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Back In First

Apr 14, 2007 12:19 AM

Sure they’re technically tied for first, but it’s first nonetheless. I have a feeling this might be the closest any team gets for the rest of the season. The Mets are playing all division games for the next week, and I expect them to heat up with the weather. Expect to see some home runs when the Mets visit Philadelphia on Monday. I would not be surprised if the Mets hit seven in the two days, including two by David Wright.

Enough predictions, I’ll be out at Shea for my third game tomorrow, seeing John Maine pitch again. He had a little bit of control problems on Monday, and with the slightly warmer weather tomorrow, 51degrees, I expect him to have a little better grip. I’m thinking 7-2 Mets. Oops, i thought I was done with predictions.

David Wright swiped his third base of the season last night. He stole 20 last year, and right now is on pace for 48. I doubt he’ll reach that, but with Beltran looking to steal more this year too, you’ve got spots one, three and five in the batting order that look to be pesky and distract the pitchers. I’m sure this was one of the considerations Willie was thinking of when he thought about batting Wright second.

I’d love to see both Reyes and Wright one day be 30-30 players. How awesome would that be?

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That Home Run Swing

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.

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Excited

Feb 15, 2007 11:47 AM

Maybe it’s because it’s the first year the Mets have made the playoffs in a while, or maybe it’s because of how devastating it was leaving Shea after game 7, but i’m very impatient about the start of the 2007 season.

Even though the roster is still unknown, there are a lot of young pitchers out there ready to make the team and shine. And a lot of them will get the chance to. Orlando Hernandez will probably miss a couple of starts here and there, and there are always injuries and switches during the season. On top of this, Pedro rarely pitches a whole season, but this year it will be the first part of the season he misses, so that when the time comes to pitch in the playoffs, not only will he hopefully be energized from missing it last year, it’ll feel like July for him as he’ll only have been pitching a couple of months.

We’ve got enough relievers out there to find something that works and Wagner…well, he’s not Rivera, but what else is there?

Delgado is a very smart player, and after his struggles last year, I think he’ll be having a monstrous year, Reyes is only going to get better, i’m predicting 70+ steals this year. David Wright is only improving too, and as of yet he’s the only position player in Port St. Lucie right now. He’s going to hit 30 home runs and 130 rbi’s this year. I’ve been saying this all off-season, and he’s been doing great in the games he’s been playing, I think Anderson Hernandez is going to be a starter on this team.

I miss Cliff Floyd, and I think he’s going to have a huge year this year, but I think are outfield can get it done. I’m interested to see what happens with Milledge.

I’m strongly considering trying to goto Spring Training this year, but if not, I have every intention of winning the lottery and scoring tickets for opening day.