Daily Archives: May 16, 2006
The Game…
The Mets (23–14) head to St. Louis to take on the Cardinals (24–14) for the first game of a three-game set starting tonight at 8:10 pm EDT…
The Pitchers…
LHP Tom Glavine (5–2, 2.19 ERA) starts for the Mets … In one start against the Cardinals last season, Glavine pitched seven scoreless innings with three strike outs … Glavine is batting .500 in 12 at-bats this season with a double and two RBI … In 16 at-bats against Glavine, Jim Edmonds has just three hits, while Scott Rolen is batting .360 in 50 at-bats and Albert Pujols is batting .529 in 17 at-bats with zero home runs…
RHP Jeff Suppan (4–2, 4.58 ERA) starts for the Cardinals … Suppan, 31, has a 2.25 ERA at home this season, where he is 3–0 with 15 strike outs compared to four walks … Paul Lo Duca is 5–for-12 against Suppan, while Carlos Delgado is just 6–for-26…
The Notes…
Following a power surge, Carlos Beltran has just five hits in his last 25 at-bats…
Carlos Delgado leads the team with 14 multi-hit games…
Paul Lo Duca has a four game hitting streak, and is 6–for-19 on the team’s current road trip…
Kaz Matsui has a nine game hitting streak, during which he has four runs scored, three doubles, three RBI, three walks and a stolen base…
Jose Valentin has six hits in his last 11 at-bats…
Aaron Heilman has allowed just one run in his 15.1 innings pitched…
The Mets have scored more than 30 percent of their runs in the third and seventh innings this season…
The Bleachers…
To chat during the game, go to MetsBlog’s Bleachers … or, to access the chat room through IRC, go to server name irc.echo34.com and channel #metsblog…
…enjoy…
The Simple Request…
…please win, guys…i’m getting antsy…thanks…
At The Baseball Journals, Maury Brown explains how MLB and FOX continue to haggle over a new broadcasting arrangement, as their current deal expires at the end of this season…
…first off, maury’s blog is one best blogs about the business of baseball…if you enjoy this portion of the game, i highly encourage you to read his work…
…second…if there is any way to get mlb to agree with a network that is not fox, let me know, as i will do everything i can to make sure it happens…
…i have nothing against Jeanie Zolasko and Kevin Kennedy, or even Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, i just can’t their craziness anymore…i am punch drunk from all the graphics, and cut-aways, and sound effects, and goofy jokes, and personal profiles, and cartoon baseballs who give bad lectures about the game, and the music videos, and four-hour old game breaks, and, oh, the lack of anything baseball…
…i know i sound like a 92–year-old man moaning about mtv or a video game, but i am what i am: a kid who likes baseball…that’s it…the game of baseball…nothing more, nothing less…
In USA Today, Hal Bodley writes that, despite their recent struggles coupled with the red-hot Phillies, the Mets remain the team with the best chance to end the Braves’ run of 14 straight division titles…
For those who may have been in a coma over the last two weeks, the Star-Ledger’s Dan Graziano tracks the team’s slide from a seven game lead to a one game lead over the Phillies…
…the phillies have won 13 of 14 games…this will not continue…just like it was unrealistic to expert the mets to continue the pace they were on after the first two weeks of the season, it’s unrealistic to expect the phillies to go 100–20 the rest of the season…they’re a good team, but they’re not that good…
…this will be a tough stretch of games for the mets…they head to st. louis for three against the cardinals, following by six games against the yankees and phillies at shea…meanwhile, the phillies, in addition to playing the mets, will take on the brewers on the road and the red sox at home…
If you look around the Mets blogosphere, the mood is murky…
Jaap, at Archie Bunker’s Army, flat out writes, “The Mets are in trouble.”…
Greg, at Faith and Fear in Flushing, asks, “ Where are the freaking Marlins when you need them?”…
Whitney, at Misery Loves Company, is worried, among nine other reasons, because, “Willie Randolph has begun making ’05-esque misreads.”…
…it’s days like this that i realize just how long the baseball season actually is…it feels like it’s about to end next week, yet opening day seems like years ago…neither is accurate…fact is, the mets are 24–13, weathering a rough stretch right now, and have a lot of baseball yet to play, including a ton of games against their division, and with some solid young talent in its minor leagues that has still yet to be tapped…
…this season has only just begun…so buckle in…
At his blog for the Daily News, with one eye on Mike Pelfrey, Adam Rubin takes a look at college pitchers taken with the top 10 selections during the past five years, and how fast they either have or have not made it to the Major Leagues…
…it’s a shaky bunch, and far from a lock on success…Mark Prior is clearly the most notable, but he spends more time in the trainer’s room than he does on the mound, it seems…
…also interesting is that six of the 18 are currently recovering from some sort of arm surgery, including Philip Humber, who was drafted by the mets in the first round of 2004…
At Triple-A Norfolk, OF Lastings Milledge has just seven hits in his last 48 at-bats, and is now batting .287 down from his late-April high of .375…
…and you know mets management is watching…
…this is why they challenged him with a quick promotion to triple-a, to see how he’ll adjust in this very situation…if he can fight off this slump, like a big-leaguer, and get back on track, he will take a huge step forward…
…clearly he is struggling to re-adjust at triple-a, though we all know he’ll recalibrate…he’s too good not to…but, asking him to make these adjustments for the first time at the major-league level can be suicide mission for a young player’s career, especially in new york…
Mets C Paul Lo Duca talked with WFAN 660 AM in New York this morning, and had the following to say regarding…
…Duaner Sanchez, who allowed his first run of the season this past weekend…
“He was due. It was gonna happen, and it did. He made some bad pitches and they made him pay. But, he’s still our guy down there setting up for Billy [Wagner]…he’s gonna be fine. When you give up no runs in 20 innings you knew it was gonna happen and, you know, he’s gonna be fine…I like Willie’s decision sticking right back in there and saying, “you’re owr man.”…
…the umpires, who seem to be clashing a lot with the Mets this season…
“I think it stems from, first of all, this thing they call it QuestTec. I think the umpires are put in a tough position. I remember when they first got the QuesTec and I went and saw it in Cleveland. And, literally, this didn’t show strikes that…if you pitched a curve ball, it could bounce and it comes up a strike on QuesTec. And these guys get graded on that QuesTec, and it’s terrible. The system that they have is…it’s a terrible system. It puts pressure on the umpire, and we have QuesTec in New York and every time they come in they know that the QuesTec’s there and they’re being graded on it. I think it puts them in a tough situation and I think the system is bologna…
“They’ve also got these guys making sure the game moves faster, and that’s coming down from Major League and Bud Selig. And I think that’s bologna, too. There’s no time clock. And you know something, it’s been a hundred-and-something friggin’ years since we’ve been playing this game, so something’s going right, so let it happen. I never understood it.”…
…the team’s recent inability to hit with runners in scoring position…
“It’s just, you know, we’ve gotta stay with the same plan. We’re getting guys on, and when we get guys on we change our plan. And, you know what, you’re gonna go through that. But, we need to buckle down and take better at-bats with guys on base…
“We’ve been doing the little things, moving guys over, we’re just haven’t gotten the big hit and we need to do that, too…
…Jeremi Gonzalez…
“He threw the ball really well. He threw strikes. A ton of strikes. He went right after guys, so I think he’s gonna be fine.”…
…Jose Lima…
“I thought he threw the ball well…until that one inning where he got in trouble. He was really, really good. He worked in the bullpen with Tom Glavine, who worked with him a bit on changing speeds, and I think Jose’s gonna be okay.”…
…the Subway Series, and the madness that ensues throughout New York when the two teams meet…
“I can’t wait. I’m excited. This is what you play for, stuff like this.”…
…the Phillies, who have moved from seven games back to one game back of the Mets for first place in the National League East…
“They’re good. They swing the bats well. They play in a stadium that fits them. You know, it’s tough to win in that stadium. What ends up happening, over the long haul, when it gets hot out you play a lot, a lot of games in the stadium that are really, really long, and they’re high scoring and it wears out your bullpen and over the long run it’s tough.”…
To listen to Lo Duca’s entire interview go to WFAN.com…
John Rovere from Northport asks…
“Is it me, or does Jose Reyes hit a home run, then go into a 2–for-35 swoon after every home run?”…
It does feel this way, John. My first reaction was to think about this a bit, before looking at the statistics. When I think of Reyes, I think of him either blazing towards third on a triple, as though he were just shot from a canon, or I think of him swinging and missing on a slider in the dirt, looking like drunken polo player. The thing is, he’ll hit the triple in one at-bat, and play polo during the next…
Reyes has hit nine home runs since the start of 2005, two of which came on the same day, and three of which came within five days of one another…
In the week prior to his home runs on April 9, 2005, Reyes hit .259. The week after he hit .333…
In the week prior to his home run on August 20, 2005, Reyes hit .262. The week after he hit .300…
In the week prior to his home run on September, 15, 2005, Reyes hit .267. The week after he hit .280…
In the week after Reyes hit a home run on April 7 of this season, which came two days after opening day, Reyes hit .357…
Lastly, in the week prior to his home run on May 10 of this season, Reyes hit .160. The week after he hit .240…
The point is: Reyes is inconsistent, made evident by his signs of patience at the plate, followed by an ugly strike out. My hunch is that what you perceive to be a 2–for-35 swoon, John, is just Reyes being the herky-jerky, loose canon, good one day, bad the next, inconsistent, 22–year-old baseball player that he is, something which is to be expected at his age. He has made significant improvements from last season, and he’ll certainly improve from here going forward…
Unfortunately, Reyes is not the only one who needs to be patient – it appears that we need to be patient with him, as well, which is always tough to do when watching a team that can win now…
The Journal News, Daily News, New York Post, and Star-Ledger all report on how the Mets may approach Cardinals OF Albert Pujols, who has 19 home runs this season, an average of one dinger every seven plate appearance…
Paul Lo Duca, as quoted in the Journal News…
“He’s the guy in that lineup you don’t want to have beat you…
“You have to hit your spots with him. He doesn’t have a real long swing; he has a flat swing. It stays in the strike zone longer…
“You have to get the ball in and mix it up on him. You can’t keep showing him the same pitches.”…
…he’s just so smart and quick to adapt, and he kills a pitcher when he makes any sort of mistake…and with Scott Rolen and Jim Edmonds batting behind him, it’s just too risky to walk him intentionally…
In 19 at-bats against tonight’s starter, Tom Glavine, who is fourth in the NL in ERA, Pujols is batting .529 with one strike out, one walk and no home runs with no doubles…
Glavine, as quoted by the Post…
“He’s on an ungodly pace…I think that given that and given the way he’s swinging the bat, if the game is on the line, you’re stupid to let him beat you.”…
…i have to agree…
…i would do like lo duca says, and just pitch him all around the outter portions of the strike zone, and if you lose him, off to first he goes…
If you were Willie Randolph, assuming the bases are empty, how will you pitch Pujols…
At FOXSports.com, Jeff Gordon explains who he feels are the greatest showmen in baseball…
Checking in at the top of Gordon’s list is Pedro Martinez, about whom Gordon writes, “He is emotional and demonstrative, commanding the attention of everybody in the house.”…
…including the opposing team…seriously…sometimes i can’t tell if the opposing team is attentive when pedro’s on the mound because they are being paid to be there, or because they’re watching him like we are, as fans…it’s a weird look in their eyes…
Last on Gordon’s list: Jose Lima…
…ugh…you know what, gordon, among mets fans, he’s last on a lot of lists…
For every Mets win this season, Lance, a Mets fan and a reader of MetsBlog, will buy a $5 bednet for children in Africa, in an effort to help stop the spread of Malaria…
According to Lance, “Malaria is the 62 Mets of disease, the Enron of public health. we need to get involved now.”…
To learn more about how you can help Lance, go to his webpage at World Swim for Malaria…
