Spring Means Nothing

I certainly hope it’s true that the spring means nothing. I know it means rain for me. And I probably haven’t nearly seen the end of it. Thank God for sump pumps and hoses and drains that still take more water than you’d think was possible. It’s meant rain for the Mets too unfortunately, and it just doesn’t look that promising right now. A Mets fan has to hope the sun is just around the corner.

Maybe it’s just that they’re always playing the Cardinals and the Marlins, who share the stadium down in nearby Jupiter, Roger Dean stadium. In case you’re wondering, Roger Dean is a local car dealer. I had been hoping he was a pirate or something, but alas, no. Both those teams are good though, if the games I’ve seen are any indicator. I have to think that. The alternative is too depressing.

Who knows, maybe today will be the start of a turnaround. Stranger things have happened. Murphy just made a horrible baserunning blunder and got hurt in the process. Maybe that will get Mike Jacobs on the team. At least he can hit the ball out of the park on a regular basis. I mean, if you’re going to hit for a low average, you may as well have some power. Dave Kingman would look good to me now.

Things could turn around too. Sean Green, who had been so bad as to be almost scary, just pitched two very solid innings. Of course they’re down by five so that really isn’t such a tremendous deal either. And here comes Kiko Calero into the game after watching Fernando Tatis have another totally inconsequential at-bat.

I don’t even know who started. The broadcast team is keeping it to themselves. It was probably Ollie though, judging by the score. Hmm, looks like Calero has a nice slider anyway, and he did do a nice job last year for the Marlins. (Somebody should tell these ladies in the stands behind home plate that they really should make an attempt to keep their knees together).

The guessing continues as to the composition of the bullpen. (Matt Holliday just hit his second homer of the day off Calero, about 420 feet to dead center, what a shot). The broadcast team seems to think it’ll be Francisco Rodriguez for sure and Pedro Feliciano for sure and everything else is up in the air. Fernando Nieve is out of options, I understand. I like Igarashi and Calero. Kelvim Escobar may return to form too. Then there is the kid with all the talent they’ll hold down, God knows why. (Yeah, I know why but I don’t agree).

Hope springs eternal for Jose Reyes, though, and I love his quote about feeling that he was Japanese, with all the pens and cameras following him around. Newly acquired Jason Bay just hit one out of the stadium. Wright still looks like Wright. Beltran is still out and probably won’t be returning for a little while yet. I refuse to speculate on him anymore. Angel Pagan is actually starting to look like not such a bad alternative to Beltran, not to mention Fernando Martinez, another young talent who won’t get called up until it’s too late to matter.

Mike Jacobs is up now and I’m hoping he hits another long one, just to make GM Omar Minaya a little crazier. Minaya’s supposed to make a decision by Friday on his final roster. It should be interesting. As a Mets fan, you have to hope the mid-season roster will look quite different from the one we are witnessing right now, barring a complete turnaround in their play once the season gets under way.

The Mets seem to be playing their cards for the future, no matter that their present may very well dictate the futures of the GM and manager Jerry Manuel. I just heard catcher Omir Santos will be starting the season in Buffalo, a fact that makes me sick. I just can’t get excited about Rod Barajas. In fact, I can’t make heads or tails on why they picked him up in the first place. He must think Barajas and Henry Blanco are an upgrade but you couldn’t convince most Mets fans of that.

I’ve defended Minaya for ages now, but I’m beginning to think I’ve been wrong about him. Not only is the present not too rosy, but the future doesn’t look that good either. Where are the pitching prospects other teams seem to have coming out their ears? Yeah, we have a first baseman in Ike Davis, a centerfielder in Fernando Martinez, and a pitcher in this Mejia(sp) who are supposed to be great (but not great enough to call up), but what about the pitching?

The starters inspire no confidence whatsoever, not even from this eternal optimist when it comes to the Mets. It’s as if God handed all the concentration and focus to Johan Santana, but withheld it totally from all the rest. Pelfrey, Maine, Perez…..what a mess! There has to be a short leash on these guys if they don’t turn it around pretty soon, especially for Perez and Maine. It’s beginning to look like the classic “addition by subtraction” situation.

K-Rod’s on the mound now, thank God. Only Sean Green’s done anything on the mound today. K-Rod just threw the nicest curve I’ve ever seen to record another strikeout. It looks as if the ninth inning will be secure, but it’s anybody’s guess how many times the Mets will arrive in that ninth inning with a lead.

Baseball’s a funny game though. Sometimes those teams appearing quite dead in March turn it immediately around once April rolls around. A Mets fan has to hope for that eventuality. I’m hoping Minaya will start showing some concern for his own immediate future. I’m hoping he gets a little less patient with players who have given him nothing in return.

Meanwhile, spring means nothing, spring means nothing…..

Olympian Effort in Baseball?

Oh baby! Baseball’s really revving up now as baseball articles intrude on the Olympics and basketball coverage inundating the sports pages. But, this happens just as I was starting to get into Bode Miller and Lindsay Vonn, and, if I must say so, Julia Mancuso. And the ice dancing, something I ordinarily wouldn’t watch, drew me in last night as the coverage led off with a piece on White and Davis, one of the two American entries skating in the top 5.

What struck me were the sacrifices these two had put in for so many years of their lives. It makes you realize that these Olympians are athletes, highly trained athletes in every sense of the word. And then to see them put up some ridiculously high number to vie for gold was very gratifying. Their attitudes were great too, happy that they did their jobs pretty splendidly and only hoping for the best. They wound up with silver, of course, and I had to grudgingly admit that that Canadian couple looked pretty damned good too. (How’s that for analysis)?

It made me wonder too. Do baseball players try that hard to achieve excellence? More particularly, do Mets players try that hard? More particularly even than that, does Oliver Perez even toss the ball around in the off-season?

I pick on Perez as I had just finished reading that Sandy Koufax was impressed with him and that Jerry Manuel was impressed that he could duplicate the same delivery twice in a row. I can understand Koufax being impressed with his arm. Koufax was notoriously wild early in his career. His success came relatively late. I can recall watching some of his early games, wondering what all the fuss was about him. He couldn’t come near the plate some games.

Let’s hope Ollie’s career takes a similar path. That’d be nice. It’s encouraging too that Manuel had some good things to say about him. At this point, I don’t think Manuel would go out of his way to say good things about someone who has arguably been the Mets greatest failure.

But really, how hard is that guy capable of working? And how long will he be able to keep it up? I guess 2010 will tell us. We’ll see if he can become the #2 starter the Mets have needed. Not that a good or even great performance from Perez would have made any difference last year.

But, all in all, there have been a lot of good indicators coming out of Mets camp. You hear that Pelfrey dropped 25 pounds, not that that’s necessarily a good thing. I can recall Sid Fernandez, one of my all-time favorite Mets pitchers, dropping weight and being dreadful. But Pelfrey’s dropping some pounds is a good sign of effort.

Carlos Beltran, too, seems over his funk, or at least that has become his story. I personally don’t think Beltran is the type of person to worry too much about anything. And while he was obviously perturbed with the Mets and their medical staff, it sounds as if it was for good reason. He knows it, the Mets probably know it, and the whole incident just smells of bad public relations and bad communications within the Mets hierarchy. Again.

Ah well, let’s face it. Everything can’t be rosy. Sometimes it’s tough to be a Mets fan. For example, I had been looking forward to watching Omir Santos break out and have a good year. Next thing I know, he’s out and Rod Barajas is in. Why? I have no idea. And Santos won’t even be the second catcher. That job will go to another guy, Thole, nobody’s ever heard of. Why? I have no idea. Maybe it’s excessive perspiration or he needs a breath mint once in a while. He sure seemed to hit in the clutch. How bad can his pitch selection be?

And speaking of pitch selection, there’s the story out of Yankee camp that Burnett and Posada have worked out their differences, or, alternately, that there was never a problem to begin with. That Girardi gave Burnett Molina to catch all his games was just some kind of miraculous coincidence. Posada isn’t as stupid as he looks….or something.

Ah geez, there’s that Yankee hate coming out of me again. I just can’t help myself sometimes, like Newman (from Seinfeld) railing against the postal system. At least he had Kramer to rein him in and bring him back to reality. I have to rely only on Yankee beat writers and the few pearls of what is supposed to be wisdom from Brian Cashman.

Okay, he finally got them a World Series. After outspending the entire free world for baseball players for around ten years or so, he finally got one. Let’s anoint him baseball’s version of Bill Walsh. Oops, there I go again.

But really, the difference between the Mets and Yanks is astounding when it comes to PR. The Mets say nothing, the Yanks spin stories. For example, Joba is officially off his pitch count, but, oh by the way, he may be going to the pen.
I’m still amazed the Yanks let Johnny Damon go. He was the perfect Yankee in that nobody was ever more full of baloney. He’s thrilled to be a Tiger, he always wanted to play for Detroit, he’s happy with his one-year contract for 8 mill. Heeeere’s Johnny….

Let’s see now, is there a point to these ramblings? I’ll tie it all up with this….if the Mets put as much effort into communications as they expect their players to put into baseball, things would be better. And if the Yankees put as much effort into baseball as they put into baloney, they’d probably have some more Series rings to their credit.

Oh, and they really should have made more of an effort for Damon/Matsui. I can’t wait for crunchtime in Yankee games when it’s all on the line for, um, Granderson? Nick Johnson? Heh-heh.

The Answer - Playing Smart Baseball

Let ‘em play. It’s May 4th, for Pete’s sake. All the brilliant sports-riders know best, of course. The Mets have no heart. The Mets have no edge. The Mets have no pitching. Oliver Perez is a bum. Gimme a break already.

Let’s go through the field and evaluate what we have:

1B – Carlos Delgado – we may not have him for the year as he’s nicked up right now, but who’d you rather have than Carlos #1 (or Carlos #2 depending upon your point of view). Carlos is a hitter’s hitter, who records every at-bat in a log. How scientific is that? What players do that? Is this a guy who needs an edge?

Tatis has been his backup. He’s only recently started to hit the way he can hit. I look forward to seeing the old Fernando again, either in left or right fields, or first base. Dan Murphy can also spell Delgado in a pinch. From what I’ve seen ths far, he may be a better risk at first than in the outfield.

2B – Castillo and Cora – Castillo has been pretty good so far and Cora, in his limited playing time, has really shown me some flash in the field. There are a lot of second basemen who hit better but I’ll take fielding consistency at this position and we’ve got that, at the very least.

3B – David Wright – once again, who’d you rather see there? He’s shown some great fielding lately and, while he hasn’t hit in the clutch yet, you can say that about a lot of players, including Texas Rangers star shortstop/third baseman Michael Young. He’ll get better in the clutch, and I’ve seen improvement since he’s been moved out of the three spot, which he couldn’t and shouldn’t be forced to handle, not when Carlos Beltran is on the team.

SS – Jose Reyes – once again, who’d you rather have? Jimmy Rollins? No thanks. Hanley Ramirez? Not me. I want to see Jose vacuuming up everything in the hole or to either side and running like crazy. He does need to recognize the game situation though, and he looks as if he’s trying.

C – Ah, now here’s a sore spot. Three catchers means you really have no catchers. Schneider just isn’t really good in any area. I haven’t seen anything from him, which is why we see so much of Castro, who’s always got a reason for not playing, it seems. Now we’re getting to see Omir Santos, and I’ll take him over the other two any day of the week. So there’s hope at catcher. If he can keep it up, Santos is the answer.

CF – still once again, who’d you rather see in center than Carlos Beltran? Great fielder, great hitter, good speed, and only occasionally seems to be sleep-walking. Time off may be the answer to that quirk, but not too much please, just enough to give him that “edge”.

LF – okay, here’s a bit of a problem, but it’s getting better. Murphy shows some signs of calming down in the field and hits the cover off the ball. Sheffield spells him and he’s a great hitter, but you can downgrade him to just good lately. All in all, they’re an entertaining duo. You’ll get excitement from both of them, but sometimes good and sometimes bad.

RF – Ryan Church just doesn’t do it for me. He doesn’t hit in the clutch, he only occasionally seems to hit at all but he fields the position really well. He doesn’t seem to come through, at least not this year, and I’d love to see anybody else in the lineup rather than him. One reason Beltran had no steals until recently is that he was followed in the lineup by a totally oblivious Church. No edge here at all.

SP – Okay, now here’s a problem being addressed. Santana and a bunch of non-producers has been the story but there are some encouraging signs lately from both Mike Pelfrey, John Maine and Livan Hernandez. The only recent dud is crazy Ollie, which might turn out to be a mistake of Pavanian proportions. Stay tuned.

RP – Putz and K-Rod have been lights out, for the most part, but then there’s Sean Green, who really hasn’t been getting it done lately. Maybe the answer for him is less usage, not more. But these young guys filling out the pen show a lot of promise, moreso than, say, the Yankees have in their pen.

Mgr – Jerry Manuel’s my type of manager. Smart with a good personality for handling all the different types you find on a baseball field. Once again, who’s better? Sciosia? Valentine? Girardi? Come on. You won’t get Francona, one of the only managers who might be better, but he’s a Manuel-type anyway.

So there’s very little reason to complain, given the makeup of the team. It’s a very tricky business. If Omar did make any mistakes, it was signing Perez and making the trade for Church and Schneider for LoDuca. Of all the myriad moves he’s made over the years, that’s not really much to whine about.

The players have to just start playing as smart as the manager. Reyes can’t over-run bases and get thrown out, Beltran can’t take a play off by not sliding, Wright has to take a different approach with two strikes or with men on base. And Manuel has to keep his prodigious baseball savvy in check . Sometimes the answer is the obvious one, not one that only a genius could even conceive.

But it’s all fixable. The most serious problem nobody talks about is the problem with Delgado. Even without him, however, the Mets should be okay, with enough pitching and defense to win a lot of games.

But they have to play (and manage) smart baseball. We haven’t seen much of that. They seem to have reverted to the form they had in Willie Randolph’s last days, which is to say they’re doing just enough to lose.

They're All in Line for 2009

The big game is over. We can stop wondering what all those speedy world-beating Cardinals were doing in the eighteen seconds it took Harrison to traverse those hundred yards to pay dirt and no longer ponder the prevent defense that could’ve killed the Steelers in the end. We can just get out in the snow and play.

Omar Minaya sure got on with his life, and that of the Mets at the same time, by finally signing good old Ollie. That would be Oliver Perez, of course, the schizoid lefthander from, as John Madden put it while describing an Oakland lineman whose head was steaming in the cold, the University of Mars.

That moniker would certainly fit Mr. Perez. Maybe the kindest thing you could say about him is that he’s not boring. Masterful one game and horrible the next, Perez is usually at his best against the best and just as bad against the worst. He also seems to lose interest after five innings, a dangerous habit especially for a team that had such an, um…….. exciting bullpen.

But he’s a year older now and, while experience certainly doesn’t guarantee anything, that should do nothing but good for mad Ollie. It’s to be hoped that the 36 million won’t go to his head, and since nothing else seems to penetrate that skull of his, I doubt that money has one chance in hell.

So ends, I would imagine, the free agent acquisitions for the Mets this season. Yeah, Pedro is still out there as is “El Comedulce”, sweet Bobby Abreu. And who knows? If they’re allowed to keep the Citi money, maybe they’ll even swing a trade for Xavier Nady, who the Yanks may have soured on, incredible as that seems to me. Of course, if there’s a bad move to be made, Cashman will find it.

Nobody could say Minaya hasn’t been on point though. He needed relievers, he got relievers; he needed a couple of starters, he got some nice ones. There have been no flights of fancy, no 43 year old left fielders, no ancient pinch-hitters or second basemen, just good solid value so far, or so it would seem anyway.

If you’re into probability though, signing guys in their twenties beats signing a bunch of old men any day of the week. As much as I like Pedro, I hope he looks great in the World Baseball Classic and signs with Boston, or even the Dodgers where he can be reunited with Manny.

There are those who will say he should have gone after Ramirez, or he should have picked up Abreu, but I really think you need to reward your current people for jobs well done. That young platoon in left field did quite nicely in left field last year, and who says they can’t get even better?

A team needs life, and that life often comes from those unproven guys in the lineup, those hustlers, those young guns trying to prove themselves. It’s what the Yankees have lacked year after year, for the most part, unless you count the young pitchers they threw into the fire last year.

You may think that last crack is a contradiction. Why is it good to give a left fielder a chance but not a pitcher? It has to do with expectations of success, I think. I’d rather go with Murphy, who showed promise for much of last season, at a less critical position, left field, than go with a rookie at a critical position, starting pitcher, for TWO rookies who really hadn’t shown much at the major league level.

Starting two rookies at starting pitcher alarms the whole team. Starting a deserving 2nd year guy in left field is a reason for optimism. It shows that the team will reward hard work and solid play. Decidedly not what the Mets had shown when they ditched Nady for a potential relief pitcher who never panned out. (That was another flight of fancy).

The Mets depth chart currently shows Murphy and Tatis in left field. It shows Nick Evans at third base. Maybe they’re expecting Wright to get tired after his World Baseball Classic. He certainly seemed to be tired in some very big spots last year.

Those are the kinds of things I’d worry about as a Mets fan, drop-offs in performance from guys who have done it in the past. I’d like to see some depth at first base, and Nick Evans is not my idea of depth at third. Delgado, Reyes, Beltran and Wright have been real workhorses for the Mets for a long time. Probability says it can’t continue. Somebody’s got to break down.

I hate to even suggest the possibility of losing any of those core guys. Who plays center like Beltran? Who can come close to providing the all-around game you usually get from Reyes or Wright? Not anybody, of course, but really, there are currently only six infielders shown on the roster, one of whom is Alex Cora at shortstop, who’s a little long in the tooth himself.

Well, it’s still early. Maybe we’ll see some new blood manning those infield positions, especially when they get into a bind. Argenis Reyes filled in nicely at second base last year. And, despite Castillo’s horrible last year, there is reason to believe he’ll recover the form he once had.

Marlon Anderson did nothing last year. That should change too, at least part of the time, as he’s an old-timer too, but he’s the Mets’ current backup for Delgado at first base. There are three catchers, Brian Schneider, Ramon Castro and Robinson Cancel, a nice threesome. Schneider is solid, Castro is a clutch hitter and seems to be the designated catcher for Santana. Cancel delivered some big hits too.

All in all, though, the Mets are all in line for 2009. The core is solid, the pitching is very good all around, but there is no depth. Depth can be had fairly easily. Omar?

Fitting Endings

It was fitting, I thought, that the Olympics should end with 400 Chinese shakin' their butts in the air. That's just the way I was feeling about the Olympics as they finally wound down, except my pants would have been at half-mast. While the beginning of these Olympic Games were practically earth-shaking, and the middle was excellent, by the end, I was ready for baseball again, oh, and football too. It was the two concurrent fantasy football drafts though that really did me in.

As I had feared for some time now, the Mets were not able to put away a team with good pitching. Although they hung around for ten innings, it was the middling Astros who took the third game of the series yesterday. And, as expected, the starting pitching was pretty good. That the relief pitching was less good, if not downright awful, had to be expected too, I guess. It had to catch up with my Metsies sometime.

The Giants-Jets game was a real yawner too, I thought, though we did see some pretty good defense, I suppose. That Osi Umenyiora was lost for the season is a real heart-breaker though. We can only hope it's not a forbidding omen, and that albatross I thought I saw flying over the stadium was just a gigantic pigeon, gone crazy from too many hot dogs and beer. Oh well, at least I won't have to spell his name again this season.

The most startling football news though, for fans not interested only in the local teams, was that Kurt Warner may have kept his starting job in Arizona over the bonus-baby heart throb from USC, one Matt Leinart. Kurt has been pretty darned good this exhibition season, but the word was that Leinart would surely be the starter. I'm sure salary negotiations may have played a part, too, in Warner's sudden ascension. When handing out millions to anyone, it's kinda nice to see them on the field, especially in Arizona, a place that has never happily given away anything, just ask Anquan Boldin.

In fact, if salary negotiations thrill you, this is your season. (Turn, turn, turn). Plaxico Burress may get some kind of extension and Antonio Pierce has had his hands out too, we are led to believe. At least the Jets seem a lot more settled right now, having already doled out multi-million dollar contracts to quite a few newcomers, such as Faneca and Pace. They may even be able to protect what's-his-name althoughthat wasn;t much in evidence on Friday night.

That the football season starts on a Thursday night thrills me not. What a stupid way to start a season. I know. I have to learn to adapt to change, Olympics in China, Jamaicans winning all the sprints, and making a big deal about the Redeem-Team beating friggin' Spain in basketball. Ho-friggin-hum. Kobe-Kobe-Kobe, WOOHOO.

But this piece is supposed to be about fitting endings, right? Well, based on this beginning, I'd have to say it would be entirely fitting if the Jets made the playoffs, what with about five rather extreme additions to both offense and defense. But for the Giants, alas, it doesn't look good. To lose Osi after losing Strahan is taking two big hits right off the bat. The rest of the league wasn't standing still, you know. I expect both the Eagles and the Skins to be more formidable this year. You can be sure Donovan McNabb will be singing no sad songs for the G-Men.

But now I must turn to the most fitting ending of all, the end of yesterday’s Mets game. I guess Mr. Manuel can’t spin a miracle every time out after all. Finding the right combination of mediocre relief had been a Manuel specialty as of late, but yesterday wasn’t one of those days. Well, actually, it did look as if he’d pull it off one more time, but he ran out of options at the end.

Pedro Feliciano gave up two, two, two big home runs in the top of the tenth to pretty much seal the Mets fate Sunday afternoon. And I say it was fitting only because the Mets have not been able to secure a top reliever after losing Billy Wagner. They did secure a pretty fair holder, if you will, but he had been used up in the ninth.

I suppose the real story of the game was that Oliver Perez could only put in 6 1/3 yesterday. Heilman relieved Perez in he seventh but couldn’t hold the lead for the southpaw starter, giving up two hits while retiring only one batter. Schoeneweis and Smith finished out the seventh and eighth very nicely too

Luis Ayala, the reliever they did acquire, has been very good, and he continued to be, pitching the ninth inning to a very good effect. But in the 10^th, Manuel was running out of options; there were only two relievers left.

Manuel opted for the lefty Feliciano. It was not his day. And it was very quickly not his day; no infuriating walks or seeing-eye base hits yesterday that in the past had brought Jerry out to the mound for a magic pitching change. No, yesterday, it was all over very quickly. Boom. Boom. Down two.

Duaner Sanchez, the last reliever, did finish out the tenth with no further damage but the Mets didn’t show much in their half of that 10^th inning and it was all over. The Astros closer, Jose Valverde, handled the top of the Mets lineup pretty handily yesterday.

But all is not lost. The Mets still retain their first place position in the NL East. They can tie the Astros series 2-2 with a win tomorrow and, as Mike Pelfrey takes the mound, things look pretty good, especially if he can give them seven or eight good innings. Then it’s the Phillies for two and Florida for three.

I sure hope the starters can keep on keeping on. Otherwise, there may be more fitting endings to come.