If any of my answers today sound like I am "bellyaching," that's because I am! Pro sports clubhouses are just about the perfect place to pick up germs and nasty bugs. Generally, I seem immune because I'm in so many of them so often that I must build up resistance. But something "got me" since yesterday. So, I'll try to be a little (too) charitable or compensate for a grumpy stomach.

Sunday's game and Davey's managing weren't as bad as it looked to me at the time. I went back and watched on replay. Martinez certainly managed like it was September-in-March. You never want a whiff of desperation in the air in the THIRD game of the season, like asking your closer to get a five-out save, something Doolittle has almost never done in his career.

But the Mets also had four of the luckiest jam-shot flare hits over the infield that you will ever see in one inning in their three-run 8th inning. Give them credit for "getting the label on the ball." They sure didn't get the barrel on it on the two singles off Sipp, the single off Rosenthal (on a perfect pitch, a 96 mph fastball on Rosario's hands, a pitcher's pitch) and the Ramos gork off Doolittle.

OTOH, Martinez showed little confidence in Barraclough who was, supposedly, acquired to pitch the 7th inning. He sat while Justin Miller had a 1-2-3 7th. Martinez was quick to get Sipp --though after talking to Tony after the game it's clear that he's still building up the strength in his shoulder to have his best fastball. But the result of by-passing Barraclough, who would have pitched the 10th, hooking Sipp as soon as he was due to face the tying run, and grabbing Rosenthal after ONE pitch --yikes!-- was a sense of panic, whether it was intended or not. Doolittle called it "pushing all our chips into the center of the table." In Game Three of the season?

Martinez has almost a dozen new faces to mold into a team and was given a very shaky bullpen with one guy needing to be babied because he's coming back from TJ (Rosenthal), another needing to be babied because he only signed and got to camp 18 days ago (Sipp) and a third who's really a starter (Hellickson). Add to that Barraclough's unimpressive spring training and Wander Suero throwing 31 pitches on Saturday.

I sympathize (some) with this one.

Martinez always stands the whole game. So, for all we know, his seat may already be too hot to sit in.

Seriously, you have to have some patience. You can't run a franchise like it's an asylum for the terminally impatient.

One note on Martinez as Nats manager. You can thank the Lerner family for him. After '17, everybody in MLB knows that Rizzo wanted to bring back Dusty Baker. And everybody knows that his first choice for a new manager, once the Lerner's insisted of not bringing Dusty back, was Bud Black, who is now doing well in Colorado.

The Lerners completely screwed up any "negotiations" with Black by low-balling him so badly that it constituted an insult to a lifelong pro. His reaction was: The hell with this. Rizzo DID have Martinez as his NEXT choice. So he did endorse him as a qualified manager. But it was also his third choice.