213 Miles From Shea

(via Page By Dave)

The Mets take another series at home tonight as the win against the Tigers clinch a series victory against a good ball club. The Mets now have a pitcher who is 6-0 and another pitcher who has an ERA at around 2.30 (2.33 to be exact). Also, you can add another shutout to the books tonight as the Mets beat the Tigers 5-0.

Let's focus on R.A. Dickey tonight. He was amazin'. Looking back at all of his starts now he has this theme of starting a little rough and then getting on a roll (which I've heard on various telecasts is typical of knuckle ball pitchers). Also (I was watching the ESPN telecast since I am currently in DC) the announcers kept talking about how the game, as the night went on, became Dickey's environment. He likes cool(er) temperatures and with a slight breeze (which, lets be honest, is pretty much any night game in Queens). Anyway his line was amazing as he pitched 8.0 innings while allowing 0 runs, walking 2 and striking out 4. He dropped his ERA from 2.82 down to 2.33. These numbers are even more impressive when you consider that he loaded the bases in the first inning. Another attribute of his game is that when he pitches, you want to watch. As a fan, you want to see how he mixes his pitches and mixes his speeds to get batters out. Its fun!

Oh, and Dickey is the first pitcher to start off his career as a Met with a 6-0 record. Well done.

In terms of offense, Jose Reyes was on fire tonight. He opened up with a triple, and didn't score. Then he got a single (and scored), and hit a homer (obvisously scored) and then reached on a fielder's choice (and then scored). He also got his 19th stolen base of the year as he continues to be a key piece of the offense for the ball club this month. Other notes include David Wright notching in his 20th double of the season and also recording his 56th RBI of the season. Jesus Feliciano recorded his first RBI of his career tonight as well.

Next up for the Mets is a three game sweep of the Tigers. That would be a great explanation point on the season so far and lets hope the Mets can do that tomorrow. The Mets will draw Galarraga in that game as they will send out Takahashi.

Check out the new banner at mets.com:

Sorry about the blurry-ness, I had a copy/paste/crop/resize Microsoft Word to Paint fail. Anyway keep pushing for Wright. The NL needs him to start at 3B.

The Mets will try to make it 2 in a row tonight as they play the Tigers in game two of this series. The first game featured, rain, offense, hits, scoring, late hours and uh, more scoring. The question for the Mets going into this homestand was if they could keep up this up winning pace. Winning tonight would show that this time, their winning ways are more sustainable than earlier in the season.

Hip Hip R.A.! It's time to knuckle down again at Citi Field as Dickey takes the mound for the Amazin's. Dickey is having a historic start for the Amazins as he makes his seventh start. In his first six starts he is 5-0 over 38.1 innings pitched with a 2.82 ERA. Dickey has had some recent trouble as his knuckle has been hit a little more, but thats also due to him ramping up the speed (the trade-off of course between a knuckleball and its speed). Last season Dickey was 0-1 over 3 games against the Tigers as he logged 7.1 innings against them allowing 4 runs. Here are the numbers the Tigers have against Dickey;

The Mets batters will get to face Bonderman on the mound tonight. On the season Jeremy has a 3-4 record with a 4.09 ERA over 75 innings pitched. In the month of June, Bonderman has made 4 starts with a 1-2 record over 27.2 innings pitched with a 4.55 ERA. The Mets have the following numbers against Bonderman:

Look I hate being hypocritical (and I also hate the word hate) but every once in a while I find myself having to be hypocritical. In the recent and not so recent past, I have been vocal about how I am not pleased with the concept of fans voting for the All-Star game. Now I need to flip it around though. Over the last few weeks Wright has been gaining in his position for the All-Star game, but he is still about 131,000 votes back (he has closed the gap by about 70,000 votes in the last week). He needs to be the All-Star.

Wright is chasing Polanco, but the only thing Polanco really has on Wright is his batting average. Polanco is hitting .313 while Wright is hitting about .283. However outside of that, Wright is much better than Polanco. Wright has (not including last night's games) 53 RBI's while Polanco has 25. Wright also has 4 more doubles, 9 more stolen bases, 1 more triple, and 7 more homers.

From a statistical point of view, Wright is the winner. From a leadership point of view, Wright is the winner. However for the real question for the All-Star game is if there was one third basemen, you would want to play at third in order to get the NL home field advantage, you would, or should, pick David Wright.

So now its up to us, the fans. We need to get Wright into the All-Star game. I'm confident that he will be picked as an alternate, however, he needs to be starting this game.

Some quick hits to go with your Wednesday Morning Blueberry Crisp Cliff Bar:

The Mets beat the Tigers by the score of 14-6 tonight. Whenever the score is that high, you can believe that we can pull a lot of interesting numbers out of this game. Before we get to that, lets review the game briefly. The Mets scored two quick runs in the bottom of the first. The game was then pretty smooth until bottom of the third inning. Through the first top frames, Niese held the Tigers hitless. The Mets at the start of the bottom frame of the third send in another run, and then the skys opened up. After a lengthy rain delay, Verlander didn't return to the game, but the Mets bats did. They ended up scoring another 7 runs in that inning, making the total 8. Then Niese returned, and after the delay he was not as sharp. After Nieve went in the game, and the Tigers got through the rest of their problems, the rest of the game was fairly uneventful.

Anyway Numbers!

Good (Statistically) Looking Game!

The Mets return to Citi Field after a long and successful road trip. Although the Mets tripped up over the last two days, a 7-2 road trip is a strong way to return home, where they just had a 5-1 home stand. This should be an interesting series for the Mets as the Tigers are also 8-2 in their last ten games and are also 2nd in their division. Both of these teams really want to win these games in order to continue their winning ways. Working in the Mets favor is their home record (24-10) vs the Tigers road record (13-19).

The Mets will be sending out Niese to the mound (4-2, 3.64 ERA) to take on the Tigers this afternoon. Jon has been pretty successful since his return from the DL. In that time he has made three starts where he has a 3-0 record over 23.0 innings and a 1.57 ERA. Due to the nature of Niese's age and the rotating interleague schedule, it comes as no surprise that Niese has no records against any of the Tiger's hitters. For Niese the key will be, as it has in his last several starts, getting that curveball over for a strike. When he gets it over for a strike, and in the armslot of the fastball, Niese becomes a very special pitcher.

The Mets batters will have to deal with the ace of the Tigers staff, Justin Verlander (8-4, 3.54 ERA). In the month of June, Verlander has an identical record to Niese (3-0) in the same amount of starts (3) while posting a 2.86 ERA over 22 innings pitched. Verlander has never faced the Mets in his major league career, however he has been around long enough to face a few Mets batters while they were with other teams:

We all know that to some degree, the MLB Draft is a bit of a crap shoot. However a team's first round pick should at least make it to the majors, right? Here I am not concerned with whether or not the first round player was effective once he came up, I just want to know if the player actually made it to the majors. The other ground rule for this study is that I am including the supplemental first round as first round picks. Below is a graph that looks at percentage of players that made it to the majors:

And the Raw Data:

Made It	Picks	Season	Percentage
23	35	1996	0.657143
31	52	1997	0.596154
30	43	1998	0.697674
23	51	1999	0.45098
24	40	2000	0.6
26	44	2001	0.590909
27	41	2002	0.658537
26	37	2003	0.702703
27	41	2004	0.658537
35	48	2005	0.729167

Notable Draft Picks that didn't make it:

Some quick hits to go with your Tuesday morning Blueberry Frosted Mini-Wheat: