THE Mets’ ship refused to dock during Robin Ventura’s days off, and doing his part to bring it in expended a lot more energy than just two days at the beach.
“It’s not really that big a break,” he said. “You are away from playing, don’t have to worry about getting a hit, but you’re still here. You are still consumed by it. It’s not really that big a break.”
The consummate pro, consummately consumed by an 0-for-23 schneid and .222 batting average, found something, he thinks. If Ventura had a dollar for every piece of advice he’s gotten during a season in which he is 55 points below his career average, he would, by now, have purchased himself a few hits.
But batting coach Tom Robson did some film study of old Robin, and compared it to cold Robin -and he returned to a nest devoid of hits last night to see if anything he saw was going to fly.
“In batting practice today, he had the look of old,” Bobby Valentine said. “It’s one thing to know what to do and you still have to have the feel.”
“There hasn’t been a lot of tinkering with Robin. Relative to other guys who experiment, Robin hasn’t tinkered at all. He is consistently trying to find it but he’s been doing subtle little things.
“I’ve been two years with Robin,” Valentine said, “and he knows what he has to do and what he wants to do. He has great convictions. But knowing what to do and doing it are a paradox. It’s tough for him at times getting that feel.”
In their bones, the Mets, hitting under .200 for the last 10 games, eight of which they have lost, feel they are due. But it’s one thing to know it and quite another to go out and, uh, due it, which brought them to another no-name pitcher, Milwaukee’s John Snyder, last night with a reshuffled deck.
The slumping Mike Piazza and Mike Bordick came out of the lineup, Ventura went back in, just as Bobby Valentine had promised the third baseman when one day off turned to two Monday.
“He can do what he wants,” Ventura said. “I told him he could put me in late [for defensive purposes] if he wanted to.”
The Mets aren’t paying Ventura $8 million this year to be a late-inning glove, but a nine-inning gold glove and a four-times-a-game bat. He hit 31 home runs and drove in 120 runs a year ago, which was, by a little, the best he ever did, and there was no way they would have expected Ventura’s absolute worst only a year later.
“Did the foot, the shoulder problems he had earlier in the season get him in bad habits?” said Valentine. “It’s hard to tell definitively.
“He says he feels fine and there were times earlier in the year when I asked him he wouldn’t tell me that.”
You get name, rank and only serial number from Ventura, this year not numbers the Mets through August didn’t terribly miss. But the bats have crashed, en masse, so you don’t have to ventur(a) guess as to who is feeling the most heat. The guy who, for all practical purposes, hasn’t hit all year.
“It’s frustrating but if you win, it’s not quite as frustrating,” Ventura said. “When we lose, it wears on you more than if you win.”
He looks more worn than Bobby Bonilla’s welcome. “Sometimes you shake your head, you think it’s going to end and it gets a little bit worse,” Ventura said.
Misery doesn’t love company in this case, not after eight losses in 10 games and an opportunity to catch the Braves passing the Mets by.
“Two-out hits aren’t something you should rely on, but a bonus,” Piazza said. “You come up feeling like the world is on your shoulders. If we take some pitches, get base runners, hit with some discipline, you don’t find yourself in that situation.
“You aren’t going to get it all back on one swing. You have to find the right combination of being relaxed and also being aggressive. We’ve got to take our walks, have to put pressure on the other team.”
The Mets could use more speed and ability to manufacture runs. Ventura’s season-long problems have exacerbated their shortage of lefty swingers. But they are seventh in the National League in runs scored, and fifth in on-base percentage, so they haven’t turned into absolute hitless wonders before our eyes, even if their eyes don’t look too sharp these days.
“There have been times {Piazza] hasn’t been hot that we’ve won a lot of games,” Valentine said. “You don’t win 180 games over two years with one guy. There are a lot of ways to score runs other than Mike being hot.”
Ventura took over Piazza’s clean-up spot last night, trying to clean up a mess of a season that is still, with the playoffs looming, entirely in front of him.