As snow falls on my backyard, spring is here. There are actual baseball games on the TV, cablecast live from points south and west. Think baseball is floundering? ESPN reported the Cardinals/Mets exhibition game two weeks ago garnered their highest ratings ever for a spring training tilt. The World Baseball Classic is in full swing, [...]
OK, so it’s not 1980. Kansas City is playing Philadelphia for a championship this evening, but it will have nothing to do with bats or gloves. Back in those heady days of ’80, it took six games for Philly to vanquish KC. This one is a one game, winner-take-all proposition, in a neutral setting, in [...]
OK. So we’ve all had about a week to grouse and lick our wounds. It became officially official – because these things do make a difference, as we’ve come to find out -- only a couple of days ago: All-Star SS Carlos Correa will not be a New York Met after all, instead opting to [...]
You will forgive the Mets fan if they seem bewildered. We have been trained – by outside forces, inept ownership/management, historic tomfoolery, etc. – to hope for the best, and expect the worst. The double-edged sword called “winning the winter” has backfired far too often for this franchise and longtime fans can never feel comfortable [...]
Baseball fans – and particularly Mets fans, I think – are a lot like dogs: if something happens once, it happens all the time, every time. It becomes instant tradition. It seems that’s how the Baseball Gods want it. We Mets fans used to listen to Ralph Kiner on the broadcasts and he would bluntly [...]
Oh, what might have been… The Mets looked primed to take a major step towards securing the NL East Division title. Looks can be deceiving. For ordinary mortals, Jacob deGrom’s stat line would be impressive: six innings, five hits, no walks, 11 strikeouts, three earned runs. That last bit was the problem. deGrom was rocked [...]
Let’s get this out there, right now: this is not last year. The Mets will not finish under .500. That is a mathematical impossibility, as they already have 87 wins on their tally. This is also not 2007, as they are all but guaranteed a playoff spot, even in the absence of a division title. [...]
The last two games notwithstanding – a 2-1 loss and a 1-0 win, both vs. Philadelphia at home – the Mets’ offense has been generally robust this season. They haven’t clubbed teams to death, no. They don’t have Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton hitting back-to-back in a hitters-favorable ballpark, no. They have been opportunistic, adept [...]
The 2022 season is really humming along, isn’t it? The Mets are 21 games over .500, in first place in the NL East and, according to Fangraphs, have a 98.9% chance to make the playoffs. Baseball-Reference.com is less sanguine, putting their odds at 98.4%. As has been exhaustively chronicled, the Mets faced down their daunting [...]
Some things are simply inevitable. Like death and taxes. For the last 15 years or so, an addition to that short list has been necessary: the Mets’ early season promise disappearing as the All-Star break approaches. Even in the grand years, like 2015 and 2016, mid-June-to-early-July has been a tough slog for the boys from [...]
Sometimes, you just…know, y’know? A long baseball season is always fraught with signals and portents about what type of season it will be. We all try and read the tea leaves, especially in April and May. A baseball season is long, of course, and this week’s harbinger is next week’s dashed hope. Even a flying [...]
Yeah, it’s only two games. I know. Two games against the Washington Nationals, this year’s NL East putative doormats. So as is the case every April, all enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that the sun hasn’t really risen on this season yet. But man, the Mets look good! Tylor Megill’s surprise quality start in [...]