Where Was Our Multi Million Dollar Closer?

I know all the headlines will blare that Aaron Heilman blew the game last night by throwing wildly along the first base line on a tapper in front of the plate that both he and Lo Duca were going after with the bases loaded but what I won't know until tomorrow is what the hell was he doing in there in the first place?! Isn't that the situation Billy Wagner was bought and paid for?

You really have to wonder (or I do anyway,) about Willie's choices out of the bullpen. Where was the logic in sending out the set up guy in the 8th playing with a one-run deficit but sending in the pre-set up guy with the game tied in the 9th? If Heilman had pitched the 8th, he might have even been able to pitch the 9th, or if not, you'd have had both Sanchez and Wagner available for the 9th and if need be, the 10th. Instead, Willie burned a third of his options with stupidity leaving only two options, one of which he was apparently unprepared to use for unknown reasons - (I can't buy the auld Wagner is only used to protect leads in the 9th rubbish - this is a big game and a big situation...)

The left-handed Wagner was not even warming up in the ninth, leaving lefties Utley and Abreu to hit against the right-handed Heilman. Mets manager Willie Randolph said he didn't want to use his closer in a tie game on the road. Way to think outside of the box, you Joe Torre Statue wannabe. Ugh.


Heilman disappointed but not as disappointed as Phillie fans who didn't get to throw all their AAA batteries at Billy Wagner last night.

Maybe Willie was trying to make it up to Heilman for squelching any hints of his return to his beloved role in the starting rotation by sticking him in the game in such a tight situation. Maybe Willie was trying to protect Billy Wagner - you'd hate to think so because Wagner doesn't strike one as the type who needs protecting not to mention the fact the closer has to has nerves and balls of steel and returning to his previous owners in the 9th inning should have been as easy as an extra point in the logic department - get it out of the way early...

Or maybe Willie, as he proved so many times last season, has an uncanny ability to cock up bullpen calls in tight games. Maybe this is Willie's Achilles Heel. Or perhaps Willie just wasn't planning ahead, perhaps he wasn't believing that Carlos Delgado would cause Tom Gordon's first blown save of the season and wasn't believing he'd even NEED a reliever to pitch the bottom of the 9th.

Other than the game being marred by this sort of bizarre planning and poor thinking, it was also a game that was otherwise marred by several unusual relief events, Duaner Sanchez, for instance, allowing his first run of the season in the 8th inning after a Ryan Howard double scored Shane Victorino (what an oddly apropos name for a late-inning pinch-runner) to give the Phillies a 4-2 lead just a half inning after the Mets had come from out of nowhere to make it a 3-2 game in the top of the 8th.

In addition, just after that, when you thought the sails would have been out of the Mets ship, (by god, you scratch back from a 3-0 deficit only to see it pushed back up to a two run deficit for the top of the 9th) the Mets or rather Carlos Delgado counterpunched again off of Tom Gordon with the Mets second two-run homer in two innings to tie the score and allow Gordon's first blown save of the season, not to mention the fact that Delgado was 2-for-30 against Gordon, a seemingly open and shut case.

I mean, Holy Roman Empire, Batman, this was shaping up to be yet another joyous Met occasion of improbable comebacks and victory and all this like gravy, after Pedro's injudicious three-run 2nd inning and Randy Myers' 7 innings of dominating 3-hit pitching made you almost come to believe the Mets were the proverbial cooked geese before Xavier Nady hit that two-run shot in the 8th with Cliff Floyd aboard.

But all this was for naught, all the hopes risen and then extinguished like an Earl Weaver dugout cigarette - when Willie sent the untested Aaron Heilman out into the 9th with the game tied.

If this is the kind of managerial fortitude we get from Willie in tight situations, one has to wonder how far the Mets will go in any imagined postseason - even if the Mets have a great pen, with a half wit running it, you may as well bring back Braden Looper.


No chance for Lo Duca to play the hidden ball trick against Shane Victorino in the 8th.

In any event, marred as this game was by Willie - there are, I believe another 21 games against the Phillies to go and these games will prove to test the mettle of whichever team is willing to make the move from push to shove and seize victory, as the Phillies did last night, at home, against the Mets' third best reliever rather than their shut em down closer.