Mets Fall to .500 As Ollie Gets Crushed And Team Doesn't Hit

The Mets lost their third consecutive game, and dropped to .500 on the season, by falling to the Marlins 7-2 on Friday night (box score/wrap). 

You can't just blame this loss on one person, because the team only managed 4 hits tonight, which wasn't enough last night against Johnson and wasn't enough tonight either against Anibal Sanchez.  THAT BEING SAID...Oliver Perez was awful.  He didn't even give his teammates a chance to think they were in the game.  Perez went 3 and 1/3 innings giving up 9 hits and 7 runs on 4 homers. 

There's a whole lot going wrong right now for the Mets, and Jerry should be held responsible for some of it.  Although the team initially responded to Reyes in the three hole, it's not the right move, and never has been.  The fact that it worked for as long as it did was great, but baseball is a game of adjustments, and now that line up isn't working Jerry should ADJUST.  In the postgame on SNY, Ronnie made an interesting point about the Mets line up, basically saying that if he were a pitcher facing this team he would know where to get the outs.  By that Darling meant that the team has certain guys who strike out too much, and them back to back in the line up is killing the team (Francoeur, Barajas amongst others).  If Ronnie knows that, chances are other teams do too.

The adjustments Jerry needs to make should happen first in the line up because that can take effect immediately.  The other change that needs to be made is the removal of Perez from the rotation.  If Jerry wants to move Perez to the long man role, go for it.  If Jerry wants to drop him to triple-A, do it.  But this team cannot win if they have to overcome their starting pitchers.  And that's been what they've needed to do with the way Perez has been pitching lately.  I know R.A. Dickey is being talked about, but I don't like that idea either.  I think Takahashi should be the man, because he's been fantastic.  And they won't lose too much, especially considering how well Valdes has been throwing out of the 'pen lately.  Fortunately it seems as though Jerry isn't about to let Perez run out there every fifth day anymore, as he hinted to in his post game interview.  And it's about time...

Bottom line here is that the team needs change.  They've responded to it once before this season, and can respond again, but Jerry needs to put them in a situation where they can succeed, and continuing to start Oliver Perez and running this struggling line up out there day after day is not what I would call giving them a chance to succeed.