Commentary : Don’t Put Blame on Johnson for Met Season

Of course it’s Davey Johnson’s fault. Obviously it’s his failing that the New York Mets are not going to win anything this year with the very same players who were the best in baseball last year.

Fire him. Get rid of him. Any decent manager would have straightened Darryl Strawberry’s head so he could have a dynamite season, would have seen to it Dwight Gooden didn’t hurt his shoulder, would have created a new personality on that team, would have seen to it Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter didn’t get hurt or grow older.

Whitey Herzog would have done something, wouldn’t he? Just listen to that grumbling on the Mets.

Forgive me if the sarcasm is elusive. I listen to talk radio from time to time.

It isn’t Johnson’s fault. He no more deserves the blame than Herzog did when the Cardinals fell from first place in 1987 to fifth last season in the National League East. Just think, Herzog’s team fell from 95 victories to 76 -- 10 games under .500. Tell me about the injures; I’ll listen.

Herzog is the resident genius in St. Louis and resident bugbear in the minds of Mets fans. He’s a good manager, but he loses, too. He won a pennant in ’85 and the next year finished under .500 and 28 1/2 games behind. And, by the way, Whitey’s Cardinals won the 1982 World Series and were beaten by inferior teams in ’85 and ’87.

Johnson has managed the Mets for six seasons. His teams have won two division championships, and this will be the first time they will not win at least 90 games, unless they close with an unlikely rush. When the Mets won the ’86 World Series, the grand ecstasy parted to say they won in spite of the manager.

Baloney!

There is this tendency to watch too closely and to fix on the things that didn’t happen. Such as Saturday, when the Mets had a man on third with none out in the 10th inning and didn’t score. The manager doesn’t bunt, he doesn’t hit-and-run, he sticks too long with failing players.

Better they should look at the players. This team isn’t that good. It isn’t as good as it was last year, and that team wasn’t as good as it was the year before -- in spite of the standings. Players get older. Skills fade or are traded. If they look lifeless and listless and show so little spark, it’s not because the manager hasn’t been able to light a fire under them as much as because the Mets have players who give them no spark.

It is a team in transition. Johnson identified it as that back in June. “This is the most critical year since I’ve been here,” he said. “If we can pull it off like I anticipate, it will be my most satisfying year.”

It sounded as if he was establishing a built-in excuse. Take another look.

The most difficult chore for a manager is to decide when players who have won for him no longer can win. Earl Weaver, the previous generation’s Whitey Herzog, asked how was he going to know when Don Buford’s .206 meant he was going to hit .206 and not spurt to his normal .285. So Buford had 408 at-bats, batted .206 in 1972 and the Orioles lost their string of three straight American League pennants. Classic case.

Johnson has to judge the “diminishing” Hernandez and Carter on that basis, plus the organization has to be able to make decisions on them as free agents after the season ends. They provided the first great transition for that team. They were great players and indispensable.

Hernandez came when he still was in the prime of life. He gave them far more with his influence than statistics can measure. He was the man who made sure the infielders were alert to possibilities; he was the man who went to the mound and demanded Jesse Orosco show he had the heart for the task.

Carter came after a career’s battering behind the plate. The Mets saw only the tail end of the best of him.

“People say, ‘He’s managing with his heart.’ Well, maybe I am,” Johnson said. He knows what those two guys can give a team even if they’re not hitting, and he can’t get that anywhere else. Dave Magadan is having a nice year, “but you can’t compare Magadan having the influence of Hernandez,” the manager said.

Mackey Sasser and Barry Lyons have established themselves as professionals, but mostly as valuable backups. Who do you want behind the plate when David Cone bounces a curve with a man on third?

Magadan and Sasser or Lyons doing their best weren’t going to turn the race. Johnson had to go with Hernandez and Carter.

But with those pitchers, how could they lose? When those pitchers don’t pitch that well, that’s how. When Gooden got hurt, the others weren’t able to step up a notch. The pitching hasn’t been good enough to win with the Hitless Wonders.

That’s a team that doesn’t know how to scramble for a run. “Bunt?” Johnson said. “Do you want to give up an out when you’re not getting anybody on base?” Bill Robinson, the hitting coach, is one of the nicest people around, but those hitters haven’t learned how to maneuver or exploit a pitcher.

Johnson challenged them to make up for some of what they lacked with aggressivness. “Above all, we have to take it to them: Make things happen,” he said.

But that’s not what they are. In their best of times they had Ray Knight, Lenny Dykstra and Wally Backman getting dirty and goading the others, and they are gone. Perhaps they wore out their places, but General Manager Frank Cashen and Vice President Joe McIlvaine failed to replace what those guys gave the team.

In a tight game, they are painfully unable to scratch for a run. Howard Johnson tries, but he can’t drag the others along.

This is a team that failed chemistry early in the season. To play as elegantly as the old Yankees, you have to have that kind of talent. The Mets don’t. Whatever drew McIlvaine to Juan Samuel has not been visible. Samuel had an off-year last year and is having a worse year this season. He can’t play center field and he can’t play second base.

Kevin McReynolds may wind up with representative figures, but he provides only what his statistics say, nothing more.

And there is Strawberry grumbling about attitude and pointing out that others want out. In the meantime he’s played the whole season in a funk and is concluding, “I want to see what the free-agent market will be next year.”

He adds, “I’m not saying I want to leave.” But he hasn’t done anything that says he wants to win in New York.

The transition is hardy complete. What it lacks isn’t the manager’s fault.