By now, Mets players should be used to being cast into a firestorm they had nothing to do with. Batten down the clubhouse hatches and get on with it.
Not surprisingly, once again, Met players are being thrust into choosing sides due to yet another demonstration of dysfunction in the front office.
Pick your version of what happened, pick your villain, what does it matter? Yoenis Cespedes is not the single reason why the Mets are 4-7, and if not for the corona side-tracked Phillies (1-3), the team would be looking up at the rest of the division.
This is not a time for Mets players to let themselves be distracted. For obvious reasons, the media, hoping the story has what’s called in the business “legs”, is in a frenzy doing “investigative work” to discover the story behind the story.
Mets Players – Seeing The Forest Through The Trees
But the worst part is that some of the Mets players are buying into and feeding the fake news mystery.
Brandon Nimmo, who up to this point has been likable as a put me in coach, I’m ready to play partner on the Mets team.
We read in today’s New York Daily News that are supposedly two stories floating among Mets players.
The first story, according to Brandon Nimmo, details that Cespedes or his agent let the Mets know Sunday morning that he was opting out. The second story mimics that of Mets management; general manager Brodie Van Wagenen did not find out until the eighth inning of Sunday’s 4-0 loss to the Braves.
So, Brandon Nimmo, not Pete Alonso or Jacob deGrom, is now the face of the Mets. Are we to believe that Deesha Thosar, the Mets beat writer for the Daily News and one who typically does her job masterfully, did not see a fawn in the forest, ripe for pickin’ in Nimmo?
Mets players had nothing to do with whatever GM Brodie VanWagenen was doing and did for his role in the Cespedes fiasco.
New spins are coming forth by the hour, and sooner or later, VanWagenen might wake up to this one fact.
And it’s this. Why did Van Wagenen keep both his manager Luis Rojas and his Mets players in the dark for the sake of a player who has been known to be a bit “off” and quirky?
Okay, I get it. VanWagenen will probably say he didn’t want to “disturb” Rojas, whose job it was to manage a game in progress. As if Rojas is not capable of multitasking? C’mon, Brodie, if that’s true, why did you hire him in the first place?
Mets Players: Bring Back August-September 2019
There is only one salient and relevant aspect of the entire matter.
Yoenis Cespedes is history, and the Mets are off to a dismal start to a season that will be one-fifth complete by the end of this week.
That’s it, and all Mets fans can hope is that the Mets players can put aside the noise and dysfunction surrounding them.
So as to focus on the only thing they genuinely care about anyway – securing a spot in the 2020 NL postseason, where anything can happen.
The core of the 2019 team is still there, and those Mets players now need to rally the team to adopt the same spirit which blocked out the noise surrounding Mickey Callaway’s staying or going.
Mets players (then) said, “F___k ’em all”, and they hunkered down in a unified clubhouse to sport the best record in the National League over the second-half.
Ripped off shirts after a win and a “can I keep my dog” Jeff McNeil inspired controversy formed the backdrop of a team winning – despite the foul odor terminating from ownership and the front office.
Mets Players: Did It Once, Do It Again
Turning the page is more comfortable when we don’t pay attention to the noise around us. Let them say these Mets players don’t make themselves as “available” as they used to.
Little do these same media folks realize if they keep the Mets players out of this and whatever is about to come, they will be treated to an even bigger story in just a few months when they can maybe write headlines like, “Mets Beat Dodgers, Move On To WS”.
Or maybe not.
But the point is this is as challenging a season as baseball has ever seen, to begin with. Mets players and their peers are putting a great deal on the line to get to the finish line.
Yoenis Cespedes, wherever you are, stay there, and don’t let the door kick you in the ass.
And Brodie, if you must, continue your search to find him, but your team and the New York Mets players have better things to do.
Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
