal, are fine and will run the Mets exactly the same way had they not lost all that money. Don’t forget that the Wilpons have to pay back almost half a billion in loans that were handed out by the city (interest free luckily), on a brand new stadium that will be hard pressed to sell tickets for a team that is stinking up a beautiful new place.

Now, fans want heads to roll. Fans want to see Jerry gone, fans want Omar gone and eventually the venom will spread to the players on the field. Eventually, no medical team will be able to patch a winning team together if there is no accountability. If everyone is operating under the same misguided concept that not turning over every stone to find a suitable solution to a problem is ok, then the whole ship will sink. No matter how badly they want their luck to change, it won’t if the rest of their organization is being mismanaged and their fans are being misled.

At some point in this mess of a season, everyone will be held accountable, whether they want to or not.