Last night after the game, Jerry Manuel was as un-optimistic as I’ve ever seen him. Even after a loss, he can usually be counted on to look for the positives and even crack a smile, but not last night. He looked like a battle wearied soldier. The fatigue of a long and frustrating season was clearly evident in his demeanor and body language and it was almost pitiful to see. Talking about his offense, he was surprisingly critical:

“We have to do what we’ve been talking about all of the time, we have to do more offensively.  We’ve got to find a way to get that done.  I mean, that’s poor.  That’s a very poor effort on our part offensively… We have to do better.  Period.  It’s pathetic.  We have to do better.”

Only 24 hours before last night’s loss, Manuel was still hanging onto the possibility that his team was still in the playoff hunt.

I see Manuel as a sympathetic figure as I alluded to in one of my posts yesterday.

He was promised a frontline starter which he never got in the offseason. He has been crying for a setup man all season long and even going back to spring training, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. With the team only 4 games behind at the break, he had hoped for a big bat to help revitalize the offense and instead got Ruben Tejada (.216) and Fernando Martinez (.176).

Now he is faced with an endless stream of blogs, articles, and headlines that are all considering his inevitable replacement.

I’m not saying I love the job Manuel is doing, everyone who reads this site knows the way I feel about him.

But, think for a moment what it must be like to go out without any support from the fans, his general manager or the ones that sign his paycheck.

Manuel will be fired either before or at the end of this season, of that I am sure. But lets agree that basically he was handed an ill conceived team that was poorly constructed from the word go, and that he was expected to take this team to the World Series. Lets call a spade a spade.

In my opinion, Manuel was setup for failure, and believe you me, he knows it.

Truth be told, Omar Minaya who is the biggest reason for the failure of the 2010 season, should be escorted out of Citi Field along with Manuel at the end of the season.

It must really suck being Jerry Manuel right now.