At Least I'll Get to See Playoff Baseball
That's what I'm telling people now about my impending move to Philadelphia. I have conceded the fact that my Mets have dropped out of contention in the National League East, and will not get back into the race anytime soon. We are 6 games under .500, 10 games out, and on our way to a 4th-place finish. This will not change. I am hoping that showing some amount of humility will spare me a massive beat-down by gleeful Phillies fans upon my arrival in the City of Brotherly Love and the Worst Sports Fans in the Nation (when you don't count Syracuse fans).
The Phillies have things wrapped up. They are well on their way to a typical Phillies 2nd half, with their recent 10-game winning streak they have opened up a 6 game lead over 2nd-place Atlanta. I would peg their finish at roughly 94 wins and breezing to the division title by at least 10 games. And now they have Pedro.
That's kinda rough, not to mention very weird. Watching Pedro on "SportsCenter" pitching a simulated game in the blue and red warmups of the Phightin' Phils makes a Mets fan's stomach do a nice dip and roll to the right. We brought him into the fold in 2005, fresh off winning a ring with the Red Sox, with the hopes that he would win us a ring too. Now the cruel irony is that he did not win us a ring, sat on the DL in 2006 while we blew our sure chance at a ring thanks to Aaron Heilman, Cliff Floyd, and Carlos Beltran, and now is going to win a ring with our chief rivals.
But the real killer will come less than a week from now, when the Phillies get Roy Halladay from Toronto. Most experts say it's inevitable; the Phillies have the best deal to offer and are more than motivated to get another ace to complement Cole Hamels and provide the last piece to a repeat championship puzzle. SNY reported earlier this week that Mets GM Omar Minaya was offered Halladay by the Blue Jays... and TURNED THEM DOWN. It's that kind of forward-thinking that will propel the blue and orange... to 4th place.
The irony of all this is that the baseball talking heads quickly ruled the Mets out of the Halladay sweepstakes because they all said we have no prospects to offer. Apparently, we did, but Omar said no to trading them. Then, Omar went on the SNY Mets broadcast the other night, and said that all the remarks about the farm system were ill-founded. So, we have prospects but we won't trade them. That puts Omar in a no-win situation because the New York media and Joe from Long Island calling in to the Fan want Omar to make a deal. Having not made a deal, that intensifies the calls for Omar to get whacked for what he has done to this team that was supposed to be a championship contender this year.
Luckily for Omar, a perfect fall guy presented himself yesterday, when the news broke that Assistant GM Tony "Berserker" Bernazard went apeshit on a clubhouse full of stunned minor-leaguers in Binghamton. He apparently ripped his shirt off and challenged the B-Mets to a rumble. He's had other confrontations in the past, most notably with closer Frankie Rodriguez, and also had a big hand in the debacle that was the firing of Willie Randolph as manager last season. I think it's clear that Bernazard needs to be fired immediately. As for limiting the ultimate fallout over the Mets' underachieving, that's unlikely. Heads will roll once the season ends.
The most likely head to roll will be manager Jerry Manuel. After all, despite the fact that the team picture this season should be an X-ray (ba dum bum) with all the regulars on the DL, you still have to push the right buttons with the players you have. Manuel has not. He caused a lot of the team's problems in spring training when he came up with the brilliant idea of changing the approach of our best hitters. We're moving into a bigger ballpark, he figured, so we should turn our power hitters into opposite-field hitting singles hitters. The end result: the Mets have the 2nd-best batting average in the National League... but WE DON'T SCORE ANY RUNS! We're great at getting guys on base and into scoring position, but then we can't knock them in. When it requires three singles instead of a bloop and a blast to score, you're not as likely to pull it off. David Wright, once a dependable 30-homer, 100 RBI guy, has FIVE home runs this season. The excuse of the ballpark not being conducive to homers went out the window when the Phillies and Yankees knocked the ball out of Citi Field with regularity, to the point where people now derisively call the right field corner "Utley's Corner" because the Phillies star has hit more homers at Citi as a VISITING PLAYER than just about any Met has this year.
And then there's the bullpen. Yeah, a lot of our bullpen woes in '07 and '08 came from the fact that we had awful relievers, but part of it was also Willie (and now Jerry's) custom of overusing the good relievers we have. Now, it's gone completely overboard. Sean Green, Pedro Feliciano, and Bobby Parnell seem to pitch EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. How effective can you expect them to be when you're going to send them into a game over 100 times before the season is through?
Omar and Jerry recently got the dreaded "vote of confidence" from Mets management, and anyone who follows these things knows what that means... one or both of them is (in the words of Gary Cohen) "outta here" when the season ends. While all the finger-pointing continues, I think I'll start picking out my spot on Broad Street for the championship parade that will end October in Philadelphia. Not that I'm bailing on my beloved Amazins, mind you, but I've never been to a championship celebration before, and I don't see one happening down Manhattan's famed "canyon of heroes" anytime soon...
Blogger's note: The website that holds my original blog's entries from 2000-2002 is about to follow GeoCities into the dustbin of online history. So I will soon be transferring all those old entries to this site. This will make it much easier for you to look them up anyway. See how helpful I am?
The Phillies have things wrapped up. They are well on their way to a typical Phillies 2nd half, with their recent 10-game winning streak they have opened up a 6 game lead over 2nd-place Atlanta. I would peg their finish at roughly 94 wins and breezing to the division title by at least 10 games. And now they have Pedro.
That's kinda rough, not to mention very weird. Watching Pedro on "SportsCenter" pitching a simulated game in the blue and red warmups of the Phightin' Phils makes a Mets fan's stomach do a nice dip and roll to the right. We brought him into the fold in 2005, fresh off winning a ring with the Red Sox, with the hopes that he would win us a ring too. Now the cruel irony is that he did not win us a ring, sat on the DL in 2006 while we blew our sure chance at a ring thanks to Aaron Heilman, Cliff Floyd, and Carlos Beltran, and now is going to win a ring with our chief rivals.
But the real killer will come less than a week from now, when the Phillies get Roy Halladay from Toronto. Most experts say it's inevitable; the Phillies have the best deal to offer and are more than motivated to get another ace to complement Cole Hamels and provide the last piece to a repeat championship puzzle. SNY reported earlier this week that Mets GM Omar Minaya was offered Halladay by the Blue Jays... and TURNED THEM DOWN. It's that kind of forward-thinking that will propel the blue and orange... to 4th place.
The irony of all this is that the baseball talking heads quickly ruled the Mets out of the Halladay sweepstakes because they all said we have no prospects to offer. Apparently, we did, but Omar said no to trading them. Then, Omar went on the SNY Mets broadcast the other night, and said that all the remarks about the farm system were ill-founded. So, we have prospects but we won't trade them. That puts Omar in a no-win situation because the New York media and Joe from Long Island calling in to the Fan want Omar to make a deal. Having not made a deal, that intensifies the calls for Omar to get whacked for what he has done to this team that was supposed to be a championship contender this year.
Luckily for Omar, a perfect fall guy presented himself yesterday, when the news broke that Assistant GM Tony "Berserker" Bernazard went apeshit on a clubhouse full of stunned minor-leaguers in Binghamton. He apparently ripped his shirt off and challenged the B-Mets to a rumble. He's had other confrontations in the past, most notably with closer Frankie Rodriguez, and also had a big hand in the debacle that was the firing of Willie Randolph as manager last season. I think it's clear that Bernazard needs to be fired immediately. As for limiting the ultimate fallout over the Mets' underachieving, that's unlikely. Heads will roll once the season ends.
The most likely head to roll will be manager Jerry Manuel. After all, despite the fact that the team picture this season should be an X-ray (ba dum bum) with all the regulars on the DL, you still have to push the right buttons with the players you have. Manuel has not. He caused a lot of the team's problems in spring training when he came up with the brilliant idea of changing the approach of our best hitters. We're moving into a bigger ballpark, he figured, so we should turn our power hitters into opposite-field hitting singles hitters. The end result: the Mets have the 2nd-best batting average in the National League... but WE DON'T SCORE ANY RUNS! We're great at getting guys on base and into scoring position, but then we can't knock them in. When it requires three singles instead of a bloop and a blast to score, you're not as likely to pull it off. David Wright, once a dependable 30-homer, 100 RBI guy, has FIVE home runs this season. The excuse of the ballpark not being conducive to homers went out the window when the Phillies and Yankees knocked the ball out of Citi Field with regularity, to the point where people now derisively call the right field corner "Utley's Corner" because the Phillies star has hit more homers at Citi as a VISITING PLAYER than just about any Met has this year.
And then there's the bullpen. Yeah, a lot of our bullpen woes in '07 and '08 came from the fact that we had awful relievers, but part of it was also Willie (and now Jerry's) custom of overusing the good relievers we have. Now, it's gone completely overboard. Sean Green, Pedro Feliciano, and Bobby Parnell seem to pitch EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. How effective can you expect them to be when you're going to send them into a game over 100 times before the season is through?
Omar and Jerry recently got the dreaded "vote of confidence" from Mets management, and anyone who follows these things knows what that means... one or both of them is (in the words of Gary Cohen) "outta here" when the season ends. While all the finger-pointing continues, I think I'll start picking out my spot on Broad Street for the championship parade that will end October in Philadelphia. Not that I'm bailing on my beloved Amazins, mind you, but I've never been to a championship celebration before, and I don't see one happening down Manhattan's famed "canyon of heroes" anytime soon...
Blogger's note: The website that holds my original blog's entries from 2000-2002 is about to follow GeoCities into the dustbin of online history. So I will soon be transferring all those old entries to this site. This will make it much easier for you to look them up anyway. See how helpful I am?
posted by Dave | 2:18 PM
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