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Opening Day

BASEBALL! It’s begun, and so far Johan Santana appears to be the real thing. After watching the Nationals, and David Wright’s good pal Ryan Zimmerman, hand the Braves their first loss of the season last night it was a good feeling to watch the guys take the field for the first time and come through like they should. And the best part is we get to flip on the television and see them do it again tonight! That’s eight strike-outs for Santana, now lets see how many Pedro gets.

In other news, the biggest story in “Yankee Country” was again not baseball, but weather. The ghost of Babe Ruth is giving them grief, 86 years after he christened the structure with a home run, they’re knocking it down.

For an interesting article I wrote about why Opening Day should be a national holiday to celebrate our national pastime, click here.

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Letters to the NL East

Baseball starts soon, and that means I’ll probably start updating with a little more regularity once there is actual content. For now I’m planning a 6 part series of “Letters to the NL East” which I’m envisioning as a sort of rally cry/smack talk analysis of what I think of those teams.

the 6th team being the Yankees, as they are close enough to warrant a little attention.

Letters to the NL East: Yankees

Letters to the NL East: Nationals

Letters to the NL East: Marlins

Letters to the NL East: Braves

Letters to the NL East: Phllies

Letters to the NL East: Mets

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Betting on 2008

Pending wagers for the upcoming season.

I like to place a couple of simple wagers every year, and this year is no different.

My first one is the Mets to win the World Series. I made this wager pre-Santana so I have 15-1 odds.

Hanley Ramirez, Under 27.5 Home Runs. I don’t expect Hanley to have as good a year as he had last year, as pitchers will figure him out a bit.

Mariano Rivera, Under 36.5 Saves. 37 is a lot of saves, and I think the Rivera is in decline, plus the Yankees with a shoddy bullpen and inning-limited young pitching are unlikely to give him as many opportunities in years past. I made this bet last year and won.

Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, Over 75 wins. 76 is a lot of wins, would be a franchise record. I was hoping this number would be lower, but I still think they can do it. I think they’re a better team pitching-wise this year, and the division is worse, if only by a little.

New York Yankees, Under 93.5 wins. From the Yankees perspective I think the division is about the same as last year, Tampa improved, Orioles downgraded, Boston and Toronto remained about the same. I won this bet last year(I think the number was 96) and I would’ve won it with 93.5 last year too. The Yankees didn’t get better, in fact they got worse. (A-Rod and Posada won’t do better, and they didn’t acquire any new talent. Unless the young pitching blows everyone away, they’re in for a tough year)

Philadelphia Phillies, Under 87.5 wins. Did the Phillies get better? I’m not a big fan of Myers anyway, I think Lidge doesn’t give them much of an improvement. Just give the Mets two more wins against them and I’d win this. Philly will probably stick around though May and then fade. They just don’t have any pitching.

New York Mets, over 93.5 wins. Can the Mets fight off their stagger last year, and does Johan add what it takes? I actually think the Mets will annihilate this number, because I think Johan and Pedro will have years that make us drool. I lost this bet last year, when the number was 89.5, which I thought was practically a given.

So there are my bets for this year, I may add others if I see them, I’d love to bet on over strikeouts for Pedro, but I didn’t see one anywhere. Anyone else make any wagers, or think I’m crazy on any of these?

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Metamerica

Red Sox Nation, Yankee country? How about Metamerica? My Santana t-shirt provoked plenty of comments walking around downtown San Diego, on one March evening. I had a conversation about Santana, about Delgado, and about El Duque 3000 miles from Shea Stadium. I didn’t hear one peep from Padres fans, and I didn’t see one Yankees or Red Sox cap. This isn’t a very representative sample; it’s March and I was wearing a Mets shirt and hat. However, there were certainly Mets fan about, and people were excited enough to cheer “Let’s Go Mets!” at me as they walked by.

I’m not suggesting we have an election for “America’s team”, I’m just suggesting that maybe Hank shouldn’t count the Mets out so easily. There are plenty of relocated New Yorkers, and plenty of them are Mets fans. There are also plenty of people out there who will always remain National League fans, never jumping on an American League DH team’s bandwagon.

And remember, no one’s talking about how the Yankees kept the same roster they had last year, they’re talking about the biggest trade in baseball and New York; Johan Santana to the Mets.

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Watching the Game

I’m way more excited about grabbing a beer (homebrew), sitting on the couch in 30 minutes, and watching Johan Santana pitch for the Mets in Spring Training. But it’s a good way to warm up for the same event in a little over a month.

I’m also way too excited about hearing Keith, Ron, and Gary again. I don’t even know if they’re all doing this first game.

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Headliner Ryan Church

Now that the trade of Milledge for Church and Schneider has become a minor deal behind the acquisition of Johan Santana, I think we need to think back and remember how good the deal was for New York headline writers. Lastings Milledge has a unique name, but nothing can parallel the headlines the papers can write with Church.

If Church has a good day at the plate or a key hit, we could be ‘blessed’ with headlines like,

“Church is in session!”

“The Savior!”

“Hallelujah!”

“Church Crusading for All-Star Team”

If Church is quoted saying something notable, we could get something more like,

“Church Sermon”

“The Sermon on the Mound”

Or if Ryan makes a play at the wall on a fly ball,

“Thou Shall Not Homer”

Maybe whether the Yankees or Mets get more back cover stories is not dependent on the teams at all, but who can think up the most headlines.

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Good.

Beltran’s making statements now? Good. I love it. I’m glad he thinks the Mets are the team to beat. They are. They own this division. This was my favorite part.

“I don’t care,” Beltran said. “They boo me in Houston. One more city won’t make a difference.”

Good. Stop worrying about what fans think and just take what belongs to you. Maybe Willie’s right when he suggested you becoming a father gave you confidence.

It’s still February and I’m starting to feel some strong magic with this team..March 31st can’t come soon enough.

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How Many Strike-Outs for Mets Pitching This Year?

Tomorrow is the day. At noon tomorrow the moment we’ve all been waiting for since Glavine walked off the mound that Sunday afternoon. His upgrade, Johan Santana, will report to Port St. Lucie and officially start the 2008 baseball season. It’s not quite the regular season games we’re waiting for, but having daily news, even if it isn’t much, to look forward to everyday will be a much needed joy.

David Wright will be showing up this weekend, as ready to get started as we are for him to get started. Wright is the player I think we have the most confidence and faith in. He played his heart out last year, all year. He truly cares, truly wants to win, and plays the game the right way both on and off the field. I would rank the players I have the least questions about going into next year like this. David Wright, Johan Santana, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran. I also have few worried about John Maine, or even Pedro Martinez.

I know most people probably think I’m insane for not worrying about Pedro, but I’m not. As the time came for him to return last year, I thought he’d have a good couple of starts, and that he could really contribute in the playoffs. We never got there, but Pedro did pitch well. Now everyone is saying you can’t count on Pedro, but I don’t think that’s true. His pitching in September proves that the injury he recovered from isn’t going to inhibit him, and he’s only recovered more from it now. He’s still an ace pitcher, he still knows how to pitch, he still has that ability. And he’s healthy. Sure he’s brittle, but he’s always been brittle, whatever that means. It’s possible anyone can get hurt in 2008, but I don’t think Pedro Martinez is more likely, and certainly not a given, to get injured. Plus Pedro is a competitor. I think he’ll truly thrive on this come back of his, plus I think he’ll thrive on the friendly competition he’ll have with Santana. They are going to feed off each other all year. A thriving, strike-out thirsty 1-2 punch of Santana and Martinez is going to have opposing batters at Shea Stadium whiffing so much it’ll change the wind patterns.

However, this team did come off a horrible collapse, and we’re going to need to see something from them to really regain our confidence in them. One thing that comes to mind would be to see a combined 3-22 stat from Jimmy Rollins and Pat Burrell during the opening series. That would really make us feel good, although we can’t forget that Rollins and Burrell had a pathetic showing during the opening series at Shea in 2007 also.

A quick word on the former player Roger Clemens. I listened to some of the hearings today, and I was actually laughing at Clemens. He comes off so badly in my opinion, that I’m absolutely convinced he did steroids. It’s no longer a he said, she said situation, it’s a he said, THEY said situation. From the little I heard, McNamee, Pettite, Pettite’s wife, and Mike Stanton all have said Clemens has taken steroids. Clemens countered most of this with garbage like “I don’t remember that.”, or “Pettite must have misheard”. It doesn’t look good, and I’m done with all the attention this is getting, it’s time to talk about baseball now that spring is finally here.

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Fantasy Baseball

I know it’s early, but I’m impatient for the season to start. So I created a “Mets Bloggers” fantasy baseball league on Yahoo.

Unfortunately we can’t all take Johan.

League ID#: 17569
League Name: Mets Bloggers

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Opening Day, Closing Day, Subway Series lottery

I’m sure there will be emails going out and all that, but Registration for the Platinum Game lottery is underway through Feb 18th at http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/nym/ticketing/tixop_season08_form.jsp.

Good luck. The same 6 ticket allotment as last year.