213 Miles From Shea

Something will have to give tonight. The Mets have one of the worst road records in the majors. The Brewers have one of the worst home records in the majors. The red-hot New York Mets travel to Miller land tonight as they take on the Brewers in a series where the Mets hope to continue building steam from their fantastic homestand. It will also be a reunion of sorts tonight as Carlos Gomez will get to face his former team, and the very ace that he was traded away for.

Santana (4-2, 3.41) will get the nodd tonight. Over his last three games he has pitched 21.2 innings and allowed only 3 ER (1.25 ERA). He actually has four consecutive starts at this point pitching at least 7 innings, which is excatly what this team needs him to do. Last season, Santana was 1-1 in as many starts against the Brew Crew pitching 13.0 innings and posting a 3.42 ERA. The Breweres have been able to put these numbers on Santana over his career:

The Mets will draw Gallardo tonight, who is young pitcher with a lot of potential. This season he is 4-2 with a 3.20 ERA in 59 innings of work. His last three starts yield similar numbers to his season numbers. In 2009 he faced the Mets twice with an 0-1 record but he put up some scary numbers as in 13 innings of work he allowed 1 ER while striking out 19 (Postive though: he did allow 10 hits). If the Mets are going to do some damage against him tonight, they will need to channel in the Mets that have been getting timely hits in 6 of their last 7 games. The Mets numbers against him:

Lets Go Mets!

Today feels different. It's a feeling that hasn't been around since that 8 game winning streak earlier this year. The Mets have returned to being exciting. It's like a buzz in the air. Pure anticipation for each game. No longer is it “oh no, here we go again” its now “yeah! let's get this game started!” Its gone from “ugh I don't want to look at the box score” to “20 hours between games is too long!”.

Earlier this week, the question was proposed here if the series against the Yankees could be considered a possible turning point for the season. So far there really have been two turning points, the Ike Davis Call-Up Homestand, and then that was directly followed by the abysmal series in Philly.

I think its worthwhile to interrupt my own thought here and explain how I'm defining turning point. These Mets have proved to be real streaky players. Therefore normally in a season you have one or two turning points, tops. This season though, we are going to have a lot of “turning points”. Maybe it might be better to think of this in math terms, as critical points, or points where the behavior of a function changes from positive to negative or negative to positive. However, the word critical carries too much weight, and so does turning, but for sake of keeping myself sane, I'm going to refer to them as turning points, but think of them as mathematical critical points.

So anyway, earlier this week I said I would reserve judgement as to this being a turning point of the season until after the series with Philly. Now I think its safe to say that is a very important point for this season. The Mets were coming off of a terrible road trip and although they were coming home to Citi Field, they had to face the Yankees and the Phillies for a six game stretch. A stretch that could have knocked out the coaching staff and one that, if the Mets performed better on the preceding road trip, they probably would have been fine with a 2-4 record and happy with a 3-3 record.

After dropping the first game, the Mets roared back winning the next 5, taking series from two very good teams. They went from 7 games back in the division all the way to 2 games back. What they did against the Phillies was special though. Three consecutive shut outs. Those are like double wins now.

Not only is that a three game sweep of a rival, they never let them go across home plate. The Mets may have infected them with some sort of psychological hitting block where the Red Sox administered the first infection.

This is also what the pitching staff needed. This what the hitters needed. This is what Jerry needed. This is what we needed.

Now there is one more part. The Mets need to win on the road starting tonight. They need to keep building this little cushion above .500 and head back to the top of the division.

Some quick hits to go with your Friday morning McGriddle:

The Mets go for the three game sweep tonight against Philly. After back to back great starts, the Mets will send out Mike Pelfrey to finish off Philly. After last night's game the Phillies had a meeting to discuss what has gone on in the last four games where they have lost by a combined score of 3-26. It's always hard to sweep a team.

Pelfrey (6-1, 2.86 ERA) was fantastic in his last outing where he pitched 6 innings and allowed one run. In his last two outings he has pitched 13.2 innings with a 1.98 ERA. Earlier this season he was on a roll until he landed in Philly where the wheels came off the track (4.0 IP, 6 ER) however since then he has regained his confidence, and he will be pitching at home tonight where his ERA is 2.43 (vs 3.66 on the road). The Phillies have these stats against Pelfrey lifetime:

The Mets will draw Hamels tonight, who is having a comeback year. Overall on the season he is 5-2 with a 3.92 ERA and he has winning decisions in all of three of his last three starts with an ERA of 2.89. He was average (at best) against the Mets last year going 1-1 in three starts with a 4.86 ERA . The Mets have been able to put these numbers on Hamels over his career:

The difference for this team in the last four games has been consistent starting pitching and consitent hitting. If the Mets can keep up both ends, good pitching and timely hitting, then this could be a very memorable homestand. Lets Go Mets!

(From: The Pursuit of Red Sox)

In the 17th round of the 1998 draft, the Mets selected Ty Wigginton out of UNC. From that 50 round draft, only 6 Mets draftee's ever made it to the majors, and Ty has been above and beyond the most successful one of the bunch. He would later make his major league debut at the age of 24 in 2002 with the Mets where he had 116 at bats and a .302 batting average (he would also belt 6 homers that year). In 2003 he got 573 AB's with the Mets and his batting average dropped to .255 and he only hit 11 homers. His 2004 campaign started off with the Mets where he had 312 AB's and had 12 homers but another Mets star was set to make it through the minors that year, and the Mets could use some more pitching, so away went Ty.

Right before the trading deadline, the Mets made a package of Ty Wiggington with Matt Peterson and Jose Bautista to go the Pirates for Jeff Keppinger and Kris Benson. The rest of the of the story on the Mets side we all know. Kris Benson had some short lived fame in New York, or rather, his wife had some short lived fame up here. He would later be traded to the Orioles for Jorge Julio and throw-in John Maine. Julio would later (that same season) be traded to the Diamondbacks for El-Duque and together El-Duque and Maine would become pivotal pieces of that 2006 and 2007 Mets rotation.

But what about who we traded away? Well Ty would later be released by the Pirates in 2005 as he really struggled in Pittsburgh. He was then picked up by (the then called) Devil Rays where he had a terrific season hitting .275 but also hitting 24 homers. The following season, his numbers would stay consistent as he was traded midway through the season to Houston for Dan Wheeler. After another successful 2008 season with Houston (.285, 23 homers), he was granted free agency where he was then picked up by his current team, the Baltimore Orioles. His last season was alright with the birds (.273, 11 homers), but this season has been a different story.

Ty Wigginton is literally the most exciting player on the Orioles. I was at the game last night, and he really is the player the fans hold in the best light because he has been their most consistent player this year. He was just supposed to fill strange roles but when Tejada went down, he had to step up, and step up he did. He actually, until this week, was leading the majors in homers (13). Leading the majors! Who would think he would do that? Now, of course he trails Konerko and the other piece to this story.

This article has focused on Ty so far, but now its time focus on Jose Bautista. Jose was drafted in 2000, and by the time he got to the Mets, he already was bounced around a lot. The Mets got him from the Royals,after a complicated two days for Bautista. Now Bautista never played a game in the Mets uniform. The Mets traded Huber to KC to get Bautista and then flipped him to the Pirates to get Kris Benson (all on the same day). Actually in a three day stretch he was technically (although never played for some of these teams,) an Oriole, a Devil Ray, a Royal, a Met and a Pirate. He would stay in Pittsburgh until 2008 when he was traded to Toronto.

Now these stories merge. Jose Bautista has become the major league leader in homers (15).

Thus ends a strange tale that one day in 2004, the Mets traded away 2 of the 3 players that would be leading the majors in homers in 2010.

Of course, the best part of this story, in my mind, is generally when you would tell someone “Hey! Six years ago you traded away two of the HR leaders!” your reaction would probably be, “ugh, frustrating”. However, thats not the case here. First of all thats probably the case because by the end of July, some more familiar names will take those leading spots for homers, but Ty and Jose, they were never really the pieces the Mets were looking at, because of options that we have had and have now. So this is more of a good for you and “Hey! We actually drafted someone of talent!”

Some quick hits to go with your Thursday morning Unfrosted Blueberry Poptart:

The Amazin Mets try to keep the ball rolling tonight as they take on the Phillies for game two of the three game set. Last night, it was R.A. Dickey making things Tricky for the Phillies as they faced knuckleballers for two games straight. Tonight the Mets will try to fool the Phils with Takahashi while the Phils will call on Joe Blanton to quiet the Mets bats.

Takahashi (3-1, 2.53 ERA) was brilliant in his last started as he pitched 6.0 scoreless innings against the Yankees (in his first major league start). Although he allowed 5 hits over that time, he only walked one batter and was able to strike 5 out keeping hte basepaths mostly quiet and keeping the Yankees bats silent. The key for Takahashi will be to do the same tonight. He has to keep runners off the paths because its ok if the Phillies hit a solo shot, but its not ok if they hit a grandslam. He faced the Phils in relief this season and pitched 1.1 innings allowing 5 hits, ER, no walks while striking out 1. All fve hits were from different players (Howard, Moyer, Polanco, Werth, Victorino) with Werth hitting the only extra base hit (2B) and getting an RBI.

The Mets will be getting their first taste of Blanton tonight as he makes his fifth start of the season. So far he is 1-2 over 26.2 innings pitched with an ERA of 5.06. Last season he faced the Mets once and he pitched a four hit, scoreless 7.1 innings against us. The Mets have these numbers on Blanton over his career:

Lets Go Mets! Beat the Phils!

(NY Post via Can't Stop the Bleeding)

Do you hear anything?

Well if you don't, then good. What you don't hear right now is my head banging against the wall this season. This probably seems a little odd because well the Mets are bewildering team that do great and then fall flat on their faces, so lotsa head-banging-on-walls should be occurring (or at least hand palm slap to forehead).

The reason its not happening this year is I have made a very conscious effort to not listen to certain baseball analysts. Its one thing when a friend says something stupid in sports, or a peer, or a colleague, or an idiot blogger (see: me), but its another when a person is being paid a large sum of money, and still publicly state opinions that leave you scratching your head.

Going into this season, that meant I needed to avoid to people. The first is Rob Dibble, the Nationals announcer. For me, he is pretty difficult to avoid since I live in DC and well when the Mets play the Nationals, MLB.com says I need to watch my local TV broadcast of the game. After suffering through one game (seriously, he says the same things every single broadcast, his range of color commentary is that short), I realized that I could still get MLB.com Audo, which I play over the TV broadcast. Problem solved, no more Rob Dibble.

Next person was Steve Phillips. He generally does a great job of saying things that leave normal baseball fans just stunned. Well he did it again yesterday. Phillips, as we all remember is all about winning right now. This very second. His long-term plans are the equivalent to most people's short term plans. His proposal to get the Washington Nationals to the playoffs is to trade Strasburg for Oswalt.

Thats right, Strasburg for Oswalt.

The Nationals are sitting on a wealth of prospects right now, and there is one player who is generating revenue and attention(ticket sales, minor league sales, jersey sales, TV time, National coverage…the list of intangibles, companies, and other teams that are profiting from Strasburg just goes on and on). While I generally do not buy into rookies making impacts immediatley, the minor league stats are are point Strasburg in that direction. This trade, would be really unthinkable.

If that part doesn't get you, consider the money arguement. The Nationals have Strasburg now for 6 years. Thats incredible! Oswalt is due 31 million between this season and next season.

Another if. If the Nationals really wanted Oswalt, there are other pitchers and hitters that they could (although they probably shouldn't) cut ties with.

Moral of the story. 1) Phillips is not ready to be a GM again. 2) Don't even read an article talking about Phillips. 3) I really should get my head checked because I care this much about this topic.