I know I saw a picture at one point, but I can’t find any on the internet at the moment.
Does anyone out there have a good picture of the field level rotated out to accommodate the Jets?
First Offseason Move
Well, Omar’s poised to make his first mistake of the off season. Hopefully it’s his only mistake. I have confidence he’ll do what’s needed to improve this team, without caving to what whiny fans think is the best course of action. However, keeping Manuel who failed as a bench coach, failed as an interim manager, and may have even failed as a leader in the clubhouse and managed a team that was succeeding and cruising, even without Billy Wagner, and managed to have them crash and burn again.
Luckily managers don’t have that big an impact, and if you give anybody the right players they can’t succeed. If the bullpen did, or will, pitch well enough that Manuel doesn’t have to constantly tamper with it, he won’t be able to screw it up. Maybe if he resides over a spring training for real, he won’t treat next September like one.
Omar’s decisions can only get better from here.
All or Nothing
Shea was great on Saturday. And hopefully it’ll be great on Sunday. Hopefully this isn’t actually the last game. Either way I’m going to take 6 zillion pictures. It’s going to be insane, and we won’t know the final of the Brewers game until the middle of the Shea Goodbye ceremony, which will make it all the more nerve wracking.
What Johan did was amazing. Oliver Perez never moved from his spot leaning on the railing in the front of the dug out, and was one of the first out to congratulate him. Here’s hoping he was taking notes.
All…or nothing.
This team is very all or nothing this year. It feels that way sometimes in games, and now the whole season is at that point. The whole relationship with the fans is at that point too. Win, and everythings golden. lose, and the floodgates will have opened.
This season has the potential to be great, to create two or three or more all-time Mets favorites, ones that might even surpass guys like Keith Hernandez and Doc Gooden and Darryl Strawberry.
It could also tumble down, and have fans calling for these guys heads. Even the ‘franchise’ ones. This weekend will start to tell the story, and hopefully it’s only the beginning of the story.
Smart At-Bats
I only want to talk about one specific at-bat here. It happened in the 9th inning, while Ryan Church was at bat. I was watching the defense and I saw before the final pitch that the second baseman and shortstop had moved in dramatically, to the front edge of the dirt. I was curious why, but then I realized. They were setting up Church for a ground ball with the bases load. Sure enough, ground ball, fielded, throw home for the force. Couldn’t someone in the dugout, or Church himself, seen this and adjusted accordingly? I’m not a baseball player but that made me see the Mets as overmatched.
Bad all Around
That game was miserable. Manuel’s managing of it no better than the situational hitting. The crowd felt alive, energetic, excited..it was almost a borderline playoff feel. Until Sanchez let up the tying hits.
How can Manuel be so inconsistent? How can he use reliever after reliever when someone is in trouble in earlier innings, but leaves Ayala in there for two? Shouldn’t he have gone somewhere else, or at least pulled him after the first hit, if not the second? Why did he pinch hit for Schneider, but leave Argenis in to bat when he already got his hit for the month? And then pull Argenis after the inning anyway!
Good Bye and Good Riddence
The Mets game was a disaster, all across the board. Managing, situational hitting, bullpen.. So while we still have a lead in the wild card and a more than adequate chance to make the division title ours, I’m going to talk about something else.
It’s hard to be a baseball fan without at least a little respect for Yankee Stadium (not necessarily the Yankees themselves). The Stadium has been around for roughly 86 years, and housed some of the earlier stages of baseballs history. If there is a baseball ‘god’, it’s Babe Ruth, who made the first marks at the Stadium. So my gut reaction is that they shouldn’t be demolishing something full of so much baseball lore.
The Mets fan and Yankees hater side of me enjoys that they’re knocking down something so historic. You could argue that the Curse of the Bambino that supposedly stopped the Red Sox from winning was actually reversed when the Yankees went through the process of starting to dismantle the Bambino’s house. The Red Sox won twice, and the Yankees have gradually gotten worse and worse, until this season when they will miss the playoffs entirely. Going into the final game ever at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees number for elimination is 1. This means that if they lose, not only will it be the final regular season game in the building, but also clinches that it will be the last game, period. They’re currently up 5-3 in the 5th, but we’ll see how it turns out.
Physically, Yankee stadium isn’t very nice. The concourses, specifically on the ground floor, are tight and feel cave like. The seats aren’t great, and the upper deck is tall and steep. The entire place feels old, because it _is_ old. Besides the ‘magic’ behind the historical place, I’m glad they’re knocking it down. As a baseball fan in
Babe Ruth may miss the place, but I won’t. May the Yankees live to regret this decision and be doomed to decades of failure.
Back to the Mets, I’m sick and tired of Mets fans acting like Luis Castillo is beating up babies and stabbing nuns in the clubhouse. To me it seems like he plays at least as hard as anyone, and he certainly gets on base more than Argenis Reyes, and more than Easley. I don’t think the 7th spot in the lineup is the best location for him, but that’s Manuel’s lineup, not Castillo’s. The guy might not have the range he used to, but he’s certainly not stationary. If the Mets were pounding in runs, specifically in clutch spots, then maybe you live with a defensive Argenis a little more often. Right now though, they need both Castillo’s OBP, and his average with runners in scoring position.
Division Title is Brewing
Regardless of the struggles for the division, the Brewers inability to win games has put up a safety net for the Mets. They own a substantial lead over the wild card challengers in
There are nine games left, which is also the magic number to clinch the division outright. Seven is the magic number to clinch the postseason altogether. Both are doable. This team looks good right now; finding ways to win, capitalizing on errors, and not letting their own errors hurt them.
86 wins in the book, with nine to play. Chances are they don’t win every one of them, but end up with a comfortable 90-92. Which is where they’d have been last year if their collapse had been mini instead of total. Time to finish it out, put the Phillies away, and win this division. Leave the final weekend at Shea for Shea, not trying to make the playoffs.
Argenis Reyes really should just told he can come back next year. His spot in the lineup should just read ‘out’. I know Castillo has been slow returning from the DL, but so has Church, and we’re not killing him. Castillo is better than Argenis, and a hurt Castillo is better than a hurt Easley, and I don’t think Castillo’s that hurt. Maybe he’s lost a step here and there, but he still can run the bases, still can draw the walk, still gets on base. If he can get on base, and Wright, Beltran and Delgado can hit, then everythings peachy. Argenis Reyes however, hasn’t had a hit in over a month spanning 12 games. He’s had one walk in that span. Castillo accomplished both last night.
Magic Number Mojo
Obviously baseball is a very superstitious sport. That doesn’t mean jinxes are real, or that some things don’t have to happen the way they do. There are some things you just can’t wait until the last minute to plan for. The playoffs are one of them. Many Mets fans out there don’t want anyone mentioning the magic number for instance, but if these fans got their way the Mets would wake up on October First having made the playoffs, but having even more issues.
A. They already sent the groundscrew home for the winter, so the field isn’t ready, the grass isn’t cut, the trap hasn’t protected the field, (They’re knocking it all down anyway right?), and the lines aren’t drawn.
b. No one’s showing up to see them play, since they never printed or sold the tickets.
c. The vendors and ushers aren’t there to escort anyone to their seats or sell them hot dogs. There aren’t any hot dogs anyway, since they didn’t reorder from Aramark past September 28th. (Would anyone be surprised if the concessions are out of virtually everything that day, clinched or not?)
d. In fact, the wrecking ball is already dismantling Shea, because everyone told them to assume the season was over October first until told otherwise. Can’t play at Yankee Stadium, since that’s meeting the same fate.
e. If they did manage to play, it wouldn’t be on the radio. Fox has the tv covered, but Howie Rose is already in Uniondale and Wayne Hagin went home.
f. Mr. Met is off doing weddings and other apperances, unable to man the Pepsi Party Patrol Cannon.
In all, the number (and not just on Metsblog) has been posted before. ’06 as well as ’07. Would Glavine and Mota have pitched better if the number wasn’t up there? no. Even without it on the main page, it’d be mentioned in every thread. Everytime you look at the standings and the Phillies score, you’re thinking “how many more Mets wins and Phillies loses before we’re in?”. So posting it is merely giving us the info we want, which is what the blog is for. I’m too lazy to come up with a proper auto-updating widget (and don’t know javascript well enough) to put up the Magic Number, but it stands at 13 with I believe 26 games left.
Can’t win them all
Wow. Bummer of a weekend. It turns out this team is roughly the same team as last year. I’d originally thought the bullpen was better, but without Wagner, it just isn’t. The bigger deal is that the Brewers seem to be freefalling again, like last year. It’s shocking that the Phillies beat them in 4 games, but the Mets at least still have a two game in the loss lead. One of those games is to night.
I’m still not worried, this has been the trend for most of the season. They’d get a little good run going, and the Phillies would struggle a bit. Then it’d reverse, and the Phillies would catch back up. But each cycle of this, the Mets seemed to gain a little bit of ground. In July and early August, the Mets would get to a game or two lead, and lose it again. Now they’re getting a three of four game lead, and letting it dwindle down to one or two. I still think it’s likely the Mets win by four, and I think it’s entirely probable that the Phillies lose 3 games this week. If the Mets can lose less than that, or go 5-2, next week they’ll be a solid three games up with a week to play.
The biggest problem is still that the bullpen is unsettled. Last year at this time, we didn’t know who to go with when. Maybe because they were all struggling or hurt. This year it appears to be the same story. For the most part guys like Ayala and Stokes have been solid since coming here, but is that something that’s going to be the norm? Or are they going to be tired out from being the go-to guys, and by the final weekend, we won’t know who to call on in a tight spot?
The Mets have had plenty of opportunity to put this division away. There have been a game here and there that they just let get away, gave up early, or couldn’t shut the door on. They could easily be in a position that the Phillies wouldn’t even be sending out ticketing emails about coming to see their playoff push.
However, it is what it is. Let’s see the Mets end this this week, play TWO games better than the Phillies, and enter the final week four games up. The Cubs have a magic number of seven, and likely will be using those four games against the Mets for rest and setting up for the playoffs. Just like it’s been each of the last three seasons, the division is there for the Mets taking.