Opinion: Time for Some Changes

by Michael Baron on May 15th, 2010 at 8:17 am

Enough is enough – it’s time for Oliver Perez to be removed from the Starting Rotation, and to accept an assignment in the minors.

I do feel bad for Perez, because this has to be humiliating and a low point in his career.

However, performances like last night, and last Sunday, when he simply could not compete at the Major League level, indicates he, and the Mets need to go back to basics, start from scratch, and work his way back up to the minors.

It’s a difficult decision, because of the money involved with his contract, and the politics behind re-signing him prior to the 2009 season, but I think the cost of not winning, and not even competing, is higher than any contract on this team.

In addition, I think it’s time for Jerry Manuel and the Mets to abandon this experiment with Jose Reyes in the middle of the order, and put him back in a place where he has excelled throughout his career, and that is the leadoff spot.

I’ll throw out last night because the Mets were out of the game by the fifth inning, but, generally speaking, Reyes in the third spot in the order is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and it just isn’t working. Manuel cannot make Reyes something he isn’t, and that is a number three hitter.  The whole experiment is an unpleasant reminder of when the organization moved him to second base to give way to Kaz Matsui in 2004.

If they do nothing else but move Reyes back to the leadoff spot, and possibly move Ike Davis to the middle of the order, I think their lineup could be more productive than it is right now.

The reality is, the Mets are trying to find a substitute for Carlos Beltran, and that’s difficult to do.  I think this whole experiment, and the inconsistencies within the lineup in general, highlights the value of Beltran even more – and that’s all with him being absent.

There’s no way to know if demoting Perez and revamping the lineup again will help, but at least we know that this current formula is not a recipe for success, and so it’s time to change it.

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