You can root for the Mets without being convinced of their doom
We’ve reached the theoretical halfway point of the season, and I’m sure we all hope for a better second half. I’m confident we’ll get there. For now, It’s All-Star time. I point you all to my TOTK article where I explain why I have a little excitement about watching the Derby and the Game.
BTW, nobody except a Mets player has driven in or scored a run in the All-Star game since 2005.
Good clean 8-1 win with Jorge Sosa pitching wonderfully nets the Mets the best record in the National League for the time being. The game started at roughly 10:10 and finished at just before 1am. Certainly sounds like a typical west coast start time for the Mets, but it was a home game delayed by rain instead.
Interleague play, Love it or hate it, seems like it’s here to stay. There is a lot of debate about it’s pluses and minuses, discussions about how unfair the scheduling is and about how it’s an abomination. Another draw back was made apparent in tonight’s Mets/Cubs game, one that actually affects the fans. With the extra 15-18 baseball games thrown in against the opposing league the Mets see teams like the Cubs and Cardinals who have long been rivals of the Mets, less. If the Cubs were returning to Shea, waiting out a 3-hour rain delay would’ve been less necessary and the game may have been canceled early and a make up scheduled. However that’s not the case; the Cubs play their last game at Shea for the year(although I did pick the Mets over the Cubs in the NLCS, so they could still come back, just not in the regular season) later today and then fly back to Chicago. So the fans sit through a rain delay, the players sit through a rain delay, and the game is played late. The Mets did award anyone with tickets to yesterdays game a free ticket to the Minnesota series, which is nice but besides the point.
While I both like the idea of seeing the different teams, especially in cities where there aren’t two teams like in New York, I personally think it might be a bit much. It ruins a certain flavor of the World Series match-ups too. The World Series is about the best team from each league, going head to head to see which is the best in the ‘World’.(If Bobby Valentine got his way, they’d then go on to play the best team from Japan) Four times in the 10 year history of interleague play has the World Series featured two teams who played each other in the regular season; 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2006. It wasn’t so much two teams pitted against each other as a rematch of a regular season series. The fans didn’t get to ooo and ahhh at the opposing teams stars, as they’d already seen them.
That being said, I’ll still enjoy this weekends games against the Yankees. I’ll be at all three games, screaming at the Yankees and their fans. I’ve even got 6 extra tickets that I need to get rid of at cost for Sunday night’s game. Hopefully I can find someone to take them and not be out that money. If you’re interested, let me know.
One final thought; A lot was made about the American League’s dominance over the National league in Interleague play and over Trevor Hoffman in the All-Star game. I would argue that the Cardinals came through when it mattered, and that’s how you truly determine who’s better. What else is the World Series for right? I think the Interleague games will be more split this year, and I predict the National League will finally win the All-Star game and home field, hopefully at Shea Stadium.
Apr 09, 2007 12:46 AM
David Wright’s power numbers were down the second half of last season and he’s off to a little bit of a rough start this year. However, one thing I’m tired of hearing about is the Home Run Derby and how it messed up his swing. This is not an exclusive argument to Wright and has been applied to many players. Obviously the biggest detractor from the argument is to look at how the Derby champion, Ryan Howard, did afterwards. His swing certainly didn’t look messed up.
I find it really hard to believe that a professional hitter, which is what all of the participants of the Derby are, can be messed up by a couple of hours of extracurricular fun. Why do those 50 or so swings have a bigger effect then the dozens more a player does between the derby and his next regular season game. At the very least he’s got the All-Star Game and any warm-up associated with that, plus batting practice of the next game after the break. Besides the hours of batting practice Wright and other such players had for the last 80 games or so, there is also a hitting coach and 24 other players (Okay, more like 12 other hitters) on the team that can help out if his swing looks a little off.
So does the Home Run Derby actually affect a player’s power numbers for the second half of the season or is it just another stat anomaly that people read too much into? My bet’s on the latter.