Delgado's Opening Day at Shea

Lost amongst the Mets spending the winter and spring talking about putting the collapse behind them and then playing Tuesday’s home opener against the Phillies in a way that was somehow more collapse-ey than anything that they did in September ‘07, was the fact that Carlos Delgado had himself what I can only imagine is a fairly unusual game-- hitting a home run (2-4 overall), turning an unassisted double play, and committing a costly throwing error—which, perhaps more than any other non-Heilman/ Schoeneweis factor, lost them the game.

Jason Werth led off the Phillies’ second with a single. The next batter hit the ball hard up the first base line, as Werth started, but only just started, to head for second. The ball came exactly at Carlos Delgado, who was standing between Werth and the bag, and turned the double play by grabbing the ball, stepping on first base, and applying a tag to Werth—all the work of about half a second, since, at the time the ball came to Delgado’s glove, Werth, ball and bag, were all within two feet of each other. The highlight of the play was Werth, whose move was theoretically to run towards second and get caught in a run-down, but opted instead to stand frozen just off of first base, his head turned down, his body askance, and one arm dangled downwards at an angel to cover his crotch: the position was probably the result of him being frozen in the first motions of running to second, but looked very much like some primal expression of embarrassment.

Delgado led off the Mets half of that inning and hit a towering home run to center field, giving the Mets a 1-0 lead. Delgado had been having a seemingly good start to the year, hitting for some ridiculous, small sample-size average, but most of his hits have been singles, and pretty much attributable to a run of good luck on balls put in play. This was an old-school Carlos Delgado monster shot, and it was really great to see. At the same time, Jamie Moyer is no John Smoltz, and it is important to remember that almost all of what the Mets accomplished, and didn’t accomplish, came against the only active MLB player older than Shea Stadium.

In the next inning, Delgado was part of the sequence that scored the Mets second run. Beltran had drawn a one out walk, and moved to second on Delgado’s single. Pagan then got an infield hit on a questionable play by Utley, and Beltran scored on a Ryan Church groundout. Moyer then intentionally walked Brian Schneider to load the bases and struck out Oliver Perez. Perez’ at bat included the oddest attempt at bunting for a hit: as Moyer released the ball, Perez quickly swung the bat into the position used to bunt, and, as the ball reached the plate, dropped the bat and began to sprint towards first without awaiting the results of the ball/bat encounter—they missed each other completely and Ollie took a strike.

In the bottom of the seventh, Ryan Howard faced Scott Schoeneweis with the bases loaded and one out-- Chase Utley was the runner on first. Howard hit a ground ball that Delgado fielded, as the runners went in motion. Delgado threw the ball to Jose Reyes at second. Ideally, Reyes would have tagged second, getting out Utley, and then tossed the ball back to Delgado at first to get out the slow moving Howard and end the inning. Delgado’s throw, however, hit Utley square in the back and then bounced into the outfield, allowing both the runners ahead of Utley to score, and leaving runners at first and second with still only one out. Those two runs tied the game, and Utley scored latter in the inning, to give the Phillies the lead. Utley was running outside of the base path when he was hit by Delgado, and while the thing was obviously a rotten break, it was also the result of sub-optimal defense by Delgado and Reyes- the latter should not have positioned himself with Utley between him and Delgado. Oddly, Utley had reached base by being hit by a pitch: it was the third time he had been hit that day (although the first two had made more contact with his uniform than with actual Chase Utley), tying the major league record for HBP in a game.

So, when was the last time that a player turned an unassisted double play, hit a home run, and committed a run-scoring error in the same game? And what does it tell us about players who accomplish this feat? Probably not very much…although I’d be pretty impressed if anyone has done it twice.

Mets 2008 Preview: Starting Pitchers

Today I’ll be previewing starting pitchers because, after the infielders, I am most sure about the composition of the rotation.

Johan Santana
Chinese Zodiac: Sheep
Career ERA: 3.22
The arrival of the second best athlete traded from a Minnesota team in the last ten months catapulted the Mets from a shaky team with questions at several positions, into favorites to compete, not only in the NL East, but also for the world championship. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and decided that you probably are better off being a basketball team with Kevin Garnett than a baseball team with Santana. The logic being that in MLB there are perhaps two or three pitchers (Beckett, C.C. Sabathia) that give you more or less what you get from Santana, where as the NBA has one other player, Tim Duncan, who gives Garnett’s combination of lock-down interior defense and solid scoring near the basket; and Duncan has been proving for years that if you surround one of these guys with the right combination of jump shooters and flopping foreign role players, you can compete for the championship until you run out of fingers for rings. Still, in much the way that a KG or a Tim Duncan can improve their team on offense and defense by controlling the paint and taking pressure of their teammates, the presence of a true ace allows for a better rested bullpen, and takes pressure off both the back of the rotation and the lineup. Fortunately, aside from the loss of KG and Johan, everything else about living in Minnesota is completely awesome.

Pedro Martinez
Chinese Zodiac: Pig
Career ERA: 2.80
How will Pedro’s surgically repaired shoulder hold up? How will he adjust to being the number two pitcher on the team? How many jack-ass articles will be written in The Post about Pedro being too greedy and egotistical to come back to the Mets in ’09? Where will Pedro pitch in ’09? And how will he cope with the feelings of remorse brought on by PETA’s letter of protest? Honestly, the outlook on all of these things is good, and the reports from camp are that Pedro is almost enjoying his secondary status. And, in much the way that Santana’s dominance takes pressure of the rest of the Mets on the field, Pedro’s eccentricity and charisma should take pressure off of them in the media. PEDRO FACT: Pedro drives a black Austin-Martin with his number “45” engraved on the hubcaps.

Oliver Perez
Chinese Zodiac: Rooster
Career ERA: 4.43
Sam’s Mets Blog favorite Oliver Perez continues on his quest for some kind of consistency in ‘08. Why can’t he just be good all the time, dammit? The neat thing about Perez is that he still holds out the possibility of transforming into an ace, although the chances of this happening seem more remote every year. I suspect the same oscillation between brilliant starts and disasters. In other news, Ollie won his salary arbitration with the club, which got him a raise of something like $ 4 million. I would really like to know how he spent the night after the arbitration hearing; I hope it involved drinking tequila with Rick Peterson.

John Maine
Chinese Zodiac: Rooster
Career ERA: 4.19
At some point during spring training, one of the Mets Notes, on Mets.com, was a bunch of bullshit about John Maine going on line for the first time in his life. My assumption is that a reporter saw Maine on a computer and Maine claimed he had never used one before as a joke-- either that, or it was a joke on the part of the reporter. With other ballplayers I might be more inclined to believe this, but Maine is presented as almost an intellectual by baseball standards, doing crossword puzzles and Soduku and occasionally speaking in full sentences. Apparently Maine and Perez have been playing pranks on each other in spring training, and I wonder if this is just fun and games or the seeds of real animosity between the two pitchers vying for #3 status.

TBD
The Old Duque (Rooster, or possibly Snake) vs. Big Pelf (Pig)debate took a turn for the terrible as both of them got lit up by the Cardinals on Sunday. Omar Minaya has apparently mentioned Nelson Figueroa (Tiger)and John Niese (Tiger) as possible alternatives. Although, El Duque and Pelfery will split another start before the season begins, I would have to think that any alternative is looking very good. As Dorothy Parker said, “When given a choice of bottom of the rotation starters, I always take the one I haven’t tried before.” Personally, I’m pulling for N-Fig.

What the Hell is Wrong with People?

According to northjersey.com, John Maine and Oliver Perez attended the Knicks game on Monday, and were booed when they were shown on the Jumbo-tron. Seriously, what the hell?
I am not that happy with the Mets at this moment. On sober reflection, my initial optimism about the Milledge trade was unfounded/insane. They gave away a guy with some up-side, for two guys with zero-upside, who don’t seem to meet any immediate needs (ok, they needed a catcher. But they’re up to the eye-balls in outfielders. And Church is an unfortunate guy to replace Shawn Greene with.)

And the not-signing Santana or some other amazing pitcher thing is pissing me off. And I wish that Schoenwise had been busted for steroids and gotten the 50-game suspension just so we wouldn’t have to watch him for the first chunk of the season.

But, at a Knicks game, there are simply too many other things to boo; and in the context of Madison Square Garden, the Mets franchise is a paradigm of winning, responsibility and success.

The Mets were a huge disappointment and ought to have made the playoffs. I try not to be a mean-spirited fan, but I can understand the urge to hold that fiasco against all the players personally. However, the Knicks are so bad that I like the Met’s chances against them in a game of basketball.

Center: Mike Pelfry—dude is 6’7”
Power Forward: Moises Alou—played hoops in high-school.
Small Forward: Carlos Gomez-- 6’4”, athletic, fast as hell.
Shooting Guard: Jose Wright/David Reyes—young, in good shape, could probably make a lay-up.
Point Guard: El Duque—extremely competitive man; a state-mandated test once revealed that he had the highest basketball IQ in Cuba.

I would bet on that team to beat the Knicks. And if I saw Maine and Perez at Madison Square Garden, I would not boo them: I would try and see if there was an extra jersey lying around and if either of them could make a jump shot.

And of all of the Mets to boo, Maine and Perez are two of the worst. Both of them were pleasant surprises in 2007. Neither was anything like an ace, but neither of them was completely terrible. They both showed tons of upside. They are fun guys to have on a baseball team that you root for, because every game they start has the possibility of being either an amazing performance or minor disaster. The fact that they both over-performed in 2007 was the only reason that the Mets got to go through the worst collapse in sports, as opposed to just spending the season in second place. And, in the face of a non-Santana ’08, they are the closest thing that Mets fans have to a reason for not being completely depressed about the state of the pitching.

Basically, if you feel so strongly about the Mets that you are booing Ollie and Maine on the jumbo-tron, you better be at the Garden because you are waiting to go to Penn Station to catch an Amtrack to Atlanta, where you are going to burn down both Turner Field and Tom Glavine’s house.

John Maine and Oliver Perez: a long day’s journey into VORP

On Baseball Prospectus, if you go to the Team Audits, you can find hitters listed by VORP. VORP is a stat that is used to try and figure out how much a player contributed to in relation to a fictitious “replacement player,” and the stat tells you how many more runs the team scored because a particular player, and not a typical minor-league call up, was at that position. David Wright lead the Mets with 81.1 runs more than a hypothetical minor-league third baseman, followed by Carlos Beltran who was responsible for 51.1 more runs than a hypothetical center fielder; unfortunately for the Mets, the hypothetical minor-league center fielder was unavailable, and they had to call up Carlos Gomez, who was last on the team with a VORP of -4.4.

The stat can be calculated to figure out the effectiveness of pitchers as pitchers—which is useful. In the following discussion I am considering the offense of pitchers, and so my comments have to be taken less as referring to what the stat says about the players and more as what the players say about the stat. Of the Mets hitters John Maine ranked an even zero, which is to say that the average minor league pitcher should have provided exactly as much offense as John Maine: not a shock since it is widely acknowledged that John Maine is a bad hitter even as pitchers go. Tom Glavine (5.2), Jorge Sosa (2.5), El Duque (.8) and Brian Lawrence (.8) all provided slightly more offense than the potential minor-league replacement. Oliver Perez had the worst VORP as a hitter of any Mets pitcher with -1.4, which I found interesting, because, while Perez’ swing is ugly, he does occasionally get his hits and the announcers talk benignly about his efforts at the plate, even going so far as alluding to using him as a pinch-hitter in extreme situations. Perez, indeed, particularly seems like a good hitter compared to Maine, who is, as I mentioned, known as a particularly bad hitting pitcher.

The table on baseball prospectus also lists the player’s batting average, on base percentage, and slugging percentage (total bases over at bats, used to get an idea of a hitter’s power). For Perez, all of these numbers are .161, which means he did not hit a lot, never walked, and only hit singles. Maine’s numbers are .109/.194/.164, which means that while he hit less frequently than Perez, he walked occasionally, and hit for a little bit of power; specifically, he walked five times and hit one homer.

Maine had a total of 6 hits, to Perez’ 9, but broke exactly even with the hypothetical minor leaguer—compared to whom Perez cost the Mets 1.4 runs (a hypothetical minor league pitcher, of course, would have allowed way more runs, 24 to be exact, than Ollie did, so the 1.4 runs that he didn’t hit don’t really matter). In the end this is just another illustration of the general point that on-base and slugging are, according to the new metrics, the major ways in which hitters can help an offense, as opposed to hitting for average. It also, I guess, makes a point about the particular ways in which hitters get to be overvalued based on average. A casual fan would have had a 30 percent better chance of seeing Oliver Perez get a hit of any sort than John Maine; indeed, if they had seen Maine’s lone homer, they probably would have developed an even worse opinion of him, since the event was so wildly celebrated in a way that made a point about its extreme unusualness. Of course, the fans were right to celebrate it: it was good for the fifty-odd points of slugging percentage that propelled Maine’s VORP to zero.

Mets vs. Phillies

I had these thoughts the first time this happened, but then they swept Atlanta and things seemed to be looking up. Now however, that they have twice, twice goddammit, faced the Phillies, the team which, all year, they have had the most emotional incentive to beat, with a chance to pretty much eliminate them from post-season contention, and they haven’t even beaten them one time out of seven. It is things like this, that lead you to severely question weather or not the team has the ‘will to win,’ the ‘mental toughness,’ ‘bullpen,’ or whatever else it takes to make a serious post season run. Looking at Mets.com this morning and seeing Brian Lawrence listed as the starter, leads you to wonder if they’ll even make the playoffs.

I actually attended the fiasco that was the end of the season series with Philly. Looking over the box score, there is an impressive symmetry of numbers: for every strikeout that Perez got, he gave up a walk; for every run that the Mets scored, they committed an error. Their level of play was basically miserable, but they still had the game weirdly within reach, thanks to a three run Beltran homer, until the bullpen, specifically Guillermo Mota, imploded and eliminated any chances the Mets might have had of a comeback. The bullpen is the definite, glaring weakness of the team, and one questions Randolph’s sanity for returning to Mota miserable outing after miserable outing, but, really, who else has he got? Mota has been terrible, but its not like there is some really good reliever hanging out, forgotten, in the Mets pen, that Willie Randolph is refusing to go to out of stubbornness…well, there is Joe Smith…

The problem, though, is that the Mets are not quite this terrible against teams other than the Phillies, and one can’t help but think that this goes back to Jimmie Rollins’ much publicized statement that the Phillies, and not the reigning champion Mets, were the team to beat in the NL East. This afforded everyone on both teams a nice opportunity to talk tough in spring training, and gave the beat reporters a couple free inches of minor news; it also created an extra incentive for both teams to play well against each other. In these games, the games where there was something intangible at stake, in addition to the games in the standings, the Mets played pathetically. These games, against the upstart Phillies, seem to be the closest that the Mets have faced in the regular season to a playoff atmosphere, where they will be forced to come through with the season on the line.

The notion of the ‘clutch performers’ is not taken very seriously by Sabermatricians; apparently, if you do the math, it all boils down to chance. Indeed, if this were a different sort of blog, I would probably turn to the strange kabala of statistics and match-ups to try and account for the Phillies dominance of the Mets. As it is, I can only hope that the Sabermatricians are right, and that my feeling that this is an erratic, gutless, and nervous team, unable to perform under pressure, is grossly uninformed. The Mets have enough of a lead, and an easy enough schedule the rest of the way, that they will, almost certainly, end up in the playoffs; but in the NLDS, a short series played under pressure, I am not particularly fond of the Mets’ odds.

Of course, the Phillies still have a more than decent shot at the post-season, via the wild card, in which case I would have to revise my prediction of a first round exit for the Mets. If the Phillies do, in fact make the playoffs, I think that the only thing to expect would be the NL East teams contending for the NLCS. If this does come to pass, I actually like the Mets odds: the Mets are a historically unlucky team, but Philadelphia is one of the more cursed cities when it comes to professional sports, and the Phillies regular season dominance of the Mets seems like it could be only setting the Phillies up for an extra excruciating post-season defeat--in much the same way that Smarty Jones, the last championship caliber thing to come out of Philadelphia, won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, leading the citizenry of Philadelphia to wager on him heavily for the Belmont, in which he was fairly unimpressive.

Unreasonable Speculation:

So, if the Mets make the post-season, and if everyone is healthy, the Mets will face a minor dilemma: they will have five starting pitchers when they will only use a four man rotation. So, of the five, Martinez, Glavine, El Duque Maine and Perez, one of them needs to be moved to the bullpen—any Met-ologist will point out that this was done to Sid Fernandez on the 1986 Championship Team. It is unthinkable, for reasons of ego and star power, that Glavine or Martinez would pitch in relief. In the most recent Mets Mailbag, someone asks if El Duque’s nearly legendary relief outing for the White Sox in the 2005 ALDS would make him a leading candidate for the bullpen assignment; the mailbag’s emphatic answer was no, which was kind of too bad since the first draft of this post was mainly about how the Mets should not let the 2005 ALDS tempt them into using El Duque in relief.(the White Sox put him in the ‘pen because he had an awful end of the season and they thought they had better options for starters, which is not the case of 2007 Mets) This narrows the field down to Maine and Perez.

For a lay person the question of weather Maine or Perez should work in relief is fascinating, since there is no real information of any sort to go on. In terms of success rate, they are very evenly matched: Maine’s performances tend to stick closer to some sort of mean, whereas Perez’ vary more sharply and he is more prone to both excellence and miserable failure. They have similar, brief, histories in the post season: both were very adequate in the games that they pitched for the Mets last year.

Eeven less concrete than their numbers, is the fan’s perception of a difference between the two in temperament, particularly in what is perceived as their mental/emotional state when they end up in trouble. Maine, apparently, is prone to lapses of concentration; he occasionally misplaces his pitches and gets ‘hurt by the longball.’ Perez, on the other hand, is liable to ‘get rattled’ when things don’t go his way: when balls get misplayed in the outfield or when he disagrees with the umpire about balls and strikes. Once one of these minor setbacks occurs, Perez is prone to losing his composure, and his command, and issuing walks until his composure returns or he gets taken out of the game. The generalization is that Maine hurts himself by not reacting enough to the game, the opposite of Perez, who makes trouble for himself by being too emotionally involved.

Of course, the Mets Mailbag precedes its response with the customary hedge, saying that it is far too early too discuss these things and that no one knows who will be healthy and what the situation will be if and when the time comes to make these decisions, but then says this: “I wouldn't use Perez in relief. He's too erratic for the role,” and goes on to speculate that Maine might be a serviceable short reliever, based largely on his dominance early in games—this is in fact a very good point, and Maine’s first trips through the lineup have been extremely dominant all season, and there is some kind of logic to thinking that he could repeat this dominance in relief outings.

In my expert opinion, though, the South Paw from South of the Border might have a little bit of a better psychological make-up for a relief pitcher. It is frequently said of Perez that he “wants the ball” in big games, that he wants to be out on the mound when the season is on the line. He is an adrenaline pitcher, and a component of his wildness is a taste for danger; there is something about him that reminds one of Billy Wagner, who is capable of protecting a lead of exactly 1.5 runs. The theory about Perez, that his emotional involvement in the game leads him to fall apart, works both ways: it has been known to lead him to excellence as well. The Met’s best bet might very well be to run him out in relief and hope for the best.

UPDATE: Mets fans are dopes.

apology

This should probably be my lesson to get out of the crystal-ball racket, and I can’t really shake the feeling that by making announcements I managed to damage the karma of the team. But, while looking over the highlights once I got home, it occurred to me that there might have been a few things other than karma at work.
First off, I don’t think Shawn Greene has any damn business playing behind Oliver Perez. Not very long after Moises Alou got injured, Perez took a one-hit shut-out into the ninth inning. The out fielders behind him were Carlos Beltran, Endy Chavez and Carlos Gomez. All three are centerfielders by vocation, all three are defensively excellent, all have good speed. Watching that game I couldn’t shake the feeling that, had Alou and Greene been playing instead of Gomez and Chavez, Perez’ outing would have been far less impressive. Against Perez, hitters hit a lot of balls into the outfield, and how often they get caught and how long it takes them to make their way back into the infield, can easily be the difference between success and failure in an Oliver Perez outing. The first run against Perez was a walk that was driven in by a triple from a first baseman who had hit six previously in his career, and stolen all of three bases. I have this weird feeling that, had the ball been run down by someone who didn’t have a broken bone in their foot, the batter would not have reached third base and the runner might not have scored; if the ball had been fielded by someone with Gomez’ speed and Gomez’ arm (someone such as Carlos Gomez), they might have had a play at second.
So, yeah, "Nigel" it was actually all about Endy: they miss his defense as much as they miss Alou's bat.
In the end, though, it was the walks that did Perez in, so I guess there is also a lesson about the in-game web-surfing habits of my favorite south-paw from south of the border: Perez obviously does not keep up with this blog, if he did, he might have known to stop walking people.

The game in progress....

I don’t know if this is bad form, or bad luck, but I guess I’m doing it anyway. BEFORE the game, I assured Haxi, an Albanian co-worker of mine and extremely recent inductee into baseball fandom, that the Mets would win tonight. A friend told me that predictions I make here do pretty well; I’ve actually been reluctant to make any since he threatened to take them to a bookie.

Now, though, the game has started and I don’t think that the bookies are taking any more bets, so I’m calling a Metropolitan victory… partially because my gut tells me so, and partially because they are up 1-0 in the second.

Also, should Oliver Perez happen to stumble on Sam’s Mets Blog, while surfing the web in the wireless-enabled dugout: Hey Ollie, no more walks, okay?

Oliver Perez is why Baseball is Great

Pop Quiz: what do an incompetent Miami cab driver and an ex-stripper in a low-cut Santa dress have in common?

Answer: They are each responsible for getting the one of the two pitchers currently tied for the club lead in wins, onto the New York Mets. If Anna Benson hadn’t showed up for the Met’s Christmas Party in a skimpy Mrs. Claus outfit, the Mets would probably not have dealt her husband for Jorge Julio, in which deal the previously unknown and unimpressive John Maine was included as an after thought. And if Duaner Sanchez, the Met’s top set-up man, hadn’t injured his shoulder in a Miami taxi cab there would have been no reason to trade Xavier Nady for veteran reliever Roberto Hernandez and a once promising starter that the Pirates had given up on, named Oliver Perez.

In 2004, for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Perez had one of the most tantalizing seasons for any young pitcher, leading the Major Leagues with 10.97 strikeouts per nine innings and putting up 2.98 ERA that was good for a tie for fifth place (with the Rocket, whose recent minor league starts are NOT impressive to Pedro Martinez) in the NL. However, even prior to that season, Perez had had issues with his control and tendencies towards wildness—glaring weaknesses in his game that would never cease to haunt him. In 2005, after a loss to the Cardinals, he broke his big toe kicking a laundry cart in the dugout and spent two and a half months on the DL. He opened 2006 as the Pirates number one starter, but quickly moved from the rotation to the bullpen, to the minors. When the Mets traded Nady to the Pirates for Hernandez, Omar Minaya was probably the only person left in baseball who saw enough in Perez to demand that the Pirates throw him in.

At first for the Mets in 2006, Perez was much like he had been before, very closely resembling the little girl immortalized by the poem: ‘for when she was good/ she was very, very good/ and when she was bad, she was horrid.’ He would be lights out for innings at a stretch, only to develop un-conventional notions about the size and location of the strike zone, and walk and hit batters until the game was out of reach. When he started game 7 of the NLCS, he had compiled the worst statistics of any pitcher to pitch a game seven in the history of baseball.

But Perez was good in that game, only giving up one run in six innings, and since then he has basically been brilliant, with flashes of wildness, instead of the other way around. True, he has thrown some rotten games this year, but they have been the exception, rather than the rule. He has been evolving into something like a ‘big game pitcher,’ having his best games against ‘rivals’ like the Braves or the Yankees. Indeed, while Atlanta’s Chipper Jones has embraced the label of ‘Met Killer’ to the extent that he named his son ‘Shea’ after the stadium where he has had the most success, the Mets should start calling Ollie ‘Firewater’ (or maybe Smallpox), because he always messes up the Braves (knock on wood).

The part of the human brain that evolved from animals that would hide from their predators in trees feels deeply sorry for pitchers. They have nothing to protect them, no wall to put their backs against: man was not meant to be quite so out in the open. Few pitchers, however, manage to draw much attention to their humanity: good ones (Tom Glavine) make it seem as if they aren’t doing anything that impressive; great ones (Pedro Martinez) give the impression of having evolved into Supermen; truly bad ones (Jose Lima) can only be reviled; and we are never tempted to relate to true and deep mediocrity (Steve Trachsel), although maybe we should be.

Perez is none of that: he sits on the cusp between fantastic and abysmal. He has touched greatness, but been unable to grasp it. He is bound by superstition— when he skips over the baseline he sometimes seems delightfully exuberant and sometimes demented. The control that he lacks, that is his great weakness, is not a control over others or over outside forces; rather it is the control of his own product, his own process, and his own stuff.

Oh, Oliver! Oh, humanity!

Two People Who Really Piss Me Of Right Now

1) SI.com writer, John Donovan: The guy did a peace on how Oliver Perez might have been successfully reclaimed and was going to be a key to the Mets future, actually mirroring thoughts that I had had myself. It was about two pages of glowing reports on Perez’s potential. There is a weird, unnatural joy in reading about how your favorite athletes are really very good. Reading this one, I was torn between being extremely gratified, since I have always liked Perez, and the strong feeling that putting this thing on the web a matter of hours before Perez’s next start was just jinxing the hell out of him. Perhaps, I should be grateful, since Donovan’s piece allowed me to enjoy a last couple of Perez-positive hours, before Ollie lost all concept of a ‘strike-zone’ and walked in the decisive runs in last night’s loss. A baseball fan is offered myriad instances of just how little connection there is between what is written on the web, and how well anyone actually does (and, of course, one bad start does not qualify Perez for permanent bum status, and hopefully Donovan will be proved right yet) - but the temptation, at least when they write things that you want to hear, is to go along with it. Reading Donovan’s bit on Perez was like dating a pathological liar with amazing tits: the depth of the desire to believe outweighs all instincts towards rational thought. And when, as they generally are, the ridiculous expectations are cruelly dashed, it hurts.


2) Whoever re-designed Gameday: following the game on Gameday is a little bit like drinking your own urine to avoid dieing of thirst: it will work, at least in the short term, but it is a situation that you don’t ever want to be in in the first place. At least the old Gameday got you accurate information and updated itself in a more or less coherent fashion. The current version looks a lot better: instead of the primary colors and sharp lines of old Gameday, this one has lots of shading and bubbles that make it look like it might be how they catch games on the Starship Enterprise. However, all the different aspects are rarely in agreement with each other: the graphic of the diamond will show runners on first and second, and the list of the at-bats in the corner will tell you that only one man came to the plate so far that inning; comparing the list of at-bats, to the line-up, and then checking the person who they are showing as hitting at the time, will reveal a batter or two that simply cannot be accounted for, at least until they re-appear after an update, leaving you to wonder if you are losing your mind. The old Gameday wasn’t flashy- and it forced you to realize that there was far more to the game than just a vaguely animated box-score, and to desperately wish that you were hearing it on the radio, but it got the job done. The update has essentially sacrificed coherence and brevity for a visual style that people three years from now will find repulsive. The fact that, as a culture, we routinely make that same decision is the reason our grandchildren will probably grow up speaking Chinese.

Games 2-6

Since I last said anything about them, the Mets have been playing .500 ball, gaining dominant wins over St. Louis and then Atlanta, before losing to Atlanta twice. The two losses seemed mainly to do with breakdowns of their defense and bullpen, whereas the victories seemed defined by commanding offensive performance coupled with solid starting pitching. This is, more or less, what we are lead to expect from the team: we are told that their line-up is the most powerful in the National League, and team officials see this as mitigating any shortcomings from pitching and defense. When they all hit, the Mets are fairly close to unbeatable- but all offences are prone to periods of stagnation, and over the course of 162 games, the laws of probability indicate that there will be a bunch of them where they don’t hit, or don’t hit very much- and these are games that the Mets have a perfectly decent chance of losing, at least until Mota, Sanchez, and Pedro get back.

Looking back at yesterday’s game, it seemed obvious that Willie Randolph has been reading this blog, and took to heart my thoughts on the desirability of having David Wright hit in the two-hole. With Lo Duca taking the day off, Randolph had Jose Valentin (who did miserably) batting second, and Wright, same as ever, hitting fifth. Shawn Green had better be extremely careful.

Reflecting on today’s home opener, and the six games that preceded it, it seems that the thing that Mets fans should hope for most fervently is the emergence of either John Maine or Oliver Perez as the real ace on the rotation. This is in no way a criticism of Glavine or El Duque: both of them are, and have been, great pitchers and will be both useful and essential to the team this season. The best thing that can be said for either of the youngsters is that they have shown that they might, at some point, be capable of doing what El Duque and Glavine have already done: survive in the big leagues for many years as an unquestionably dominant pitcher. At least the potential to do this has been shown by both Maine and Perez, and the chance to see how they perform over a full season is one of the most exciting things about the 2007 Mets.

Predictions

The New York Post just published a supplement about the 2007 season which was filled with stuff like this: “The summer is spent with anticipation and setbacks mixing for Pedro Martinez… he is never close to himself and is never much of a factor,” and “Will have a bigger year than expected: Billy Wagner… look for Wagner’s second season in New York to be superior to his first.” Anyway, that inspired me to make some predictions of my own:

1) Pedro Martinez will come back and be FREAKING AWSOME
That thing that they say happens where you have surgery, do rehab, and the constant working out makes you a better pitcher, that’s going to happen with Pedro. He will make the opposing batters look like chumps. Also, Oliver Perez will flat out rock.

2) ALL the relievers will return from injury/suspension and kick ass
Mota, Sanchez, even that guy Padilla who I’m not really sure where he came from, are all going to come up big time when they rejoin the club. Joe Smith will emerge as being insanely dominant, and after a brief stint in the minors, Burgos will find some control and destroy opposing hitters, completely destroy them.

3) The Mets will suffer their biggest setback of the season when Jose Reyes misses ten games in mid-August after ascending in a ray of light to a UFO hovering over Shea during an inside-the-park home run. He will return ten days latter with a strange trophy made out of an element that is not on the periodic table. Close observers on the team will notice that after this his feet never really touch the ground; instead he always hovers a quarter of an inch above it.