Mets Manager Just As Dumb As Mets Owners, Carlos Beltran Is His Whore

Any of you know what the hell this means? Backward, defeatist: these are your New York Mets, with their fearless skipper leading the charge.

Here's Joel Sherman of the New York Post:

Since baseball is an individual game wrapped in a team concept, selfishness by Beltran and Reyes actually could be a good thing. I heard that with Wright and Ike Davis out of the lineup and Jason Bay still in freefall, Terry Collins actually went to Beltran recently and told the switch-hitter to get greedy in RBI situations. The Mets manager liberated Beltran to essentially become an RBI whore.

We'll excuse Sherman's split infinitive and clunky metaphor because those are perhaps the least odious components of this bit. The first sentence in the second paragraph makes you "Duh"—when is being unselfish, at least at the plate, a good thing. Bunting? Moving the runner over? Any of these better than, say, getting a hit or walking?

But the second part rankles any Met fan—especially those who thought the ancien régime had settled for eternity in whatever zen pasture Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya built together. Alderson and his Chess Club were supposed to bring some analysis, forward baseball thought. Instead, here's a manager who tells his best hitter (Beltran's 10th in OPS among the NL) to "get greedy in RBI situations." Is Beltran supposed to try extra hard when there are men on base? Is that the idea? Or is it that he should try to hit sacrifice flies, not doubles, because then he'll be a more effective RBI whore? How could this lesson provide even the tiniest bit of value? There's nothing useful here.

And of course pep talks like this belie the ostensible tobacco-stained wisdom of the old-timey baseball man. He's living back in the 1980s, in the fuzzy days before Bill James, with slicked-back hair and contrast collar dress shirts. Remind you of anyone?

David no longer owes Wilpon his allegiance [NY Post]