The detritus of opening week

Whoa, alright. I woke up this morning and couldn’t see my bedroom floor. It was covered in my dirty laundry. I couldn’t see the surface of my desk, either, or the bottom of my sink.

This happens during baseball season, especially when the Mets are home, and especially in April when I’m still getting adjusted to a different schedule. I spent every night this week only watching baseball some place or another, and so this morning I needed to commit hours to unburying myself from the detritus of opening week: the laundry, the dirty dishes, the three-day old press notes strewn about my home office.

I don’t envy my wife, who’s trying to live and study to become a doctor amid this squalor.

The house is clean now, and so I’ve got a second to look around at what’s been happening here. And the Mets are 2-2. Here’s hoping all those WFAN callers jumping off bridges after Thursday night’s game swam safely to shore in time for Friday night’s win.

2-2. Fifty percent. Not bad, not great. Just so-so. But given the circumstances, not terrible at all.

And better yet, the Mets have outscored their opponents 22-13 in those four games. Sure, plenty of that is due to some downright miserable play by the Marlins, but a lot of it is thanks to surprisingly good play from elements of the Mets’ roster.

The bullpen, for example. Mets relievers have mustered a 1.93 ERA over their first 14 innings despite a pedestrian 8:5 K:BB ratio.

So that’s cool. Likely to continue? I hope so, but I’m a bit skeptical. Fernando Nieve, one of the most effective bullpen arms so far, has been used in all four of the Mets’ games, and Jerry Manuel seems to manage as if there’s a rule against using a reliever for more than one inning.

Last night, with the Mets up by four runs, Manuel turned to Nieve for the eighth inning, presumably because Nieve is settling in as the elusive “eighth-inning guy,” and maybe because the meat of the Nats’ lineup was coming up. But Hisanori Takahashi had only used 12 pitches to retire the side in order in the seventh. Overuse could become a problem if Manuel is not more careful with his bullpen arms.

Actually, the starting pitching hasn’t been all that terrible either, despite all the preseason hoopla. Though none of the individual performances has been exceptional, no starter has entirely crapped the bed, which is notable given their propensity for bed-crapping. Johan Santana’s start was predictably good, only John Maine’s start could reasonably be described as lousy, and Mike Pelfrey’s — even considering his four walks — might even qualify as pretty damn decent.

As for the offense, Jeff Francoeur is killing it. Killing it. So are Jason Bay and David Wright. Whoever the Mets trot out to center field has managed to get on base at a great clip. Rod Barajas has not, but he’s made up for it with his power. Mike Jacobs, Luis Castillo and Alex Cora have not been at all good.

What does this all mean? Not much. These were four games in a very long season. The good news is that the Mets managed to win two of these four games without Jose Reyes, who returns to the lineup today. So, you know, good.

Leave a comment