{"id":54,"date":"2007-07-28T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2007-07-28T18:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/?p=54"},"modified":"2007-07-28T13:07:00","modified_gmt":"2007-07-28T18:07:00","slug":"smith-delgado-pelfrey-and-the-trading-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2007\/07\/28\/smith-delgado-pelfrey-and-the-trading-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"Smith, Delgado, Pelfrey and the trading deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At first I was a little upset that Joe Smith got sent down.  I know he&#8217;s been struggling as of late, but I still think he&#8217;s a good pitcher.  I&#8217;ve gotten over it though, and I hope he can work on some adjustments down in AAA that will aid the Mets down the stretch.   I feel the Mets need a reliever and contract situations make that tough, so if Joe Smith could be a solid playoff contributor, it would go a long way. <\/p>\n<p>The trading deadline is approaching, and while I feel like we need a move, I&#8217;m not quite sure exactly what it should be.  There are a lot of underachieving parts on this team, and it&#8217;s a tough spot to figure out which parts are going to come around, and which could use a backup or replacement.  Should we get a decent reserve infielder that can spot Delgado at times? Do we need another decent outfield bat?  Another reliever?  I don&#8217;t relish Omar Minaya&#8217;s job this year, he&#8217;s got a lot of tough choices.  I have faith in him though, based on what he&#8217;s done so far. <\/p>\n<p>Mike Pelfrey is getting the start tonight, a game in which I&#8217;ll be in attendance.  I have a strange feeling he&#8217;ll be good.  He managed to pitch himself onto this team in the spring against expectation, and he is in that situation again tonight.  With Sosa no longer exceeding expectation, I feel like Pelfrey could steal his spot with a gem tonight.  Hopefully he&#8217;ll only be keeping it warm for Pedro, but until Pedro&#8217;s throw a game or two, It&#8217;s hard to talk about him.<\/p>\n<p>Carlos Delgado is hitting .333 this July.  He&#8217;s got a .394 OBP this month.  Hopefully this is a turning point for him.  Whatever the struggles were early, he&#8217;s looking like he might start turning it around for real.  If he plays well the rest of the way, I don&#8217;t care what happened early this year.  Maybe he just struggled to get into his groove, but we&#8217;re in first place, and if he keeps playing well, it&#8217;ll stay that way. <\/p>\n<p>This team isn&#8217;t playing great, but that doesn&#8217;t mean they can&#8217;t.  Almost everybody is having a poor season, and that just means that they all are capable of playing better.  Better than four games up in the division is a good thing, and I expect that at least some of the underachievers will step it up down the stretch and in the playoffs.  It&#8217;s going to be a successful year, I can feel it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At first I was a little upset that Joe Smith got sent down. I know he&#8217;s been struggling as of late, but I still think he&#8217;s a good pitcher. I&#8217;ve gotten over it though, and I hope he can work on some adjustments down in AAA that will aid the Mets down the stretch. I &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/2007\/07\/28\/smith-delgado-pelfrey-and-the-trading-deadline\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Smith, Delgado, Pelfrey and the trading deadline&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[7,38,2964,45,32,215,177,27,216],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ceetar.com\/optimisticmetsfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}