Not Earning Their Money

How often did we watch Mike Piazza come up with the huge hit to win a game for the Mets? How often do we watch highlights and see guys like Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez and other big-name stars come through in the clutch? This is why players like these make the big bucks. Certainly they cannot get the big hit every time, but more often than not they seem to.

The reason I mention this is that three big-name, high-priced Mets had the chance to be the hero during Sunday’s loss to the Dodgers, and each time, they failed.

Jason Bay strolled to the plate in the bottom of the seventh with two outs and the bases loaded, the Mets down 4-1. Instead of hitting a massive grand slam and putting the Mets in the lead, he flew out to left.

Now to the ninth. After Jose Reyes (who seems to be coming through every game, yet the Mets are reportedly considering trading him. Crazy.) tripled to cut the score to 4-2, Carlos Beltran had a chance to tie the game. Instead, he popped out lazily to right — not even deep enough to score Reyes.

Then David Wright came to the plate and promptly — you guessed it — struck out to end the game.

Now, as I said before, no player comes through in the clutch every time. That would be impossible. But teams pay huge salaries to certain players with the expectations that they will often win games for them with one swing of the bat. We watch as other teams’ players do it. Why can’t ours?

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Shock of shocks — Chris Young has been placed on the disabled list with tightness in his shoulder. Young downplayed the serverity of this latest injury to his pitching shoulder.

“Last year I could barely even pick up a ball,” he said. “This, I can go through the motion. It’s just grabbing as I try to increase the intensity.”

So is that supposed to be reassuring? The end result is the same — he can’t pitch a major league game.