If the Mets were a sitcom — and who is to say they aren’t? — the presence of Mickey Callaway would be explained away in the third act.
RICCO: I gotta tell ya, Mickey…you’re not a very good manager.
CALLAWAY: I’ve always been before.
RICCO: Before? This is your first managerial job.
CALLAWAY: I’ve been managing for years. Why, I’ve managed a whole string of ’em.
RICCO: A whole string of what?
CALLAWAY: Bakeries. We call more than one “a string of ’em” on account of the string we use to tie the boxes. That’s bakery humor.
RICCO: This isn’t a bakery! This is a baseball team!
CALLAWAY: It is? Well, I’ll be darned. You know, I was wondering where you kept the flour.
RICCO: Excuse me, but WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?
CALLAWAY: Say, I know what happened — you wanted my brother DICKIE Callaway. HE’S the baseball guy. Real good at it, from what I can tell. I’ll bet he can make those “pitching changes” and “double switches” everybody keeps asking me about like it’s second nature.
RICCO: So you don’t know anything about baseball?
CALLAWAY: Does it look like I know anything about baseball?
RICCO: Oh dear. I better call Omar. And J.P. And Jeff. Definitely Jeff.
CALLAWAY: Hey, there’s the flour! You sit down and relax, John, and I’ll fix ya up some crullers. I’ll bake a batch big enough for ALL the GMs. Now where do you keep the oven?
RICCO: And it’s not even the All-Star break.
On the chance that the Mets aren’t a sitcom, and that there is no Dickie Callaway ready to emerge from the wings, then I have no idea what Mickey Callaway is doing managing them. Nor does Callaway have any kind of a clue.
When you’ve lived with a team a long time, you try to be reasonable toward each of its components. You try to have a memory and keep in mind that this guy who sucks right now maybe didn’t suck so much before and maybe he won’t suck in the moment. You cut slack accordingly. Jeurys Familia has a big slice of slack from me for all he did to win the Mets a pennant and push them toward the playoffs again, but he’s pretty much nibbled through it. I no longer have a lot of faith that Familia won’t suck (whether it’s from wear or tear or both) and when he does, my memories of the 96 saves that embellished two golden seasons and the several celebrations that ensued upon his final pitches fog over. He’s the guy who sucks right now. When he doesn’t, which he didn’t on Tuesday night in nailing down five outs to help enable a rare Citi Field Mets win, I am pleasantly surprised.
But he’s still kind of the guy who sucks right now, which is why I didn’t want to see him come right back out there for the ninth inning on Wednesday night to protect a two-run lead that immediately felt endangered by his mandated participation in the proceedings. Zack Wheeler had been so good against the Pirates for seven scoreless innings and, more relevantly, Tim Peterson had been sharp for nine economical pitches in relief of a faltering Robert Gsellman one night after five zippy deliveries the night before. Peterson was already in, and he’s been in the zone in a way no emerging setup man has been since perhaps Jeurys Familia in 2014. Familia, on the other hand, threw 28 pitches the night before, barked at a baserunner who had done nothing wrong and has aged plenty over the past four years.
Except Peterson is just some rookie and Familia is an established closer, and when you have an old, set-in-his-ways manager who has always hewed closely to roles…no, wait a second, that’s not Mickey Callaway, at least not the Mickey Callaway who was sold to us as an avatar of new age situational progressivism specifically where the bullpen was concerned. This Callaway wouldn’t just default to his closer because he was the closer. He’d go with who made the most sense in the right spot, giving his club and his pitcher the best chance to succeed.
Peterson made the most sense in the ninth inning Wednesday night. He went with Familia. Familia went downhill immediately, as did any chance the pitcher and the club would succeed. Nobody in a Mets uniform demonstrated much concern. No catcher, no infielder, no pitching coach, no manager. No reliever was visibly nudged to get loose ASAP. Maybe concern boiled beneath the surface, but nobody availed themselves of a mound visit (the Mets had some left) to lend the closer a hand. They just let him keep pitching and creating baserunners.
Then, suddenly, Anthony Swarzak got up and, almost just as suddenly, Anthony Swarzak was in the game. Nobody fast-forwarded to skip over the boring warming process. They got him in there just before it was too late. A couple of instants later, it was too late. The stilted two-pitcher process that permitted four Pittsburgh runs required 25 pitches in all. The eventual result approached our rainy shoreline with the relentlessness of Superstorm Sandy. You could see it in the forecast. You knew it was coming. You braced for the worst.
There went the trees.
When the moderately paced torture was over, the Mets were behind, 5-3, en route to a wholly unnecessary loss [1] in a wholly unfathomable season. The manager tried to help us fathom it postgame by kindly Metsplaining, “Yeah, so how it works in baseball…” It doesn’t really matter what he said thereafter (it wasn’t anything useful). It was the most condescending managerial tutorial regarding fundamentals since Mr. Burns informed Darryl Strawberry he was pinch-hitting Homer Simpson for him in a righty-lefty matchup because, “It’s what smart managers to do win ballgames.”
I could cut Familia slack until very recently because he’d earned it. I hope he comes around and elicits a few decent trade offers; I’ll always appreciate the Familia of 2015 and 2016. Swarzak hasn’t earned any slack, at least not with the Mets, yet he was thrown into a bases-loaded, nobody out maelstrom. Swarzak has come off as a bit snippy when peppered around his locker in less than ideal (a.k.a. losing) circumstances, but if he was being asked questions after getting key outs, maybe that would translate as “boy, that guy sure has a winning edge to him.” Either way, Swarzak wasn’t signed for his personality, whatever it is. He was signed to get key outs.
Callaway’s good will was all based on talk and theory. In theory, he was gonna be a great manager. In theory, he was gonna make a great difference. Oh, he’s made a difference, all right. Whatever the metrics are on managerial impact, you can’t watch this team on a going basis and not infer they are a reflection of a first-time manager who had no idea what he was getting himself into and has yet to come up with one.
Listen to him talk, we told ourselves between October and March. He sure sounds good. Or sounded good. He sounded good before there was a season. Every night I tell myself he sounded good before the game. Honestly, he sounds great whenever I hear him interviewed in the early evening. At that point, nothing has gone wrong yet, and he’s affable as all get out. Then, after another game/loss, the vibe shifts to just get out.
And it’s not even the All-Star break.
Now that we have confirmed the Mets are being their worst selves, come hang out with some writers and fans who talk about them anyway. We’ll be at Two Boots Midtown East — 337 Lexington Avenue, between 39th and 40th Streets in Manhattan — tonight at 7. Jon Springer (“Once Upon A Team”), Dave Jordan (“Fastball John”) and I will talk about our team, our books and one of our idols, Rusty Staub. Two Boots proprietor Phil Hartman is offering up, as ever, some sublime pizza, including the Le Grand Orange, created specially for this occasion. OFF NIGHT FOR METS FANS, as we’re calling it, is more likely to be fun than any given Mets game in the Mickey Callaway era. So is somebody accidentally stepping on your foot, but this will be better than that, too. Hope to see you there.