How Fitting

Training camp opens today, and not a moment to soon. In a mere few days, there will be hockey played at Madison Square Garden, albeit the preseason variety. The way the Mets are going through the motions, just the sight of the Garden ice is something to look forward to.

I was not at Citi on Tuesday/Wednesday, but had the pleasure to be there Thursday, the most miserable of the three value dates. That place was dead (yet somehow in the middle of the game, the Shake Shack line was still wrapping around, just not outside the line barriers). If you wanted to go to the field seats late in the game, you could have. The staff almost felt sorry for us and were not checking tickets. Ah, the one benefit for your team stinking it up- good seats and small crowds. Still a few more home games to attend- is there anything to look forward to?

We can see Angel Pagan trotting out to the outfield day by day, with Jerry showing absolutely no discipline for each and every boneheaded mental mistake. I don't care if he's taking care of it in-house. Don't put him out there in the next inning. That's what we want to see. Are you worried about his confidence or that of Bobby Parnell, who continues to take a beating in his Bad Bobby starts. There were two Good Bobby starts, but a lot more the other way. He's making Oliver Perez look consistent.


Last night, you knew Cole Hamels would eventually shut down the Mets. The Mets knocked him around twice already this season. An outing like last night was bound to happen.

It's time someone just drills Chase Utley, making it count. This guy has been leaning over the plate forever and enjoys getting nicked on the elbow. What's there to lose? A pitcher getting thrown out? We have a deep (number of people, not talent) bullpen. Suspension? Who cares? Philly baserunners? We're going to lose anyway.

Are we done with the red hats already? Seriously. How about next season we bring back those navy blues and teams have options to wear the red or the blue.

Feast or Famine

This is what you get with Bobby Parnell. Lately, it's been a lot of famine, but here now are a couple of scoreless outings sprinkled in. He's been more up and down than Oliver Perez in his heyday.

Brian Stokes put up a crooked number for the third time in the last four outings. Crooked numbers are good for batters, not pitchers. Give a Mets pitcher the eighth inning and he wilts under the pressure. Elmer Dessens, anyone? In defense of Stokes, this outing was not completely his fault despite giving up two. Angel Pagan continues to prove he is not deserving of a starting position in the major leagues by not calling a popup that Jeff Francoeur and Luis Castillo were waiting for him to catch. There's more to a player than the numbers. Perfect example.

Watching Alex Cora talking to Mike Pelfrey in the dugout continues to show why the Mets have to bring this guy back. Intangibles. Alex needs to spend more time with Angel.

How can we forget about the player of the game, Cory Sullivan? A homerun to start the scoring, a beautiful catch in left, an intentional walk (forget for a moment Omir Santos was following him in the lineup), and another single in the inning that broke the game open.

Pat Misch?

Who says we need another pitcher behind Johan? We have Figueroa and Misch. Even Redding is pitching well lately. What is going on?

Congrats to Misch for getting his first big league win, after threatening Anthony's Young consecutive losing streak by going almost a third of the way towards it.

Congrats also goes to Josh Thole, who started at catcher for the Mets and got his first big league hit.

Congrats to David Wright, for ditching the space helmet. Make the damn things mandatory prior to a season and we can then laugh at everybody.

Angel Pagan went 3-for-5, but I'm still not sold. Carlos Beltran is on a rehab assignment. I sure hope he's not feeling any lingering pain- I got a bad feeling about this one.

The 40-man roster rule is September is a joke and needs to be abolished, tradition or not.

Bobblehead Night

The Mets lost, but all anyone wants to talk about is David Wright's helmet. If you missed it, it looks a little something like this:

He will indeed be the butt of all jokes until this new gear is mandatory everywhere. Aside from the bobblehead, it was nice to see David back.

Mike Pelfrey was awful. Sean Green was his usual awful self in a short stint later in the game. Angel Pagan continues to prove he is not a starting player. Stop thinking about him for left field next season. He's a fourth or fifth outfielder at best, and always will be with his baseball instincts. There's a reason why there's a mental side of the game.

Can't Have It All

A six game winning streak. A four game sweep of a team in front of us in the Wild Card hunt. A gem by Jon Niese. All pretty much extinguished with a David Wright strikeout followed by yet another botched delayed steal of home in the first inning.

That was the chance for the Mets. It was a chance to jump out in front early and give the sagging Rockie confidence another Flushing blow. They've lost like 20 of their last 22 here. Put them down early and they stay down. If Pagan somehow scores, maybe the Mets squeak out another run and have a bigger lead than the 1-0 lead they held for a little over an inning later on.

As it is, you have to be happy to take three out of four. Now comes yet another four gamer, vs. Arizona. Winning these series is tough. Winning them back to back is tougher. I'd like to be confident coming off Livan's last start in Houston, but the prospects of Livan-Ollie-Pelfrey-Redding? in the next four makes me think we are not winning three of four again.

See what happens when you give Castillo a day off? 0-for-3.

I kid.

Comedy of Errors

You gotta love DVR. Why kill yourself staying awake if you have to get up the next morning, when you can simply just record the game and wake up a little earlier and watch it the next morning over breakfast, Japan-opener style. I called it a night after an inning last night. The headline was going to be "Welcome back Steve Trachsel". That's who Tim Redding reminded me of in his first Met start.

Redding gave up two runs and made that first inning last what seemed like an hour, and included not one but two consecutive fake-to-third-throw-to-first moves. However what we saw was not the case at all the rest of the way. He settled down quite nicely and the game flowed along.

The story was the five errors the Mets committed. Where do you start with this one? It did not look promising just looking at the lineup. Angel Pagan was leading off and playing left field. Ramon Martinez, our down-the-stretch 2008 second baseman started at short. Martinez made two of those errors. Carlos Beltran was charged with one, but Pagan insisted to catch the ball after the center fielder in charge called him off ten times. Sean Green throws one away. To cap it off, outfielder Jeremy Reed, playing only a handful of innings at first has a ball find him in a key spot leading to the game-losing error, a throw intended for home that got away.

Then there's Ryan Church. A go-ahead run in the 11th was erased when an appeal play at third called him out. Church had missed third base on his way to scoring from second. Here's my take on Church. The guy is mentally screwed up and it's not his fault. With fifty outfielders on the roster, Jerry Manual had no choice but to get other guys in the lineup and pulled Church during his hottest stretch of the season. It's been downhill ever since. Never mind that the guy is one of the only pure outfielders on the team, aside from Beltran and Reed, who's playing first base instead. But it's clear from postgame reaction that Church will probably continue to be the odd man out. What's wrong with this picture?

Who's fault is it that we had an aging Carlos Delgado with hip trouble and no backup pure first baseman? Who's fault is it that the roster continues to get an influx of outfielders when the problem is in the infield? Ramon Martinez? Look I know you did not expect Alex Cora to get injured with Jose Reyes out, but Martinez with his second base arm is the best we can do as a third-string shortstop? Speaking of Reyes, I asked last week for a one-game benching, not a week with a mysterious calf-injury. It's obvious they need him back in the lineup soon, dumb mistakes aside. You only hope he learns from them, but it's been more than a few years now.