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Jason Bay Experimental Slump-Busting Tactics

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.

 

Bat Jason Bay 9th.

 

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.

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Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran: Pretty Amazin’

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.

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A Breakdown of MLB Ticket Surcharges

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.

 

Dilbert.com
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.

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The Mets Are Confident

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.

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Despicable Mets

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.

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Sports Paywalls

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.

 

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Where Are The Mets Going?

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.

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Sandy Has It Under Control

This probably doesn’t bother anyone on the team, so it’s far from becoming a distraction, but the situation with his vesting option is starting to become too common a topic of conversation among fans, bloggers and media.  They brought him in to finish a game yesterday in an almost certain loss, which suggests that maybe they’re just not as worried about it as the rest of us are.

 

That’s the catch here; the Mets know a lot more about the situation than we do.  So why get bent out of shape about something that’s probably not a big deal?  The Mets know whether or not Francisco Rodriguez fits into their budget, or under what circumstances his option vesting for next year is not a problem.  Sandy Alderson knows whether or not they’re going to try to trade him before that, or extend him and have him void the option.   I’m not suggesting we have blind faith in Alderson; after all he’s just as fallible as the next guy.  However I think it’s silly to treat this situation like the Mets are purposely sticking their head in the sand regarding the 2012 payroll and how their closer fits into it.  At the end of the season, the Mets aren’t going to cry about what happens with Frankie, it’ll all be part of the bigger picture.

 

All in all, I’m just tired of half the Mets talk being about getting rid of our best players.  It was tedious at best during the offseason, but now that I’m actively enjoying these guys beating down the opponents, can we stop wishing them away?  I’d rather take a shot with Jose Reyes and whoever else makes the team better every year than close my eyes and hope I’ll be able to enjoy Mets baseball a couple of years down the road.  I’m actually enjoying the Mets this season, I’m enjoying watching Jose Reyes literally scare the Cubs defenders into making two errors on one play and running all the way around the baseball diamond.  I’m enjoying knowing that the game is over after eight innings when we have a lead.   Don’t take that away from me please.

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The Citi Field Beer List

This is late in coming, but just in time for the latest and longest homestand of the year.    Here is a list of every beer available in Citi Field. I count 60 distinct beers right now, although I suspect I may have a mistake or two that you can certainly help me out with.   Snap a picture or let me know if you see a beer somewhere that I have not properly cataloged here.

 

Obviously It’s sad that the Brooklyn Brewery drafts are no longer available at Citi Field, but recently Sixpoint brewery started canning their beers, and I can only hope those beers find their way to Citi Field in the near future.

The Citi Field Beer List