Because there’s an hour and a half to go until the Mets season starts and maybe you’re as antsy as I am, I’ll prey on your restlessness for page views if you haven’t read some of these yet. Here are the positional season previews I rolled out this week.
Starting pitchers
Catchers
First basemen
Second basemen
Third basemen
Shortstops
Left fielders
Center fielders
Right fielders
Bullpen
And here’s the general season preview from earlier.
I got a hankering for some mozzarella sticks around lunchtime so I walked up to a little burger place near my hotel called Roxy. They didn’t have any on the menu, but they did have something called “Deep Fried Battered Bacon Planks,” so obviously I got that.
They weren’t just battered and deep fried bacon, I should add. They were covered in some sort of sweet and sour goo, like a slightly spicier General Tso’s sauce. And they were served, alarmingly, with country gravy for dipping.
Here’s what it looked like:
How was it? Well, I’m pretty sure that just about anything that’s battered, fried, covered in sweet goo and dipped in country gravy would be pretty damn good. The crispiness of the batter and the flavor of the goo drowned out the bacony aspects of the bacon, so it was really just a medium to transport the other ingredients. When I really focused I could detect a hint of porky flavor, but it was difficult to focus because my heart hurt.
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat.
– Ernest Thayler, “Casey at the Bat.”
Thayer’s “Casey at the Bat” is on the short list of my favorite things ever. If you’re not very familiar with the full text of the poem or haven’t read it in a while, go check it out now and come back here.
The situation: The Mudville nine are down 4-2 with two out in the ninth inning. Against all odds, a pair of terrible hitters — Flynn and Johnny Blake — reach base, bringing up the team’s best slugger, Casey. He strikes out on three pitches.
Casey appears the goat. His air-shattering whiff means there will be no light hearts or laughing men or shouting children in Mudville.
But think about it another way: Maybe Mighty Casey is not at fault for the Nine’s fate. He is, after all, marooned in a lineup full of “lulus” and “cakes” — to use Thayer’s awesome words. No doubt he has been carrying Flynn and Johnny Blake on his back all season. No doubt Flynn and Johnny Blake dribbled out in their first four at-bats that day in Mudville. And the skipper isn’t doing his team any favors batting a star hitter behind Blake the cake.
You might even say “Casey at the Bat” is the original Blame Beltran narrative. The club can only muster a couple runs in eight innings, but we put the onus on its best player for the loss.
The Mets, these past few years, have been dragged down by too many lulus. We remember the times Carlos Beltran and David Wright fail in big spots because we expect them to get hits. No one ever wrote poems about the dozens of times Flynn made the last out in Mudville because no one thought he’d come through in the first place.
The Mets failed to add a player of Casey’s stature or anything close this offseason, so many fans and media expect they won’t improve over their past couple of miserable seasons. But quietly, Sandy Alderson and his crew rid the Mets’ lineup of the Johnny Blakes.
Assuming Lucas Duda starts most of the games in left field until Jason Bay returns, the worst hitter in the Mets’ lineup is probably Brad Emaus. And Emaus, a patient hitter with good Minor League numbers, is (we hope) hardly an automatic out. As long as Beltran stays healthy and Wright and Jose Reyes play like they can, the Mets will have three legitimate offensive stars in their lineup. Bay, Duda, Ike Davis and Angel Pagan should all hit. And there likely won’t be many eighth hitters in the National League better than Josh Thole.
With no obvious gaping holes in their lineup, the Mets should score a lot of runs. Though none of their starting pitchers is Johan Santana, all five appear apt to keep the team in games. The bullpen, cobbled together though it may be, looks decent.
Will everything proceed smoothly then? Of course not. Players will get hurt, pitchers will bomb, Francisco Rodriguez will blow a couple of late leads. These things happen. But the Mets, with a deeper club and a manager hopefully less eager to destroy his pitching staff, should be better prepared to shoulder those blows.
That might be hard to believe if you read certain newspapers, magazines and websites or listen to a large subsection of the fanbase. The disappointing finishes of the last few years combined with the perpetual drumbeat of bad news about the team’s owners have sucked much of the dialogue regarding the team’s chances in 2011 into a maelstrom of negativity. “Only the Mets.” “Same old Mets.” “Blame Beltran.”
But these are not the same old Mets. There is a new manager and front office. Eighteen of the team’s 25 players were not on the Opening Day roster last year. Change does not guarantee success, but this is hardly the team that mustered a Francoeurian 90 OPS+ in 2010 and gave 40 cumulative starts to Livan Hernandez and Tim Redding in 2009.
Is improved depth and more organizational foresight enough for the Mets to take down the Braves and Phillies in the division? Probably not, though way crazier things have happened in baseball. The Mets should win more games than they lose, and do so with players that might actually be part of their future, guys we are excited to watch.
That certainly won’t be enough for some people, and doubtless we’ll still be exposed to plenty of that negativity from the stricken multitudes. But really, who cares? We have the choice to tune out the nonsense and celebrate good players playing baseball, knowing that the front office does seem to have the Mets moving in the right direction and that the team will still be around enjoying the trappings of their huge market whenever its ownership situation is settled. Starting at 7:10 p.m. tonight, all that really matters – as far as I’m concerned, at least — is what the team does on the field.
Here we go.
From my hotel room:
Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone has a list of “15 Baseball Songs Better Than Centerfield.” I don’t love Centerfield, but it’s better than a bunch of these, I think. An entertaining list regardless. I’m reasonably surprised Belle and Sebastian’s “Piazza, New York Catcher” isn’t on the list.
Extremely interesting read about the future of technology. Via Sam.
Krod!
The bullpen in April: Francisco Rodriguez, Bobby Parnell, D.J. Carrasco, Taylor Buchholz, Tim Byrdak, Pedro Beato, Blaine Boyer
Overview: Besides the closer Rodriguez, the Mets’ bullpen is comprised of converted starters, non-tendered free agents and guys brought to camp on Minor League deals.
That sounds bad, but it’s not. Though “two closers” might make for sexier headlines, the best bullpens are often cobbled together on the cheap. Due partly to sample size, and presumably partly to usage, most big-league relievers’ performances fluctuate pretty wildly from year to year. As long as a team can find a host of promising arms and be willing to shake things up when necessary, it can build a successful relief corps.
By keeping Boyer, who had an out clause in his contract if he didn’t make the Major League team, the Mets had to send Manny Acosta and Pat Misch through waivers. Both pitchers cleared and will start the season in Triple-A Buffalo. Jason Isringhausen will open in extended Spring Training, building up arm strength and waiting for an opportunity when the big-league club loses a reliever to injury or ineffectiveness.
My colleague Mike Salfino is very bullish on Bobby Parnell. Parnell is among the game’s hardest throwers and induced a ton of groundballs last season. He needs to be able to control his slider to keep hitters off-balance, but he could easily emerge as the successor to Rodriguez.
Carrasco isn’t likely to dominate, but he was available at a relative discount and has been a decent Major League reliever for three straight seasons. Buchholz was great the last time he was fully healthy. Byrdak can get left-handers out (though Mets fans might have to adjust to the idea of a lefty specialist that needs occasional days off). The Rule 5 pick Beato converted to a relief role last year and posted a 2.11 ERA in Double-A. Boyer induces a ton of ground-balls.
And when he’s not disrupting the peace, Rodriguez has been a very good closer. The Mets will want to be careful with how they use him, since Rodriguez has an option on his contract that vests if he finishes 55 games, but he should be good whenever he pitches. Terry Collins has said he’ll be willing to use Rodriguez earlier than the ninth inning if the situation calls for it.
Collins has also mentioned a couple of times how he doesn’t like to get guys warmed up to not bring them in the game. That’s important, and a massive departure from the last couple years in Flushing. It remains to be seen how Collins will manage the Mets’ bullpen, but it’s hard to imagine him being worse at it than Jerry Manuel. The new administration seems more adamant about determining on its own when a player needs a rest day, not deferring to a professional athlete who will inevitably insist he’s ready to go.
Joe Pawlikowski at Fangraphs recently suggested the Mets’ bullpen will be a strength for the team, perhaps surprising the set disappointed that the team failed to bring on any big names this offseason. He’s right though. Though few of the Mets’ relievers are bona fide studs, the club has enough depth in its bullpen that it should be able to settle on a good mix of guys to finish out games.
The bullpen in September: Rodriguez, Parnell, and five other guys, a couple of whom are probably on the roster now. High turnover isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a bullpen.
Overview: The Braves’ bullpen, on paper at least, appears excellent. The Marlins’ crew looks good too. The Phillies’ won’t be great until Brad Lidge returns, but they should benefit from having starting pitchers eating up most of their innings. The Nationals’ bullpen, a strength last year, seems a bit top-heavy. But it’s pretty difficult to predict how bullpens will shake out, so I’ll take the safe guess and figure the Mets will wind up somewhere in the middle of the pack in their division.
Authorities in Florida said they arrested a man who allegedly cut off a 50-inch alligator tail using a knife he kept in his “Taco Bell pants.”
OK, first of all: Great lede or the greatest lede?
Obviously the big question here is: What in hell are “Taco Bell pants”?
I can think of three possible explanations: 1) This man works at Taco Bell, and those are the pants he wears to work; 2) They are pants that celebrate Taco Bell, like maybe with a bunch of tacos and bells all over them. Or maybe like Zubaz in the Taco Bell colors; 3) He has a specific pair of pants set aside for wearing when he goes to Taco Bell.
I know the third explanation sounds ridiculous, but seasoned Taco Bell enthusiasts know that the beef produces an electric orange grease that inevitably gets on your clothes somewhere. Maybe this guy just wants to concentrate all the grease on one pair of pants, either because he doesn’t want to sacrifice multiple pairs to Taco Bell or because he’s trying to slowly saturate the pants with Taco Bell grease so he can produce his own seasoned beef at home.
Man, Florida’s underbelly is gloriously seedy. I’m considering blowing off the game tonight and driving up to Orlando to cover this developing story.
Huge hat tip to Joe for the link.
Via Tommy Bennett. No way. I mean, it doesn’t look photoshopped or anything… but no f@#$ing way. Really? I’m not trying to sound like a middle-school bully or whatever, but is he kidding or something?
Tedquarters 