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Manuel has right sense of urgency

Wallace Matthews

August 27, 2008

PHILADELPHIA

There will be blood. Jerry Manuel guarantees it.If the Mets are going down - and their "interim manager" with them this year, they are going in flames. That at least is a welcome change from last year, when they just went down in shame.

Last year on this date, the Mets had a five-game cushion over the rest of the NL East and an exceedingly relaxed man in the manager's office. Last night, that lead was down to a slender half-game even before the Mets blew a seven-run lead to head into extra innings tied with their pursuers, the Phillies, at 7-7.

Yet, you have to feel better about their chances for a happy ending to this season primarily because of the man in the manager's office.

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When asked before the game if he would consider reining in Mike Pelfrey, currently his best starter, in deference to his relatively tender 24-year-old arm, Manuel laughed.

"You're trying to win a championship, period," he said. "And in the course of winning a championship, there will be some damage to some folks in order to do that. That's the sacrifice. That's the cost, that's the price of a championship."

You may recoil from the candor and sometimes cringe from the results, but you got to love the man's attitude.

Two months after the Anaheim Assassination, the early-morning sneak attack that claimed the jobs of Willie Randolph and two of his coaches, it is time to admit what is becoming more obvious by the day - that even though the Mets fired their manager at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons and in the worst possible way, it has turned out all right. Better than all right, in fact.

Because this year, there is fight in the Mets because there is fire in their manager.

From the day he took the job, Manuel has acknowledged that to deny last year's collapse was to invite it back in the room, and during the past two months, he has emphasized a word Randolph shunned as if it were an obscenity. The word? Urgency.

"You have to attack every game as though you're playing your rival," he said. "At least tonight, we don't have to assume."

And the Mets attacked with urgency last night, scoring in each of the first four innings to take a 7-0 lead. But Pedro Martinez gave back five of those runs and the bullpen did the rest.

If Manuel is to believed, and there is no reason to view him as anything but a (sometimes painfully) honest man, the Mets may not o win the division but they won't do it without a fight. Or, a casualty list.

Then, managing as if his team was in the seventh game of the World Series rather than the 133rd game of the regular season, Manuel saw his team blow a 7-0 despite his best efforts. Or maybe, because of them.

Three times last night, Manuel defied logic and tempted fate in his late-innings pitching matchups. Twice, he got away with them, and probably would have a third time had he gotten a strong relay throw out of Damion Easley in the bottom of the ninth. But those who live by the roll of the dice often crap out and last night, in arguably the most important Mets game since last year's regular-season finale, some of Manuel's moves clearly backfired.

He gambled on allowing Joe Smith to pitch to Pat Burrell in the eighth with two on and two out, despite Burrell's .750 batting average (3-for-4) against Smith, and got away with it when Burrell lined out And he barely escaped a Luis Ayala-Ryan Howard matchup to start the ninth when the Phillies slugger flied out to the centerfield fence.

But the glass slipper shattered when he allowed Ayala to face pinch hitter Eric Bruntlett, who was 2-for-6 against him. Bruntlett doubled in the gap, scoring Jayson Werth, who needed an off-line relay from Easley to sneak in with the tying run.

It was the kind of play Manuel himself could appreciate, even if it worked against him. On each day's lineup card, Manuel writes an inspirational saying. Yesterday's was: "The student who is never required to do what he cannot do is often unable to what he can do."

The message was clear. This year, the Mets will be asked to do things they thought they couldn't in hopes they will be able to do what they were supposed to do last year. Win a championship. At any cost.