MEET THE MESS
Callaway gives Mets a talking to after loss
GETTY TWO DAYS AFTER Mickey Callaway had insisted a team meeting wouldn’t pull the Mets out of their ongoing malaise, the first-year manager called for one and let his team know about the disturbing signs he witnessed once again during Friday night’s 7-4 loss to the Cubs.
The injury-riddled Mets, once a potential juggernaut at 11-1, now are a sub-.500 team at 27-28, and Callaway succinctly told his players why he believes they’ve struggled and what they must do to reverse it.
“We just had something that I said we weren’t going to do,” Callaway said about the closed-door meeting. “Just because we’re playing the game the wrong way and it’s starting to affect…we’re starting to see it consistently. We talked about it and we had some things we needed to discuss and we did it.
“We have to play the game the right way. We can’t miss cutoff men. We have to take care of the baseball, throw it to the right bag. We have to run the bases the right way, we have to not walk leadoff batters. We’re not snake-bitten. We’re not playing the game the right way and we have to do a better job at it.”
Center fielder Michael Conforto was among the players Callaway singled out for missing the cut-off man and airmailing a throw home on Kyle Schwarber’s sacrifice fly in the Cubs’ three-run seventh inning, enabling Tommy La Stella - who turned out to be the tying run - to advance to second base.
“He addressed it in the meeting and he’s right,” Conforto said. “We can’t be doing stuff like that and expecting to put our best performance out there.
‘It’s something I’ve been working on, we’ve been talking about, and tonight I just didn’t do it. He’s right. I’ve got to keep the ball down and give us a chance at the double-play there…It’s something we’ve been harping on, and it’s on me. So it’s something I have to get better at.”
Still, Conforto made the distinction in the tone of Callaway’s address from previous ones this season, his first as manager.
“I think everything he says carries weight. Mickey’s someone who we respect and someone who’s our leader,” Conforto said. “The tone of the meeting was different than ones in the past. It was ‘let’s pull this stuff together and play better baseball.’ Because we’re a much better team than what we’ve been showing. There are things we can correct and control. I think maybe it’s a bit of a wake-up call for some of us. We have to start playing better. Sometimes it takes the manager to come in here and wake us up a little bit.
“In the past it’s been early…But it’s not so early anymore. It’s getting to the time we have to start winning games, we have to play better. I think he feels like we needed something to fire us up. I think it was received well and I think we’ll all be motivated…It’s things we can control. It’s not bad luck. It’s fundamental baseball and we have to do better.”