I told you yesterday I’d make sure they won..
More photos after the break. The game started an hour late but looked to almost finish at a normal time before Frankie got a hold of it.
Going to the Game to Make the Mets Win
Headed out to the game tonight alone. Which means I’ll be roaming around the park aimlessly watching the game from all over the place.
I’m thinking of hanging around the outfield tonight. Checking out the pitchers warming up, watching the game from the Shea Bridge, and maybe climb up to the Pepsi Porch for an inning or two.
The Mets really need to win tonight. They’ve had one bad week every month that keeps them from getting above .500. In May they got to .500 and then lost six of seven. They got back to .500 again last week in Atlanta, lost a crushing game and have now lost four of their last five. If they can minimize that damage and start the climb again now, they’ll hopefully be able to climb above .500 and keep going. Maybe Bay is going to start being Jason Bay again after a big game last night, and maybe Wright and Davis get good news this week and make their way back to the team. Otherwise this Mets season feels a lot like Sisyphus.
Move Along, Nothing to See Here
I was going to rant and rave and vent and fume, but it looks like Jason Fry basically covered all the angles over there at Faith and Fear in Flushing so I’ll just throw in a little pointer here to there.
Ugh. After which we never, ever spoke of it again.
So let’s remind these American League teams that are coming to Citi Field why National League baseball is the way to go. Let’s laugh at their pitchers trying to hit, and laugh at the managers that may botch a double-switch. Let’s read all the Moneyball references made while the A’s are in town and watch the Mets play, and win, some baseball games at home. It’s been a long road trip, and a successful one, so let’s go out to the park and watch Jose Reyes be Amazin’.
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.
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.
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.
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?)
Depressingly Early Football Season and Long Term Mets Plans
My posts have been lacking lately. Part of that is certainly that the Mets don’t produce much to be optimistic about right now, but I am also having a lot of computer issues involving memory and hard drives and multiple reformats of my laptop. I spend most of my time at the computer cursing at it and telling it get going; which is much like how I feel watching the Mets. I was holding out hope as things spiraled out of control with the Mets as is befitting the title of this blog, but my hope is dwindling as the math suggesting the Mets will make the playoffs, even if they were to morph into a powerhouse overnight, grows bleeker and bleeker.
They can still make the playoffs. They won’t, but the possibility does still exist. A strange confluence of events including David Wright not having another slump, Jason Bay coming back and accumulating all the stats that he would need to reach his career averages for the year in the final month, Carlos Beltran shaking off the rust/age/injury and playing well, Castillo putting up career norms for OBP and getting driven in regularly, would have to happen first. Some of these will happen, but it does not seem like it will be enough to matter.
My personal opinion is that the Mets have subtly given up on the season, but they do have a long term plan in place. Promoting the unready Tejada and the possibly unready Fernando Martinez suggests as much. I think the Mets should probably take the next step and start interviewing managers, if not GMs. Take the two weeks to figure out who should manage this team next year, and give them a month to get acclimated with Wright, Reyes, and the rest of the 2011 incumbants so they don’t have to do so in Spring Training. I think it would help the long term goals. One reason not to do this immediately is if the Mets plan on dumping Omar Minaya, in which case you’d want to take care of that before the manager situation, and you may just run out of time to do this all sequentially. Tonight is the night the draft picks have to sign by, so it’d be a perfectly opportunity to make a move forward after that. Give a new GM time to analayze the team and it’s holes and create a offseason strategy. Start the ball rolling, hint at the long term plan, and bring some more of the kids of up in September and I bet Citi Field won’t be quite as empty as some are predicting.
It’s sad that I’m aware that the Giants are playing a preseason game tonight. (Against the Jets too) I prefer years where I don’t even know the Giants record until late October. Or at least late September. I prefer football games as an appetizer to a big Sunday Night Baseball game featuring the Mets and a pressure filled push towards a playoff berth. (results aside)