More than any team in baseball, the Mets have a credibility gap.  While fans of other teams are speculating about how their season is going to go and just what heights their local nine can achieve, fans of the Mets, not to mention sportswriters and journalists, are speculating on just how much of what comes out of the front office can be believed at all.  The fact is the Mets are either the most ineptly run business in professional sports or have decided that deceiving the fans and media is the best way to do business.

Mets fans are wondering when Jose Reyes will return.

Photo by wallyg, used under creative commons license.

A season later we are still waiting for Carlos Beltran and Jose Reyes to return from injuries, injuries that last season were deemed "minor" by the front office who insisted the players would be back in time to turn a dismal season around.  That didn't happen.  Instead we go into 2010 hearing about Beltran's recovery from surgery which "should" put him back in the lineup sometime in May or June.  We also haven't heard much about Reyes' thyroid flare up -- which has done little but lead to wild speculation as to if Reyes has an unusual form of thyroid disease, a thyroid inflammation or if he was popping thyroid pills to burn off body fat.

That's par for the course in this organization right now.  They never give a straight answer when a crooked one will do.  We don't know if the ownership is essentially bankrupt or if they floating in the dough.  In fact we are awash in rumors, especially ones saying that manager Jerry Manuel and GM Omar Minaya are both on the hot seat over last season's collapse.

That's hardly fair to Manuel, who hasn't had much in the way of a team to work with in either of his seasons at the helm here.  He was forced first to deal with far too little in terms of pitching and then was left to do the best he could with last year's morass.  Those who argue that he should have managed to keep last year's team afloat, because that is what great managers do, obviously haven't looked much at the level of talent he had available after losing the majority of his offensive players to injury.

But blame clearly rests above the managerial level -- both on GM Omar Minaya and on the Wilpon family for their gross mismanagement of this franchise.  And despite the rumors and endless speculation on talk radio and in print, there is no real proof that the Wilpons are ready to fire Minaya, especially since their tightfisted reputation stresses how much they hate to have to pay out someone's contract without milking it for all that it worth.  Bad contracts seem to be the rule rather than the exception with players: the Mets are still paying off Bobby Bonilla.

Maybe things would be better if there was a clear voice of the Mets, either that of the GM or the owner who'd simply tell us things straight.  Fans are tired of excuses, we're tired of "spin" and we don't really give a damn if the team is losing or making money at this point.  We're tired of being treated badly, being lied to and watching a lousy product on the field.

Sure this year's team is better than last year's -- if only because we are expecting largely healthy seasons from guys like Santana, Maine, Beltran and Reyes.  Replacing Delgado and his clubhouse antics with a straight shooter like Jason Bay will help too, but these Mets sure don't look like competitors even with everything going right.

And an organization, like a fish, rots from the head.  The buck stops not with Minaya, but with the owners.  The only question is what they are going to do about it.

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