Mea culpa Mickey is 1-0.

And this time Mickey Callaway pushed his starting pitcher Jason Vargas to 117 pitches and a complete game, considering the state of the Mets bullpen that is long overdue.

The night after Callaway apologized to his team after taking out Noah Syndergaard and costing the Mets a victory, the Amazin’s easily beat the Giants 7-0 Wednesday night at Citi Field.

Of course, any win over the Giants is like beating a Triple-A team. Or the Orioles.

About the only thing that went wrong for the Mets was Robinson Cano, in his first game back from a quad injury, had to be taken out of the game after having difficulty running down the first-base line because his quad tightened up.

That got Adeiny Hechavarria back in the lineup and he hit one of the Mets’ three homers. So that works.

If you are scoring at home, Brodie Van Wagenen’s big winter acquisitions of Cano and free agent Jed Lowrie, who has yet to play a game for the Mets, is not looking so hot.

Same goes for the bullpen and that’s why this new Mea Culpa Mickey allowed Vargas to go so deep into the night.

Callaway needs to go with his gut more and not overanalyze his thinking, like worrying about Syndergaard giving up a stolen base instead of just letting Thor continue to roll.

He admitted Vargas made his life much easier.

“I can sleep tonight,’’ Callaway said with a smile. “We needed this bad.’’

Callaway and the Mets and the overworked, underperforming bullpen needed this.

Callaway really needed it especially after talking to his team on Wednesday night and taking the blame.

“The bottom line is I wanted them to know how I felt about the situation and that I held myself accountable for it,’’ Callaway said. “We all have to hold ourselves accountable. They need to hear that sometimes.’’

They do. And they all got a break Wednesday night thanks to Vargas’ performance, his eighth career shutout, first in more than two years and his first as a Met.

The Mets went into Wednesday night with the 12th-ranked bullpen in the NL with a 5.10 ERA. That is dreadful. This is the NL East, though, Land of Bad Bullpens. The Marlins were 13th at 5.39, but are in a total rebuild. The Nationals are dead last with a 6.66 ERA.

The Phillies are seventh in the league with a 4.28 mark and have lots of injuries in the pen so this figures to get worse. The Braves are eighth with a 4.31 only because veteran Luke Jackson found his slider.

All the mistakes Sandy Alderson made with the bullpen, Van Wagenen is duplicating, even bringing back Jeurys Familia (6.56 ERA).

Callaway has made many mistakes but one of his worst has been putting too much trust in this bullpen.

It burned him when he took out Jacob deGrom because of a hip cramp in Arizona and it really burned him Tuesday night when he took the blame in front of his team for pulling out Syndergaard in what became a terrible 9-3 loss to the Giants at Citi Field.

Going into Wednesday night the Mets bullpen, who mercifully wasn’t needed in this one, had allowed 28 earned runs over the last eight games, a span of 20 ¹/₃ innings for a 12.39 ERA.

The greatest managers in the history of the game could not win with a bullpen throwing that much gasoline onto the fire. Callaway has trusted his bullpen way too much. Reminds me of Otter’s famous line from the movie “Animal House”: “You f—-d up, you trusted us.’’

To that end, Callaway is going to have to trust his starters more as he did Wednesday night with Vargas.

As for this philosophy, Callaway made a point to say it’s important to do the little things and pointed how if he makes his bed in the morning he’s already accomplished something.

“We need to do what’s best at that moment,’’ Callaway said. “We need to understand who’s performing and who’s not, sometimes you take risks.’’

Sometimes, like Wednesday night, you just stay in the dugout and let the players do their jobs.

.


READ MORE – CLICK HERE

www.Red360.com.ve


from Red360.com.ve http://bit.ly/2QMrN6Y
via Red360.com.ve