Mets Believe Mets Fans Believe They Can Win

I was at the Subway Series games this weekend, and while a lot of the juice has gone out of it, there was still excitement in the air. The lack of juice could be attributed to both teams struggling. I didn't hear one “Jet-ers Boy-Friend” chant for A-Rod. No Hip-Hip You're-Gay! No Captain Cologne! (Admittedly, some of these are better left unsaid) There were still a good amount of Yankees fans being positive, cheering “Der-ek Jet-er” and other assorted lame Yankees chants. Despite the Yankees being in arguably a worse position than the Mets, their fans are still more optimistic.

The argument everyone always falls back on is they've won in the past. But winning in the past doesn't do anything for winning in the present. The only thing it affects is confidence, and part of that is fan confidence. Who do you think has more confidence in their team, and their own performance? Cano, or Castillo? Both are playing badly, but one guy is having his head called for constantly and booed. The other is certainly souring faces, but he's not yet being chased out of town or having fans seriously consider releasing him. Sometimes if you tell someone that they are a certain way enough, they believe it themselves. When Delgado comes up to the plate, everyone at Shea is convinced and screaming at him that he's going to ground out to second, so he's thinking about grounding out to second. Just like you can't stop thinking about the giant elephant in the room. Conversely, Derek Jeter comes up in a big spot thinking he's going to come through because that's what everyone always tells him he does. So he hits roughly the same ground ball, but instead it seems to go a little faster, and just seems to find that hole between second and first.

So how about we go about our business as Mets fans with a little bit of swagger and confidence. We just crushed the Yankees, winning the series 4-2. Play that way all season and the Mets would win well over 100 games. We've gained on the Phillies, and we're coming with a vengeance that they should be frightened of. Even bad teams can win frequently, and whether you think the Mets are good, bad, or somewhere in between, lets go out there and root like we think and know they will win the game instead of constantly telling them how they're going to fail and not good enough for us. Maybe they'll start to believe it too.

Oh, and Jerry Manuel telling everyone that the it's the Yankees town isn't helping. All it did was give fodder to the newspapers to continue talking about the Yankees and treating the Mets like the second team.

Mets Grab the Holy Grail

Finally! The Grand Slam arrives, and how fitting it comes from our typical clean-up slugger in Carlos Delgado. I've toyed with some 'turning points' for this team during the year, and just a couple of days ago I realized that the Grand Slam was what was truly lacking, what was truly holding this team back. Well now that's out of the way, courtesy of the Yankees bullpen.

The Grand Slam is a jolt of confidence, a great turning point in any game, providing a sudden 4-run swing in the runs column. These are some things the Mets sorely needed, and even better is that it came with two outs, so it was a dazzlingly clutch RISP hit also. (picture not from today's game)

It’s just one game, although it set a record for RBIs by a Mets player in one game, but even better would be if this was a turning point for Carlos Delgado to finish the season, and maybe even his career, on a warpath to a championship. Of course, the Yankees may be clamoring for him to be their DH next year with his performances at Yankee Stadium.

Now everyone gets to head over to Shea to face Sidney Ponson. Let’s get this party started!

P.S. I know the All-Star game is 'lame' but I'd still like to see Wright, Reyes and Beltran there. So vote! or something.. Try to reduce the Yankee Stadium love fest it'll be by bring some Shea representatives.

Subway Series Makeup

Friday at 2pm is an awful time to make up the Subway Series game.

Subway Series loses some luster, but the Mets gain some

The Subway Series this year was very subdued. I'm still a fan of it, I like how it takes over the city and the general feel of it, but most of the novelty has worn off. It's certainly no longer a David versus Goliath type match up like it was when it started, or when it reached what I think was it's peak in 2000. It's no longer a competition to see who is the better team, but who isn't the worse team. Both clubs had issues to work out, and the opponent at the moment wasn't important enough to matter. The fans, excepting when trying to shout down opposing chants and cheers, were almost quiet. I only saw half a dozen fights at the Stadium Sunday night. I'm sure a lot of that atmosphere was due to the game being a blow out, but it was more important that the Mets won, than it was who they beat.

And they did beat them. They played better baseball; hitting, fielding, and pitching. Derek Jeter, who always does well in these competitions, did well with the bat, but was average at best everywhere else. He failed to make the only high-caliber move he has at shortstop, his leaping throw to first, early on Saturday. He also got thrown out trying to stretch a single in that game. On Sunday he couldn't keep his foot on the bag while fielding a bad throw from Giambi during the Mets first rally.

The Mets, particularly Church, played great defense, hit the cut offs and made great plays. They hit, Reyes hit, Wright hit, and they scored 18 runs. They also pitched well, Santana to Wagner on Saturday and Perez went as far as Santana before giving the ball to Smith and Schoeneweis.

More importantly, whether a result of a team meeting or something else, the Mets played with enthusiasm. They played with energy and heart and they really came alive during these two games. Wright was already on the mound encouraging Perez by the time Matsui's ball went over the fence, everyone was excited when they got hits and scored runs. Maybe the Mets fans' unwillingness to boo their own players in the hostile environment of Yankee Stadium helped, and maybe the Mets can go and put together a nice streak of games over the next seven so that when they return to Shea, there isn't a single person we want to boo....besides Hanley Ramirez of course.

Subway Series, and getting going

I haven't been a proponent of firing Willie Randolph, and I still don't believe firing him will fix this team. However, at one point something needs to be done, and that's about all there is to it. These next seven games are important ones though, more important than these last seven.
The Yankees are actually the right team for them to play. They're an average pitching team with a good offense, which is actually very like the Phillies, and it plays to the strength of the Mets. Their pitching is their strength, which should be enough to shut down the Yankees, and their offense has enough firepower to score plenty of runs against them.

After that a short four game series against the Braves, who if they stay healthy are definitely better than the Phillies. Keeping themselves ahead of the Braves, and beating them in this series, would go a long way to make them, and us, feel good.

If they don't play well against these teams, then barring suddenly going on a 10 game winning streak or something, it's probably time to ditch Randolph because whether it'll help or not, he's ultimately culpable for the performance.

Watching the last few days, I've felt like the Mets have gotten a lot of bad breaks recently, whether it's great catches, line drives right at people, or pitching to contact that finds holes. I'm confident this team will have good stretches, but depending on when and how that stretch comes, it might not be enough to put them in a positive, relaxed frame of mind for the rest of the season.

Maybe the energy associated with, and they can deny it exists all they want, the Subway Series will actually wake the Mets up. So here are my predictions, as crazy as you may think they are.

(Santana) Game 1: Mets 8, Yankees 1

(Perez) Game 2: Mets 5, Yankees 3

(Maine) Game 3: Mets 6, Yankees 1

Opening Day, Closing Day, Subway Series lottery

I'm sure there will be emails going out and all that, but Registration for the Platinum Game lottery is underway through Feb 18th at http://newyork.mets.mlb.com/nym/ticketing/tixop_season08_form.jsp.

Good luck. The same 6 ticket allotment as last year.

Faith on the Subway

I think the Mets are a better team than the Yankees, and despite the past two weeks, I think the Mets are going to win this series. I'll give some reasons for each game, I'm not panicking, and I don't think the Mets are either.

Game 1: Perez vs. Clemens
Oliver Perez has really pitched well here in New York. He's pitched some of the biggest games and done well. Game 7 last year, the three wins against Atlanta, and he beat the Yankees at Shea. He lost his last start and he hasn't had two bad outings like that all season. I expect him to bounce back strong tonight.

Obviously the offense is the problem, but I think they can wake up tonight. Clemens threw well over 100 pitches just getting through six innings against Pittsburgh, and the Mets offense is a lot scarier than that. If the Mets work counts, and let Clemens throw as many pitches as he did in his last start, he won't make it six. Even if the Mets don't capitalize on him, that leaves a good stretch of iffy Yankee bullpen to beat up on. Nothing wakes up bats like Scott Proctor and Kyle Farnsworth.

Game 2: Clippard vs. Glavine
Would you believe people are actually saying that this match-up favors the Yankees? Seriously? Tom Glavine is miles ahead of Tyler Clippard, and after his poor start in Detroit, you know he's going to come back strong. The Mets often struggle against new guys, but Clippard is no longer new, they've seen him before, and they're going to be ready for him. This will be another early to the bullpen day for the Yankees.

Game 3: Hernandez vs. Wang
I feel like this match-up may favor the Yankees a bit, but Hernandez is a fierce competitor, facing his old team, coming off a bad start, and has pitched very very well recently besides that. The Mets have apparently never seen Wang, but he's been around enough that I don't think they're going to fall prey to him the way they would've if this was his first year. At the very least I think the Mets will compete, and he won't pitch a complete game like he did recently. The Yankee bullpen could be tired by this point if my other two games went as planned, so even if he does pitch well, the Mets have a chance to put their foot down on a tiring bullpen.


The Mets are done with their slump. They're going to win these games, because they need to start winning games. Everybody needs to have some Faith in this team. It was 24 years ago today that the Mets started putting together the '86 puzzle by acquiring Keith Hernandez. I wonder if Gary will remember that and mention it to him tonight.

The Three Cs

Surely if you're reading this you're only doing so to see how I'm possibly going to be optimistic at a time like this. There is a lot to be down on lately with the Mets and I am, and surely you are too, sick of hearing about it.

No baseball today, unless you count finding out if the Yankees are going to welcome in the Mets at .500, or on a nine game winning streak. Either way, I'm predicting they are going to be no better than .500 on Monday.

The Mets are obviously not as bad as they've been playing. You can complain about individual pieces and problems, but every team always has something that's not going right. The problem is that they all were happening at once. It doesn't matter where Lo Duca hits in the lineup, as no one's driving in runs from anywhere.

Obviously the Mets aren't going to lose nine of ten for the rest of the season. The important thing is that they're still in first place. They've lost maybe two games in the standings during this streak. Atlanta has struggled too, they couldn't even catch a cold. Obviously Philadelphia wasn't going to be eliminated after a bad first two weeks, but they haven't caught us either, despite the sweep. I don't think they're anything to be worried about either. The Mets will visit them at the end of the month, playing better baseball and thirsty for revenge after last week.

There is no reason to panic, or declare the season over. Although declaring the season over right now would put us in the playoffs. The Mets are going to play good baseball again. If they started doing that on Friday, they'd again be padding the lead, not trying to play catch up.

The Mets didn't have a streak like this last year, but that's not necessarily a bad thing for these guys. Last year they cruised, and they lost in the playoffs. The Mets are now feeling the pains of losing, they're learning that despite being the team to beat in the NL East, they can't take it for granted. They need to take that message to heart, and go out there with fire and passion to win in each game. They don't look happy right now, and that's good. They're not enjoying the losing streak, and they know the media frenzy that's going to take place this weekend. Maybe being back to being treated as second-class citizens, and the second best team will spark the fire that they need.

Sometimes losing can teach a team a lot, and when they learn their lesson, they will be able to win that much more effectively. I see good things for this weekend, remember the three Cs. Clobber Clemens and Clippard.

Subway Series to Atlanta

There isn't that much of importance to say in regards to this weekend. The Mets missed out on the sweep, but they secured another series win. The Yankees look disastrous, although Tyler Clippard grabbed one of the shovels the Mets were using to bury them to excavate his team a bit. Not bad for a MLB debut. The Empire State Building will still be orange and blue tonight to display the Mets victory, and the Mets go to Atlanta 2.5 up, while the Yankees welcome in the Red Sox 10.5 back.

The overall series was pretty tame in terms of fan craziness in the stands. Sunday night picked up a bit with the Yankees in the lead and some actual fighting in the stands. I'm not sure what it is about Sunday nights, but it seems to bring out the drunken rowdy fan. I know the two or three guys sitting behind me were horrible. They didn't shut up the entire game, chanting and yelling at the Yankees. I'm sure I would've despised them even more had they not been Met fans, but they were ignorant stupid Met fans, which are the worst kind. The kind I suppose I should get used to as the ignorant stupid band-wagon Yankee fans come over to Shea.

Even though some Mets struggled, John Maine, Carlos Beltran, Delgado, Green, and Scott Schoeneweis among them, it didn't really affect them. One player who I still don't like, despite some big home runs, is Damion Easley. Something just bothers me about the guy, particularly his defense. He seems to get to a lot of balls, but struggles to get it where it needs to go, and struggles with double plays.

A lot of talk has started to pop up about the possibility of Carlos Delgado being injured, or not fully recovered anyway. If this is the case, it's becoming too much of a problem and he needs to do something about it. If he needs some days off, just needs to take it easy, or maybe some physical therapy he needs to get it. Of course, I don't necessarily want to see Julio Franco there. I don't imagine this will happen, but seeing Shawn Green there and Gomez in right fight wouldn't be a bad thing.

I turned down the opportunity to go down to Atlanta for this series. The prospect of a 13 hour car trip was a little too much for me to handle, so I decided to just sit it out and root for them on tv. I get to enough games at Shea, and I fully intend on making to it Washington and Philadelphia to see them this year.

I still feel like the Mets have a power streak in them. They've had a good 7-3 homestand, but that wasn't quite as strong as it could've been. Atlanta's already 2.5 back, and with a nice push this week they'll be 3.5 back and the Mets can hopefully put one of these streaks together in the summer to lengthen the distance.

Interleague Play Draws Near: Command?

Good clean 8-1 win with Jorge Sosa pitching wonderfully nets the Mets the best record in the National League for the time being. The game started at roughly 10:10 and finished at just before 1am. Certainly sounds like a typical west coast start time for the Mets, but it was a home game delayed by rain instead.

Interleague play, Love it or hate it, seems like it's here to stay. There is a lot of debate about it's pluses and minuses, discussions about how unfair the scheduling is and about how it's an abomination. Another draw back was made apparent in tonight's Mets/Cubs game, one that actually affects the fans. With the extra 15-18 baseball games thrown in against the opposing league the Mets see teams like the Cubs and Cardinals who have long been rivals of the Mets, less. If the Cubs were returning to Shea, waiting out a 3-hour rain delay would've been less necessary and the game may have been canceled early and a make up scheduled. However that's not the case; the Cubs play their last game at Shea for the year(although I did pick the Mets over the Cubs in the NLCS, so they could still come back, just not in the regular season) later today and then fly back to Chicago. So the fans sit through a rain delay, the players sit through a rain delay, and the game is played late. The Mets did award anyone with tickets to yesterdays game a free ticket to the Minnesota series, which is nice but besides the point.

While I both like the idea of seeing the different teams, especially in cities where there aren't two teams like in New York, I personally think it might be a bit much. It ruins a certain flavor of the World Series match-ups too. The World Series is about the best team from each league, going head to head to see which is the best in the 'World'.(If Bobby Valentine got his way, they'd then go on to play the best team from Japan) Four times in the 10 year history of interleague play has the World Series featured two teams who played each other in the regular season; 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2006. It wasn't so much two teams pitted against each other as a rematch of a regular season series. The fans didn't get to ooo and ahhh at the opposing teams stars, as they'd already seen them.

That being said, I'll still enjoy this weekends games against the Yankees. I'll be at all three games, screaming at the Yankees and their fans. I've even got 6 extra tickets that I need to get rid of at cost for Sunday night's game. Hopefully I can find someone to take them and not be out that money. If you're interested, let me know.

One final thought; A lot was made about the American League's dominance over the National league in Interleague play and over Trevor Hoffman in the All-Star game. I would argue that the Cardinals came through when it mattered, and that's how you truly determine who's better. What else is the World Series for right? I think the Interleague games will be more split this year, and I predict the National League will finally win the All-Star game and home field, hopefully at Shea Stadium.

Ticket Woes

Feb 26, 2007 01:27 PM

It gets harder and harder to get the platinum level type ticket every season. Last year I managed to have tickets for opening day, and all three subway series games. This year I have 3 tickets to opening day, and 3 tickets to one of the Subway Series games. I also have 4 tickets to a second subway series game, but that's only because I took the financial hit and bought a Saturday season-plan which included one.

Sadly baseball is becoming, at least here in New York from my perspective, a sport for richer folk. Now I don't remember the days where you could see a baseball game for less than the current price of a mocha at Starbucks, but even at 24 I can see the ever increasing cost of being a fan.

I understand that a fan has to remember that baseball is a business, but I think that _baseball_ needs to remember that it is also a game and a passion of a lot of ordinary, average people. It's understandable that baseball tries to make money, by offering corporate boxes, charging more for prime games, and the like. There are millions of us out here that are fans that cannot come up with hundreds of dollars to see a couple of games, but are willing and enthusiastic about spending what money we have on the sport we love. Making it hard for the average fan to buy a cheap ticket, even to deep bleacher seats just alienates us, and mutes our interest in the game.

Some people have wonderful memories of paying quarters to get into memorable games of baseballs rich history, remember getting into the bleachers just so they could see some of baseballs great players play. Others listen to stories of fathers, or grandfathers, or uncles as they recollect some of the exciting games they went to, even if they weren't rich, while we listen on, remembering just how much to costs to be able to goto a game today.

With the construction of Citi Field, and others like it, the philosophy of having no bad seats is a wonderful one, but if the trade off is the cheapest ticket being $20 or $30+ dollars, I'd be just as happy watching it at Shea. For the true fans, it's not about the seat, the concourses or the view. It's about the game in front of us.