It'll Be Interesting

Good pitching, no hitting, how many teams have you said that about over all the years of your life? Almost none of them win when it counts. The Mets did everything they could in San Francisco to be that team. That they won the 4th game with the Giants was a gift from the worst umpire in the game.

It sure made for good entertainment. I was mesmerized. Once again the Mets pitched great. Johan Santana made it interesting though, getting into trouble and then pitching his way out. He went a full 8 for our Mets and gave up just 1 run. But the Mets only got 3 and the closer gave one away again.

The closer was, and is, K-Rod of course. But then he got the win for the boys in their ugly gray road uniforms. K-Rod is nothing if not lucky. After the Giants banged him around to tie the game in the ninth, here came the winning run around third, there we saw him cross the plate before the tag, but Mr. Cuzzi didn’t see it that way. He said the runner was out. So the game stayed tied.

Then, wonder of wonders, Jason Bay gets another hit and Ike Davis does what he always does, which is drive home the run. So they take the lead, K-Rod gets in a little trouble again in the tenth but then strikes out the last and worst hitter on the Giants (which is hard to be), and the Mets got off the hook.

The Mets can’t hit good pitching, and that’s what the Giants had. And the team they’re playing on the field isn’t the strongest. Not that it ever really was. Having no Jose Reyes doesn’t help. But the bottom of the lineup doesn’t scare anybody, Francoeur, Blanco and Tejada yesterday, and somebody called Justin Turner batted second. (And managed to score a run).

So if Bay and Wright don’t produce, then there’s Ike Davis and Pagan. Trouble is, of all those guys, Bay has done the least. I’m rooting for him, God knows we need to, and he did get three hits yesterday, but they were Jason Bay type hits, singles and stuff. It’s good that he can run fast. He gets respect from opposing pitchers but that’s all. A lot of times, Bay has looked happy to walk.

But the Giants have good pitching, really good pitching, especially if you can’t get to their middle relief, which the Mets did yesterday only. The rest of the time, it was Zito and Lincecum and Cain, making their very decent number 4 starter, Anibal Sanchez, look puny.

The Mets won’t run into that kind of pitching very often but every team has got some good ones. This west coast swing isn’t easy either, I’m sure, with Arizona and LA on the agenda after having opened the swing in that city by the bay.

But they’ll be facing tougher lineups than they saw in San Francisco. The Dodgers especially can be dangerous, but the Cards, with Pujols and Holliday, come back to CitiField for three after that. So I fully expect the pitching performances to go South a bit. But then they would have to. The Mets pitching has been terrific. Niese and Dickey have balanced out, and then some, Maine and Perez.

They have to start hitting though and the pitching has to stay good. They’ll probably try Perez again, crazy Ollie can always come back, and maybe pitch better than has Takahashi for the last month. The Mets would appear to need a fifth starter, if Takahashi can’t pick it up.

I don’t really expect the Mets to pick anybody up either, not anybody you’ve heard of. I’m sure we’ll see Perez again. I think Minaya is probably on the hook to win with what he has. At the very least, he’s working with a short rope. So I don’t really expect a big story in that direction, ie pitching.

The Mets have come up short though in their last 3 series against the cream of the league, Cinci (surprisingly), Atlanta and San Francisco. If the pitching is there, the hitting isn’t. If they manage to hit, the pitching falls down.

I think they’re just not good enough. At full strength, they’re a heck of a lot fun to watch though, and they could go on a run. If Reyes comes back strong, and Castillo can solidify that lineup a little bit, the defense is tough, the pitching is very pesky and that manager isn’t as bad as everybody seems to think.

Manuel was questioned for taking Santana out in the ninth. Not me, there was no reason to push him when he had already thrown 117 or so. Manuel knows the race is a long one. It was K-Rod who messed up and K-Rod who would be lucky enough to save the day….if not the game itself.

Manuel is juggling a lot of pins. Many times, things work out. Like using Bobby Parnell. Bobby Parnell’s been good since his return, much better than anybody could have expected. He’s the eighth inning guy lately (and one time the ninth) and not perpetual Pedro. But the relief staff is not deep right now, a fact that hasn’t even hurt them lately, not with good starting pitching and Bobby Parnell.

Manuel always is thinking long run. He won’t put himself or his team out of it. But he can only play with what he’s got on that bench. And although you love to see the Tejadas and Carters and Turners, especially when they play well, as Turner did yesterday, they’re not exactly Jason Kubel, y’know.

But there’s a reason we’re seeing all these new people, people we’ve never heard of. They’re obviously restricting any big expenditures. There have already been some bad ones.

But the Mets will keep things interesting. Jerry will juggle these guys and Omar will find something cheap to plug the gaps. They have to.

No Maine In Sight

I hate to pile on but nobody deserves it more than John Maine.

What can a guy expect when he walks the world to open his last game and then gets taken out when he opens a game with another walk? Manuel was absolutely right to take Maine out in that spot. If John Maine had any sense of judgment at all, his priority last night should have been to throw strikes, especially to that first batter of the game.

Manuel shouldn’t have to justify taking Maine out with allusions to the 85 mph speed of his fastball (for lack of a more genteel word), or express what might have been a legitimate concern for Maine’s health.

Manuel’s team needed a win. They’d been swept in Florida and floundered in Washington. Maine had been horrible in his last start and Manuel kept him in that game longer than he needed to, much to his regret, I’m sure. Manuel expected and needed strikes. He didn’t get them.

He also got a pitcher acting as if he were hurt, bent over, looking defeated. So what’s a manager to do?

Maine’s temper tantrum reflects his sense of entitlement, a curiously undeserved feeling for a guy who hasn’t been worth much for quite a while. Maine’s expectations far exceed his talent. Why should his treatment differ from that of Oliver Perez, who just got axed from the rotation? And he was removed partly for not finding the plate.

Maine desperately needed a sense of urgency last night. The most urgent need was to throw a strike. He didn’t. Case closed.

That the Mets later won didn’t matter to Maine. He continued to pout. All those Mets runs could’ve been his to work with. Bummer! That this guy has been a Met for so long might partially explain what has been wrong with the team, lo these many years.

Maine’s removal energized the whole team. How often have the Mets had 3-run innings, and then a 5-run inning? It was as if they said, “okay, everybody hits” and that was just what they did. Everybody hit, and the core guys, Wright and Bay and Reyes, seemed to lead the charge.

The Mets also got a terrific pitching performance from Raul Valdes, who went a full five innings and struck out six Washington batters while spacing 7 hits and just one measly walk. He came out after allowing his first base on balls. Are you awake yet, Mr. Maine? There are other pitchers out there. Some of them show the intensity required to pitch in the major leagues. Most of them can throw strikes.

I’ve felt all along that the success of the Mets season would depend not on the success of Maine and Perez but on how quickly the Mets would respond and manage their situations and their failures. The Mets had been patient with both and even coaxed a few decent performances from them. But now, as it seems both have reverted to recent form, the Mets need to clear the decks.

It’s not as if there are no decent alternatives. Takahashi has been great in long relief. There’s no reason to think he can’t be effective as a starter. Knuckleballer R.A. Dickey has already tossed in one nice start. He might be just the change of pace the Mets rotation needs to baffle opposing bats from day to day. Igarashi will be returning to the fold soon to bolster the pitching in general. And just who wouldn’t inspire more hope than John Maine?

Even the refusal of Perez to pitch at Buffalo for a while may turn to the Mets favor. Perez has already appeared in a relief role, and, although he did walk a batter, he did get the one out the Mets needed.

So, without Maine, it’d be Santana, Pelfrey, Niese (hopefully soon), Takahashi and Dickey. Without Niese, then some more resourcefulness is needed. Rookie Mejia, who has been effective in relief, may ultimately be the nice answer. In the short run, Pat Misch and last year’s bust Parnell could be this year’s boom. And, even if they can just turn in mediocre performances in the bigs, they will have been better than John Maine.

After this terrible road trip, 2-6, one has to wonder how competitive this Mets team can be over the long haul. Before the trip I thought it would be a good measure of how competitive they could be in their division. But if that were true, the Mets will be in bad shape this year.

The hitting has been so bad though lately. It’s hard to believe the bats can’t get a lot better than they’ve been. If the bats pick up and the pitching can hold together, the Mets can easily pick up. I know I’m looking forward to three days of Takahashi, Pelfrey and Santana. It’s only after that that expectations descend somewhat.

Can Dickey repeat a nice job? Who’ll it be after that? I guess that’s why they play the game.

Merde! The actual Yankee-Mets game has intervened. Takahashi was great. The Mets couldn’t hit the Yankees Javier Vasquez or Joba after that. They did manage to get a couple of hits from Bay and Davis off Mariano but it was too little, too late and the Mets lost 2-1.

But they looked damned good in every other way, the pitching, the fielding, the managing…..even given Cora’s big throwing error and the inauspicious debut of Elmer Dessens, that anybody but the far-seeing Manuel could have foreseen.

Vasquez got all the Mets out except Alex Cora for one of those mysterious reasons that only occur in baseball. But he got all the “big” guys out. Joba Chamberlain was like the old Joba, except he looks 20 pounds heavier to me. Maybe it’s just my imagination. When Girardi doesn’t totally kill his spirit, Joba rules.

So now it’s just Pelfrey and Santana to face Hughes and Sabathia. And no Maine appearance in sight for 15 days.

Anything's Possible for these Mets

I couldn’t be happier. The Mets are playing good baseball. They came back from oblivion to achieve a better than .500 record in the space of about 10 days. And they’re doing it with pitching, not just good relief pitching either. The starters have come on like gangbusters. Santana, Pelfrey and Niese have ben magnificent. Perez and Maine have held their own.

But it hasn’t been just pitching. It’s been the fortuitous return of Ike Davis from Buffalo. It’s been Jose Reyes flashing his speed from the third spot in the order. It’s been Jason Bay starting to hit. It’s been good baserunning, good fielding, and opportunistic hitting, even taking into account a low figure for aveage with runners in scoring position.

It must be pointed out that Mets fans had not been feeling optimistic. There was nothing to feel that good about just about 10 days ago. The angst begins with the starter of the day. With Santana, they worry he’ll relapse, with Pelfrey, they worry he’ll go to pieces with men on base, with Niese, that he’ll realize he’s young, with Maine and Perez, that they won’t totally implode.

None of those maladies befell the Mets starters in this streak of good fortune. The closest thing to a bad start was Maine’s injuring his off-arm and coming out in the fourth inning on Friday, the opener against the Braves, those same Braves that just seem to thrash the Mets at every opportunity. But Hisanori Takahashi, one of their two Japanese imports this season, struck out seven Braves in three innings.

What a game that Friday night affair was! For a long stretch there in the middle of the game, it was two Japanese pitchers facing each other, and they were both looking very effective. But, in the Mets half of the sixth, Ike Davis hit the Shea Bridge in deep right centerfield to put the Mets ahead. It was a truly majestic shot, one that seemed to pee on the Citi Field dimensions.

Then, in the seventh, as if to show that Ike wasn’t the only Met player with power, Reyes and Bay hit two triples in a row. Bay’s shot was quite a shot, just hitting the base of that long wall. Then Wright drove in Bay with still another long shot to right center to put the game away.

I say “put the game away” but when the Mets play the Braves, that never seems to be the case. But after Takahashi left the game in the 7th, Raul Valdez got the third out, Feliciano mowed the Braves down in the 8th, and K-Rod, after giving the Braves life with a walk and a single, finally closed it out after striking out two very dangerous hitters, McLouth and Prado.

That game put the Mets at 8-9. After taking 3 of 4 from the Cubs and smoking the Braves in the opener, they just had to somehow get by Braves pitcher Jair Jurrjens to get to .500. Once again, Jonathon Niese got the call, and once again, he came through. He threw lots of pitches and walked more than his share, but in the end, the Braves had scored just one, thanks to some pretty fair (to put it mildly) relief from the likes of Manny Acosta and then the usual suspects, Nieve, Feliciano and K-Rod.

The Mets were .500.

It was a wonder that Sunday’s game got off at all. It had rained all day. But the Mets got a run in the first that Reyes virtually stole and Pelfrey blanked the Braves for five innings before the rains came down for real in the sixth, thus fortunately ending still another game in the Mets favor, and voila, the Mets were a winning team.

It’s easy to like this team too. They still can’t hit very much, especially early in the game, but they have come through in the stretch more often than not. Ike Davis really energized this team while the new lineup, with Reyes batting third, seems to be working too.

Jason Bay seems to have found his swing finally after three weeks of mostly frustration. Wright’s struggles continue though, and it seems he’s lost that swing from the legs that was supposed to bring his power back this season. Hopefully, he can find that swing again.

This Mets team seems complete just as it is. This team has won 7 of its last 10 and its last four in a row. If the Mets had any thoughts about trading Carlos Beltran, who seems to not want to return, this would be the time to pull the trigger, before he comes back, before encountering the risk of a bad start after a long period of injury.

Angel Pagan is no Beltran, but he is a good player and seems to hold his own. And, with Fernando Martinez in the wings up in Buffalo too, I’d think centerfield was not a worry, especially given that Gary Matthews, that second ill-advised pickup (the first being Mike Jacobs), is still with the team.

Beltran could easily bring another pitcher to Citi Field, an established pitcher who could lend some savvy and experience to that rotation, especially if it begins to show signs of faltering. With Maine and Perez, it seems almost inevitable that, somewhere down the road, another starter will be needed, especially if the Mets are still in contention in July.

In the meantime, I’ll enjoy watching these Mets as presently constructed. It’s a fiery team, a resilient team, one that’s becoming successful with great pitching, a much better defense with Ike at first base, and just enough hitting to get by, even with some potentially big bats still struggling.

Tonight it’ll be the Dodgers coming to town, with Kuroda facing up against Ollie Perez, who is winless thus far despite his 3.71 ERA. If the Mets can continue to get by his turn in the rotation, anything’s possible in the NL East, even a pennant.