The Mets wanted Carlos Beltran to get a third opinion [1]? OK, here goes:
“Hey Carlos, your team needs starting pitching.”
Opinions are like Met injuries: There are plenty to go around. Today the Mets expressed, as blandly and nonlitigiously as possible (other than by just shutting up), the opinion that Carlos Beltran went behind their backs to fix his knee. That’s their opinion and they’re entitled to it. That knee is a big investment for them.
I don’t really know what the Mets were supposed to do once they couldn’t be ahead of the story from the start. Had they taken, as Mike Francesa lucidly suggested, the tack of “we don’t discuss our players’ injuries,” it would have fired up a PR storm that was already brewing. A PR storm is almost always brewing around the Mets. Twenty-four hours ago, the Mets’ PR waters seemed unusually calm. David Wright was sharing football insights with Francesa, and pitchers and catchers were creeping ever closer.
Now hobbled centerfielders and secret surgeons are reporting instead.
I also don’t know what reporters who cover the Mets are supposed to ask, but none of their questions elicited much in the way of revelations — bad for information junkies, good for the Mets not looking terrible, I suppose. I listened to the conference call with John Ricco, which boiled down to two essential exchanges:
“Can you tell us everything we want to know about your internal machinations?”
“No.”
And:
“Can you accurately forecast when an injured player will be fully recovered and playing baseball despite the horrendous track record attached to your usually wild and inaccurate guesses.”
“Twelve weeks.”
Other than that, the whole process has been characteristically enlightening.
The upshot I gather is Carlos Beltran has two knees and would like them both to function so he can perform at his job. He went to a really well-regarded doctor for an operation that apparently didn’t do him undue harm. He and his agent ignored his employer since the Mets’ default prescription for regular leechings and bleedings wasn’t making him feel any less pain. And now Angel Pagan will have to be directed to center field, which I’m guessing he’ll find nine of every ten times he lights out for it.
So…do the Mets still Believe in Comebacks [2]?