John Maine just didn't have it on Saturday - it took the Maine event 96 pitches to get 12 outs, and he put the Mets in an early 4-1 hole against Tim Hudson. The Mets closed to within 4-3, the Braves pushed it to 5-3; it was 5-3 in the seventh until Jorge Sosa came on and loaded the bases before giving up a grand slam to Kelly Johnson which pretty much put the game out of reach.
Not too many smiles for Maine in his first start
On Sunday, Johan Santana threw seven stellar innings, giving up just one run on seven hits. As usual, the Mets had a hard time figuring out John Smoltz, but the game was within reach at 1-0 until Aaron Heilman gave up a two-run homer to Mark Teixiera in the 8th which proved to be the difference. Down 3-0, the Mets tried to rally in the ninth, but a line drive by Brian Schneider went right to Teixiera, who's also a gold glove first baseman and was playing the line.
I don't think 2007 is going to go away this year. I don't mean that to sound like a depressed, doomsday lament or anything like that. I just think that even if we're doing well, the comparisons between the prototypical team of talented under-achievers (last year) and a talented team that lives up to its potential (this year, hopefully) will be irresistible. This spring, any visitor to my blog knows that in most of my posts I've been unable to avoid sizing up this year's team and looking for any indication that now we've got our head screwed on straight and this season might be different. Then there's also the simple truth (Regis Courtemanche of metsblog wrote about this today) that every loss - every tough loss, in particular - will probably remind us of those last two painful weeks of September '07, where the Mets found every conceivable way to lose and our relievers (Jorge Sosa and Aaron Heilman in particular) gave up late inning home runs in big spots with regularity.
So we Mets fans - understandably - are all freaked out after the Mets failed their first early season aptitude test. What if the Braves are back? What if we get swept by the Phillies this week, at home? What if we suck this year, even with Santana?
It's going to be like this all year, I think - another reason why we won't escape 2007 until we either make the playoffs or, and this is an even shakier bet, just as far as the odds for any team go - advance to the NLCS or World Series.
But we've got to keep things in perspective, or we're just going to drive ourselves crazy. This morning metsblog linked up these comments from the blog It's Mets for Me:
So it counts for nothing that in a month (last September) where the Mets did all they could to send their season go to hell - ultimately succeeding - they won 5 out of 6, against magical, mystical, Atlanta? That included a sweep in Turner Field, by the way. Woooooo...the Braves! Oh my god!
And of course, we didn't basically finish off the Braves in '06 with a late-July sweep in Turner. Nothing has changed since the late 90s and early 2000s...nothing at all. And of course, a couple rough performances in our fourth and fifth games of the season mean that their stars want it more. Chipper Jones and John Smoltz wanted it more at the end of last year, too, right? Last I checked it was the Phillies - not the Braves - who took advantage of the collapse and backed into the 2007 NL East title.
Not every loss against the Braves can or should be chalked up to the same "Brave mystique" bs. At this point, Met fans who continue this ass-kissing tomahawk rattling are only tossing up a red herring for any of the team's actual troubles. As fans, we're only psyching ourselves out when we build up this unbeatable foe from Atlanta who the Mets always find a way to screw up against. Frankly, I think Mets fans believe this crap more than our players do. But still - when we sit in our seats at Shea and groan when David Wright makes a throwing error in the third inning of a game against the Braves, and say it's all because of some sort of predisposition for the Mets to lose to Atlanta, at what point does that attitude trickle down to the players, so this whole mumbo jumbo becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I'd prefer to think that Aaron Heilman served up a gopher ball in a key spot yesterday because he's got a dangerous knack to do that sort of thing. Maybe we shouldn't trust him so much in the 8th inning. Do we have a choice? And I'd prefer to see Angel Pagan's misplay on Yunel Escobar's RBI double early in yesterday's game as a bad play, that he may have unfortunately made against anyone on any other sunny Sunday afternoon. The Mets played sloppily over the weekend. There's no excuse for that, but it didn't happen because they played the Braves.
If I'm worried about anything, it's that they'll play that way against the Phillies this week, and the Brewers this coming weekend, and the Nationals next week. To succeed this year, they'll have to be a little sharper than that, and Saturday's start by John Maine will have to have been an abberation, and the Mets will have to put up some runs when Johan Santana pitches valiantly without his best stuff and gives up just one run over seven innings.
We Met fans are going to drive ourselves crazy this year, one way or the other. I stated recently that I was more embarassed than scarred over the way last season ended, but '07 has left us so on edge as a fan base that we're prone to over-analyzing and getting worked up about every loss. As important as every game is (last year demonstrated this) we need to balance our sense of urgency as fans with the knowledge that we also need to give it a couple weeks before we can get a real accurate gauge on where the Mets are this year, at least in the early going. Really.
And it is hard. But let's first watch the home opener tomorrow, and maybe we'll forget about this first unfortunate trip to Atlanta in the same brief amount of time it took us to get all worked up. Or maybe not. But if we're going to take each game as seriously as we have so far, (a good thing, even it does make us nuts) then let's focus real hard on helping the Amazins' give Shea a final opening day to remember.
Go Mets.
I'm gonna miss the old ballpark
Get the feeling that John Smoltz would rise up from a molten grave to choke the life out of the Mets, like a Turner-ator? Smoltz was his typical Satanic Majesty and the Br*ves ruined Johan Santana's Atlanta debut. Poopeyface emerged on cue to serve up his usual BPSGB (big pressure situation gopher ball) and the world was again much like we remember it before 2006. No one is conceding anything, but I sometimes still scan the Mets dugout for Art Howe involuntarily. And if it wasn't clear before, the Br*ves more often then not beat the Mets in Turner Crypt because their stars, Smoltz and Larry Jones, simply want it more than our stars do. You can see it in their oily baby eating grins as they congratulate each other in the dugout each time they finish dispatching the Mets. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
So it counts for nothing that in a month (last September) where the Mets did all they could to send their season go to hell - ultimately succeeding - they won 5 out of 6, against magical, mystical, Atlanta? That included a sweep in Turner Field, by the way. Woooooo...the Braves! Oh my god!
And of course, we didn't basically finish off the Braves in '06 with a late-July sweep in Turner. Nothing has changed since the late 90s and early 2000s...nothing at all. And of course, a couple rough performances in our fourth and fifth games of the season mean that their stars want it more. Chipper Jones and John Smoltz wanted it more at the end of last year, too, right? Last I checked it was the Phillies - not the Braves - who took advantage of the collapse and backed into the 2007 NL East title.
Not every loss against the Braves can or should be chalked up to the same "Brave mystique" bs. At this point, Met fans who continue this ass-kissing tomahawk rattling are only tossing up a red herring for any of the team's actual troubles. As fans, we're only psyching ourselves out when we build up this unbeatable foe from Atlanta who the Mets always find a way to screw up against. Frankly, I think Mets fans believe this crap more than our players do. But still - when we sit in our seats at Shea and groan when David Wright makes a throwing error in the third inning of a game against the Braves, and say it's all because of some sort of predisposition for the Mets to lose to Atlanta, at what point does that attitude trickle down to the players, so this whole mumbo jumbo becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I'd prefer to think that Aaron Heilman served up a gopher ball in a key spot yesterday because he's got a dangerous knack to do that sort of thing. Maybe we shouldn't trust him so much in the 8th inning. Do we have a choice? And I'd prefer to see Angel Pagan's misplay on Yunel Escobar's RBI double early in yesterday's game as a bad play, that he may have unfortunately made against anyone on any other sunny Sunday afternoon. The Mets played sloppily over the weekend. There's no excuse for that, but it didn't happen because they played the Braves.
If I'm worried about anything, it's that they'll play that way against the Phillies this week, and the Brewers this coming weekend, and the Nationals next week. To succeed this year, they'll have to be a little sharper than that, and Saturday's start by John Maine will have to have been an abberation, and the Mets will have to put up some runs when Johan Santana pitches valiantly without his best stuff and gives up just one run over seven innings.
We Met fans are going to drive ourselves crazy this year, one way or the other. I stated recently that I was more embarassed than scarred over the way last season ended, but '07 has left us so on edge as a fan base that we're prone to over-analyzing and getting worked up about every loss. As important as every game is (last year demonstrated this) we need to balance our sense of urgency as fans with the knowledge that we also need to give it a couple weeks before we can get a real accurate gauge on where the Mets are this year, at least in the early going. Really.
And it is hard. But let's first watch the home opener tomorrow, and maybe we'll forget about this first unfortunate trip to Atlanta in the same brief amount of time it took us to get all worked up. Or maybe not. But if we're going to take each game as seriously as we have so far, (a good thing, even it does make us nuts) then let's focus real hard on helping the Amazins' give Shea a final opening day to remember.
Go Mets.
I'm gonna miss the old ballpark(Photos courtesy blog.ny.com, the-hud.com)
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