213 Miles From Shea

The Mets left Atlanta late last night as winners (finally) and their reward is a day game after a night game on the road in two different cities (seriously, that disappointing scheduling). Anyway, the Amazin's descend into the Windy City as they look to make it two in a row behind R.A. Dickey this afternoon. Dickey rebounded really nicely from his poor start (two starts ago) by going 7 strong innings allowing only 1 ER. Robert Allen has actually never pitched in Chicago and has never faced the Cubs anywhere so there are only three batters he has faced on the current Cubs team. Byrd and DeWitt are both 0-2 and Soriano is 1-2.

The Mets will get a crack at Randy Wells today and he is 6-12 this season with a 4.50 ERA. In his last two starts he has allowed 7 ER over 12 innings, so he is looking for the rebound tonight and he is doing it against a team that he had success against earlier this season when he pitched 6 innings of one run ball against the Mets, in a game the Cubs eventually lost. The Mets have these numbers on Wells:

Lets Go Mets!

The Mets end their four game set with the Braves tonight as they still look to avoid the sweep. Johan Santana will take the mound for the Amazins who need some positive starting pitching (and some offense, but whatever). In his last outing he pitched 7 innings while allowing 4 ER in an losing effort. He is 1-1 this year against the Braves in three games with 21.0 innings logged and a 2.57 ERA. The Braves have these numbers against the ATL:

The Mets have to deal with Timmy Hudson tonight who is 15-5 this year with a sparkling 2.24 ERA. He is coming off of a great start where he allowed only one earned run over 7 innings of work. He is 2-0 against the Mets this year over 13.0 innings pitched with a 0.69 ERA. The Mets have these numbers against Tim:

Lets Go Mets!

On Tuesday we saw the first variant of the Mr. Met golfing commercial and today we get to see the second one, where Mr. Met causes a bit more damage than he did the first time around:

September 1st brought a new chapter in the life of Joaquin Arias. The once highly touted prospect was traded away from an organization that was loosing faith in him to an organization that is searching for answers. Arias may already be coming into New York with an interesting target on his back. The Mets fans may (and I really do mean may, its just a possibility) expect big things from Arias since he was traded for an everyday Major League player.

At this point in Arias's career, which has had him bouncing around from the Majors and the Minors since he was 21, he needs to find a spark to get his career in motion. The good about Arias is that he is quick. He is quick on the field, and quick on the base paths. He also gets hits. He is a career .286 hitter and this season a .276 hitter. The problem is that has practically zero power and zero patience at the plate. In his 101 AB this year he has 2 BB and 6 extra base hits. When that is the case, he needs to be hitting .276 (which is ok to hit when you are slugging and getting on base in other ways).

Even as early of 2007 he was still on the top 10 list of the Rangers prospect ranked at #6. In the 2004 and 2005 season he was hitting above .300 in the minors. Things were looking ver good. He was brought up for a very quick stint in 2006 where he smoked the ball going 6-11. The next time he retuned was 2008 where he went 32-110 (.291 BA) with 7 doubles and 3 triples. That is where he had the height of the performance. In 2009 he took a huge slide in the minors only hitting .266 and then when he went to the majors he went 0-8.

Now its 2010. In a young career Arias has been all over the place. The only way for the Mets to know what they have in him is to let him play and let him take Castillo's spot (we can't keep using him off the bench if we want an in-depth view). He projects right now to be a utility infielder, to be carried for his defense and thats about it.

The calendar flipped to September, which means it is acceptable now for a team to fall out of contention mathematically (sorry Pirates and Orioles). In step with what was alluded in the last edition of this article, now that the Pirates and Orioles are out, it will be a few days, probably 5 at least until the next falls from all hope for the 2010 season:

It's the race to mathematically hopelessness and as almost as exciting as the race for the best pick in next year's draft!

The past two days have been miserable for the Mets who have had pretty poor starting pitching, poor hitting and defensive miscues. The Mets look to avoid the sweep tonight in Atlanta as Mike Pelfrey looks to play stopper against Tommy Hanson. Pelfrey has been on a very successful tear of late where he is 3-1 in his last four starts with 30 innings of work logged and an ERA of 1.20. Against the Braves this season he is 2-2 in as many starts where has put in 21.1 innings pitched wtih an ERA of 3.80. The Braves have the following numbers on Big Pelf:

The Mets will get another crack at Tommy Hanson who is 8-10 with a 3.76 ERA this season. In two starts against the Mets this season he has had pretty bad luck as he is 0-1 despite pitching 10.1 innings of 2 ER run ball. The Mets have these numbers on Tommy:

Lets Go Mets!

In today's entry of this six part series, we will see how Mr. Met occupies his time using the teams baseball bats as the 2005 Mets are away from the friendly grounds of Shea Stadium:

With the calendar flipping from August to September brought the Mets a trade and the normal expanded rosters and prospects making their way to the big league club. The first major move that happened yesterday was the Mets finalized a trade that sent Francoeur to the Rangers for Joaquin Arias. For the most part, Francoeur is excited about this trade because he gets to go to a club making the playoffs, but he'll miss his teammates here (normal cliche sayings, etc, etc). In the long run what this means for the Mets is that this is one issue, albeit minor, the Mets do not have to deal with this winter. Later at 213 we will look at Francoeur's brief (but feels like a century) stint with the Mets.

In return for Jeff, the Mets get 25-year old infielder Joaquin Arias. Essentially, he is very good at somethings, and very bad at others. He is a very fast player (is small bursts) which allows him to make great plays in the field and cause trouble on the basepaths. This fits into the Mets game. The problem is in 101 AB's, although he has a nice .276 BA, he has only 6 extra bases, 2 walks. The Rangers were really done with him, which is why we have him. We could use another infielder though, and I'm interested to see how he works out. He will be profiled for tomorrow's “Get To Know A Prospect” entry.

The last two moves are about call-ups. We all had a feeling that Mejia was going to be rejoining the team. I am in the group that is a little shocked that it will be so soon (next start on Saturday) since he had only one start at AAA (albeit an incredible start). Let's see what he can do as a starter. Duda really surprised me. I know we as Mets fans have been calling him to come up for a while, and now he is here. I hope he becomes a starting OF'er otherwise his callup will be studpid and very a la Nick Evans.

The Mets dropped the opener of the season last night in a game that was the exact opposite of Sunday where the Mets last night did not get good starting pitching and the bats were not able to move runners from base to across the plate. The Mets look to reverse that tonight as they take on the Braves from game 2 behind Jon Niese as the Braves will counter with Mike Minor.

After a fantastic string of starts, Jon Niese finds himself needing to rebound from a terrible start in his last outing where he allowed 7 ER over 5.2 innings of work. Before that game he had 4 consecutive starts were he allowed 1 ER pitching a total of 26 innings (one game was the 5 inning complete game). Niese has pitched one game this year against the Braves where he has a no decision in 5.1 innings of work where he allowed only one earned run. The Braves have these numbers on Niese:

The Mets tonight get to face the young 22-year old pitcher, Mike Minor in Atlanta tonight who has pitched 3 Major League games so far this season with a 2-0 record and a 4.00 ERA. He has pitched 6 innings in each start and has given up 5, 5 and 7 hits respectively, combined with 1, 2 and 1 walks. In those games he has allowed 3, 2, and 3 earned runs. What is important to note from these numbers is that runs are being scored on him and that he hasn't been completely shutdown yet, however he has been good. Hopefully the Mets can figure him, and themselves, out tonight.

Lets Go Mets!