April 2010
Random Thoughts for a Rainy Monday!
It was supposed to be The New York Mets vs. The Los Angeles Dodgers of Brooklyn at 7pm this evening, but alas, Mother Nature intervened. So a treat for a Tuesday afternoon instead. An old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness, and most importantly, single-admission DOUBLEHEADER! It’ll be Ollie P. (0-2, 3.71) v. Hiroki Kuroda (2-0, 2.18) preceded by The Johan (2-1, 2.59) v. Charlie Haeger (0-2, 6.46). Since I’m a faithful subscriber to MLB Extra Innings, I usually take in my fair share of late Dodger games featuring the Master, Vin Scully. However, this year, I’m slackin on my West Coast vibe so far and letting my East Coast Bias be slanted towards a good night sleep. Apparently the Dodgers have been having pitching issues, and one Manny Ramirez has been kept away from the New York circus by his Manager, Joe Torre (what does he know about the New York circus? Oh Yeah, I forgot…) Hopefully the Mets can keep their recent winning ways going before the weekend matchup in Philly v. the Phillies.
Mike Pelfrey has been lights out this year, fashioning a 4-0 record with a microscopic 0.69 ERA. However in last night’s rain shortened matchup, he showed something else… some gumption. One of the knocks on Pelfrey prior to this year has been an inability to be able to survive on nights when he doesn’t have his best stuff or command of his pitches. Well, last night was one of those nights and he was able to gut his way through 5 innings and 106 pitches. Of course it probably helped that the weekend’s opponent the Atlanta Braves couldn’t buy a clutch hit. Still maybe, just maybe, Big Pelf has turned a corner and can be that guy the Mets need to ride shotgun to Johan Santana in the rotation. Only time will tell, but the results so far are encouraging to say the least.
My new Facebook buddy is Jeff Mattingly. From my new Facebook buddy I’ve stolen, er, borrowed some very pertinent stats about the Mets pitching staff. Namely as of Saturday the Mets had the most strikeouts as a staff in the NL. and second most in the Majors. Unfortunately they’ve also surrendered the most walks as well which was supposed to be one of the things they were going to rectify as a staff in the spring. On the flipside, of course, is one Johan Santana, who has not surrendered a leadoff walk in nearly 70 innings since last year. What does this mean? Simple, Johan is great and I enjoy trying to sound like a stat guru! By the way Jeff’s website is www.thesportspy.com. Check it out! NOW!
See Ya!
IT’S ONLY SEVEN FREAKIN’ GAMES- The Sequel
Last year, I wrote an entry telling everyone to relax. After all, 7 games in a baseball season was far too early to press panic buttons and sound alarms. I’m not saying that this year. While there’s a very large part of me that feels that this ballclub has too much ability to be a lousy team, the way they’re playing belies that sentiment. John Maine’s second straight lackluster performance, errors, lack of clutch hitting, too much like last year and for that matter the 2 previous Septembers. It’s hard to believe, almost, that this team was 1 game away from the World Series just 4 years ago. I blamed a lot of the debacle that was 2009 on the most obvious reason, the almost Biblical rash of injuries that occured. But if you watched the team before it was blatantly obvious even before that that there was something missing. This year feels a lot like the same thing.
I’ve done my best not to fall prey to the rampant negativism that prevailed all winter long. I simply felt that there was nothing for the Mets to do other than Bay, Lackey, Halladay or Holliday that would have had any major impact. I still believe that and obviously Lackey, Halladay and Holliday weren’t coming to Flushing for a variety of reasons. Would Joel Piniero or Jason Marquis have been a serious upgrade over Maine or Ollie? Again only time will tell, but this team needs to do something NOW. Does that mean bringing up an Ike Davis or Fernando Martinez to provide a spark? Something more drastic in the way of personnel or management? I don’t have that answer. What I do know is that I really don’t want a repeat of last year when despair set in quickly. This week is a huge week for the Amazins’. I just hope that they can answer the bell, otherwise other bells may toll very soon.
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