I was going to rant and rave and vent and fume, but it looks like Jason Fry basically covered all the angles over there at Faith and Fear in Flushing so I’ll just throw in a little pointer here to there.
Ugh. After which we never, ever spoke of it again.
So let’s remind these American League teams that are coming to Citi Field why National League baseball is the way to go. Let’s laugh at their pitchers trying to hit, and laugh at the managers that may botch a double-switch. Let’s read all the Moneyball references made while the A’s are in town and watch the Mets play, and win, some baseball games at home. It’s been a long road trip, and a successful one, so let’s go out to the park and watch Jose Reyes be Amazin’.
It often feels like the mainstream media has a story they want to write, and look for the facts to fit the story rather than watching the game and writing a story that matches the facts. They can get hung up on narratives they like and beat them to death. Part of the reason I named this blog what I did was to counter the idea that the Mets are cursed, never spend, are inept, or Latin-biased, etc etc.
One of the common stories this year was that the Mets are broke and can’t afford Reyes, so they will trade him. They stuck to this; it seemed like every day there was another story about how they’d have to trade him, or who would be a good suitor. As the season went on some of these writers had the occasion to glance down at the field, and happened to notice how unbelievably awesome Jose Reyes is, and how much he is adored by Mets fans. Slowly but surely more articles came out suggesting, as many bloggers have been writing all along, that the Mets should and could keep Reyes. It’s so refreshing to watch a player that’s just that awesome, that leads the league in so many categories, and is having a blast doing it. That his great season has caused writers to use the delete button more than usual is just a bonus.
Speaking of which, here’s a post from Ed Ryan at Mets Fever that wonders if maybe the Mets should be thinking about adding, not subtracting, players at the trading deadline. Personally I think the Mets will add someone. Alderson has been known in the past to like to wheel and deal, and I suspect this year will be no different. He’s claimed to this point to have the financial ability to do so. This doesn’t mean no one will get traded though, it just means it doesn’t have to be a fire sale. Sandy Alderson won’t need to trade major league pieces for guys that may or may not help the team at some future time. He’s got the options of trading major league talent for equal major league talent, maybe shuffling off an extra bat for an extra relief pitcher, or trading prospects for a good player that’s still got a couple of years left on his contract to help the team out both this year and next.
Winning or losing, it’s never too early to start bringing in talented players. Even if you don’t believe the Mets are one or two players away from making the playoffs, if you make them one better right now, that’s less work needed to do in the offseason. I expect a lot of activity in July, and some of it will probably be pretty exciting.
A player like Jose Reyes will never win a Triple Crown, he’s not a slugger and right now doesn’t bat in a part of the lineup with a lot of RBI opportunities. We count the success of players like Reyes with runs scored and stolen bases over home runs and RBIs.
So how does Jose Reyes stack up in the Leadoff Hitters Triple Crown as of 6:00pm on Sunday when I’m writing this? He leads the National League in average at .346. He’s currently 2nd in runs, one off the lead held by Drew Stubbs and Ryan Braun at 48. He’s second in stolen bases, six behind Michael Bourn of the Astros who has 26.
The season is a little over a third over, so there is still a lot of time left. Still, Reyes certainly looks like a solid candidate for my newly created Leadoff Triple Crown. He’s leading in hitting right now, although Joey Votto is only .007 behind him and having an unbelievable season as well. He’s currently got a .466 OBP. He’s on base more than 9 times out of 20.
Reyes is only one run scored off the lead, which is doubly impressive when you consider Stubbs has Votto behind him driving him in and Braun has Prince Fielder. Reyes has had to deal with injuries to Ike Davis and David Wright, and has often had Jason Bay, who’s not hitting at all, batting cleanup.
Michael Bourn is leading Jose in stolen bases. Bourn has been the leader in each of the last two seasons while Jose was dealing with the injury in 2009 and the lack of a Spring Training in 2010. So far this season he’s playing decently above his career average, and perhaps will tail off in stolen bases opportunities and allow Jose to pass him. Or maybe Jose starts stealing more.
Yes, Jose Reyes is having a monster year. He’s easily one of the most exciting players in baseball and the best shortstop in the league. Ultimately the Mets are going to have to work out an extension with him and resign him, but in the mean time we’re getting to enjoy one of the best seasons we’ve ever seen from a Mets position player. Getting to the tv for first pitch when the Mets are on the road is a necessity, because if you’re late you may miss Reyes doing something amazin’.
The 7 train sometimes makes local stops, but Jose Reyes is always express.
Most of these are just me being silly, but at this point it’s not looking like they’ll be less effective than what he’s trying now.
Only permit Jason Bay to bunt for an entire game. Maybe it’ll really help him get his timing down and figure out where the ball is going.
Have Jason Bay stand in the batter’s box as the dummy-batter for all starting pitcher side sessions. This way he can time and track pitches without the pressure of striking out.
Make Jason Bay swing lefty. It might force him to focus and make contact.
Get Jason Bay drunk the night before. Tell him not to show up to the park until 30 minutes before first pitch. Maybe it’ll keep him from over-thinking his game and just hit.
Randomly send Jason Bay up to the plate as a pinch hitter with absolutely no warning. Maybe do it after the pitcher has gotten two strikes. Put his back against the wall and maybe he’ll come through.
The logical one being literally work it out with the hitting coach. Watch tape. Analyze your swing. Compare it to past years. Take more BP. Put in extra time scouting the opposing pitcher.
During the Mets home run drought someone commented to me that comparisons to 1980 don’t bode well. Well here’s a comparison to 1986 that’s exciting to see, via the Wall Street Journal: The Mets have two players (as of Tuesday) in the top 10 in OPS. The last year that happened was 1990, and before that 1986.
This is one of the reasons the Mets are still afloat after losing David Wright and Ike Davis. Still having these great players really helps things, as does having guys pressed into duty like Justin Turner and Ruben Tejada performing well.
Ultimately comparisons to past years don’t mean anything. Every season is full of “This hasn’t happened since” milestones both good and bad, but I wouldn’t count out a team that has two of the games top players and will likely be adding David Wright and Ike Davis at one point in the next month or so.
Chris Jaffe of the Hardball Times has been breaking down the order charges associated with baseball tickets for some time. Yesterday he posted about some of the new numbers for this year. The Mets were roughly middle of the pack until Citi Field opens, but now as most of you are probably aware, there is a ticket fee and an order fee. This year they’ve added a fee to mail you the tickets, so the cheapest option is a $2.50 surcharge to print them yourself. All teams seem to do this, despite it basically costing them nothing to email you the tickets.
Felt applicable to me.
I poked around a little bit myself with what I could find in my email regarding ticket prices over the years. Jaffe has total costs listed back through 2007, but I found some from before that.
For the 2007 and 2008 Playoffs there was a $12 per ticket fee, but no order fee.
Jaffe lists the Mets price as $6.50 in 2007. I don’t doubt him, but the only receipt I have from that year is for the Yankees, and it’s $9.25. ($4.75 + $4.50)
In 2005 there appears to be no per ticket fee, or it was built into the price on the receipt, and there was a $3.00 order fee. The prices of the tickets appear $6 higher than the price of the same ticket in 2004, so I suspect that’s the order fee.
In 2004 the per ticket fee was $6.00 and there was a $2.50 order fee.
So lots of order fees and surcharges through the years. Luckily there are also ticket deals, and you still can get tickets at the ballpark without any fees at all.
Over a month ago I wrote about the Mets breeding confidence with a big win. For all the talk of how the Mets haven’t been involved in any walk-off wins or losses this year, the only thing stopping that one was that they were on the road. After falling behind 3-2 in the bottom of the 8th, the Mets rallied for four runs to win 6-3. It was the game with the Hu sac-fly to tie it, perhaps the best moment of Hu’s Mets career. Yesterday suggested that the Mets may in fact believe in themselves.
They’d come off a very tough loss the night before with a lot of bad luck and bloops and they were getting some of that same bad luck early. Pelfrey struggled. Except for Justin Turner the night before the Mets hadn’t hit a home run since Mike Piazza retired and were barely scoring runs. All that didn’t stop Carlos Beltran from striding to the place and smashing a home run well over the left field fence to get the game to 7-3. From there the Mets did what they could, with a lot of help from the Pirates, to tie the game and eventually take the lead 9-7 and the 9-8 win.
The Mets believe they can win games. They believe they’re a talented team, injuries or not. Terry Collins believes it too; whether or not his tirade in the post-game conference the other day had any motivating benefits to it, it wasn’t fake.
Just believing in yourself is not enough to win baseball games, but doubting yourself or your team can lead to losses in games like yesterday. Opportunities for wins can come at the strangest times and places, but a team needs to be prepared to capitalize. This one come from behind win doesn’t forgive letting leads get away in the other games during this homestand by not making pitches or catches, but hopefully it helps the players believe that they CAN make those pitches and win baseball games.
Remember when I said that the Mets needed to maintain good defense and starting hitting better with runners in scoring position in the absence of Wright and Davis? Well, this is what happens when you don’t do that. You drop games to teams like the Pirates due to a frustrating to watch collection of poor defense, poor pitching, and bad luck.
These last three days were a showcase for what the Mets would be like without Reyes. Thankfully he’s back tomorrow, and hopefully he’s back next year, and the years after that. This, coupled with how well Turner has played, should keep Willie Harris out of the lineup if not off the team entirely. There’s two big series coming up against teams that will likely compete for the division and the wild card, and it’d be the perfect time to start stringing together wins.
Will they do any of this? Or will they let the injuries and poor play crush them? Only time will tell. There’s a quick turn around for tomorrow’s day game and that could help quickly erase the poor events of these last two games. If they lose they’ll have clinched a non-winning home stand, win and they get a chance to win a series against the Braves to start climbing back to relevancy.
This tweet annoyed me and got me thinking about paywalls. First the obvious archaic nature of Keith Law’s reference; does anybody watch the Playboy channel anymore? The nature of television signals has changed and I don’t think you get scrambled stations anymore; you either get it or you don’t. Furthermore this isn’t the 1980s; there are plenty of alternatives to Playboy, scrambled or unscrambled. However, Law’s comparison is still apt in that paying for his predictions is very much like paying for the Playboy channel in this day and age.
The Internet makes everything and everyone so accessible that it’s hard to believe one person has so much more knowledge and insight that it’s worth paying for. Obviously Keith Law is going to promote his own work and tell you it’s worth buying; but so will Playboy, and the homeless man on the corner. There are a lot of other people out there doing the same thing as him (Talking about and predicting the MLB draft), and to top that off there are also high school and college fans with Twitter accounts and blogs that can give us accounts of the players they see more regularly than any expert or whichever scouts those experts talk to. There is also a wealth of information and statistics that are kept that can be analyzed by anyone that feels the urge. If you’re only into the specific predictions for you own team, there will surely be someone that’s splurged on an insider account that will repost the information to a blog or forum somewhere.
This isn’t only about ESPN. There are other paywalls, usually related to newspapers, that do similar things. I have yet to fret over something that I couldn’t access. Either that information comes to me through other sources, or it’s not worth reading. The paywall can actually act as a filter to save me the trouble of reading filler articles. In this case the Twitter user who inquired if there was anyway to see Law’s opinion without paying for something he wasn’t interested in probably went on his way and read about the players he wanted to read about elsewhere. In the age of the Internet, simply charging, or charging more, for something does not automatically make it worthwhile. Customers are getting savvy enough to search out the better deal, because there is always a better deal.
It’s Memorial Day, a day many baseball fans traditionally use to take their first real assessment of the team. Now suddenly standings start really meaning something, it’s considered okay to scoreboard watch, and most batting averages and rate statistics have at least a reasonable sample in which to infer some judgement on the player beyond a hot or cold start. (Jose Reyes is batting .335, is the best shortstop in the game and is just plain exciting to watch. Please extend his contract.)
So where are these Mets going? Right now it certainly doesn’t feel like they’re going very far. They faced the Phillies and the lesser two of their aces and their rotation filler and outpitched all three of them but lost the series. The fielding got sloppy in close games and the bullpen picked the worst possible time to struggle. Still, can you proclaim anything as over in May? The Phillies were 1-3 against the Mets, one game over .500 and 7 games back on Memorial Day in 2007. Sure, the Phillies look better than the Mets right now, but you would’ve said the opposite in 2007.
There is no doubt that the Mets need to play better to have any hope at some sort of reverse 2007 season. The latest news on Ike Davis and David Wright doesn’t exactly have them returning immediately, but it won’t be too much longer either. The news on Johan Santana remains good. If the Mets can find ways to win games without them, and that would include hitting better with RISP and fielding the ball cleanly to not force pitchers to have to get 4 or 5 outs too many times, then they can crawl back to .500 and be poised to add two big bats to help them chase the Phillies. They still have nine games against them and won’t face them again for over a month. The Mets play eight of the next 14 games against the Pirates. It is not unreasonable to expect the Mets to slaughter them, and be able to be above .500 after those 14 games. Minimize the losing stretches of baseball and maximize the winning ones. I think two weeks of this losing is enough, it’s time to start another strong run.
This was a rough weekend for the Mets, but it’s one they can look at and realize that maybe if they field the ball cleanly they win two or three of those games. No excuses; fix the problems or find players that will.
One thing that’s starting to concern me is Terry Collins’ bullpen usage. (#1 thing fans nipick about a manager right?) I really like the Mets bullpen, but i do not like their situational guys, and I wish Collins would stop going to them like they’re gold. These pitchers are not Pedro Feliciano and I would leave Capuano or even Pelfrey in those games. A lot hinges on Buccholz and Beato. Both showed a lot of promise and if they can be relied on in those fringe innings between Isringhausen and K-Rod and the starting pitching then Mets will have a lot of chances to win baseball games.
