Sports Time Radio

It seems that a Major League Baseball manager and NFL quarterbacks have at least one thing in common. When their teams win they get too much and credit and when the teams loses they get too much blame. At least in the NFL the quarterback gets his hands on the football when his team is on offense. A manager doesn’t get to hit or pitch, but he’s the one that loses his job when that team doesn’t perform. That seems to be the case in New York right now as Mets manager Mickey Calloway is on the hot seat after a prolonged slump by his team.

The Mets where on a 5-game losing streak and it looked like Calloway might be out of a job. First year General Manager Brody Van Wagenen came out and said that Calloway would be the Mets manager, but he used the term “for the foreseeable future”; so that really didn’t answer anything.

As it turned out the best thing for the Mets was to return home to face the Washington nationals another struggling National League East team. The Mets have taken the first two games of this four game series with the Nationals. Thursday the Mets picked up a 5-3 win and then last night the Mets won 6-5 on a walk off infield single by Amed Rosario.

With those two wins the Mets improved to 22-25 on the season and you’d have to think that for a short period of time Calloway’s job is safe. Of course who knows if he’ll last through another losing streak.

As early as it still is in the season I’m not sure that a managerial change would make that much difference on a team like the Mets.

The Mets have struggled with injury like a lot of teams have this season. Jed Lowrie was a big off season signing for the Mets, but he’s yet to play a game due to injury. Lowrie sprained his left knee capsule which kept him out of all of spring training as well as the 47 regular season games the Mets have played. It appeared that Lowrie was recovered from his injury, but had a setback when he strained his left hamstring. Lowrie is going to be re-evaluated in two weeks and there’s no set timetable for his return. Todd Frasier also started out the season injured, but has returned to play in 23 games this season. Frasier is off to a slow start hitting .206 with 2 home runs. You can add Michael Conforto to that injury list as he is currently on the IL with a concussion. Hopefully Conforto will just miss the 10 days that the Injured List calls for, but you never know with a concussion.

Then there’s the plight of Yoenis Cespedes. Cespedes has battled injuries for the last three seasons with the Mets. In 2017 he played in 81 games, last season he played in just 38 games and this season it doesn’t appear as he’ll play any games for the Mets this season. Cespedes was sidelined after having surgery on both of his heels. While it’s unclear how Cespedes had an accident while working on his ranch and suffered multiple right ankle fractures. As of right now there’s no idea when he’ll be able to return.

The only Mets pitcher to miss significant time has been Jason Vargas. Even when he was healthy Vargas wasn’t very good. In 7 games 6 of which where starts Vargas was 1-2 with an ERA of 5.92 over 24 1/3rd innings. Vargas injured his hamstring and landed on the 10-day IL. He’s scheduled to throw a bullpen session on Friday and then a decision will be made on a return date. When Vargas returns the Mets will have to decide if he’ll go back into the starting rotation where he wasn’t very good or he’ll be oved to the bullpen. There’s also a possibility that the Mets could release Vargas when he returns.

Now injuries are out of the managers control, but they do affect a teams record and that indirectly can lead to the manager losing his job. Even at 3 games under .500 the Mets are only 5 1/2 games behind the Philadelphia Phillies in the NL East.

Do you think a change in manager would help the Mets? Or do they just need their players to get healthy and back into the line up?

While it’s really no surprise that the Golden State warriors are going back to the NBA Finals for the 5th season in a row it is a little surprising that they did it by sweeping the Portland Trail Blazers.

Now remember Golden State Played the entire series without Kevin Durant who is recovering from a strained calf. Andre Iguodala also missed game 4 of the Western Conference Finals with a calf injury.

Luckily for Golden State Iguodala’s injury isn’t serious and he’ll be ready for Game 1 of the NBA Finals whenever that is. Durant’s stats for the Finals is still unclear.

The Warriors will now sit and wait for the winner of the Milwaukee Bucks/Toronto Raptors series. Toronto won Game 4 of the series last night 120-102 to tie the series at two games apiece.

If this series was to go seven games it wouldn’t end until Monday, May 27th. There’s never really a quick turnaround with these NBA series; so the NBA Finals might not start until mid-week or later.

That means the Warriors will have at least a week to get their players healthy and prepare to try and win their 3rd NBA championship in a row and their 4th title in 5 years.

Do you think this much time off is go for the Warriors? Or do you think it would’ve been better for them to only have a few days off before starting the NBA Finals?

You can listen to the Sports Time Radio podcast live on BlogTalkRadio.com The podcast airs Monday thru Thursday from 5:30 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. Then on Friday’s we start a half hour early at 5:00 p.m. and we go until 6:00 p.m. Now if you do happen to miss the podcast live all you have to do is head over to TuneIn.com and you can listen any time you want.

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