The New York Mets are off to a sluggish start in 2024. They got swept in their first series vs the Milwaukee Brewers over the weekend, and lost the first game of the current three game series to the Detroit Tigers on Monday, to start the year 0-4. Not a lot of things have gone [...]
In 2023, the Braves won 104 games. No rational person can claim that they weren’t a fantastic regular-season team. And yet they had three separate times when they lost four straight games. From 4/19-4/23 and again on 7/15-7/19 and once more on 9/15-9/18, the Braves lost four straight games. Of course, it helped when they [...]
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 [...]
While still hungover – figuratively – from N.C. State’s third NCAA win and eighth-straight victory, it dawned on me that today is the fifth Saturday of the month and no one was scheduled to write an article today. For me, these early-season articles are the toughest ones to write. What has happened that isn’t already [...]
After finally reaching my goal of having more predictions right than wrong in 2022 – it was back to reality with the picks last year. While fewer than half right, there were six correct predictions, which is a solid score, given the self-imposed mandate to not make safe picks. But no one wants to read [...]
Spring Training 2023 was an entirely different world for the New York Mets. We had two veteran Aces who had proven track records of success, we were the most expensive team in baseball and the Mets were supposed to be World Series contenders and the Mets had four top prospects at the cusp of the [...]
Spring Training 2024 ends tomorrow, as the New York Mets face off against the New York Yankees at 1 pm, the Mets lineup seems to have sorted itself out. But not without some last-minute help. Batting order, at least any sensible batting order, does not have significant effects on a team’s ability to score runs [...]
Every MLB team faces adversity. And those challenges can come from injures or under-performance or questionable lineup/roster decisions. Spotrac tracks injuries and last year, MLB clubs had between 13-35 IL moves each, with dollars lost to the IL ranging from $9.5-$82.1 million. The Mets were tied for 11th with 25 IL moves and ranked fourth [...]
Yesterday the Athletic’s Jim Bowden published one of his trademark articles (subscription required) wherein he ranks a thing, and in this case that thing is the quality of all 30 MLB teams' opening day lineups. Somewhat surprisingly, the Mets are slotted in at 14th behind the likes of the Cubs, Reds, and Padres even with [...]
With a week before the start of the regular season, the Mets apparently have three spots on their Opening Day roster up for grabs. There are two reliever openings and one bench spot available. The good news is that there are several good options for the back of the bullpen. The not-so-hot news is that [...]
In their the inaugural season, the Mets ownership selected Casey Stengel to be their first manager. Stengel’s MLB playing time spanned from 1912-1925 where he was a .284 career hitter with what would have calculated in today’s terms to a .766 OPS and a more than acceptable OPS+ of 120. He managed from 1949 to [...]
This offseason was unlike any other in the Steve Cohen era of Mets baseball, noted more for the team’s austerity on the free agent market than the previous few years. There are myriad factors for that, but even with some very good players still available, the team seems willing to stand pat with the group [...]