Healing and Growing

Where Do We Go From Here?

We were 4.5 games in front when May ended. Now we are 1.5 games in front. We’ve won three games in that stretch. It’s depressing, and hard to be optimistic lately, but if there was ever a reason, that’s it. We went a stretch where we won three of 15 games. Not even the 1964 Mets played that badly over the season, so when we only lose three games in the standings it gives me faith that even if we continued to play like the 1964 Mets, we’d probably maintain the lead.

Now before all you worry warts use that as ammunition, we’re not going to play like that team for long. It’s just not going to happen, we’re not going to continually leave dozens of runners on base. If A-Rod could get over that adversity, surely the Mets and Carlos Beltran can too. Our pitching isn’t going to be this bad forever. El Duque probably was due for a bad start or two, and Glavine is a veteran, he’ll figure this out and bounce back. Meanwhile, Oliver Perez is making a case to start as many possible big games as humanly possible. John Maine hasn’t been excellent like he was in April, but he hasn’t been horrible either. He’s learning to minimize the damage when he doesn’t have it, and maximize the innings when he does. Jorge Sosa has had two bad starts, and even if we never got another one from him, he’s been a big contributor.

The Mets have growing, and healing to do. Pedro’s well on his way to returning. Delgado, whether from some sort of residual pain or weakness from his surgery, or whatever it is, isn’t this bad. He’ll be good again, even if it’s only for September and October. Beltran will heal his left quadricep back to 90% and be good again. Gomez looks like he’ll only grow and get better. I think having him up here with Veteran hitters and runners is going to help loads more then playing consistantly in New Orleans. Valentin still is probably aching a bit. Alou will eventually heal, as will Lastings Milledge, for whatever he’s worth. Scott Schoeneweis will either learn how to pitch effectively with his injury, Willie will learn how and when he can use him to maximize effectiveness, or hopefully he’ll be forced to get surgery and heal. Mota hasn’t looked good, and he’s one of the more legitimate concerns in my eyes. I’m in favor of some auditions of our minor league relievers, and I imagine Minaya has been on the phone constantly trying to plug some gaps and fine tune this team.

I see the signs of the offense breaking out of this slump, the problem is that the pitching has fallen apart recently. When Glavine and Hernandez pitch them out of games early, it must be hard mentally to overcome a slump and get some hits. I don’t expect it to be much longer.

Earlier in the season we had our share of problems too. Orlando Hernandez went on the DL, Valentin wasn’t hitting that well, then went on the DL. Delgado and Wright went through some slumps, Pelfrey wasn’t able to ever pitch well enough to win. Heilman hasn’t pitched very well at all. With all this, the Mets still came out and won. Injuries happen, slumps happen, and the Mets will overcome that. They’ll have a stretch where they’ll be better than we’ve seen all year, and while many of you will still be waiting by the ledge for the right time to jump, others of us will enjoy it.

And please, do not boo Carlos Beltran tonight. He’s slumping, but so is the whole team. It’s not his fault solely, and rather then getting on him, which we know gets to him, how about we give him the benefit of the doubt. The Mets need some confidence right now, and booing him is only going to hurt that.

The Three Cs

Surely if you’re reading this you’re only doing so to see how I’m possibly going to be optimistic at a time like this. There is a lot to be down on lately with the Mets and I am, and surely you are too, sick of hearing about it.

No baseball today, unless you count finding out if the Yankees are going to welcome in the Mets at .500, or on a nine game winning streak. Either way, I’m predicting they are going to be no better than .500 on Monday.

The Mets are obviously not as bad as they’ve been playing. You can complain about individual pieces and problems, but every team always has something that’s not going right. The problem is that they all were happening at once. It doesn’t matter where Lo Duca hits in the lineup, as no one’s driving in runs from anywhere.

Obviously the Mets aren’t going to lose nine of ten for the rest of the season. The important thing is that they’re still in first place. They’ve lost maybe two games in the standings during this streak. Atlanta has struggled too, they couldn’t even catch a cold. Obviously Philadelphia wasn’t going to be eliminated after a bad first two weeks, but they haven’t caught us either, despite the sweep. I don’t think they’re anything to be worried about either. The Mets will visit them at the end of the month, playing better baseball and thirsty for revenge after last week.

There is no reason to panic, or declare the season over. Although declaring the season over right now would put us in the playoffs. The Mets are going to play good baseball again. If they started doing that on Friday, they’d again be padding the lead, not trying to play catch up.

The Mets didn’t have a streak like this last year, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for these guys. Last year they cruised, and they lost in the playoffs. The Mets are now feeling the pains of losing, they’re learning that despite being the team to beat in the NL East, they can’t take it for granted. They need to take that message to heart, and go out there with fire and passion to win in each game. They don’t look happy right now, and that’s good. They’re not enjoying the losing streak, and they know the media frenzy that’s going to take place this weekend. Maybe being back to being treated as second-class citizens, and the second best team will spark the fire that they need.

Sometimes losing can teach a team a lot, and when they learn their lesson, they will be able to win that much more effectively. I see good things for this weekend, remember the three Cs. Clobber Clemens and Clippard.

Subway Series to Atlanta

There isn’t that much of importance to say in regards to this weekend. The Mets missed out on the sweep, but they secured another series win. The Yankees look disastrous, although Tyler Clippard grabbed one of the shovels the Mets were using to bury them to excavate his team a bit. Not bad for a MLB debut. The Empire State Building will still be orange and blue tonight to display the Mets victory, and the Mets go to Atlanta 2.5 up, while the Yankees welcome in the Red Sox 10.5 back.

The overall series was pretty tame in terms of fan craziness in the stands. Sunday night picked up a bit with the Yankees in the lead and some actual fighting in the stands. I’m not sure what it is about Sunday nights, but it seems to bring out the drunken rowdy fan. I know the two or three guys sitting behind me were horrible. They didn’t shut up the entire game, chanting and yelling at the Yankees. I’m sure I would’ve despised them even more had they not been Met fans, but they were ignorant stupid Met fans, which are the worst kind. The kind I suppose I should get used to as the ignorant stupid band-wagon Yankee fans come over to Shea.

Even though some Mets struggled, John Maine, Carlos Beltran, Delgado, Green, and Scott Schoeneweis among them, it didn’t really affect them. One player who I still don’t like, despite some big home runs, is Damion Easley. Something just bothers me about the guy, particularly his defense. He seems to get to a lot of balls, but struggles to get it where it needs to go, and struggles with double plays.

A lot of talk has started to pop up about the possibility of Carlos Delgado being injured, or not fully recovered anyway. If this is the case, it’s becoming too much of a problem and he needs to do something about it. If he needs some days off, just needs to take it easy, or maybe some physical therapy he needs to get it. Of course, I don’t necessarily want to see Julio Franco there. I don’t imagine this will happen, but seeing Shawn Green there and Gomez in right fight wouldn’t be a bad thing.

I turned down the opportunity to go down to Atlanta for this series. The prospect of a 13 hour car trip was a little too much for me to handle, so I decided to just sit it out and root for them on tv. I get to enough games at Shea, and I fully intend on making to it Washington and Philadelphia to see them this year.

I still feel like the Mets have a power streak in them. They’ve had a good 7-3 homestand, but that wasn’t quite as strong as it could’ve been. Atlanta’s already 2.5 back, and with a nice push this week they’ll be 3.5 back and the Mets can hopefully put one of these streaks together in the summer to lengthen the distance.