Some 2013 New York Mets Predictions

It's another year where the Mets are not going to the postseason.  Before the season officially starts, I'm going to offer up some predictions:

-I was all prepared to like Collin Cowgill.  He comes across to me as a gamer.  I guy who I'd like having around as a 4th outfield.  I'm not sure he is an everyday player and I'm afraid I'll turn on him at some point this season.

-Jon Niese will win 14-15 games and pitch well causing people to say things like, "he could have won 18 games on a contender."

-Ike Davis will again hit around 32 homeruns and drive in 90 runs.  But his batting average will get back to the .260 range.

-Marlon Byrd does not finish 2013 as a member of the New York Mets.

-Shawn Marcum has a 3.50 ERA...but only has 11 starts.

-Brandon Lyon has double digit saves.

-Lucas Duda will hit 25 home runs.

-Daniel Murphy will miss an extended period of time and will never regain the second base job from Jordany Valdespin.

-Once again the Mets will be surprisingly around the .500 mark around the All-Star Break before the wheels come off and the cream starts rising to the top.

-The Mets will finish over their Vegas win total of 74.5.

Happy Opening Day!

Loving the R.A. Dickey Trade!

It's weird to think that in back to back years the Mets are going to lose an NL Batting champion and the NL Cy Young award winners in back to back years coming off the years they won them.  As a lifelong Mets fan the Jose Reyes divorce was tough for me but as much as I loved R.A. Dickey's time as a Met, I am over-the-moon about this trade.

Even if Travis d'Arnaud and  Noah Syndergaard flame out and never see the majors, I will forever stand behind this trade 100%.  If you are bringing R.A. Dickey back to the Mets this year, you are essentially returning the same 74 win team from a year ago. The Mets need to retool.  If they are able to land a guy who might be able to catch for the Mets for the next decade and be one of the cornerstones of the franchise you pull the trigger without question.

I hate to boil down a human being's worth like this but R.A. Dickey was found money for the Mets.  He learned the knuckle ball on his own, the Mets didn't spend any resources developing him and they weren't paying him anything.  They took him off the scrap heap and gave him a chance.  To be able to turn him into (according to Baseball America) the Blue Jays' first and third best prospects is a coup (Baseball America also ranks Toronto #5 in their Organizational Talent Ratings).

I give Sandy Alderson a ton of credit for pulling the trigger on the trade.  R.A. Dickey was asking below market value for him and the easier thing to do would have been to hold on to him.  He was a P.R. and ticket selling asset to a team that needs both.

I'm Ready to Start Panicking - Mets Fan Style

My hiatus is over.  I didn't really have time to post as my wife and I welcomed our second kid in to the world.  But I'm back just in time to start panicking over the Mets.

I know I could be overreacting right now as a Mets fan but, I am now in fear of Johan Santana's no-hitter on June 1st being the catalyst in the wheels coming off on their surprising early season.

I shouldn't say the no hitter is the reason, but it's Terry Collins' handling of the pitching staff after the no-hitter.  Johan Santana is a creature of habit.  I completely understand that off of his surgery and 134 pitches you would want to do something to lighten his load, but giving him extra rest was not the way to do it.  By giving him extra rest and shuffling the pitching staff around it created a domino effect that resulted in losing 6 of their last 7.  Just say Santana is on a 110-115 pitch count for each game.  Have him start on normal rest but have him only throw 90-95 pitches.

Lets take a look at the last two series:

June 5th - @Washington - Lost 7-6 in 12
This was Chris Young's first start back from the same surgery Santana had.  As a means to push Santana back the Mets opted to go with a 6 man rotation and start Jeremy Hefner the next night.  So not only was the bullpen shorthanded with Hefner slated to start tomorrow, Jon Rauch had an elbow issue and was unavailable to pitch.  So 5 man bullpen.  My question   Of course it goes 12 innings and the bullpen blows leads in the 8th, 10th and 12th.  Knowing what we know now that the Mets would send down Pedro Beato and keep Jeremy Hefner up when the rotation stabilizes, wouldn't it have been nice to have Hefner available in the pen to eat some more innings instead of stretching Frank Francisco and Elvin Ramirez into second innings?

June 6th - @Washington - Lost 5-3
Hefner didn't pitch terribly after allowing a three-run homer in the 1st but this is where Santana should have been pitching on regular rest.  Based on how he's been this year you'd like to think he would have done as well or better than Hefner did in his 6 innings.

June 7th - @Washington - Won 3-1
Thank god for R.A. Dickey.  On regular rest by the way.

June 8th - June 10th - @ Yankees - Swept all 3 games
It's hard to assume this series would have gone much differently than a sweep even if the Mets staff was on regular rest.  The Friday night game was a foregone conclusion.  Anyone who expected anything from Santana was misguided.  Long rest = disaster for him.  It would have been Niese's turn and there was probably nothing he could have done with the way Kuroda pitched.  Gee on Saturday battled despite not having his best stuff and who knows what Chris Young would have given you on Sunday.

The point is, this is a brutal stretch of schedule for the Mets and as fun as this season has been so far, Mets fans know how fragile it is.  By babying Santana too much, I feel they probably cost themselves a 3-3 stretch in these which is a lot less damaging than 1-5.

New York Mets in 2012!

It's embarrassing that I have to go into a season with a New York baseball franchise having this kind of attitude, but here is why I'm holding out hope for the 2012 New York Mets:

Actually before starting I should clarify what "hope" means. I do not think the Mets will sniff the NL East or the Wildcard (or even the rumored 2nd Wildcard if that happens). What I mean by hope is a team that can put together a brand of baseball that will keep me interested until August. I'd actually sign up for what the Mets did last year until September 7th when they were 1 game under .500 at that point. There is a reason Terry Collins actually received a 1st place vote for NL Manager of the year. For most of the year, they were not a terrible watch. Ideally you don't want to refer to a team with a 100+ million dollar payroll as scrappy but situations what they were they were a scrappy, fun bunch there for a little while.

So why do I think the Mets might not be a total disaster:

1. I understand the Mets are arguably in the best division in baseball so the unbalanced schedule effects them more than others but look at some of last year's teams that overachieved in 2011: the Pirates were players at the trade deadline, the Indians were a .500 ball club with two days left in the season and Vegas had Arizona's win total at 72.5 going in to spring training. In any year the right group of guys can overachieve. Now that I have my "hope springs eternal" reason out of the way...

2. I know injuries are a part of sports, but injuries! Do you know how many teams didn't have a single position player play in at least 130 games? I'm not looking it up but it's probably not a lot. The Mets leader in games played was a tie with 126 with Jose Reyes and Willie Harris. Angel Pagan and Jason Bay 123, Justin Turner 117, Josh Thole 117, Daniel Murphy 109, David Wright 102. Do you know how many at bats Jason Pridie had? Too many. These aren't normal numbers for any team. I want to see what happens when the core of the offense plays 140-150 games together.

3. The rotation is the worst in the NL East but it's not as bad as it looks. I'm not expecting miracles from Johan Santana. If asked for a prediction I'd go with an 11-11 4.50 ERA. I'm looking at this year as still a rehab year for him. Assuming you get more of the same as last year with the remaining four members of the rotation (other than Pelfrey who throws up a lot of stinkers) Dickey, Gee and Niese keep you in games. But with Gee and Niese both only being 25, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect some improvement out of them.

4. The walls are moving in. It sounds like a lame excuse but the dimensions at CitiField had to get in to hitter's heads. My theory is this: players do care about their numbers. It's how they get paid. The reason that the home and road splits are both bad for Mets "power hitters" is because they let CitiField get in their head so much that they pressed to get their numbers up on the road. If nothing else, I really do feel that guys like Wright and Bay will be able to relax a little more at home and if/when they start to get their numbers there, their numbers on the road will come too.

5. I'm not expecting much out of Ruben Tejada, Josh Thole and Andres Torres offensively but Ike Davis (he was on pace for a 27 HR 97 RBI type of season) and Daniel Murphy (until he inevitably gets hurt on a takeout slide playing 2nd) are coming back and they both can hit. As a Mets fan, you have to like what you saw from Lucas Duda last year so I feel all is not lost offensively. If you can put some order of Murphy, Davis, Wright, Bay and Duda together for any stretch of time I think they can put up more runs than last year.

I know Reyes not being back is going to kill this team. But the baseball season is so long and so pivotal in my enjoyment of the summer that I'll look for hope anywhere I can find it.

Coming To Grips With Losing Jose Reyes

If there is one thing the Mets executed perfectly since the end of the season was to condition the Mets fans to expect to lose Jose Reyes. While I'm very disappointed Jose Reyes is gone, it took me zero time to get over it. If I went in to this off season thinking there was chance the Mets could seriously re-signed Jose Reyes back and I got blindsided by the ESPN scroll that he signed with the Marlins, I would have been devastated.

Jose Reyes has faults. He hasn't played over 133 games since 2008. He has what could be described as "chronic" hamstring problems which is a problem for a guy whose #1 attribute is speed. But I'm a traditionalist. If I have a good home grown player, I want him to start and end his career in a Mets jersey. It's not just with the Mets, I like to see that everywhere in every sport. I don't want to see Pujols leave St. Louis and LeBron shouldn't have left Cleveland. I just like when a star stays with one franchise like Tony Gwynn or Cal Ripken. We're coming to a point where when everyone comes back for an Old Timers day, Gaylord Perry's jersey won't look so unique.

I was recently thinking though, while Jose Reyes said all the right things about loving New York and wanting to come back, could you really blame him for really wanting to leave? In 2004 they signed Kaz Matsui and moved him over to 2nd base, somehow the Mets got him to sign a 4 year 23.25 million dollar contract that was way under market value (when David Wright got 6 years/55 million the same month) and he's the only major league player that I've seen have to be re-taught how to run. Was he really treated that great by the organization?

It's crazy but one of the things that annoy me the most about it is from a statistical and historical standpoint. He's the Mets all time leader in Triples and Stolen Bases. Reyes is no longer a Met but he took those records from a beloved, all-time Met in Mookie Wilson which is what I really hoped he would be. Now those records just belong to some former Met that never really lived up to the promise of what we wanted his career to look like.