Monthly Archives: September 2004
Metsblog.com is currently working with renowned journalists, former players, broadcasters and industry experts on creating a Mets Think Tank, all in an effort to create a new plan for the Mets franchise.
However, we need your help in conducting a Mets survey, which will help guide the decisions of our Think Tank.
If you are interested, please email answers to the following questions to info@metsblog.com.
Additionally, feel free to forward this survey to any fellow Mets fans – the more feedback, the better.
The survey is as follows…
Question
Would you rather see the Mets win the World Series next season, in 2005, with a $200 Million payroll and team full of free agent signings and no home grown talent, or would you rather see them lose the next three season, win the World Series in 2008 and do it with mostly home grown talent and a few key free agents?
Answers
I’d rather see the Mets win the World Series next season with a $200 Million payroll and team full of free agent signings and no home grown talent.
I’d rather see the Mets lose the next three seasons, win the World Series in 2008 and do it with mostly home grown talent.
—————————–
Question
Assuming the Mets will not make the playoffs for the next three seasons, but will truly stick to a “build from within” mindset, in other words ‘a rebuilding phase’, how many games at Shea Stadium do you think you’d attend in each of the following three seasons?
Answers
1-3
3-5
5-10
10-20
—————————-
Question
How many games per year have you attended over the last three seasons?
Answers
1-3
3-5
5-10
10-20
—————————–
Question
How many games per year did you attend between 1998 and 2000?
Answers
1-3
3-5
5-10
10-20
—————————
Question
On a scale of 1-10, 10 being “very important” and 1 being “not important at all”, how important is it to you personally, as a fan, that the Mets protect their relationship with Mike Piazza, guaranteeing he is always synonymous with the Mets organization?
Answers
1-10
——————————-
Question
As a baseball fan, which baseball game would you pay to watch?
Answers
A 10-8 final score with six home runs, few stolen bases, a plethora of doubles in the gap and plenty of pitching changes
A 4-3 final score with one home run, a lot of sacrifice flies, stolen bases and bunts, an occasional run scoring double, a few nice defensive plays, a solid pitching performance and a lot of downtime to run to the bathroom and order a hot dog
A 1-0 pitcher’s duel with no home runs, tremendous defense and very action on the base paths
——————————
Question
If you could pay to see one of the following hitters again, in their prime, who would it be?
Answers
Keith Hernandez
Lenny Dykstra
Darryl Strawberry
——————————–
Question
If you could pay to see one of the following pitchers again, in their prime, who would it be?
Answers
Dwight Gooden
Sid Fernandez
Frank Viola
###
Email your answers to info@metsblog.com
Thanks, again.
Metsblog.com
How will the four-year, $52 million deal for RHP Pedro Martinez play out for the New York Mets?
Discuss…
The Daily News reported on Monday that the Mets were planning to offer OF Carlos Beltran an eight-year deal worth between $120 million and $140 million.
Is Beltran worth between $15 million and $17.2 million per season for the next eight years?
Discuss…
Metsblog.com will be closed for business from Labor Day through Columbus Day to prepare our MetsThinkTank
report; create a merchandise section; tweak our website for the
upcoming hotstove season; assemble a team of hot stove correspondents;
create a new series of Confidence Ratings, including gauges of
confidence for the general manager, ownership, and in the team’s
apparent short term and longterm plans; and lastly, for all of us to
take a deep breath.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
However, given that the team will not be playing”meaningful games” this
month, there appears to be no better time than the present to retool
Metsblog.com, and push full steam ahead towards our goal of becoming
the Online Voice of the Mets Fan.
Thank you, again, for your loyalty, readership, participation and understanding, it is appreciated more than youknow.
Have a great September, and we’ll see you next month.
Shea II, not Ebbets Redux
By Scott Nathanson
As we, the Flushing faithful, slog our way
through another season of clinging doggedly to our boys in orange and blue, and
any shred of hope for a brighter future, I’d like to take a break from the here
and now and speak a bit to another dream: our once and future ballpark.
Let me begin with a brief but loving tribute
to our old friend Shea Stadium. It is a
dump. But it is our dump.
I have memories of Shea in the 70’s – my
Grandpa Lou picking seat splinters out of my leg and then correctly predicting
how Dave Winfield was going go break our hearts by hitting a game winning home
run of Jerry Koosman just after hitting a titanic blast foul.
I remember the 80’s – the Diamond Vision’s
first season, and, of course, the Home Run Hat. I remember Bob Mandt, a Met public relations executive, giving me
the thrill of a lifetime by allowing my wife and I to take our engagement
photos on Shea’s field, and sneaking over to first base so I could say that I
stood in the same place that my boyhood idol, Keith Hernandez, once patrolled.
All that said, though, we all know Shea has
to go. And it will, sooner or
later.
There is no way that, while cities like
Philadelphia, Baltimore and San Diego have new ballparks, the drab behemoth
that is Shea can continue to be home to a team in the number one city in the
world.
A new stadium in New York may still be years
away, but now is the time for Mets fans to start telling both Met management
and the city of New York what we’d prefer to see.
Here’s my take…
I would ask that Fred Wilpon take that nice
model of Ebbets Field II that his designers built with the nostalgic facade and
cozy dimensions and throw it in the trash.
The New York Mets are not the Brooklyn Dodgers. The majority of Mets fans have memories akin
to the ones I listed above. We remember
Tom Terrific, not Roy Campinella. We
remember Mookie Wilson, not Pee Wee Reese.
We remember Mike Piazza, not Duke Snyder.
The Mets have their own tradition to build
upon, and neither need to nor should they want to borrow from a franchise that
broke the hearts of this town and left for L.A.
Additionally, the Ebbets model’s cozy nature
would make it like every other bandbox that’s been built from Camden Yards to
Minute Maid Park to Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. Pitching and defense has been the trademark
of successful Mets teams. It is what
they’re all about. In this age of
steroid-toting muscle men, Shea has survived as a pitcher’s paradise. An Ebbets bandbox will make the modern Mets
like every other team desperately trying to land sluggers, further contributing
to the death of the pitcher’s duel.
Shea may be old and tired, but the ballpark
has shaped both this franchise and its fans into something special. Petco Park in San Diego and Comerica Park in
Detroit are more the models to follow for the Mets. All the modern amenities, yet spacious dimensions that allow the
Mets to be, well, the Mets.
Lastly, the new Mets stadium should do what
was done in the old Comiskey Park: allowing local restaurants to have stands in
the ballpark to give an authentic Queens flavor to the facility – wouldn’t it
be great to have a real, local slice of pizza at the ballpark. While we’re at it, can we also swap Kahn’s
for Nathan’s?
These are just a few ideas. What are yours?
Keep the conversation going in the feedback
section below.
Scott Nathanson brought his 3 year old, Gus, to the
“sweep” game against the Yankees this year at Shea – the boy has been
able to chant “Lets Go Mets” on command ever since. Nathanson still thinks Keith Hernandez
should get out of the booth and onto the bench.
The Game...
The
Mets dropped a 4-2 lead on Paul Lo Duca’s go-ahead, two-run single off
of Tom Glavine in the sixth inning, and lost to the Marlins 5-4 at Shea
on Wednesday.
The loss drops Glavine to 9-11 on the season.
Armando
Benitez locked down his league leading 40th save, ten of which are
against the Mets. He is the first pitcher to ever save ten games
against one team in a single season.
Today…
The
Mets look to snap their five-game losing streak this afternoon as Jae
Seo takes the hill against the Marlins – game time 1:05 PM EST.
In his last start, Seo, 4-7 with a 4.65 ERA, allowed one run and five hits in 6 1/3 innings against Los Angeles.
The Mets are 1-9 on their current home stand, have lost five in a row and 10 of their last 11.
The Quote…
“I’m
not trying to be a spokesman, but I’ll talk about what’s going on. I
hate to lose, and talking about it helps me deal with it. If we were
winning, there would be more feedback from people. I assume that
responsibility to keep it straight. I speak from the heart. I have to
be honest with people. It’s the only way I know. I don’t think they’re
going to get rid of me because of my comments. If they do, that means
they didn’t really want me in the first place.” – Cliff Floyd, as
quoted by Lee Jenkins of the New YorkTimes.
The News...
Mike
Cameron missed his fourth straight game due to a viral infection.
Art Howe told Adam Rubin of the Daily News that Cameron looked like
“death warmed over.”
Rubin also reports that OF Wayne Lydon could join the Mets after Double-A Binghamton completes its playoff run.
Prentice Redman cleared waivers and returned to Norfolk yesterday.
The Notes…
Moments
before last night’s game, Mets clubhouse attendant Nick Priore, “a
longtime clubhouse man with the Yankees going back to the days of
Mickey Mantle”, as the Star-Ledger
writes, suffered a mild heart attack and collapsed in the players’ food
room. Mike Piazza . The two men performed CPR and are credited
with saving the man’s life. “I caught myself a couple of times
thinking about it in the outfield,” Cliff Floyd told the Star-Ledger.
“We always talk about the things that are supposedly so tough for us
and sometimes we forget about the important things, like life, until a
situation like this happens. It was a very scary situation. We’re just
happy the trainers were there because if they weren’t there might not
be a Nick right now.”
The Miami Herald suggests that the Marlins will offer Carl Pavano a three-year deal worth roughly $22 million.
Bartolome Fortunato, who had not pitched since Aug. 23 due to shoulder tendonitis, pitched a scoreless seventh.
According to the Star-Ledger,
the Mets expect a counter-offer to their two-year, $12 million offer
from Kris Benson‘s agent, Gregg Clifton, as early as today.
Jason
Phillips caught his fifth straight game in the wake of Vance Wilson’s
hand injury. Phillips went 2-for-4 to raise his average to .203.
Marty
Noble of Newsday offers the following bit of wit: The Mets are
autographing a souvenir home plate for charity. Glavine signed,
appropriately, on the corner. And Ques-Tec didn’t question the
authenticity of the signature. The middle of the plate could have been
reserved for Aaron Heilman, who was not among the Triple A players
promoted yesterday.
The Mets are on pace to finish 73-89, six games better than last season.
Art Howe talked with Christopher Russo during his weekly chat on WFAN’s Mike and the Maddog this afternoon.
How had the following to say regarding…
whether
or not it bothered him that Mets GM Jim Duquette talked with Cliff
Floyd and Mike Cameron regarding their comments a week ago…
“I talked with them, obviously, before [Duquette] did, and he didn’t know I had talked with them. I think it was important for him to have his worth of two cents to say to those guys too,” Howe responded. Much
like Duquette said yesterday, when asked the same question by
Russo, Howe chalked the entire incident up to a rough day and bad timing
- adding that the media tends to put these guys in positions where they
can slip up with their words.
the perception that he is a “low key guy” in the clubhouse, and whether or not he“burns” with anger over the team’s results…
“Nobody burns more than I do,” Howe quickly remarked. “Going through
what we’ve gone through has not been fun, and I’m suffering as much as
anyone on this club – probably more so, because I want to win as badly
as anyone that’s played the game. No, because
I don’t go in and throw things and throw tantrums, it’s not my makeup, I
don’t think it’s the right way to handle things – there’s proper ways to
do things, there’s ways to get your point across. But,
at the time same time, you’ve got to have some kind of control
over yourself if you want to get your players to be able do things the
right way.”
the purported comments that Jeff Wilpon called Howe a “weak” manager…
Before Russo could even finish the question, Howe jumped in by saying, “That’s totally false.” Russo
then pressed the manager, wondering where comments like that come from – to which Howe responded,“I don’t know, you tell me.” Silence
ensued
for a few seconds, realizing that Howe’s remakr intendid to put blame
on media types, such as Russo, for the accusations that often surround
the Mets; Russo continued his line of questioning, however, asking if
Wilpon ever asked Howe to be tougher on the players. Howe answered, “Not in those terms whatsoever.”
whether or not Howe’s job hinges upon the Mets winning 90-games…
“I haven’theard that either,” Howe quickly said, sounding rather bored with Russo’s insinuations. Russo then asked if Howe felt comfortable that he would be managing the Mets in 2005, to which Howe replied, “I hope so.” Adjusting his line of questioning, Russo asked if Howe “sensed” if he was on the hot seat. Howe ,however, didn’t adjust his responses, saying, “I don’t know. Like I said, I’m doing my job the best I can, Chris, and that’s all Ican do. All I know is that when this team was healthy, we were holding our own against anybody. And when the injuries started hitting us, we just couldn’t handle it.”
on
field moves this season, that Howe would like to say, as a way to better
prepare for next season, such as experimenting with certain situations…
Howe
only commented on minor moves, like Jeff Keppinger playing shortstop a
bit to see if the youngster can handle a utility roll. Russo then
asked the question he hoped to get an answer for, which was asking whether or
not Kaz Matsui would play second base at all this season – Howe
responded with only a quick,“No.”
Victor Zambrano…
“There is no doubt,” Howe said with a serious tone, “that if this kid stays healthy, he’s going to be a winner for us.”
whether he is bothered at all that the fans haven’t been able to see what Art Howe is capable of as a manager…
“Yeah it bothers me,” Howe remarked with a tone of frustration. “Our fans are starving for a winner, and I want to give it to them badly. But we haven’t been able, for two years, to keep anything together here. For whatever reason, that’s the fact. To
be able to put those kinds of wins together and put a team together like
that, you have to be able to get on a roll, and stay healthy, and
that’s been the biggest difference between [my time in Oakland and
New York].” Russo implied that we’d never know it by looking at him, in other words: Howe’s so calm it looks like nothing bothers him. He replied, “It’s killing me.”
Metsblog.com’sTake…
Howe’s passion…
It’s obvious that Howe is frustrated. Who wouldn’t be?
The
questions aren’t: does Howe get upset, is he steady like a rock, does he
throw tables and chairs, or is he a rational grandfather type. The questions are: what kind of team are the Mets going to be, and is Howe the right man to lead that team forward.
I have no idea what the answer is to that. But then again, that’s not our job, per say.
Metsblog will be sure to address this during our MetsThinkTank, though.
On this comment…
“I think it was important for him to have his worth of two cents to say to those guys too.”
Huh?
Goodnight, Ned.
The Game…
Jose
Beckett pitched a six-hitter for his first regular-season shutout,
leading the Florida Marlins over the New York Mets 5-0 on Tuesday night
for their fifth consecutive victory. Juan Pierre hit a two-run
single and the Marlins took advantage of a career-high seven walks by
Steve Trachsel, who lost his fourth straight start. Beckett drove in a
run with a bases-loaded walk and Paul Lo Duca had an RBI single
(associated Press).
The Marlins are now within three games of the Wild Card lead.
The Quotes…
“Win some games.” – Jim Duquette, when asked what the Mets goal is the remainder of the season.
“I
don’t bother myself with those kinds of issues. That stuff, it’s
like I told the players — there are a lot of things out of your
control. You just handle what you can control, and do the best at that,
and what will be will be.” - Art Howe, regarding rumors that he could be fired at the end of the season.
The News…
MLB.com
reports that, according to Mets GM Jim Duquette, the MRI taken on Kaz
Matsui’s ailing back was no different from the one taken on Aug. 9 or
the one taken when Matsui signed with New York last December. “He
still has the soreness and inflammation, so he’ll go back to Florida
and resume baseball activities to tolerance,” Duquette told reporters.
“The doctors didn’t really put a timetable on [when he can return]. The
reports were that he was getting better, but because it was still sore,
it was worrisome for him.” Though Jose Reyes is reportedly
planning to return to the club at the end of next week, he has yet to
take a ground ball during his rehab. Neither Reyes nor Matsui
were present for the Mets official team photo, which was taken
yesterday prior to the game at Shea.
Kevin Czerwinski of MLB.com
reports that the Mets will bring up Matt Ginter, Tyler Yates and Craig
Brazell on Wednesday, when the rosters expand.
The Notes…
In
case you missed it, Mets GM Jim Duquette appeared on WFAN’s Mike and
the Maddog with Christopher Russo yesterday. To read a recap of the
interview, check it out in Metsblog.com’s In Case You Missed It section.
Art
Howe told reporters that C Vance Wilson will only serve as a defensive
replacement until the pain in his hand subsides, which stems from being
hit by a pitch in San Francisco ten days ago.
Mike Cameron
remained out of the lineup for the second straight day due to a viral
infection. Though he was in the dugout on Monday, he rested at
home during last night’s game.
Todd Zeile is ten hits shy of 2,000 for his career, a group that contains only 84 other Major Leaugers.
The
AP provides this statistical nugget: Attendance [at last night's Mets
game] was 17,770, compared with 51,777 across town at Yankee Stadium
and 21,740 for the night session at the U.S. Open tennis tournament
across the street from Shea.
The Mets are only one game better, , than they were at this time last season, .
Five publications, including Newsday, the New YorkTimes, the Star-Ledger, the New York Post and the Daily News, discuss the potential firing of Art Howe. Adam Rubin of the Daily News
suggests, according to a club insider, that if Fred and Jeff Wilpon
were convinced to eat Howe’s deal, they’d opt to bring in a low-cost
replacement.
Metsblog.com’s Take...
Howe is
obviously on the hot seat. Though the team isn’t going to say so,
the smoke is way too strong for their not to be some fire.
Therefore, the remainder of the season will answer some interesting questions, such as:
Will this team win more games than last year’s club?
Will any young players step up and wiggle onto the roster for next season?
Will Mike Cameron become a 30-30 guy?
Will Todd Zeile be the 85th Major Leaguer to get 2,000 hits?
Will
aging veterans, such as Tom Glavine, Mike Piazza and Al Leiter, be able
to keep the remaining wheels from fallingcompletely off of this wagon?
Will Art Howe prove his worth, enough at least to remain manager of the Mets for next season?
Will Mike Piazza play a solid enough first base that he assures the club he can play there full-time next season?
Will
the ghost town that will be Shea be finally enough to inspire the team
to truly shake things up next season and bring in new, though
notnecessarily expensive, talent?
Hmmm….maybe the Mets are playing meaningful games this September – just not the kind of meaning that we had hoped for.
