So the news just came down that Johan Santana has a serious elbow injury that will require surgery, and is likely done for the season.  Added to the news that Jeff Francouer has a torn ligament in his thumb, it is just ridiculous how injury-bitten the Mets have been this year.

But the bigger story here is how horribly the Mets have mismanaged Santana.

Last time I checked, Johan Santana is under guaranteed contract for four more seasons after this one, to the tune of a whopping 98.5 million dollars. But even though Santana has been experiencing sever pain in his elbow since at least June, the Mets have continued to allow him to keep pitching all the way to the end of August, even thought this season has been a total lost cause for at least two months now.

Jerry Manuel admits that he has been “terribly concerned” about the pain in Santana’s elbow. But apparently not concerned enough to take the obvious step of shutting Santana down for the season and protecting his team’s massive $100 million plus investment.

Santana never complains, so he just kept pitching through the pain, and Manuel never shut him down until Santana himself begged out of a start. And if Santana himself begged out, you know it’s got to be crazy amounts of pain. It should never have even gotten close to this point, especially in a completely lost season.

Look it would be one thing if there were vague mentions of “discomfort” or something, which Manuel just wrote off.  Even that would have been bad, but in this case we hear in a direct quote from Manuel himself that “He has not been throwing between starts for quite awhile. I would say since before the All-Star break.”

Your ace is not even throwing at all between starts for two months, your ace who is under contract for four more years, and yet you keep running him out there? Rob Neyer recently wrote a column calling Jerry Manuel a “medieval manager,” but it turns out we really had no idea!

But ultimately, blame for this ridiculous situation has to go all the way up the chain to Omar Minaya and ownership. No matter which way you slice it, there is some serious idiocy going on here, because how dumb do you have to be to not take steps to protect an investment like that, in a lost season? Whether they knew about the injury and did nothing, or somehow are so oblivious that they didn’t know about the injury, Minaya and the front office have been totally negligent.

Umpbump goes both ways.

Wait. Let me rephrase.

Umpbumpers are givers and takers.

Still sounds wrong. One more time.

A collision between player/manager and umpire does not necessarily have to be instigated by the player/manager. The inverse still holds true.

There. Nothing sexy about that.

Anyhow, it’s true. While most of us think of an umpbump as an act committed by an angry player or manager, Tuesday night’s game between the Mets and Mariners proved that this is not necessarily the case.

In the bottom of the fourth inning, Carlos Beltran takes a called strike that he thought was low and verbalizes his opinion to home plate umpire Brian Runge. In turn, Runge takes off his mask, approaches Beltan and says something back. For some reason, Runge then cleans home plate (which already looked whiter than a Kenny Loggins concert) while continuing to have a terse dialogue with Mets centerfielder. The new New York manager, Jerry Manuel, then runs out of the dugout to make sure Beltran doesn’t say something to get himself ejected. And then… that happened:

(NOTE: Crap. Video was removed from the site)

It’s clear from the video that Manuel wasn’t exactly having a friendly exchange with Runge from the get-go. But it’s also clear that Runge lunges forward and bumps Manuel in the chest. Understandably upset, Manuel reacts for one second before Runge decides to throw Manuel out.

Let’s repeat that again. The umpire bumps the manager. Manager reacts to the contact. Umpire throws manager out of the game. Makes total sense, right?

After Manuel’s exit, Beltran now is fuming at the way his manager was treated and again lets Runge know how he felt. And naturally, Beltran is tossed as well.

After the game, here’s what Carlos had to say about the incident:

“After what he did to Jerry I really got mad. Because he really bumped Jerry to get an excuse to throw him out of the game. I just let him know that that was weak. This is the first time that I’ve been so angry in my career and I feel like I have a reason. If I get punished for my actions, he should get punished for his actions, also, because that was horrible.”

And here’s what Brian Runge had to say:

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

Classy guy, that Brian Runge.

Video from SNY.TV via MetsBlog.