213 Miles From Shea

This has been a tough two weeks for Mets fans. In the last two weeks the health of Santana, Wright, Murphy, Turner and Marcum have all come into question. At least within the last two days we can hang our hats on the idea of Wright, Turner and Murphy progressing, there hasn’t been too much positive news on the other two. The office is saying treatments for Marcum are more preventive and that Santana is six weeks away from pitching, but it always seems like he is some amount of weeks from pitching.

With all of this, it is easy to find pessimism in watch should be the most optimistic time of year.

In the next week, let’s walk through the positives again and show hope for 2013. Let’s highlight the players that will provide excitement for this upcoming season.

While 40% of the rotation has been disappointing and filled with question marks this spring, Niese and Harvey have been quite the opposite.

Niese, recently named the opening day starter, has been dominate this spring. In 17.2 innings of work he’s allowed only 10 hits, and 3 runs while striking out 12 batters and walking 9. It is difficult to take spring numbers and translate them into major league numbers but it feels like Niese is ready turn a corner in his major league career. He already started this last season with his 3.40 ERA, which was a full run lower than his previous year and his first sub 4.10 ERA.

This is a big year for Niese for other reasons as well. If you look at the Mets at the end of the off-season, the best shot the Mets had at getting major prospects would be trading a starter. Niese was chosen to stay over the Cy-Young winner Dickey, so the Mets are saying with that move, “we are betting on you.” This, and probably next year as well, will be the last time that Niese is seen as the ace of this squad, and maybe even the number 2 starter. In one to two seasons, Wheeler and Harvey will propel to the top of the rotation. This is Niese’s time to shine.

Speaking of Harvey, he’s another reason to be optimistic for 2013. Havery was a real bright point for 2012 after Dickey. He had a terrific 2012 campaign with a 3-5 record posting a 2.73 ERA over 10 starts while pitching 59.1 innings striking out 70 batters. Just let that K/9 ratio sink in for a second.

You did? Good.

Harvey has had a successful Spring as well pitching 18.1 innings with a 2.95 ERA striking out 24 batters. Harvey, who had the spotlight last year, doesn’t have it this year and I often find myself forgetting that he is on this roster and that he can do big things right now, at the start of the season.

I’m not going to conclude at the end of this series that the Mets are going to dominate the NL East in 2013, but I hope at the end you realize, as much as I am while writing this, that all of the depressing events to occur with the Mets over the last two weeks can be out weighed by potential the Mets already have.

The Mets have a losing record in Spring again (womp womp) as they dropped a game to the Nationals at Space Coast by the score of 8-5.

On the pitching side, Harvey wasn’t terrible as he allowed 2 ER, 3 R over 4 innings of work. The breakdown came from Parnell, who had his first bad inning of the spring as he allowed 4 ER over an inning of work.

Nothing too much to note about the play of OF except for the following:
– Duda went 0-3 as it becomes increasingly obvious that no one has a sure shot in the OF
– Cowgill 1-4 with HR as he keeps asserting himself to the OF
– Byrd 2-4, RBI

Statistically from Spring, the top 3 OF the Mets have right now are Cowgill, Byrd and Valdespin. Way different than Baxter, Kirk and Duda.

Yesterday the Mets trounced the Tigers by the score of 11-0 and improved to a record of 6-6! (Yipee!)

Let’s start with the pitching. Niese was great, he walked a good amount (4) but he held the Tigers to only one hit through 4.2 innings. Burke, Familia, Mejia and Laffey followed up with scorless outings, and its always a great day when the entire pitching staff is on the ball.

The batters went crazy too as Valdespin, Bixler and Hicks all went yard. In terms of this article theme though, Valdespin was the winner of the day even though he played 2B. Lutz also got a look at the OF too. Here are the updated OF stats:

The Mets got their fifth win (in league play) of Spring this afternoon on the roads against the Cardinals by the score of 3-0 as the Mets pitching staff kept the birds to only 3 hits.

The good pitching started with the return of Shawn Marcum who pitched 3.2 innings this afternoon allowing 1 hit and striking out 2, which is really encouraging considering his role in the starting rotation this year. Marcum was followed by Feliciano, Atchison, Rice, Familia (W), Burke (H) and Torres (S). So good day all around.

There wasn’t too much from the Mets bats today specifically from the OF. Cowgill and Byrd had a quiet day at the plate (had to happen eventually). Valdespin was put into the game late and hit an RBI single as he continues to assert himself into the OF conversation (he played RF today). In addition, OF longshot Hoffman had a 2 RBI double. Here are the updated baseball stats:

Manny Ramirez is playing baseball again! This time for the EDA Rhinos of Taiwan who play in the Chinese Professional Baseball League. In case you wanted to see the world through Manny’s eyes, here is what he’ll be seeing a lot of now:

His new logo:

His new uniform:

His new stadium:

(First three images from the EDA Rhinos Facebook page, above image of the stadium from their Wikipedia page)

In all seriousness, this is a good move. Manny gets to play baseball again and former superstars in other country is good for the spreading the appeal of the game of baseball.

David Wright came up to the plate last night in a tied game with the bases loaded and this happened:

Something interesting happened there. David Wright was already seen as the captain of this USA’s team. Having the leader hit the go ahead grand slam is a huge deal. David Wright was clutch last night and as clutch is a difficult parameter to measure, what isn’t difficult to see is momentum, and David Wright is building national momentum.

To some extent, he may be building the Mets brand too. The Mets will be in a position to sign free agent outfielders next year, David can become more of a draw.

For the rest of this article, we need to suspend judgment about whether the WBC tournament is worth it, or a good idea. For the sake of the international game, the WBC does good, especially with surprising countries. Yesterday, the WBC took a hit when the Canada vs Mexico game broke out into a bench clearing brawl. Actually, that’s bad for baseball everywhere.  David Wright’s Grand Slam gives a different video bite to show off at the top of baseball shows. It asserts itself as the top story instead of the fight. David Wright didn’t save the WBC by hitting the grand slam but he did help steal the attention from an ugly situation.

The Mets beat the Astros by the score of 9-6 today and finally had a day where the offense was really clicking.

Specifically, today was a big day for Lucas Duda, who came into this game with only three hits in Spring Training and a bunch of strikeouts. In today’s game, he went 3-3, R, 2B, 2 RBI’s and two of the hits went to the opposite field. Byrd continued his strong spring going 1-3 with a double, becoming the second Met outfielder to have double digit hit totals in Spring Training/Exhibition games.

All in all, it was nice to see the Mets to get some hits and score some runs. I keep saying this, but I’ll group the players on the following chart soon but right now the OF race looks like this:

Inside Track: Duda, Cowgill, Byrd
Pushing Up: den Dekker, Valdespin
Injury: Kirk
Falling: Baxter
Way Outside Shot: Lutz, Turner, Lagares, Brown, Hoffman

The Mets took a long trip yesterday to play the Tigers and ultimately lost, but there were some positives to write about.

On the pitching side, Gee logged 4 innings while allowing only one run. He needs to work on his control though as he walked three batters. Parnell and Hawkins both contributed a scoreless inning of relief.

On the batting side, Cowgill continued to get on base as he went 0-1 but walked twice. Valdespin flashed power with a homer as his time in the OF started to increase and Baxter went 0-3.

If we look at how this Spring has gone. In the start the OF looked like Baxter/Kirk/Duda with a possible platoon in left with Cowgill (as the secondary) and Byrd as the outside shot. When injuries and performance are taken into account, the OF now looks more like Cowgill/den Dekker/Duda with Baxter as a backup. Cowgill could replace den Dekker in CF and a Byrd/Valdespin platoon is equally likely in left. If Valdespin keeps hitting like he is, one would think he would develop a stronger inside track to Left than Byrd.

Anyway, here are some stats:

The Mets beat the Marlins 4-1 today behind a fantastic start by Matt Harvey, reminding all of us of the exciting possibilities this 2013 team has in its young talent.

With regards to the Mets OF situation, there were two interesting developments today:

– den Dekker went 2-3 today as he is starting to hit with his defense, pushing himself more into the OF conversation. One of his hits today was a homer
– Turner officially got sometime in the OF today (first time since 2006), so I added him to the chart as well, which is getting long

Here’s the data:

Images have been circulating this week of a leak of the 2013 All-Star Uniform design from a video game. Fansided has one of the clearest galleries of images on the internet, I recommend heading over there to take a look.

I’m going to attempt to avoid a review of the uniform because digital mock ups tend to look different than the reality, usually in the front where the front script looks too small, which would be my major complete here. On this image, it looks like the first letter is larger than the rest of the League Name which is that extra added detail this jersey needs.

Unlike last year, it looks like the BP uniforms have gone back to a pull over style, which is surprising here. Other uniforms almost needed to be pull over due to the detail in the front design. This front looks simple, so you would think it would be a button down, but not here.

Alright, now for the inconsistencies.

In an effort to make everyone to wear Mets colors (I can’t disagree with that), American League jerseys are blue and National are orange. The brim on the hat matches the jersey and the back is opposite. For example, the American League has a blue brim and an orange back. (Look at the above image).

I found this interesting because the underarm panels are not inverse of each other. The National League has blue underarm panels, and the American League has white underarm panels. I wonder if this will hold up when the actual uniforms come out.

The other inconsistency could be a mistake or an oversight that no one will really care about. In this image, the National League BP helmet is orange, but staying true to the hat design, it should be blue. If this is intentional, no one will really know. BP helmets aren’t worn in the homerun derby and during the actual game, teams wear their actual uniform with a patch. The only time this will be seen is if the color templates are the same for the USA vs World Futures game, and generally the templates are the same for that game.

Just some thoughts to chew on while we wait for the actual uniforms to be released. Once again, these photos are not mine, they are published on Fansided.