Writing the Pine

Ever since Luis Castillo’s unforgivable error that resulted in two runs for the New York Yankees in the New York Mets‘ 9-8 loss in the Bronx, Francisco Rodriguez has not been the same.  Since that unfortunate event, which gave K-Rod his first blown save in 17 opportunities, the following events have transpired:

1) K-Rod got into a shouting match and had to be separated from an unknown Yankee scrub named Brian Bruney.

2) The Yankees blew out the Mets 15-0 in the finale of the Subway Series, including slamming Johan Santana for a career-worst nine runs, in perhaps the most anti-climactic ending to a Subway Series ever.  The Mets now have the record for the most lopsided loss for a National League team against the Yankees (but it’s alright, the Amazins will blow out the Bombers in the next edition of FiveToolPlayer’s “The Real Subway Series”) .

3) K-Rod converts a save opportunity in the series opener against the Baltimore Orioles, but not before walking in a run.

4) K-Rod blows his second save in a week by loading the bases in the ninth, walking in the tying run, then giving up a walk-off single to Aubrey Huff.

We’ve seen injuries to Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, Alex Cora and Ramon Martinez.  Gary Sheffield and Carlos Beltran have played despite being 100% healthy.  David Wright, who is somehow leading the major leagues in batting average, has been an extremely streaky hitter and is on pace to strikeout a zillion times.  Being a lifelong Met fan, I can live with some of these unfortunate happenings.

But following Castillo’s blunder, the only constants in our season, Johan Santana and K-Rod, shamefully displayed three consecutive very poor and uncharacteristic outings.

In light of all the trade proposals being thrown around from fans, bloggers, sports radio hosts and sportswriters alike, I would like to contribute two ideas to Mets’ GM Omar Minaya:

1) Let Luis Castillo sit out a few games, let hot streak of bad luck cool off and sign Marla Hooch from A League of Their Own to play in his place.  With Hooch starting at second base, we’ll have a quality switch-hitting slugger to give the Mets some power that we have sorely lacked this season.  We can also expect her to use both hands to field routine infield pop-ups.

TheWritingIllini would prefer Marla Hooch over Luis Castillo at second base while the Mets try to shake off some of their bad luck.

2) Trade for Aubrey Huff.  Before the Mets-O’s series, I didn’t think Huff would be a good candidate to trade for.  His numbers are just average, and he’s not so great on defense.  He handed the Mets the game in the series opener by missing a pop-up, but it wasn’t exactly the easiest catch to make.  Huff more than made up for his drop by really coming through with his bat for the O’s this series, smashing the go-ahead two-run homer  on Wednesday and then hitting the walk-off single last night.  We can move him to the outfield when Delgado comes back.  Plus, who wouldn’t want to have the Elven King on his team (Aubrey, according to Wikipedia, means “Ruler of the Little People” or “King of the Elves”)?

The Elven King would be an excellent addition to an injury-ridden Mets team.

Here’s the conclusion:  we made a nice little run a few weeks ago, muscling out wins while using our second and third-string backups.  Then we dropped consecutive series against the Philadelphia Phillies, New York Yankees, and Baltimore Orioles.  We face-off in consecutive series against teams with winning records such as the Tampa Bay Rays, St. Louis Cardinals, the Yankees again, and Milwaukee Brewers without a single day of rest.  We need to make moves.  There’s no way I’m going to sit back and watch a $145 million dollar payroll team fail to qualify for the postseason for a third straight year.  No effing way.

It’s been a long and painful first half of baseball for the Mets.  It’s a miracle that we’re only three games back for the NL East lead when half our team is injured and Livan Hernandez is our hottest pitcher.  FML.