Note: The Mets believe in Themselves
Last Monday, the Mets were 11–13 and two losses back of the Marlins for first place in the NL East, during which the first four posts on MetsBlog.com dealt with Carlos Delgado’s hip pain; what to do with Oliver Perez; Phillies quotes pointing out the emotional difference between them and the Mets; and whether or not there will be a target on Omar Minaya if the Mets keep losing.
Today, the Mets are four games over .500, they’ve won seven games in a row, and they are in first place in the NL East.
…it really is amazing how different one week can be… but, remember the old Bobby Valentine advice, ‘You’re never as good as you think are in a winning streak, and you’re never as bad as you think you are during a losing streak, you’re really some place in the middle.’…
“The last couple of years we learned about that. Don’t let up,” Jose Reyes said yesterday, according to the Daily News.
“The last two years, at the last part of the season, we lost some games against the Nationals, games that we needed. But we came today to play with the Pirates, and it’s the same attitude that we had when we play against the really good teams. That’s the attitude we have to bring every day.”
Following yesterday’s game, David Wright told reporters, “I think we just needed to get hot for an extended period to realize how good we really are.”
…this is essentially what i learned in my quest to better understand the idea that passion, heart and fire matter in baseball… basically, from talking with current and former players, it matters, but not as much as confidence… it’s all about confidence… if a team is confident, it starts winning, it finds a swagger, and they play with intensity… if they’re not confident, and they do not believe, they second guess themselves, get down, and they look flat…
…in short, you can’t only want it more than the other team, that’s not good enough… more important that passion and fire, a team needs confidence and must believe in itself, and from that everything else follows…
On May 1, Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com quoted Omar Minaya as saying, while the team does not lack leadership, his stars do lack a certain ‘edge.’
Minaya later backed off his statement, though his players, including David Wright and Jose Reyes, seemed to take issue with the comments.
Since then, the Mets are are 8–1.
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