One of the great things about baseball is that the season is six months long. There are peaks and valleys every year. No team is out of it after the first series of the year. In 2005, the Mets went 0-5 to start the season. It felt like they were playing uphill the whole rest [...]
Every great offense in baseball is built on the concept of balance. A lineup of sluggers only doesn’t work. Neither does a lineup consisting solely of singles’ hitters. Great offenses have some guys who get on base (and move themselves along) and others who drive them in. In today’s game, the rule book is [...]
One of my earliest Mets’ memories is Game 5 of the 1969 World Series. My second grade home room teacher, Mrs. Goudey, let us watch the game on a clunky old black and white television she wheeled into the classroom on a tall metal cart. When she turned on the game, Jerry Koosman had already [...]
Art Shamsky played Major League Baseball from 1965 through 1972. He played predominantly for the Cincinnati Reds (1965-1967) and the New York Mets (1968-1971). He once hit four home runs in consecutive at-bats, tying a Major League record. He is the only such player, however, to hit the first three of those home runs in [...]
Now that the Mets have lost out on Yoshinobu Yamamoto, all eyes turn toward the team’s most difficult question of the off-season: Pete Alonso’s future with the Mets. In an article from last spring, it was suggested that the team should extend his contract and that it would cost north of $400M. Some scoffed at [...]
It’s December in New York and so that means the Hot Stove is heating up. Major League Baseball’s Winter Meeting is convening once again and when baseball executives meet, they can’t help themselves from doing deals. The hottest two players on the free agent front are Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto: Where will they land? [...]
When legendary labor leader Marvin Miller devised the free agent system that Major League Baseball still uses today (with some tweaks along the way), the framework of the system created an “exclusive rights” period during which teams could negotiate with their players to whom free agency was an option. Originally, a 10-day window, this year [...]
In order to construct a 2024 roster, one must first evaluate the talent on the 2023 team to identify needs and weaknesses. A close look at the white board of current Mets reveals this: There’s a lot of talent on this team. There is room for improvement to be sure, but not nearly as much [...]
This column is my last for the 2023 Regular Season – a season of significant disappointment. Looking back over my articles earlier in the year, it doesn’t seem as though they are written about the same team. In many ways, they are not. Gone are Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander. Now on the roster are [...]
About 10 days ago, I wrote an entirely different column than what appears here. The previous version was a decently upbeat assessment of the Mets’ short-term future and a maybe too rosy look at the talent the team obtained by trading aging superstars. Then I watched the first two games of the Royals series – [...]
Another lost season. It’s almost not possible. Heading out of Spring Training there was such hope and optimism – almost certainty – that these Mets would be really good. Contenders for the World Series. A stacked lineup. Wonderful starting pitching. An awesome bullpen. What could go wrong? Everything. We’ll start with Edwin Diaz in the [...]
Imagine that you are a Major League Baseball manager. You wake up in the morning, go to your office at the ballpark and begin to fill out the lineup card for today’s game. Conventional wisdom says that you should bunch your best hitters toward the top of the lineup. You decide to “Buck” the trend. [...]