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. [...]
Rain, rain go away. Losing an entire weekend of baseball is forced exile into other, lesser sports, like the NFL Draft, or worse, hockey and basketball (what a friend of mine used to call “the back-and-forth sports”). While I respect those who veer off into these diversions, I cannot understand those who believe in the primacy of [...]
Pete Alonso is on the cusp of making serious bank – and he deserves every penny. We started hearing about his prodigious home run power when he was drafted in the 2nd Round of the 2016 Amateur Draft from the University of Florida. The number one overall pick that year? The Phillies drafted high school [...]
I was able to watch two baseball games tonight - though not a doubleheader. The first game I saw was my son’s High School team - Cold Spring Harbor (against Uniondale). This game is a mismatch on paper - Uniondale has almost five times the number of students as Cold Spring Harbor, and CSH is [...]
Inarguably, the worst trade in New York Mets history grew out of the Amazin’s need for more offense out of their third baseman and their ability to trade from the strength of surplus young starting pitching. It was the winter of 1971. Then General Manager Bob Scheffing surveyed the trade market and set his sights [...]
A few years ago a Mets hitter slashed a hard ground ball past the opposing pitcher. Standing a few feet beyond second base was the opposing shortstop. He fielded at the ball cleanly and threw on to first for a routine 6-3 put out. I remember Ron Darling saying at the time, “for 100 years [...]
The unorthodox poet e e cummings once wrote a poem that begins, “i thank You God for most this amazing day . . .” I think of this poem every year on the first day of Spring Training. As the best three words in the English language are “pitchers and catchers”, the return of baseball [...]
For those of us who have lived through the M. Donald Grant and Jeff Wilpon years, watching Steve Cohen use his personal resources to make the Mets the best team possible is unbelievably exciting. When he made the move on Carlos Correa last month, Mets fans dreamed of great baseball for years on end. When [...]