Wagner: You can’t Pull Fat

They really didn’t waste any time. In two games they’ve managed to run the dizzying gamut of baseball emotions, from the giddy excitement of finally seeing Santana, to “oh fuck, fuck fuck, Pedro’s injured again, fuck.” The dominance and exuberance of youth, giving away to the frailty and uncertainty of age. The entire spectrum of baseball, covered in two games. Everything that happens from now on will seem redundant.

The commercials on am sports radio have to be considered as a candidate for the lowest form of expression ever produced.

Perhaps the best thing about Santana was the sense, not entirely logical, that we were finally done with relying on the murky depths of the rotation, who would now only appear in the number five spot. With Pedro injured, two out of five starts have to come from some mix of Pelfery, El Duque, Jorge Sosa, Nelson Figureoa, the last of whom, Willy Randolph apparently said would probably replace Pedro on the roster.

It was almost inevitable that Pedro would spend some time on the DL at some point, but the hope was that it would have come at some latter point in the season, after he had demonstrated an ability to stay with the team.

Indeed, in terms of actual baseball the injury to Pedro has the potential to be relatively minor. Pedro was probably expected to do fairly little, with the most serious expectations, after Santana, falling on Oliver Perez and John Maine. At the same time, the idea of the five Cy Youngs between Pedro and Santana, the new ace and the old ace at the top of the rotation counted for something, if only to the fans. In truth, Pedro has not had a very major effect on either of the last two seasons, and, while most of the anticipation was geared towards Santana, there was also a fair amount of excitement at the prospect of finally seeing what the Mets had in Martinez.

And perhaps the best thing about watching Santana was knowing that he would be followed by Pedro, and the expectation that the Mets dominance on the mound would continue into the next game.

…actually sports talk itself might be worse than the commercials. They just blamed Spike Lee for the state of the Knicks.