The scene was all too familiar at Citi Field Monday night.

 

No, not the lack of offensive support for ace Johan Santana.

 

I’m talking about Jerry Manuel’s mismanagement of the bullpen and our favorite shortstop’s lack of focus.

 

Jerry, what is the sense of even sending Santana out for the seventh inning if you’re going to lift him following a one-out single?

 

Santana needed six pitches to get Derek Lowe on a foul out to first before Kelly Johnson smoked a liner to centerfield. But even with one out and one on, he still is the best pitcher in baseball.

 

Why would a manager not want the game in the hands of baseball’s top hurler even when he is 107 pitches deep into the outing?

 

Does Manuel really think Pedro Feliciano provides a tougher matchup for opposing batters than Santana?

 

Before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s look at what happened before Feliciano put the finishing touches on this one.

 

Manuel pulled Santana in favor of hard-throwing righty Bobby Parnell.  The young gun has to excite Mets fans just for the sheer fact he’s not Aaron Heilman if nothing else.

 

But as Parnell showed again, he is a promising young talent and maybe the Mets most-effective reliever thus far this season other than K-Rod. Throwing darts, Parnell yielded a broken bat single and induced a can of corn to centerfield for the inning’s second out.

 

Apparently that wasn’t good enough for Manuel.  Instead of sticking with the effective arm, Manuel absolutely needed to bring in a southpaw to face the left-handed Brian McCann.

 

First off, since when does McCann warrant Barry Bonds treatment, and, secondly, why are managers moronically infatuated with lefty-lefty matchups?  Not to mention, I saw Raul Ibanez and Chase Utley, both batting left-handed, go deep off the Mets “lefty specialist” on back-to-back days earlier this season.

 

So, in came Feliciano as Manuel played the matchup game.  Believe it or not, the southpaw did his job for the moment by getting a busted-bat grounder that should have ended the inning and left the score tied at one apiece.

 

Not if Jose Reyes has anything to do with it.  Doing his best to match the loopiness and lack of focus Oliver Perez has mastered in recent months, Reyes booted the ball and opened the flood gates.

 

The end result was a four-run seventh inning for the Braves, a Mets’ loss, and a whole lot of unanswered head-scratchers.

 

If the southpaw Santana had remained in for the entire seventh inning, then Manuel would not have had to call upon Feliciano to play the lefty-lefty game when McCann came up.

 

Manuel made for more bewilderment when he played the situational game for McCann, but then left Feliciano in to face the right-handed Matt Diaz who promptly delivered a piss rod to left field for the go-ahead hit.

 

The Mets were bound to lose again sooner or later, so it’s not the snapped streak that hurts.  It’s the fact that this one was given away. 

 

Jerry, mentally, and Jose, literally, dropped the ball on this one.