The Slanch Report

Mets manager Jerry Manuel waxed poetic about the upcoming season during his opening press conference with reporters yesterday. Last year’s Mets team featured many problems on the field, their complete inability to keep an outfielder healthy, their bullpen’s continual destruction, the black-hole that is Luis Castillo and so Jerry announced that he’s thinking about making a big change. That would be removing Jose Reyes from the leadoff spot, putting Castillo there instead.

Um, WHAT!?! Reyes was one of the few consistent bright spots for the Mets, whereas Castillo was useless with the bat and  useless with the glove. So, of course it makes sense to remove Reyes from a position where he excels as perhaps the best leadoff man in the game and put someone who last hit leadoff regularly two teams ago and nearly 5 years ago. In that time Castillo has gone from lightning fast to slower than me, he’s gone from dynamic slap hitter to unable to slap himself in the face. But sure Jerry, let’s get him to hit lead off, after all, it’s always much more fun and challenging when you begin every inning with an out. This is an idea that reeks of Jerry Manuel trying to be too clever. Hey Jerry, why not just put your players in a position to succeed, and one of the ways to do that is to keep Luis Castillo OFF the field as much as possible, not giving him MORE playing time.

“The one thing we have to be careful of is this is not about statistical success,” Manuel said. “It’s about winning as a team and you have to put people in positions that you feel is best to win as a team – whether that means Jose batting second, third or whatever. That’s a big part of the message throughout spring training, is that the game takes precedence over the individual statistics.”

That’s great, but Castillo isn’t going to have good stats whether he hits leadoff, last, three times in an inning or anything else, he S-U-C-K-S and the only reason he still remains the Mets second baseman is that Omar Minaya gave him that absolutely ridiculous 4 year contract. Otherwise, Luis Castillo would be out on his ass and listed amongst all the other free agents who are desperate for a contract. At this point I think I’M a better player than Castillo.

[Newsday]