From an outsider’s perspective, Mets fans should be very happy that their team is in first place at the half, a full two games ahead of the Braves and four and a half in front of the Phillies (or “Philthies”, as some fans like to call them). Perhaps as exciting is the fact that the crosstown Yankees are struggling through their worst season in over ten years, under .500 and ten games out of first.

The insiders, however, know better.

Most diehard Mets fans are not happy with the 2007 team, for several reasons — the most glaring of which is that they’re somehow not last year’s team. At this time in 2006, the Mets were 52-36 and running away with the NL East — 12 games ahead of Philadelphia and 13 over Atlanta. Currently, they’re 48-39, which is not bad, but below this team’s par.

Maybe Mets fans were spoiled by last year’s runaway, and expected a similarly relaxed summer in 2007. The frustration is that the faces have not changed from last season, so one would expect similar, if not better results. After all, aren’t Jose Reyes and David Wright getting better every day? Shouldn’t Carlos Beltran be in his prime years right now? Weren’t John Maine and Oliver Perez supposed to solidify the starting rotation?

Something happened on the way to running away with the division again, and it started around mid-May. On May 6th, the Mets were a .700 team, with a 20-9 record. We Mets fans were all patting ourselves on the back — this was going to be a lot easier than we thought! It wasn’t quite as noticeable then, but the snowball was at the top of the mountain at that point. Of course, we didn’t expect the Mets to continue at a .700 clip, so the losses here and there weren’t a big deal. What was a big deal, however, was the sudden change in offensive strategy and the slowly evolving change in overall attitude.

In April, the Mets mixed some small ball into their offense, creating runs with walks, bunts, steals, hit-and-runs, and productive outs. By the first week of May, however, players stopped taking strikes and getting into deep counts. As the month went on, some bunts were not well-placed, and there were some defensive lapses. Here and there, you’d see someone not run out a ground ball late in game that was out of hand. It was a subtle change, to be sure, starting with a few veterans. First, Carlos Delgado began watching fly balls from the batters box, rather than running. Not a big deal at the time, but then you saw Delgado and occasionally Beltran not running hard on the bases all the time. Or Beltran would “forget” how many outs there were. Soon, David Wright was occasionally dogging it down to first on ground balls back to the pitcher or to the right side. Paul LoDuca was first-pitch swinging in situations he should have been taking. Damion Easley would allow ground balls to pass about a foot to his side without a dive — or let well-thrown balls plunk off his glove. But the Mets were still winning, and all these “little” issues could be explained away, in one way or another, and justified by Willie Randolph. Little did Randolph know that his turn of the cheek to this little snowball in May would create an avalanche in June.

Of course, we don’t need to go into detail recounting June — most of us were there, and saw what happened. It wasn’t the 12-16 record that bothered us so much as the team’s glaring lack of passion throughout the month. The tenacity of the 2006 team had vanished — rather than go for the kill when it smelled blood, these 2007 Mets rolled over and played dead when things got too tough. If the opposing team had opened up a lead to four runs or more, the Mets bagged the game. The notion of quality at-bats went out the window. Hustling down the line? Diving for balls? Why bother? The game was out of reach, better to save energy for the next night. After all, look what playing hard did for Moises Alou and Endy Chavez — it sent them to the DL.

At the end of June, the Mets looked like they were about to turn it around, taking three straight from the Phillies in Citizen’s Bank Park. But they didn’t take the fourth game — a game they could have, and should have won. In fact, it looked as though the Mets were happy enough with winning the series, taking three out of four, and didn’t care so much whether they won that final game in Philadelphia. And they didn’t — they lost 5-3 to an average rookie pitcher with a 5.00 ERA. Any bit of fire that might have been left in that series was completely snuffed by the thin air in Colorado, as the Mets were pasted in three straight by a cumulative score of 34-12. Again, it wasn’t the losing so much as the sleepwalking that frustrated us fans. If you’re not interested in playing on a particular evening, and it’s a West Coast game, let us know ahead of time and we’ll hit the sack early — thanks. If you don’t care to perform, why should we care to watch?

The final four games of the first half, in Houston, brought similarly mixed results. The Mets won two of the first three games, including a remarkably dramatic, gumption-filled 17-inning victory. But two things were wrong with this series — and both resulted in losses. The first issue is, how does Wandy Rodriguez throw a complete-game, 4-hit shutout against the “mighty” Mets? Secondly, after the tremendous, hard-fought win of game three, how do you simply roll over and give away game four to Roy Oswalt and the Astros? And don’t you dare try to tell us fans that you didn’t give that game away — we saw the starting lineup, and the starting pitcher. If Omar Minaya and Willie Randolph were given reports that Dave Williams was ready to make a Major League start, then someone needs to be fired — because an 82-MPH fastball with zero command is not going to cut it in a Sunday over-30 league, much less an MLB game. And please, do not use the excuse that he had to be on the roster, because we know full well that either David Newhan or Sandy Alomar could have been dropped from the roster to clear a second spot with, say, Brian Lawrence or Philip Humber for that one day. Instead, we saw the .210-hitting Newhan batting second, and Alomar batting in the 8th slot, while the hot-hitting Ramon Castro sat the bench. You can’t put one over on Mets fans, we’re too smart. We can see when a team is satisfied with a split in a four-game series, and chooses to use the final game against an All-Star as an opportunity for Williams to get another rehab start, crossing your fingers he can go five innings — rather than KNOW he can give you a quality outing.

So how do we grade the first half of the season? Hard to say. If the first half ended on May 15th, it would be an “A” — at worst, an “A-“. Yet, it’s difficult to give a first-place team lower than a “B”, even if the effort at times has been more deserving of an “F”. That said, it may be more appropriate to grade the Mets on their 2007 season as a whole — which, at this point, is “Incomplete”.

Keep checking back here over the All-Star break, as MetsToday will be presenting a player-by-player analysis of the team, based on first-half performances and observations.

Meantime, post your comments on what you think of the Mets’ 2007 season so far.

In case you missed it, Jose Reyes was removed from Friday’s game for not hustling out a ground ball.

The full description, and quotes from both Willie Randolph and Jose Reyes, can be found on MetsBlog.

SNY broadcaster Keith Hernandez applauded the move, saying that Willie had to “nip this thing in the bud”.

Unfortunately, there was no bud left, Keith. Willie had to pull out one flower from a big patch from the roots.

Lazy play has been the trademark of the 2007 Mets since about mid-May. If it took Willie this long to realize his guys weren’t hustling, maybe he should consider another line of work. Even the fans in the upper level, section 48 could see quite clearly that this Mets team is a far cry from the passionate, never-say-die, hustlers and grinders of a year ago. The faces may be the same, but the hearts have changed; these guys expect wins to come easy, and go in the tank the minute the score seems out of reach.

Why Willie chose this game, and this player, to make his point is baffling. But then, many of his moves this year have been head-scratchers. Forget about his in-game strategy (if that’s what you call it) — we know that he’s challenged in that area. What Willie is supposed to bring to the table is player management: the ability to get the most out of every player on the roster, in working as a team toward victory. He did a nice job of it last year, using the bench, taking the youngsters aside and teaching them, playing the hot hands at the right times, and sticking with certain players through rough times. And his players played hard, all the time. That was one thing about the 2006 team: they were relentless. Talent took them a long way, but tenacity separated them from the rest of the pack.

What happened to that attitude this year? It seemed to evaporate sometime around Cinco de Mayo — so maybe it’s the result of long hangover. The team, at the time, was winning, but you could see the breakdown beginning. Here and there, someone would jog the last few steps on a grounder to second base. Carlos Delgado would watch his fly balls bounce off the fence in the batter’s box before taking off for first. Carlos Beltran would “forget how many outs there were”. Damion Easley would let grounders pass by without stretching out his glove — much less dive. Pitchers would be late in covering first on balls hit to Delgado. Little things, but they were there, and not only did the fans see them, but so did Jose Reyes, David Wright, Carlos Gomez, and other youngsters. Next thing you know, D-Wright is making a habit of jogging down to first on grounders. Gomez is watching his homer go over the fence (where do you think he learned that from?). Then the Mets go into a tailspin in June, and sleepwalk their way through two weeks of play. You can see — on their faces and through their body language — that they give up after falling behind by more than three runs. Through it all, Jose Reyes is still smiling, hustling, and maybe pressing a bit in an effort to spark the team.

Finally, though, Reyes slips. He’s played nearly every inning of every game at a high level of energy and enthusiasm. Maybe he’s getting fatigued (yes, Keith, an athlete under 25 CAN get tired). Maybe he’s losing a bit of his enthusiasm, between losing and watching the dogs on his team. Maybe he’s tired of being the main guy going all out, every game. Whatever it is, he loses his concentration, the smile goes away for periods, and he starts missing balls in the field, has some poor at-bats, and once in a while, he doesn’t run 100% on a grounder. Why should he? Other guys on the team jog, why can’t he?

Indeed, it was not a lack of hustle on Reyes’ part — it was a lack of judgment. He sincerely believed his grounder was a foul ball — of that there is no doubt. Of course, he’s not the umpire, and he shouldn’t be watching the ball, and shouldn’t be wondering if it will go fair or foul. But this is what the “leaders” on the Mets have taught him: don’t run so hard out of the box. Take a look first and see. No need to expend your energy. Before “Willie’s Guys” came along and taught him the new way to play baseball, Reyes would have been sprinting to first the moment he made contact.

If you read the quotes by Jose Reyes in response to being taken out, he said mostly the right things. There was one phrase, though, they opened the door to his real feelings :

“I think the ball would be foul, but you still have to run. It was my fault there, so … but I think it would happen to anybody. So, hopefully it doesn’t happen to me next time … “

” … it would happen to anybody …” is the hint. As if not running out a foul ball was akin to a meteor falling out of the sky and onto your head. Not running doesn’t “happen”, it’s something you choose not to do. What he’s trying to say is, he thought the ball would go foul, and it didn’t. And therein lies the problem — Reyes has been “taught” to check out the situation before taking off. Thanks to the Carloses, old man Franco, and other “veterans”.

Further, if you watched Jose in the TV interview, his face told a different story. His words were “I was wrong, I should have been taken out, blah blah blah,” but his face was saying, “out of all the guys in this doghouse, why me? why the one guy who has laid his heart and soul on the field every single game? why not Beltran? why not Franco, who walked to first base in Philly? why not Delgado, who jogs all the time? why not Wright, who’s following Delgado’s lead? why do all those guys get pass after pass, yet the one time I do something wrong, I’m the one taken out?”

Willie Randolph let this fester for two months, and chooses Friday night to make an example of somebody. That’s fine — Reyes probably should have been sat — but it’s too little, too late. The mutiny has already taken place, and the veterans have established the attitude of this team. It will take a small miracle for the dogs to reverse their ways in time to save the season, because the two less-skilled teams behind them — the Braves and Phillies — are making up for their lack of talent with hustle, passion, and focus on fundamentals.

Many are pointing to this move as a defining moment in Willie’s managerial tenure, the move that establishes himself as the ultimate leader of this team. I disagree — I think it’s defining the exact opposite.