213 Miles From Shea

There's a party on top of the NL East and, barring some sort of winning streak till the end of the season, we are not invited.

It's time to crash this party.

The Phillies and Braves are in a close one on top of the division with the Phillies leading the Braves by a half a game, and the Giants are trailing (essentially) both teams by two games. The only thing that is worse than the Phillies or Braves making the playoffs is if they both make the playoffs (increasing the chances for another terrible to watch Yankee/Phillies or Yankee/Braves ala the 90's  World Series).

So Amazin's, starting tomorrow night, it is time to play spoiler. Win a couple from the Phils, get the Braves to take the lead and then hope that the Phils fall back in the Wild Card race.

The fuel for this fire of course is that the Mets are supposed to really not like these guys. Remember these are the guys who accused us of cheating at the beginning of the year because of our home record. Why? They were caught cheating.

Lets Go Mets. Try as you can to at least get one of these teams out of the playoff picture.

Not Much has changed in the world of elimination so at the end of this article, we will be taking a look at the “reverse” standings, or teams with the worst records gunning for that number one pick (which I'm not sure If I want the Mets to be involved with, but I'll explain later).

Anyway your completely eliminated teams:

One foot out the door:

About to be tossed:

Rotting, but not quite there yet:

Its fairly obvious from this point that even the Mets went on a tremendous slide, they probably won't catch up to be the worst team n the league. Now I really want the Mets to finish at .500 or better but there is one case I don't want them to. If they are going to sign a type A free agent (something that is never ruled out) they have to give up their #1 draft pick, unless they are in the bottom 15 in the league, which they currently are, in which that pick is protected. This is not an issue right now, but might be later on as the Mets tend to look right on the line.

Let's take a look at the catcher of our future, Josh Thole. Thole as a hitter is known is for using the entire field as he slaps hits all over the field. One thing he hasn't really been known for is knocking homers out of the ball park. Here's a video of a homer he hit on 6/14 (same game that F-Mart crushed a game winning grand slam). Check it out:

We are sorry for the interruption but today we bring you back to your regularly scheduled day game. The Mets play the 12:30 game today as they look to build off of yesterday's win featuring young Starter Dillon Gee. Today, the Mets will be looking for Dickey to bounce back from his last start as they take on Livan Hernandez and the Nationals.

Dickey just wasn't that good in his last outing as he allowed 7 ER over 6 innings of work. This season he has two no decisions against the Nationals, but he has pitched very well as he has allowed only 2 ER against them over 13.0 innings of work. The Nationals have these numbers on Robert Allen:

The Mets bats will get a chance at Livan Hernandez who is 9-10 this season with a nice 3.81 ERA. The Mets are catching him at a good time right now as he has been fairly terrible in his last three outings where he has pitched a combined 15 innings and has allowed 20 ER (yes, 5 more ER than innings pitched). What Livan has going for him is that he has been pretty good against the Amazin's this season as he has pitched 3 games totalling 20.1 innings allowing only 3 ER. So in the statistical world, its a battle to see if his numbers against the Mets continue or if his recent outing numbers continue. The Mets have these numbers on Livan:

Lets Go Mets!

Dillon Gee looked really good tonight, looking like the prospect we here at 213 thought he could be back in 2009 (check our Get To Know a Prospect on Gee from March 2009). Anyway he was phenomenal in his debut as he allowed only 1 ER over 7 innings of work while allowing 2 hits and striking out 4. You may or may not have heard that he had a no hitter going through the first five innings of tonight's game. All in all, I don't want to read too much into this because it is just one start, but its is promising because his pitches looked so good tonight.

Oh, and not to be outdone with his arm, in his first major league AB, he got an RBI. Nice.

In other Mets news from this game, Ike Davis continued his recent late season surge as he hit his 18th homer of the season as he knocked in 3 RBI's on that jack with 64 on the season.

My one complaint about the game goes back to Jerry. Why Jerry, Why? Why use Parnell for one batter in the 8th, and not give him the save situation, but give the save situation to Takahashi. That doesn't make sense man. Bobby has to be tried as the closer and he needs to pitch in save situations. 

Major League Debut Derby.

The Mets and the Nationals play game two tonight after last night's romp via young prospect Espinosa who exploded at the plate vs the Mets. Tonight will feature the Major League debut for both starting pitchers. On the Amazin's side, 24-year old Dillon Gee gets a shot to show if he has the goods to be a starter in the Majors and for the Nationals, they will show off their recent acquisition from Cuba, Yuneski Maya.

Dillon Gee has been a talked about prospect for a while now, because its hard to see on the surface whether he has the ability to be a star, or whether he is just not going to pan out (obvisously this is the discussion for every prospect, but the consensus on Gee ranges). Anyway he has had a good comeback year (only pitched 48 innings last season due to innings). This year he is 13-8 with a 4.96 ERA in AAA with 165 strikeouts to only 41 BB. Yes, that is a 4 to 1 strikeout ratio. That is where he makes noise as a prospect. It will be interesting to see what he does tonight.

Maya was a player that I really wanted the Mets to get at the start of this season, so now I'm hoping I was wrong about him. If you thought that Mejia was rocketed through his system, wait to you see how Maya (who is an accomplished Cuban pitcher) moved through the Nationals system. He made 2 starts in the Rookie League (with a 1.29 ERA), made one start in Advanced Single A (6 ER in 4 IP) then two starts in AAA with one earned run in 10.1 innings. Essentially he traveled like a pitcher on rehab.

Lets Go Mets!

Bisons week continues as we take another look at Fernando Martinez. Yesterday we saw his quick bat with a grand slam. Today we will see his glove. The play may not look so amazing on first glance, so make sure you listen to the announcers. They will talk about how he had a bad back before making the play, which makes the play that much better. Check it out:

It is no secret that the Mets offense is bad, and they are pretty safe from being the worst however they are danger of finishing the season in the bottom 5 in runs scored:

If the Mets want to participate in this race for pride, they still have a change, albeit and outside chance, to leap frog the Nationals, Padres and Dodgers to get out of the bottom part of the division in runs scored (and they will really need to be terrible, and the Astros/Pirates amazing, to fall all the way down to the bottom of the league).

Even though this is a race for pride, it will probably be discussed this offseason as the offense was supposed to be the strength of this team coming into 2010.

I know this is a baseball site.

I know this weekly column is supposed to highlight bizarre baseball uniforms.

But this was too much last night to ignore:

(via Gator Country)

Warning: This article was written DURING last night's game, so in this universe, the fate of the game is unknown

Boise State and Virginia Tech played the most anticipated game of the weekend last night and they both wore Nike's Pro Combat Uniforms. If you know about Pro Combat, you probably can guess my stance on them. If not here you go: Essentially Nike wants to be a team, so they made special uniforms for a handful of the better programs that wear their uniforms. The uniforms are all about Nike. Its the type of corporate branding that if you follow this site, you know I am very much against. Anyway back to discussion of the uniform.

If this uniform was for a special night, like for example “Computer Engineering Night” then I would probably be writing a positive review about this uniform. This uniform though was really a “Hey Look at Team Nike” situation, and that is why it is getting a negative review. The design of this uniform plays on the “Tech” in VT's name.

That and the color of the numbers are the only connection to the school.

In a uniform, a basic uniform, especially in College, the uniform needs to represent the school, the school's history, and the school's ideology as much as possible.

That being said, you as a reader have a very good idea on where I stand with this uniform design.

Also, here is another great article about the whole Nike thing from someone I respect a lot, and who is the authority on Uniform Situations, Paul Lukas.