Category: New York Mets

I am out of the country, but I have been reading about how at New York Met games fans are chanting, “Yankees Suck” during late innings of Met victories. First let me say that I am a proud Mets fan, but this needs to stop.

The Mets are off to an 8-1 start. Eight and one people! Their best start since the 1985 season when Dwight Gooden won the Cy Young Award. Why not celebrate that? Why do Mets fans even care about the Yankees?  To me it slightly taints the victory because we are not celebrating the players on the field

We often hear about players having “it.” Derek Jeter has “it”, Tom Brady has “it”, and Michael Jordan had “it.” No it’s not their athletic ability, but their unbelievable ability to lift their teams. It is unfortunate that there are so few of these players in sports, but it makes this writer thankful and more appreciative of the few that are there. Even if I am a die hard Jets and Mets fans and the sheer praising of Brady and Jeter is taking everything I can do not to throw up on my computer. I guess you have to give credit where credit is due.

The Mets have been looking for someone from their farm system to come up and lead this organization to a new level. The fans’ and the organization’s hearts have been broken by the likes of Bill Pulsipher, Greg Jeffries, Jason Isringhausen, and many others who were supposed to be “the guy,” but never panned out. Thankfully for the Mets, “the guy” has come in the form of David Wright.

      The outfield is often overlooked when evaluating a team. Although many outfielders are well known for their offensive prowess most do not get credit for their defensive game with the exception of the gold glover’s. Although the Mets have a single gold glover out there in Carlos Beltran, Cliff Floyd did lead National League left fielders in assists last year, and neither Xavier Nady nor Victor Diaz are poor defensively.

       Today is the third breakdown of the Met roster, the infield. With our corner infielder’s hitting for power and our shortstop with blazing speed offensively we should be fine. The one major question mark is still second base. Minaya constantly attempted to move the incumbent Kaz Matsui throughout the offseason but he could not find any suitors for the $8.5 million he was due. Manager Willie Randolph has made it clear that Spring Training results will ultimately determine the second basemen. As of now it’s between, Matsui, Brett Boone, Jeff Keppinger, and Anderson Hernandez.

     Today is the second of four breakdowns, this time about the much discussed starting rotation. Last year the rotation was greatly improved by the addition of Pedro Martinez, along with Kris Benson’s first and final full season as a Met. By the end of the season, it was considered the deepest spot on their roster, unfortunately in the recent weeks they have traded away much of that depth in favor of bullpen help. This is a questionable process in itself, as a surplus of starting pitching must be considered a higher value then a surplus of relief pitching. To be a closer you have to have a certain mentality, one in which you can immediately wipe out the previous night’s performance, so in all due respect they will be excluded from the category of relief pitching. But the majority of relief pitchers at some point in their career were unable to continue their starting roles and were destined for the bullpen. So had Jae Seo, Kris Benson, Victor Zambrano, or Aaron Heilman saw the bullpen I would’ve been more comfortable with that then Duaner Sanchez or Jorge Julio. Trading for a set up man was questionable in the Seo for Sanchez deal, but the Benson Julio deal was over the top unless of course, the salary was cut in order to have flexibility for acquiring someone such as Barry Zito.

      Today will be the first of four, breakdowns of the Mets roster. The team will be broken down into four aspects, the bullpen, the starting rotation, the outfield, and the infield, each of which will be covered by the time the World Baseball Classic begins which, at that point things will heat up. After tomorrow’s Super Bowl the next few weeks will be the worst time of the sport year, as the only thing to watch is hockey, or mid season basketball (and the Knicks suck). This is the only way to truly get information out there until pre season begins and the Classic premieres.

     With the New Year approaching every one has their New Years resolution that they will break or completely forget about come January 15th. But for the time being I’ve decided to give each Met player a New Years resolution in which they should fully oblige by in order for this 2006 season to be a memorable one.

From the time Omar Minaya was hired as the Mets general manager last year there has been a sense of urgency within the franchise to provide a playoff caliber team. It started last year with the signings of both Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez and it has continued this year trading for Carlos Delgado and signing Billy Wagner. With the winter meetings starting tomorrow the Mets are going in determined to fill in their remaining voids.

By: Jon Morrill

    When heading into writing anything as a journalist, you’re supposed to remain objective; to write the piece without bias or slant. But also in writing, especially in sports writing, you should have some passion about your subject. In this particular case, the latter is keeping me from maintaining the former–I have such great passion, or at least emotion, about the subject that I am about to talk about that its hindering me from keeping a balanced perspective. I’ll do my best to adhere to the strict rules of journalistic writing, but I’m not making any promises.

Ever since Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 the MLB has slowly become a multicultural society. During the early 90’s there was an influx of Japanese pitcher’s but never posistion players. Then in 2001 there was Ichiro Suzuki who became an instant star eventually setting the MLB record for hits. Hediki Matsui came over as well and provided Japanese born players can provide power as well. Along with all of the success stories, there have been failures as well most noteably with the Mets. As the Mariners and Ichiro shined the Mets had Tsuyoshi Shinjo, then the Yankees landed “Godzilla” Hideki Matsui, and the Mets signed the injury proned Kazuo Matsui. Now the Mets are going after catcher Kenji Jojima.