Opening Nightmare

The Mets lost to the Phillies yesterday, blowing a late lead on a costly error in the seventh inning before letting the game slip further away in the eighth and limping to a 5-2 loss - their third straight.

Wait, did I just recycle that sentence from last September?

If the Mets blow this season in April, at least they can just waste the whole damn thing instead of building up painfully false expectations. What's worse? Maybe we won't have to find out.

With the Mets in need of a win, Mike Pelfrey will take the hill tonight against Kyle Kendrick. Thi is a good opportunity for Pelfrey to show whether he is indeed major league material, or whether he's a tall goofy chump who the Mets should have traded to the Twins instead of Phil Humber. In his brief career, he's thus far showed an inclination toward the latter (tall goofy chump). If he has any stones at all he'll at least turn in a nice effort tonight and not pitch like a loser.

All eyes will be on tongue-boy in his '08 debut

I'm off to go take my mind off of baseball and see some live brass bands tear it up in Lafayette Square. I'll have more on the Mets home opening series, and the proper status of Willie Randolph's job, tomorrow night when I have a bit more time - the tone of that post should reflect the news I come home to tonight.

Until then...

(Image courtesy mets.com)

Manufactured Anxiety

The Mets concluded an awkward, rain-shortened two game series against the Braves yesterday, walking away from Turner Field with two irritating losses and a dent in the collective early-season confidence of Mets fans, which had been riding high after Wednesday night's 13-0 exclamation mark on our season-opening series win against the Marlins.

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:

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)

Slaughter in South Florida

The Mets annihilated the Marlins last night, winning 13-0 behind six scoreless innings from Oliver Perez (8 Ks, 5 hits and just one walk) and home runs by David Wright, Carlos Beltran, and Ryan Church.

I'm still in New Orleans, so I won't really be able to watch any games until I get back to New York in about three weeks or so. Maybe I'll try to make it out to a Zephyrs game while I'm down here...who knows. Maybe I'd try harder if the Mets' best prospects weren't all playing in Binghamton this year.

Anyway - my point is that my only frames of reference for these first few games have been MLB gameday, metsblog, and ESPN highlights (if I'm lucky). This was apparent the other day, when I talked about how great it was that Luis Castillo stole a base and was close to 100% healthy. I had no clue that he loafed around the bases in the first inning after a Carlos Beltran bloop double and cost the Mets an early run, while Willie Randolph attempted to justify his lack of hustle by claiming Castillo was "still a little banged up."

Speaking of Randolph: okay, he's a good manager. I'll give him that. He really wet the leadership bed last September, when he tried to guide the Mets through the collapse by continuing to insist that a fundamentally flawed and under-motivated team would eventually "sip a little champagne," before tearing up about the whole ordeal and acting surprised when the you-know-what finally hit the fan and the Mets really did blow a seven game lead in the last two-and-a-half weeks of the season. But I can still give him his props. Not a whole lot of managers have a deeper knowledge of the game of baseball - save managing a bullpen, maybe, but really - and he, along with everyone in the Mets organization, seems to have profoundly realized exactly what went wrong last year and seems like he's right on the ball as far as correcting the error of his, and the team's, ways. I hope. But the signs are good. Willie matching his realizations to action will be key to the Mets' success this year.

But I digress. My point: win or lose, it's a little bit funny because he's such a cornball. I think if the Mets have a good 2008, the dog days of summer will be prime time to just laugh at Willie and, in particular, his bizarre way of speaking to the media. While the Mets were playing sub-.500 baseball for all of last summer, it would irritate the hell out of me to hear Willie endlessly talk about "his guys" and how Guillermo Mota was one of them. Winning really changes everything though. If the Mets do well this summer, I think Willie will turn into that kind of weird but endearing character that, as fans, we all somehow come to appreciate, even it takes a while to get there. Not necessarily because he's that cool or anything, but, I dunno, think Tom Coughlin. Couldn't stand him, really, until the playoffs - now I love him, his rosy cheeks, and the '07-'08 unlikeliest of unlikely Super Bowl championships he helped bring home for Big Blue.

Maybe I'll do a longer post on Willie later this season, with my perspective varying depending on how things look to be turning out. For the meantime, here he is talking last night about Pedro's injury (more to come on that):

“We don’t trip on stuff like that, ya know. We’ve been a solid team, a together-team, ever since I’ve been here. These guys believe in each other. We love to play and get after it. If you’re here with us and join the party, that’s great. We’ll invite you, you’re there…That’s why I love this group. They don’t make excuses, they just play.”

I'd love to party with Willie Randolph.

****

BUZZ KILL!

Pedro Martinez is going to be out 4-6 weeks with what the Mets are calling a "strained left hamstring." 4-6 sounds like a pretty bad strain. This just sucks, pretty much.

But to piggyback on what Willie was saying, I don't think it will dampen the Mets' spirits too much. I was really looking forward to having Pedro around this season - and he talked during Spring Training about taking a more active clubhouse leadership role, which I was also very excited about. That was missing last year.

Now we've got a mini-situation of what happened last year, where the Mets will play it out and be waiting on Pedro again. For a shorter amount of time - if it is, indeed, only 4-6 weeks (crossing my fingers) - but still, he's not around now for a bit.

This year's set up to potentially be a little different though. We've got Johan Santana instead of Tom Glavine. In general, the team seems a lot more juiced up (that's NOT a reference to the Mitchell report) and a lot more equipped to hold it's own and not whine about Pedro being hurt and "missing Pedro" and playing aimlessly the entire season waiting for one player to come back from injury. I'm confident that we'll deal with Pedro being gone a little better.

Remember, this is what the Red Sox did for each of the last three years or so that Martinez spent in a Boston uniform. Pedro's hurt? The dude weighs like 20 pounds, big surprise...

It's all about how you work with the cards you've been dealt, and I think this year's orange and blue poker face is a lot more encouraging.

****

MEL ROJAS, ARMANDO BENITEZ, BRADEN LOOPER, JORGE JULIO, GUILLERMO MOTA, MATT WISE?

Matt Wise has made two appearances so far this year. In his first, he gave up two hits and recorded just one out in the eighth inning of a 7-2 ball game, before being bailed out by Scott Schoeneweis and Jorge Sosa. In his second, he struck out two hitters in the tenth inning of a tie game but then couldn't hold his liquor against Robert Andino - who? - and Andino hit a Wise fastball about nine miles or so to win the game for the Marlins.

Every team seems to have one - he's usually a relief pitcher, and you usually cringe when he enters the game. Actually you don't even cringe. His very appearance inspires profound feelings of...disgust, irritation, you feel like throwing something against a wall...hatred? Is that too strong?

Maybe every team doesn't have one, but the Mets ALWAYS seem to have that one reliever who you just have absolutely no faith in, ever. And that reliever usually does something on a somewhat regular basis to justify those feelings. Is Matt Wise this year's Guillermo Mota? If so, there could be a direct correlation between Willie Randolph's confidence in Wise and the greater successes and failures of the Met bullpen this season. We shall see.

****

Next up is the Braves tomorrow night. John Maine goes against Tim Hudson - should be a good match-up. On paper, at least, I fear the Braves more than the Phillies...it's early in the season but these next two series should give us a nice beginning gauge of where the Mets are really at so far this year. As the headline on mets.com points out, "Mets-Braves series to set tone in East." Yeah that sounds about right.

I'll try to dissect this early season showdown after Tom Glavine pitches on Saturday. These games are in Turner Field, but what I really can't wait for is Tommy's Shea homecoming...

Todd Zeile went out a bit more gracefully

(Photos courtesy virtualtourist.com, baseballchurch.blogspot.com, cnnsi.net)

Great Success!

The Mets opened powerfully and convincingly today, pushing aside the Marlins 7-2 on one of those days when everything seemed to follow the proper script. I didn't see the game, but in reading the recap and looking at the box score, it seemed that the Mets opened playing in a way that will carry them a long way this season if they can internalize what they did today and make it something of a routine.

The picture you've been waiting for...and this one wasn't even photoshopped

Some positive and particularly illustrative highlights, I think:

• Johan Santana gave up two runs on just three hits and one walk in seven innings. He struck out eight. That's just a downright good game, and starts like this on a regular basis by are what makes a pitcher like Santana the ace of a staff. You could never really count on Tom Glavine to deliver anything like that when he took the mound.
• Jose Reyes went 2-4. Luis Castillo went 1-3 with two walks and stole a base - that's all the more impressive considering the fact that both David Wright and Jose Reyes got caught stealing today. I'm looking forward to watching a healthy Castillo do his thing. A lot of people wanted the Mets to bring in a power hitting second baseman and/or no. 2 hitter this offseason, but Castillo is the type of classic, prototypical 2 guy who can really help energize a lineup. If his knees hold up, him and Reyes could produce a double leadoff combo that will really wear down opponents.
• David Wright went 2-4 with 2 doubles, and was a major player in the Mets first big rally, a six-run sixth where Wright drove in three with the first of those two hits. That's the type of game that makes Wright look more and more like the emerging on-field leader that he started to be towards the end of last season.
• Carlos Delgado had no hits. Big surprise! I'm going to be hard on him this year.
• Although Matt Wise gave up two hits, Scott Schoenweis and Jorge Sosa bailed him out and Aaron Heilman pitched a hitless ninth while recording two strikeouts as the bullpen backed up Santana's solid start and looked good.
• The Mets committed no errors.

I'll probably stop talking about last year eventually, and it really hasn't left any lasting scars or anything. I was thinking today about how it was a totally embarrassing way to end the season, but it didn't really hurt the same way as watching your star center fielder look at strike three to end the NLCS. Besides, it wasn't meant to be in 2007. Think the Mets would have beaten the fired up Rockies in the Division Series? I rest my case.

Anyway, where I'm going with this is that the Mets played the type of game that they never really got used to playing last year. In a season of maddening inconsistency, they often won in spite of themselves but rarely just played well. Today was a downright good game, and made me even more excited for the season ahead.

Plus the Phillies lost (at home) after Jimmy Rollins hit a game-tying home run in the seventh, only to watch Tom Gordon give up six runs to blow it in the ninth. Haha. Ha. Ahahahahahahaha. I hope the Braves aren't good this year.

And I'm out.

(Photo courtesy mets.com)

OPENING DAY?!

Warning Track Power is currently in New Orleans building houses; I've been down here for about a week and I'll be here for another two. I've been somewhat out of the loop and it's easy to lose track of time down here.

Three days passed without me checking realclearpolitics.com for the latest on the Obama/Hillary slugfest.

Until about 10 minutes ago I hadn't been on metsblog since last Tuesday.

Spring Training is long, too, though it doesn't feel quite as long as NFL training camp. Much like the hot stove season, you get sick of hearing the same things over and over again. It must get hard after a while to be a beat writer during Spring Training. If you're Marty Noble, by the end of March you're probably up late at night making tally marks on your arm to count down the days until Opening Day, all while being forced to write something along the lines of:

Carlos Beltran walked all the way around the Mets spring training complex today, shmoozing with some of the Mets minor league coaches, who apparently were happy to see the star center fielder.

Or,

John Maine said he's sick of Port St. Lucie today. Somebody help me.

Or,

David Wright ate ribs for dinner tonight.

There's been some news to keep up on, mostly perennial spring training stuff. Roster this, roster that...there's a competition for the fifth starter's spot every year it seems. We had a bunch of injuries, but it looks like we're going north sans only Orlando Hernandez, Ramon Castro, and Duaner Sanchez, who all have relatively minor injuries, or are almost fully recovered from a freak taxi cab accident, and should be in New York fairly soon.

Anyway, I've actually been on the road for the entirety of Spring Training this year. I'm doing some traveling and Spring Training is kind of an interesting gauge, I guess, for how long I've been away from home. I've covered the whole thing pretty loosely, and fairly or unfairly haven't made much time for the more frequent posts I try to write during the season. That's how I've covered most of the offseason; with so much of the same stuff over and over again, I've tried to give my perspective on the big events and write something random yet hopefully poignant every once in a while. January was a good chance for me to write about the incredible road to a Super Bowl championship traversed by my other favorite New York sports team, those football Giants.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Opening Day has NEVER snuck up on me like this before. As excited as I am about this season, I honestly thought we had another week. But this is soooo much better. The Mets are already in Miami, and will take on the Marlins tomorrow at 4 before having one of those bizarre Tuesday off-days we get every beginning of the season and then really getting into the swing. I won't be able to live blog the game, but I'll see if I can get up with a fresh post either tomorrow night or Tuesday.

With the season starting, I'll be trying to get back to the 3 to 4 posts a week I wrote last summer, transitioning like every one else from offseason life to the rhythm of another baseball season. As Mets fans, we've got to be excited right now. One thing I did write about a couple times this spring was the confidence level in Spring camp, I get the sense that the Mets really want to do something special to usher out Shea and atone for the giant heap of (unprintable) dumped on the fan base at the end of 2007. I'm withholding judgment, trying to eliminate all expectations, and after last year's let down just generally looking to take it one day at a time. But I still feel good. I think that one way or another, this is going to be a fun season. It's amazing how the acquisition of one star pitcher can really lift everyone's spirits.

Look for Jose to bounce back this year from the roughest of ends to 2007. We hope.

So here we go. Isn't baseball season great? It's one way to tell that spring is here, even if the April weather in Flushing doesn't always cooperate. Baseball season also signals the coming of my birthday (April 13 in case ya'll are interested); this year I'll be 20. Isn't that cool?

Before I check out, here's the lineup for tomorrow:

Leading off and playing shortstop: Jose Reyes

Second, at second: Luis Castillo

Hitting third, playing third base: David Wright

Cleaning up, in centerfield: Carlos Beltran

At first, batting fifth: Carlos Delgado

In left field, hitting sixth: Angel "my name is contradictory" Pagan

Followed by, in right: Ryan "L Millz" Church

And batting eighth, behind the dish: Brian Schneider

Starting on the mound for the Mets is the man of the hour, Johan Santana.

Keep it real, stay fresh, and here's to the 2008 Mets. Happy New Year everyone!

(Photos courtesy about.com, lovefilm.com, cnn.net)

Unease About Delgado

Since returning to action this spring from a lingering hip injury, Carlos Delgado is 0-9, with five strikeouts.  

Everyone is certainly aware of Delgado's struggles last year, to the tune of home run and RBI totals 14 and 33 below his career average, respectively.  

Delgado didn't just drop off randomly; he was hurt.  He denied it, and such speculation was generally dismissed by many people in the Mets organization, but his ongoing recovery from off-season hand surgery clearly hampered him, particularly when he tried to get around on high, inside fastballs.  This was a visible problem all year.  Delgado came through with a big hit now and then, and his numbers were fairly respectable for a Major League first baseman, but league average was a steep drop for Delgado from the dominant force he was at times in 2006, and he basically became a mistake hitter.  I'm not sure I remember Delgado hitting any "pitcher's pitches" last year, and any smart reliever in the late innings knew that all he had to do was throw Delgado a belt-high fastball on the inside corner and Carlos was sure to choke.  In short, even while finishing the year with 20 plus home runs and nearly 100 RBI, Delgado felt like a liability because he consistently failed to come through in the clutch and he was a shadow of his former self.  

And every time he got into any sort of groove, it seemed like he got hurt again.  Last September, he was heating up when the same hip injury that kept him out for the beginning of the spring sidelined him just as the Mets were beginning their tailspin into oblivion.  

Delgado is well on his way to losing it as a hitter, primarily because his body is breaking down. He's always been streaky; he slumped miserably through parts of 2006 even as he hit 38 home runs and drove in 114.  But right now it honestly feels like he's reached the point of no return. 

Throughout the past few months Delgado and Willie Randolph continued to insist that last year was a total aberration for Carlos and had nothing to do with him being hurt.  In one interview, Willie waxed poetic about how the majority of his struggles had to do with a lack of an ability to take control in the batter's box.  Delgado was playing the pitcher's game, not his - always dangerous for any major league hitter.  And Delgado, without addressing Willie's opinion, talked about how hard he's been working this off-season to come back strong in '08.  

But a good deal of Delgado's inability to "take control in the batter's box" would seem to come back to his inability to get around on a high inside fastball.  If a pitcher knows exactly what pitch is sure to get a given hitter out in absolutely every situation, that hitter is going to have a hard time "taking control in the batter's box" from at-bat to at-bat, game to game, series to series.  

Delgado didn't finish an at-bat this spring without striking out until his four hitless at-bats today.  By many accounts, Delgado '08 looked a lot like Delgado '07 through those first five at-bats, struggling with - you said it - the high, inside fastball.  

The league is on notice.  He's going to get even more of these pitches this year than he did last year.  And whether he's hurt, or just old, or whatever, Carlos Delgado will continue to deteriorate as long as he keeps getting the high inside fastball and can't hit it.  By all indications, it's going to be another long, frustrating year for Carlos, and for Mets fans watching him - especially if he continues to be hurt while maintaining that he's fully healthy.  

Delgado looks to be in a state of irrevocable decline.  The Mets would be wise to trade him if they could, but they're not going to find a taker, and they probably won't try to find one either. What might be more realistic, and would thus be especially prudent under the circumstances, would be for the Mets to find a credible reinforcement at first.  Marlon Anderson and Damion Easley are nice utility players, but they probably won't be able to pick up the slack.  Neither will Jose Valentin, if he makes the team.  Omar Minaya's been good the past few years at finding the type of guy the Mets now need to back up first base; perhaps he'll be able to pull something off now.  

2008 looks promising, but the Mets are in sort of a first base quandary.  Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments section for what you think Omar and Willie should do to manage a situation that looks like it might end up being a chronic problem.  

(Picture courtesy nycsportsnews.com) 

Johan

Watching SportsCenter the other night, I happened to catch some highlights from the Mets 3-2 victory over the Dodgers in St. Lucie. Johan Santana pitched three innings and struck out four, while yielding one run on two hits.

Nice suit

It's only the spring, but there was something special about that highlight. SportsCenter incorporated all four strikeouts into the highlight, three of which Santana registered with a downright filthy circle change.

We've had Pedro for a few years, but you have to go back slightly beyond my lifetime as a Mets fan to recall a time when the Mets had a dominant pitcher in his prime. I never really got to see Doc Gooden pitch; I was born in '88 and didn't start watching the Mets until '92 or '93.

I've known this, of course, ever since the trade for Santana and subsequent signing went through, and I've been excited to have a chance to watch a bona fide ace who works as hard as anyone do his thing. But something about actually seeing Santana pitch for the first time, even in spring, just made me feel good. I'm so pumped for this season - now if Carlos Beltran, Duaner Sanchez, Ryan Church, Marlon Anderson, Moises Alou, El Duque, Carlos Delgado, Endy Chavez, Jose Valentin, Ruben Gotay, Michel Abreu, and Brian Schneider can all only get nice and healthy for Opening Day, we'll be in business. Who's our trainer?

(Photo courtesy brucekphoto.com)

Staying Grounded

As I mentioned the other day, the Mets are slowly trickling into Port St. Lucie and the mood seems to be pretty upbeat. Everybody's confident after the Johan Santana acquisition, and it seems like the players are just as serious as the fans are about coming back with a vengeance this year and destroying the rest of the National League again, a la 2006. That's refreshing.

We've even got players making Jimmy Rollins-like guarantees. Carlos Beltran, over the weekend, on the Mets' chances this year in light of the Santana deal:

“With him, I have no doubt we’re going to win our division. I have no doubt about that…So, this year, tell Jimmy Rollins we are the team to beat.” (metsblog)

I'm not sure if Beltran, normally a quiet, just-goes-about-his-business type, wanted to stir up some controversy or was just trying to sound cool. But here's Endy Chavez, in the New York Post yesterday:

The Mets' recent trade for ace left-hander Johan Santana is "a guarantee for us to make the playoffs," Chavez excitedly told The Post yesterday after reporting to camp early. (NYP)

If you read the entire article, it sounds less like Endy wanted to send anyone a message, and more like he's just excited about the Mets' having a great pitcher on their staff. Endy seems like he's more Carlos Beltran than Jose Reyes, and fourth outfielders - even legendary fourth outfielders - don't usually make these sorts of predictions. Here's the rest of his quote:

"[Even] if he has a bad year, we're going to get 15 wins out of it," the backup outfielder added. "I mean, he's unbelievable. If he stays healthy, we're going to be in for a great season."

Two things at work here. Number one: aghhhhhhh. After we were doomed in 2007 by complacency and over-confidence, the last thing we need right now is anything that will breed more complacency and over-confidence. We should be confident - we just added the best pitcher in baseball to an already solid roster. And we need to regain some of the '06 swagger that was lost last year. But this confidence needs to be of the quiet, "we're going to beat you and we know it but we're not going to say anything about it" sort, as opposed to the "we're going to beat you and we know it so we're going to broadcast it and end up looking stupid in the end" sort.

Secondly, I'm a little concerned that the Mets' players might be expecting a little bit too much from Santana. Not that he's not likely to win at least 15 games - especially in the National League. But the rest of the Mets cannot let themselves see him as some all-powerful, messianic savior, similar to the kid in CYO basketball who scores all the points.

Johan Santana is an awesome acquisition, obviously; and the Mets definitely know that having a bona fide ace at the top of the rotation is going to be huge this year. But our team and fanbase also need to remember that 25 players win games, series, divisions, and championships, and that Santana is just a piece of the greater puzzle.

Especially after being supremely cut down to size just four months ago, I trust the Mets to stay grounded and not get too far ahead of themselves. Then again, I trusted the Mets to rise above mediocrity for about four months last season and it never happened. This year, though, the last thing anyone wants is another colossal embarrassment. Here's Carlos Delgado, he of the "sometimes I just think we get a little bored" comments at the end of last season:

"You can talk all you want, you can say all you want, but at the end of the day, all that matters is what happens between the two white lines," Delgado said. "I think the addition of Santana is a big key for us. I think we got the best team. It's just a matter of going out there and executing." (newsday)

It's fine to think you're the best, but you have to go out and back it up on the field. The Mets have the right attitude going into Spring Training. Fulfilling this season's potential will be about maintaining proper focus and discipline, and if Willie Randolph is good for anything he should be able to help foster the right approaches to taking back the National League East. The Mets know that they're in solid position to be a juggernaut this season, but for this to happen they also must understand the importance of keeping both feet on the ground.

(Picture courtesy nytimes.com)

Pitchers and Catchers

Pitchers and Catchers have reported to Mets camp, as another baseball season slowly comes upon us.

The four-month slog from early fall to mid-February seemed like even more of an eternity this year. After the way last season ended, the only story for most of this off-season was the tragic irony of the Mets' need for an ace and perceived impotence in the hot stove market. In a year where we as Mets fans are more eager than ever to turn the page, there was little to look up about for most of the winter as the Phillies and Braves made small but significant upgrades, while the haters and the naysayers dumped on the Mets and said we were nothing more than a third place team.

The thing about perceptions is that they can do a pretty effective job of influencing reality. Coming to camp with virtually the same team as the one that collapsed last September probably would have put us in contention, but we'd be hearing it from those haters and naysayers and the entire season would have been played under an asphyxiating cloud of uncertainty and doubt.

There's nothing in baseball, or life, like a fresh start, and instead of doom and gloom the narrative going into Spring Training reads much more optimistically. The biggest thing the Johan Santana deal did was re-establish the Mets as the team to beat in the NL East - sorry Jimmy Rollins. With their dominance in 2006 and position atop the division for most of last season, for the first time since the late 80s the Mets were the team everyone tried extra hard to beat - that made it harder to halt the collapse once it started. The sense, of course, was eventually lost at the end of last year, but now it's back.

For all of the renewal associated with the Mets and being a Mets fan since Willie and Omar took over, the team still hasn't climbed the big hump. We've been competitive, fun to watch, and our games have been well-attended again. But the final hurdle still hasn't been cleared, and in that sense getting Johan Santana almost makes the start of this Spring Training feel like Spring Training in '06.

Spring Training

Back then we had made several major off-season acquisitions, and as the season got underway, Mets fans most of all were cautiously optimistic. We knew we had a good team, but the Braves had still won 14 straight division titles, and we didn't quite make it the year before.

This year, we're humbled by the collapse but also aware that our team just got lucky and acquired the best pitcher in baseball to emphatically fill the hole at the top of our rotation. We had a good team to begin with, better than the haters and naysayers would have given us credit for, but now we don't have to hear about our lack of an ace or marketable prospects. As fans, we're cautiously optimistic yet again, this time that the new buzz generated by bringing in Johan Santana will help us kick out all of last year's demons and own the National League again.

You'd rather have a buzz surrounding your team in mid-February than dark, ominous clouds, and the buzz this season is as bright and sunny as the Port St. Lucie sky. It's a different buzz than last year, when everyone was excited because we almost made the World Series the year before, but there wasn't as much substance behind it because we hadn't really done much to tangibly improve our team.

And the gigantic tease that was last season followed the same script of all talk and no substance. The Mets talked like champions and played like losers when it counted. Now we have the opportunity to make up for it. The sense around Mets camp, so far at least, seems promising. It will be all about making good on this year's late winter buzz.

(Pictures courtesy metsblog, springtrainingonline.com)

2007-2008 Super Bowl Champions

An extended commentary on Johan Santana and the Mets vastly enhanced prospects for 2008 is forthcoming. In Omar We Trust.

But it's necessary first for us to pay homage to the extraordinary Super Bowl Champion New York Giants. Quite honestly I wasn't sure when I was ever going to say that. The Super Bowl Champion New York Giants.


I've written a few times in this space about the Giants and Eli Manning, Spagnuolo's D and the sense I had after they beat the Cowboys that they had nothing else to prove to me. I'm devoted to no sports team more than I am to the Mets, but this is the greatest season I've ever watched. I've been following the Giants, too, since I was five years old. I cried during the waning moments of Super Bowl XXXV, have the 41-0 win over the Vikings on tape, remember the brutal loss in 2003 (the '02 season) to the 49ers, was there when Danny Kanell and co. blew it in '97, and have watched the end of the last two seasons with the same disgust as every die-hard Giants fan. In short, the Mets play for only six months every year. I depend on the Giants to get me through at least 4 of those off-months, and anticipate the first week in September with the same excitement (well, almost) as the first week in April.

This has to be considered one of the greatest Super Bowls ever, one of the greatest Super Bowl upsets ever, one of the greatest upsets - period - ever, and one of the greatest seasons in NFL history. For the Giants, this was the true perfect season.

Not measured in an undefeated record, all-time scoring marks, or having a supermodel-dating quarterback who threw 50 touchdown passes in the regular season. Not measured by the genius of a coach going for a record-tying fourth Super Bowl with an unmatched year of icing on the cake.

No, the 2007-2008 Giants, the little team that could, told they couldn't by the sports pundits, kept alive by the right arm of the quintessential little brother, the Mama's boy who finally found himself, treated their fans to a roller-coaster month of victories against football's best. Over the Cowboys, their playboy quarterback, and their 12 pro-bowlers in Dallas. Over the legendary Brett Favre against the legendary Packers in legendary Lambeau Field in conditions that could be described as nothing less than epic and legendary. Over the New England Patriots, inevitable champions, penciled in at 19-0 since mid-October. 18-1.

You can't help but feel good for Eli Manning

The Giants can't be seen as anything short of a team of destiny. A team that had to fight to even make the playoffs, who lost several big games in the regular season, becomes just the second team in NFL history to win a Super Bowl without having played a home playoff game. (The Steelers set the standard two years ago) This is a team that went just 10-6 in the regular season, but moved past all the uncertainty, began to believe in itself at the right time, and did its thing with grit, guts, moxie, and determination. They stayed in every playoff game - in each they trailed at some point in the second half, but always were within striking distance - and then were carried over the top in the end by the right combination of good luck and outstanding individual and group performances.

When I was younger, I would look at the lines in the paper, having no clue what they represented, and root for the underdog because it always sounded cooler than "favorite." Since I've been a fan, the Mets and Giants have certainly been "underdogs" quite frequently. But these games, the climax of this season, turned into the kind of thing I'll tell my kids about. As I've grown up, I've developed a stronger and stronger appreciation for those times when I can tell I'm witnessing history. This season, culminating in a dramatic Super Bowl upset of an undefeated team, the perpetual underdogs wrote a mythic underdog story. That catch by David Tyree, after Eli Manning somehow didn't get sacked. This whole thing would make a great movie.

David Tyree celebrated his touchdown score, then made one of the great plays in Super Bowl history

It's funny because this game was kind of like the win that started this entire Patriots dynasty, or whatever you want to call it. In Super Bowl XXXVI, no one gave the Pats a chance, with their rookie quarterback and team of nobody's. The Rams were 14 point favorites - a bigger spread, even, than last night's (the Pats were favored by 12). In Super Bowl XLII, the "all-Joes," in the words of Antonio Pierce, prevailed in another sensational ending to another awesome game. Once again, David won. But this game is even bigger just for the gravity of the circumstances going in. Undefeated vs. 10-6. Victory against the most impossible odds.

It's essential that we appreciate these moments, as sports fans or even as casual observers. There are so many more underdogs than favorites in life, much more rugged scrappiness than so-called perfection from person to person. I would appreciate nothing if I were a Patriots fan today. Sorry, New England, I know this sucks. These circumstances notwithstanding, however, you just have to feel good for the Giants right now. The rag tag bunch with the good guy QB and the defense that was literally dropping to the ground in exhaustion in the 4th quarter from trying to stop the Patriots' offensive juggernaut all night are champions this morning. They pulled it off, and if that doesn't speak to the best feelings and values in most of us, I don't know what does.

There will be a parade for the ages in New York City tomorrow. The Super Bowl Champions will celebrate on Super Tuesday, so I'll be up here trying to get out the vote for Barack Obama, but I'm sure it's going to be just as epic, just as legendary, as the end to this Giants season. Soak it up, fellow Giants fans. We've just witnessed a great run to end maybe the greatest year in our team's history. Our season just came.

(Pictures courtesy giants.com, citizen.co.za, newsday.com. Video courtesy bttwtopteam.com)