1979 TOPPS LEE MAZZILLI I am one of those people who favor an inclusive MLB all-star game, with at least one representative from each team selected to participate. And it all comes down to my Metsian DNA. Many years during the late '70s/early '80s, I would sit glued to the game waiting to see if [...]
If the Mets were graded for their effort, they would get A’s across the board. Terry Collins has maximized the most out of this injury-depleted team and has done a great job of instilling confidence in this scrappy Mets bunch. For a team that started off 5-13, it's quite the accomplishment to be over.500 going [...]
With just one game remaining before the traditional end of the first half of the season, the Mets sit with a 46-44 record. While most people would not have been too surprised with that mark before the season started, I think everyone would be surprised how the team reached this point. A 5-13 start, six [...]
Yesterday, I introduced my theory that the Mets do worse than expected versus elite pitchers and better than expected versus good pitchers. In that article, I looked at how the Mets did versus the top 10 pitchers in both fWAR and K/9. Today will be about how they did versus the second 10 pitchers in [...]
Thursday morning, Dan Stack and I were talking about the 2011 Mets and how surprising the team was. Dan mentioned their two-out hitting and road record, certainly two of the areas where they are overperforming this season. I mentioned my theory that the Mets struggle against the elite pitchers but did better than expected versus [...]
I’ve decided to give New York Mets manager, Terry Collins, a special tribute for what he has been able to accomplish with this team. It was only last year when General Manager, Sandy Alderson, made the announcement that Collins would be the newest skipper in the organization. Wally Backman, the second fan favorite next to [...]
“Walk right side? Safe. Walk left side? Safe. Walk down middle? Squish, like grape.” – Mr. Miyagi to Daniel-san in the original KARATE KID So they’ve hit a season’s high in terms of winning percentage, climbing the dizzying heights of three games over .500. So they’ve taken a second step on the way to what [...]
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, and I don’t want to outright proclaim that Jason Bay is back. I have been burned once before and don’t want to get burned again. So, to quote the old adage: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” So as to not [...]
Manager Terry Collins has given more playing time recently to Ronny Paulino, essentially splitting time equally behind the plate between Paulino and Josh Thole for the last six weeks. Before the season started, I suggested that the duo would make an ideal platoon team, with Thole getting the majority of the ABs due to being [...]
1985 TOPPS TOM GORMAN It became a yardstick of sorts. Did you possess the right mixture of fanaticism, masochism, and sheer love of the theater of the absurd to make it all the way through to the end? Perhaps we should add to that list “a profoundly impaired social life”-- after all, it was the [...]
Fans often make big deals about who bats where in the lineup but in the overall scheme of things it does not matter very much. Now, that does not mean teams should pull their lineup out of a hat or start batting their pitcher leadoff. But the standard lineup does not come out much worse [...]
Last night (7/4) was one of those games that felt really bad, then suddenly euphoric. Not in the same sense that Sunday’s ambush of the TGMR (The Great Mariano Rivera) was, the 5-2 win over the Dodgers (I will refrain from any snarky nicknames referring to their bankruptcy filing: there but for the grace of [...]