You can root for the Mets without being convinced of their doom
Going to mix in some pictures from last night’s fireworks night win over Philly here with random stats and projections at the halfway point.
The Mets are on pace for 88 wins on the season. Last year the second wild card team would’ve been the Braves with 89. Close, and that’s right around the level the Mets, Dodgers, and Pirates are at right now.
One of the specialty slices at the new Two Boots location inside Citi Field is a “Meat the Mets” pie. I had this on Opening Day and I must say I found it delicious. It features Creole chicken, pepperoni, sweet Italian sausage, jalapeños, ricotta, and mozzarella. That’s a lot of meat!
Continue reading “Two Boots Citi Field: Meat The Mets Pizza”
David Wright was hitting for three and when he broke his finger it has devastating effects on the Mets lineup. That’s not to say they can’t win without him, but at the time of the injury he was practically carrying the team and no one else has managed to pick them back up yet.
Regardless of if Wright is back Friday, next Friday, or after a DL stint is irrelevant. The Mets need to make adjustments and this 50 hour window between games is the perfect opportunity to do it. Assess the best way to set up the lineup, have guys refocus on the game plan, do their infield drills, and put extra work in scouting the Phillies pitchers. Those two losses should keep the Mets from getting complacent under a “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. It’s broke, so fix it.
Obviously Ike Davis and Lucas Duda need to hit more. Jason Bay does too, as he represents basically all of the right-handed power in the lineup if Scott Hairston isn’t starting, but if Bay can simply manage to not double up on career-worst years I’ll be happy. I’ve never really been a big believer in the idea that lefties can’t hit lefties, attributing it more to a small sample size coupled with the inability for players to get enough reps against them. The Mets lineup is extremely left-handed, so they really need to start hitting to avoid being exploited by LOOGYs. Maybe the massive amount of lefties the Mets will see, both in Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels, and in the relievers teams bring in face the Mets lefty sluggers, will give Duda and Davis, as well as Daniel Murphy, Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Josh Thole, the reps against them that they need to get comfortable with release points and different breaks. Certainly if they could start demonstrating that they can hit lefties, it will keep Terry Collins from putting lesser players from the bench in key spots.
4-2 is still a good start. The Mets now need to do the work required to win on this road trip, and continue the good start. Cliff Lee will be tough, but the Mets can hit Vance Worley and they own Cole Hamels. Then they get three against the Braves again, who they already swept. David Wright back would have a huge impact on run-scoring, but they have to find ways to win these games with or without him.
Citi Field updated the scoreboard this season. It’s now a little more colorful, but more importantly it now contains a lot of new info.
You’ve got stats, including career stats, for the batter. These include more than the traditional HR and RBI that you used to see. You’ve got OBP, and SLG, and OPS, and even XBH.
You’ve got a spray chart for all the balls in play for the batter during the game, including a recap of each of his at-bats.
You’ve still got a little factoid, and most of them are still pretty silly, about the player.
There’s an in-inning summary of how each batter did and how they did or did not get on base.
The pitching summary includes a dynamic WHIP and ERA as well, while still maintaining the K count and giving you the pitch speed.
There’s a ton of info on there, and it’s great to see. Now we’ll have less reason to need to pull up baseball-reference on our phones mid-game to check on players. Speaking of which, they really need an Android app.
I’ll be at (or am at) Citi Field for Opening Day. Follow Ceetar on Twitter for interesting tidbits, Citi Field changes, Mets observations and thoughts from inside the stadium. ( Also like Optimistic Mets Fan on Facebook.)
There are some tasty new options at Citi Field this season. The winner to me was the Buffalo Dog available at Box Frites. It’s an all beef grilled hot dog topped with Buffalo blue cheese sauce, pickled carrot, and celery. The veggies provides some nice crunch and cooled down the spice in the buffalo sauce.
Another tasty treat was the 7-1-Ate Special that’s in the Promenade Club. Despite the lame name, it was pretty tasty. The only thing I’d say is there was just too many different things on it. It has hot or sweet Premio sausage, split and grilled, topped with a hash brown, fried egg, slaw and pepper hash on ciabatta.
For dessert I had a fried apple crumb with caramel sauce, also from Box Frites. This one is pretty self-explanatory: It takes like a delicious apple crumb pie with caramel sauce.
There were some other delicious things out there too, and I have no idea if anything will be removed from the menus, though I suspect there will be. Keith’s Mex burger will still be around, as will the Pastrami. Check out some of the other blogs (On the Black, Daily Stache, Tedquarters, Metspolice, Faith and Fear in Flush, Mets Today, Metsmerized Online..and probably a handful of others I’m forgetting that were there) for different writes up, or head to Citi Field and explore for yourself. My full gallery is here. Opening Day is only 9 days away!
Last night was a preview event for the new food options at Citi Field for the 2012. I’ll get to some of that in a different post, (Or you can check some of the other obvious places, such as the confluence of all Mets and Sandwich news, Tedquarters. Spoiler alert: We both agree on what was the best new food option.) First off, the beer changes!
The Citi Field Beer List lists Blue Point Lager and Blue Point Toasted. Those are actually the same beers as far as I know. It’s Blue Point Toasted Lager. One has a star and one does not, so I think this means it’ll be available at both the craft beer stands and at some normal places. (Catch of the Day is where it’s been) Another weird one is Goose Island Sum Blonde Ale. I don’t think Goose Island makes a blonde. They make Goose Island Summertime, which was occasionally available last year at Big Apple Brews due to it’s Anheuser-Busch/InBev distribution.
Yes, craft beer stands. Located near sections 105 (That’s by the World’s Fare Market), section 127 (Near the other foul pole) and in section 413 (That’s the Promenade food court area) of the Promenade Level meaning we don’t have to go downstairs from the cheap seats to get good beer.
Real craft beers that weren’t on the list last year, or were only available in the Delta Sky 360 Club (The Ommegang may still only be there) include Blue Point Summer, Blue Point White India Pale Ale (This one’s a new one, premiered March 29th, 2012), Ommegang Abbey Ale, Redhook Pilsner, Six Point Sweet Action, Sierra Nevada, Magic Hat #9, and Widmer Drifter Pale Ale. Also new is the expanded line of Shock Top ales, the Lemon Shandy, the Raspberry Wheat, and the Wheat India Pale Ale.
I’m still going to do a full analysis of Citi Field on Opening Day to take in the options and confirm this list. Having a craft beer stand is an excellent idea, and having three of them even better. I’m happy with this expansion, but I also hope this is a first step and not a final idea. The list has 12 stars on it representing the beers available at the craft beer stands in either cans or drafts. I imagine some of the more seasonal ones will rotate out, like Blue Point Summer, but the others include Shock Top, Leinenkugel Summer Shandy and Blue Moon, which are macro brews. Also included are Anheuser-Busch/InBev distributed Goose Island IPA, Kona Longboard Lager, and Widmer Drifter Pale Ale. The real expansion is the Blue Point brews, and that’s great. It’ll also be nice to be able to have Magic Hat #9, Sixpoint Sweet Action and Sierra Nevada outside the club areas. Sixpoint has a large line of cans available these days, so hopefully more of those start showing up.
This is an idea I’ve been bouncing around for a while, and then The Crazy Mets Fan made a comment on Twitter to Matt Cerrone that he should get a pub in Citi Field called Cerrone’s with some nice IPAs. I chimed in (and you can follow me on Twitter here) that they should do dueling brews.
This started as a thought about a variable beer menu at Citi Field. The best beer bars are not the ones with a good selection, but the ones with a rotating selection of seasonal and small release beers. The idea was solidified while following the Giants Super Bowl run this year. Brooklyn Brewery in New York and Anchor Steam in San Francisco made a wager on the NFC Championship game that the team’s brewery that lost would serve the beers of the other brewery. Brooklyn beers flowed in San Francisco, and it was wonderful.
So why not do the same thing at Citi Field? We know which teams are coming in for each homestand. Why not have two rotating taps, one serving beers local to New York (minus the Bronx) and one serving beers from the city of the away team. These two taps would ‘duel’ until one was empty, becoming the winner. I’m not quite sure what the beer would win besides an announcement that it’d won, but it’d be a fun way to introduce Mets fans to the brews of their enemy and provide the beer-loving masses, who’s size is underestimated, with some nice beer to drink while watching baseball.
The first homestand features the Braves and the Nationals. I don’t know what the availability and distribution rules are for acquiring beer from far away places, but Terrapin is an Atlanta brewery that you can find in New York, so it’d be a good choice. Washington DC is a little tougher, and perhaps the toughest baseball city. Baltimore has some options, but that’s a different team. Shenandoah Brewing bills itself as Washington DC’s only brewery, but as far as I know they don’t distribute to New York. Flying Dog is nearby, but it’s based in Maryland and equidistant to Baltimore. On the other hand, AL is junior league baseball and it doesn’t really count.
I think this would be a cool idea. Citi Field needs more distinctive beers outside of the Anheuser Busch distribution agreement and why not tie it to what’s going on on the field? That’s why we all go there after all.
This post is dedicated to the memory of Gary Carter, a true Mets All-Star.
Mets Police has been pondering why there has been no official announcement of where the 2013 MLB All-Star Game will be played. Unofficially it’s going to be at Citi Field, but that news is been pending for a long time now, and it’s past the time we usually have these things announced.
I had speculated that it was related to first Bud Selig’s pending renewal of his term as commissioner, and then not wanting to announce things during the Giants Super Bowl run. Now it’s almost Spring Training and we’ve heard nothing.
But something else is happening in 2013: interleague play and realignment. This will probably add more interleague games, and all year long. Perhaps Major League Baseball is considering changing the All-Star Game from an AL versus NL to something akin to the NHL with captains picking teams. Or perhaps they’ll go with something they did for the Home Run Derby a couple of years ago; teams based on country of origin. Coincidentally 2013 will also be the third edition of the World Baseball Classic, so the game will already be in an international mode.
I have no idea why something like that would need to delay the announcement though. Maybe they just want to have more details about it when they do eventually let us know.
