Baseball statistics have come a long way. We have a ton of information at our fingertips and are able to perform some pretty awesome analysis of baseball players. This includes things like projections, trying to figure out which pitchers were victims of bad luck and fielding, and which hitters are having some unsustainable success. However, baseball is an elaborate game. You can do all this work, analyze all these players, and have a pretty good idea of what should happen over a large sample of data and still have completely no idea what’s going to happen in any given moment. The cliche is that baseball is a marathon and not a sprint, but truthfully it’s probably like a whole bunch of sprints crammed together. You can make some pretty good educated guesses about who’s going to win the marathon, but each individual sprint is pretty much a crap shoot.
Ultimately everyone wants to see their team win the marathon, but most of the enjoyment comes from watching them win some of those individual sprints. A thrilling pitching matchup or a walk-off home run can be as exciting in 2012 as it was in 2006, or 1986. This is sort of the baseball opposite of missing the forest for the trees. We can get so focused on which teams are the best in a division or which individual players are the best that we miss that sometimes things happen in the individual games and matchups that are awesome and fun to watch. It doesn’t matter that Andres Torres may not be a very good major leaguer; he can still go 3-4 in one game with two home runs. Mike Pelfrey’s barely an above average pitcher, but he’s capable of pitching a complete game with 3 hits. This is especially true in April and May when you’ve just gotten into the forest and trying to figure out what the whole place looks like is just silly; relax and look at the trees!
Even the 1962 Mets played some thrilling games. That’s the beauty of baseball. Maybe Santana comes back rejuvenated and strikes out every batter he faces on the way to a Mets playoff berth. Maybe adjusting the walls make no difference and the Mets struggle to hit for power. Either way I promise you there will be fun Mets baseball this summer. At least 162 magical opportunities to see something you haven’t seen before. Who knows, maybe this is the year the Mets finally pitch that illusive no-hitter. Would you want to miss it because you have the Mets penciled in for last place and decided to spend your Saturday afternoon in June at the zoo?