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The Mets’ Wheel of Time Turns

The Wheel of Time turns, and Mets seasons come and pass, leaving games that become legend. Legends fade to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called 2010, an Age yet to come, an age long past, a press conference started in Flushing. The conference was not the beginning. But it was a beginning.

Okay, the quote barely makes sense, but the cyclical nature of the Mets history reminded me of Robert Jordan’s epic series. The Mets are again faced with a reboot of sorts, shedding some dead weight and redirected the franchise that has run off course.

Shea Goodbye
Shea Goodbye

So far I feel Fred and Jeff Wilpon said the right things.   I’m sure some of it’s probably saying what we want to hear, but they’ve given the right answers and seem to have the right goals and motivation.  I’ll take it.  Words are all we have right now, until after the World Series when we can start signing guys, and even that’s nothing until we play, and win, some games.

This season wsn’t a total waste for me.  The Mets made a lot of strides in appeasing and interfacing  with fans and bloggers. They created a Twitter account and started interacting. They invited a group of bloggers ‘into the fold’ and gave us an opportunity to stand on the field and talk to players during batting practice. They’re aware that there are a lot of intelligent people that spend a lot of time focusing on the Mets and thinking about them in detail.  Giving us that opportunity this year was an amazing thrill and one I’m extremely thankful for. It also gave me a chance to meet some of the fellow bloggers that I’ve been interacting with for a while.

You may have noticed, or not, that I’ve been posted a lot less.  It’s not the Mets, although them being mostly irrelevant for a month didn’t hurt, but me.  I’m getting married this weekend and things have been rather hectic.  The Mets did not reward me with a wedding present of a NLDS game to miss, and David Wright did not respond to my wedding invitation . I probably won’t be updating much over the next couple of weeks, but I suspect once things settle down I’ll get right back into it.  I’ve got some stuff planned in the offseason including some sabermetric debates that I’ve been putting off as well as some trying to match up the title of the blog with the 2011 season and the direction of the team.  In other words, a couple of spin posts trying to justify believing the Mets can and will win the World Series in 2011. (Hey, it’s more fun than predicting doom and gloom. Aren’t you tired of that?)

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First Place Mets Play For Respect

This series against the Phillies, while not that huge a deal in the overall season, is a pretty big deal for the Mets. The Mets have been disrespected and dismissed by much of baseball, and yet they stand in first place.

Most feel the Phillies are the “better team”, but this series is the first opportunity to show that the Mets can hang with them. It goes a long way towards instilling confidence in the players if they could go out and beat Philly this weekend. It will remind Philly, even though it’s still early, that the Mets are not just going to go quietly into the night this year. It will remind fans that the Mets are a serious fun team to watch and will be in the conversation all season. It will remind the national media, as the weekend games are both on National, or semi-National, tv, that there is another team in New York that’s going to be talked about this summer.

Win these games and fans will start coming back to Citi Field. People will feel good about the team. It would go a long way towards erasing some of the feeling of 2009 and hard luck. It will extinguish any real assertion that the Mets are at best a wild card team. The Phillies are not a powerhouse. Their pitching is suspect outside of Halladay and one pitcher does not make a team. Playing this team hard and gaining a little swagger about themselves is the first step towards what can be a championship season for the New York Mets.

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Letters to the NL East, Part 5/5

(To read past year’s letters, click here)

Letters to the NL East, Part 0 of 5. (part 0, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4)

AngryMrMet

Dear New York Mets,

Welcome to the what I like to joke is the second half of the ’09-’10 season.   But it’s time to put the past behind us and move on.  Nothing that happened before today counts for anything, and it’s time to step it up and start taking control of your own destiny.

Last season was a disaster; Let’s not talk about it anymore.  It’s now 2010 and even though we’ve got a couple of nagging injuries, there is hope.  Reyes will be back shortly, Murphy by the end of the month, and hopefully Beltran not too much after that.  The pitchers are healthy and while we’re missing Beltran for too much time, the rest of the offense is actually really capable.  There’s a lot of pressure on the pitching staff right now, but from all accounts you’ve got a chip on your shoulder and are working hard to succeed.  Relish the underdog role and punish the opponent.

Citi Field is amazing and all the changes look great.  Now make the experience inside a memorable one and make me forget that there is a Big Apple Brews or Shake Shack anywhere.  I’ll be there today early enough to get all that stuff out of the way before settling in to watch Santana pitch.  It’s time to get some confidence and win some games. It’s time to talk about things like wins and losses, actual performance, and stat lines, without trying to predict and project what you guys are going to do.  The division is ripe for the picking, and it’s time you stopped disappointing us and rise up and take it.   Let’s rock Citi Field like it’s never rocked before.

The predictions for your team are meek, but don’t let that bother you.  It’s time to surprise some people.  By June I expect to hear a collective, begrudging “I think this division is the Mets after all” to be uttered by the supposed baseball experts.  I expect you to make it so that most Philadelphia blogs will be talking about the Eagles by August.  The Mets have never closed two consecutive decades without a World Series title, and I see no reason to start the trend now.  In fact, they’ve never had a decade where they did not even go to the World Series, so let’s make that the starting point.

Your lifelong fan,

Optimistic Mets Fan

(I’ll be at the game today, but some that aren’t will be gathering in the Real Dirty Dugout irc chatroom of which you can find a link over on the right)

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2009 World Series: Bad News

As everyone has made light of, this World Series sucks for a Mets fan.

Mets fans are pretty split on which side they’re rooting for, if you can even call it rooting.  Funny thing is, you see plenty of Yankees fans saying that we should be rooting for them, but I don’t hear any Phillies fans making that same argument.

From Mets

Personally, I’m rooting for the Yankees to lose.  I don’t get any joy or any more grief no matter what the Phillies do, but the Yankees winning would really irk me.  It’d blow my theory of them being cursed for knocking down the house that Ruth built, it’d give even more fuel to the “Jeter’s the best player ever” arguments you hear, as well as the constant reminder about how much they’ve won.  Their eight rings to the Mets two would start to get a little insurmountable, whereas three for the Phillies wouldn’t be as rough.

From Mets

Some say that the cracks in Yankee Stadium will open up and swallow both teams into Hell.

Some compare it to 1999 although despite how much it sucked losing the Braves, the Braves fans were never in the equation as hated rivals.  Others suggest we ask who the Yankees were rooting for in 1986 and root accordingly.

Personally, I’m just not watching.  I get no joy out of watching either team, and if you factor in all the game-delay tactics, the 50 million pitching changes, and the pop-fly home runs, I’m just not sure it’s going to be fun to watch anyway.

I’ll be watching the Islanders at the Rangers Wednesday night.

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Winning on the Road

All analysts and radio hosts wanted to do on Wednesday and Thursday is discuss the Mets upcoming road trip, how it was a ‘tough trip’, and try to break it down. I heard plenty of “You’d sign for 5-5”. I heard some guys, like Michael Kay, say you’d be happy with 4-6. Good teams should never accept a less than positive outcome, and it looks like the Mets both agree, and are a good team.

You have to play to win, and you have to try to win every series. That would have been 7-3. Maybe you drop a game here or there, on this ‘tough trip’, and go 6-4. That’s still winning baseball, and the Mets are off to that good start. They won the first series, against the weaker team, and are 3-1 on the road trip. You’d have to be crazy to accept 2-4 the rest of the way. Despite having issues, injuries, bad managing, and mistakes in the field, the Mets have been winning more often than losing lately. There is no reason to think they can’t beat the Dodgers. If this is truly a team that can, and it can, win a championship then they can beat anyone. This includes the Red Sox, who are arguably the best team in baseball and may very well be getting Kevin Youkilis back for the series against the Mets.

You don’t like how that last game went in San Francisco, but you’ll take the series. They haven’t played well in the park overall and they almost swept. Let’s see how they do against the Mannyless Dodgers, and then the Red Sox. If you’re into scoreboard watching in May, the Phillies are playing the Reds who have been looking good, and then the Yankees who are suddenly managing to win games. I’m scared for the most home runs in one game record with those two teams playing in that small park, with the crappiness of the pitching involved. There may be more home runs than singles. The Braves play the Rockies and the Blue Jays.

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Fresh Ideas

The players are the players. Fundamentals are the result of practice and training. Look at how much better Jose Reyes has gotten at shortstop over the years. To me, this is on the coaches. They don’t seem to be doing proper base running drills, or proper training in general. Perez is what he is, but you know he has talent. It’s on the coaches to bring out that talent.

Between clutch hitting, stolen bases, good defense, and good pitching, this team has shown it all at times. These players have all show they’re capable of it. And you can’t fire the players. It’s time for a real change in management. Sometimes when you’re too close to the problem, you can’t see what needs to be done. It’s time for Howard Johnson, and Jerry Manuel, and probably Dan Warthen too, to get lost. I want some outside influence on this team. Some fresh ideas.

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Triple Play Means Its Time to Get Going

I was half paying attention to the game last night as I did other things, among them voting for Placido Polanco for the All-Star team, since he’s only 8k votes behind Robinson Cano and I really don’t want him to win. I also wrote in votes for Boston’s Kevin Youkilis, because with the year he’s having, it’s a shame he’s not even on the ballot at the position he plays. It’s a lost cause, but I’ve been voting for Endy Chavez too.

And It’s even more of a lost cause now, as he grounded out into a triple play yesterday, Reyes out at second, Chavez out at first, and Chavez’s hamstring out running down the line. Without thinking about it, it seems like losing your fourth outfielder shouldn’t be that big a deal, but we all know it is. The Mets have their star outfielder playing at about 85%, and lost their second and third outfielders to injuries, and now their fourth. Endy means so much more than that, which is almost impossible to put into words. Luckily it’s not major, and he will be back for the bulk of the end of the season to contribute the way he contributes.

I don’t even know what to say about Alou, but Green and Valentin will be back soon. Maybe between Easley, who’s also injured with tendinitis for the past two weeks, and Newhan and Johnson and Gomez the Mets can piece together that third spot for whatever time Alou needs to get healthy, as long as what he needs isn’t a time machine. It sucks for Lastings Milledge, who if he wasn’t injured would be getting a lot of chances to play. Even if the Mets don’t want to keep him, him playing here would be a great bargaining chip. I really think we need to keep Ruben Gotay around, who I liked in spring training and really have kept liking since he’s been up. Jose Valentin has played some left field before, most notably six times for the Mets last year, maybe he could fill in there too.

After their first three game losing streak, I expect the Mets to wake up from this lackluster daydream they’ve been having. I know they’ve lost practically no ground in the division race, which says loads about the Braves, but losing three games the way they’ve been playing is a disgrace. Losing Endy Chavez and the prospect of being swept at home will jolt the Mets into action.

I’ve been talking about, and waiting for this moment all year. When the Mets put together one of those swagger-filled, “You can’t touch us” streaks of great baseball. It’s coming now. The Phillies aren’t a threat, and the Mets don’t view them as part of this tough stretch of schedule. They are going to rise to the occasion to play with the best teams of 2006. I fully expect that by the time July 1st roles around, we’ll barely be able to see the next team in the rear view mirror, having put together a 17-6 stretch of games.

It’s hard to say they’ve been cruising, but they pretty much have been. Now with some serious concerns, it’ll wake them up and they’ll begin to show why they’re a championship caliber team. Who knows, maybe we can have Lo Duca start some games in left field and get Castro some at-bats.