You can root for the Mets without being convinced of their doom
Banner day is Sunday before the game against the Padres. You should head to the game and help convince the Mets you want them to do Banner Day every year. Seriously. Make a banner, go to the game, take pictures, tweet pictures, talk about the banners.
I’ve mocked up a little design that I think would make a cool banner, or at least part of a banner. Or even a t-shirt. So, celebrate the Mets 50th anniversary with a banner and have some fun on Sunday!
Mets Today asks: “Is this the soft spot in the schedule?”
Three games against the Pirates followed by four games with the lowly Padres — a seven-game span of less than mediocre opponents. What makes it all the more intriguing is that this stretch is “the calm before the storm” in that it comes right before perhaps the toughest section of their season — the next 8 series include facing the Phillies, Cardinals (for four), first-place Nationals, Yankees, Rays, Reds, first-place Orioles, and Yankees again. Whew!
I think strength of schedule is an argument that doesn’t mean much in baseball. It’s more suited for the short season that the NFL plays, although many people had the New York Giants buried based on the schedule difficulty and they ended up winning the Super Bowl. There are so many hot and cold streaks in baseball that you can get a good team that’s slumping and beat them, and get a bad team that turns in three good pitching performances in a row and sweeps you. Sometimes the timing is that you face the top three pitchers in a rotation, and other times you get the soft underbelly. Losing to a bad team doesn’t eliminate you from contention and more than beating a good team clinches a competitive season. This is part of the reason I don’t care about a balanced schedule.
So no, I’m not concerned that the Mets have a difficult stretch coming up. I think it’s more important to concentrate on how the Mets themselves are playing since certainly the Mets can beat any team if some guys are hitting and Johan Santana and R.A. Dickey are dazzling. It’s also worth noting that although the Yankees and Phillies may project as tough teams, they aren’t that right now. The opposite might be said about the Nationals and the Orioles.
Still, the Padres should be a very beatable team, and you’d like the see the Mets get their act together and do so. Winning the series against the Padres would put them at their high water mark for the season and that’s a great place to start when you’re facing the defending division and world champs back to back.
Many Mets fans wanted Bobby Valentine hired to manage the Mets again at Citi Field. Well, there is still a chance he could manage here; The Boston Red Sox just need to make it to the World Series this year and he’ll be in the dugout managing the American League Club at next year’s All-Star Game.
It requires rooting for the Red Sox of course, which isn’t something I’ve ever had trouble doing. The enemy of my enemy is my friend after all.
The perfect scenario is Valentine manages the All-Star Game as the losing manager from this year’s World Series, and that Terry Collins manages the other team. An interesting twist would be if somehow the Nationals make the World Series and we get a Valentine vs. Davey Johnson matchup at Citi Field.
Memorable series in Toronto? Perhaps not. The Mets flirted more with last place than with first this weekend, but they got out of the country with a win and perhaps that’s a step forward.
No NL East team swept this weekend, providing the Mets some solace. The Mets also have managed to squeak out some wins while they’ve been struggling, perhaps doing some good towards minimizing the damage. Avoiding long losing streaks is a good way to avoid undoing all the progress you’ve made during winning streaks, and simply being 4-6 over the last 10 instead of 2-8 has done that. A good way to have a winning record is to win more games when you’re playing well than you lose when you’re playing poorly, since all teams do both for at least some portion of the season.
It’s important to minimize the length of said losing streaks as well, and for the last couple of decades the National League’s favorite way to do that has been to face the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Mets will travel to Pittsburgh for a three game set, and while it’s true that they’re not a good team, it’s important to note that they rank 3rd in the NL in team ERA and the Mets will be facing their two best pitchers in Bedard and McDonald. The counter argument is of course that the Pirates can’t hit a lick and the Mets will be tossing the top of their rotation as well, with Johan Santana, R.A. Dickey and Jon Niese getting the starts.
It’s worth noting that the Mets are three games over .500 more than a quarter of the way through the season and haven’t been a losing team even for one game all season long despite being almost universally picked to finish last. It isn’t because everything has clicked either. The starters have probably been better than expected overall, but they’ve been prone to absolute disaster starts as well. The bullpen is incredibly streaky, and it almost seems that as Frank Francisco goes, so go the Mets. The offense that should’ve been the Mets best feature has been spotty, although David Wright is hitting for two. Ike Davis has been pretty much a disaster and the two positions that the Mets really didn’t have any depth, shortstop and catcher, are two positions the Mets faced injuries at . Both Ruben Tejada and Josh Thole went down while putting up strong offensive numbers, and their backups certainly aren’t up to par.
And still the Mets roll on. Time to take care of some Pirates.
We know David Wright is already the captain, if only unofficially, but it’d be nice to get him the official title. I thought of a fun way to possibly do it.
There is a 50% chance that one of the local hockey teams is going to win the Stanley Cup. So if this comes to pass, have that team bring the Cup to Citi Field for the Mets to see and have the captain, either Zach Parise of the Devils or Ryan Callahan of the Rangers, present David Wright with a Mets jersey with a ‘C’ on it.
Clearly as an Islanders fan I’m rooting against the Rangers and am not sure I really want the Devils to continue on and win it all either, but from a New York City standpoint I think this would be a fun way to do it. It wouldn’t have the same impact without the Cup, but you could probably have one of them do it anyway if you wanted to make pomp and circumstance out of it.
I know it’s popular to knock the All-Star Game and it all represents, but the truth of it is that it’s basically a party to celebrate baseball, and who doesn’t love baseball? And like most parties, it’s much much better in person.
I was there for the 2006 All-Star Game and had an absolute blast in Pittsburgh despite driving back after the game to New York and going to work Wednesday morning. Click the link to read my take on the experience, including the Home Run Derby. It was really a lot of fun, and I’m truly looking forward to getting to experience it at home.
So expect a lot of thoughts and reactions about the game, particularly as the more exciting details come out about All-Star Villages, first pitches, and potential celebrations. Now a note to the 2012 Mets: Get to the World Series so Terry Collins can manage and the proper (too many) amount of Mets get represented in the game.
Conor Coen wins the seatcrew.com Mets tickets! Enjoy the game!
And the Mets win the ballgame!
That’s a five game winning streak to put them at 5 games over .500 for the first time since just after the All-Star Break in 2010. It also puts them inches from first place. (And in solid Wild Card position) It’s a sweep of the defending division champions and not just a sweep but a sweep that including them pitching their two best pitchers.
With the Knicks eliminated that’s one less team for people to distract themselves with and not notice that the Mets might actually be pretty good. Off days with the Mets on a winning streak are the best type of off days.
Well obviously it’s not a must-win, it’s May 9th and the 31st game of the season!
Still, there’s a certain symbolic worth to winning this game. It’d be a sweep of the defending division champions. It’d be beating their second ace pitcher. It’d be answering a losing streak with a bigger winning streak.
And it’d put the Mets five games above .500, which is somewhere they haven’t been all season, nor all of last season. They haven’t been five games over .500 since July 19th of 2010. This was just after the All-Star Break when they rushed Carlos Beltran and Luis Castillo back and got steamrolled by the soon-to-be World Champion San Francisco Giants at the beginning of their run.
The Mets should have a fair shot at this. Dillon Gee hasn’t quite gotten the results he’d have liked, but he’s getting a lot more swinging strikes than previous years and walking fewer. This should be a good recipe for retiring the weak-hitting Philadelphia Phillies. They have Cliff Lee going, but he’s going to be limited returning from injury and the Mets have been beating on the Phillies pen the last two games.
So it’s not a must-win game, but it’s still a game you’d really like to see the Mets get.
I don’t usually do game recaps, and I don’t usually buy into “they would’ve lost this one last year” arguments trying to compare this team to that one. This game was too much fun not to keep talking about though.
Halladay gave up a hard hit ball to lead off the game that required a great catch to turn into an out, but after that he was pretty steady until the 6th when a tight zone and good patience by Andres Torres with two outs led to a walk. Nieuwenhuis laced a single into left and that brought up our uncrowned Captain. David Wright rocketed one down the line that Mayberry misplayed off the side wall and two runs scored to tie the game. Meanwhile Jon Niese battled some control problems but only allowed those two early runs through five innings.
The Mets would battle and fight through the next couple of innings, having runners on base and not scoring and allowing runners to reach base but not allowing them to score. Josh Thole may have suffered a concussion, which sucks.
If you believe in poetic moments and turning points in seasons there was a huge one in the 7th inning. With two on and one out Hunter Pence grounded to second base where Daniel Murphy flipped to Justin Turner who threw to first. Shane Victorino slid a good three feet wide of the bag to take out Justin Turner and was ruled out for interference. You may recall a similar play in late August of 2007. It was the top of the ninth in Philadelphia with Marlon Anderson on first and Endy Chavez on third with one out and the Phillies leading 3-2. Shawn Green grounded out to shortstop and Anderson went in hard at second, keeping Rollins from turning the double play and allowing Endy Chavez to tie the game. Except Anderson was ruled to have interfered on a play much less clear cut than last nights. Instead the Mets lost that game, got swept in a four game series against the Phillies, and failed to completely bury them in the division. That one game may have been the difference between the playoffs and what ultimately happened in 2007. Who knows how things are different from there. Now the Mets get one of those calls that helps them win a game and go back to three games over .500 and 2.5 games ahead of the last place Philadelphia Phillies. Is it karma? The universe correcting it’s course back to one that features the Mets establishing a dynasty and perennial playoff team? Is it the turning point in a season that the Mets were universally picked to finish last but haven’t been under .500 at any point?
Probably not. It was a great win culminated by Jordany Valdespin collecting his first major league hit in epic fashion with a 3-run home run off one of the game’s best closers. It instantly became a Mets classic, but it’s still just one win in May. The Mets will face so many ups and downs and turning points this season that it’ll be near impossible to pinpoint this game in May when it all started going right. Would the Mets have won this game last year? Well..maybe. After all, many people compared this game to the Omir Santos game winning home run off of Papelbon back in 2009. 2009’s team doesn’t seem like one that you’d describe as resilient, having been the first losing season since 2004.
Still, there’s a lot to like about this game. The Mets hung in there against a tough pitcher. Jon Niese didn’t let the wheels fall off. Except for Torres misplay in the first allowing Jimmy Rollins an extra base, they played pretty crisp defense. They made pitches when they needed to and exploited the Phillies weaknesses. They took a four game losing streak and responded with a three game, and counting, winning streak.
Is this season going to be a gusty team that fights and scraps to stay above .500? A scrappy contender that finds a way to get at least a wild card spot? An overachieving bunch of rookies that show promise but ultimately revert to what they were predicted to be? It’s too early to tell, but no matter where it winds up it’s going to be a fun ride.
It’s time for May’s Mets Ticket Giveaway, courtesy of Seatcrew.com. This week Optimistic Mets Fan is giving away two tickets to a game against the Milwaukee Brewers on Tuesday May 15th.
Seatcrew.com is a secondary ticket market similar to Stubhub with an important twist: There are no ticket fees for the buyer or the seller, which means lower prices on tickets for you. For a full write-up, and a list of which games you have a chance to win tickets to, check out my post from the offseason.
So here’s what you have to do to win. First, you need to have a registered Seatcrew account. All you need is an email address. Second, you need to predict how many hits David Wright will hit against the Phillies in three games. This means you need to have your guess in to contest@ceetar.com before Wright’s first AB tonight. There is one catch: Since this is an Optimistic fan site, we’ll be playing by reverse Price is Right rules. This means the person closest to the total without going UNDER is the winning entry. If you guess 4 hits, and David Wright hits 5, your guess is ineligible. Be Optimistic.
If it helps, the Phillies are scheduled to start Roy Halladay, Joe Blanton, and Cliff Lee returning from the DL. My personal guess would be 6 hits, with 2 home runs if you’d like to use that as a guide. Good Luck!