213 Miles From Shea

Well in a story that was just made for writers. movies, sports pages, etc, Strasburg made his highly anticipated debut tonight and he was pretty much exactly as as advertised. Before we get into the numbers, we have to talk about the atmosphere. Currently living in DC, I was watching the evening news, which was pretty much all Strasburg coverage and one fan quoted on our local Channel 9 said this “We got Strasburg, John Wall, Ovie and McNabb baby! DC Sports!” Thats when it hit me, one aspect of Strasburg's start that hasn't really been looked at is that it really marks a revival in not just Washington Baseball but all of Washington Sports. The fan atmosphere overall tonight was really unlike anything I have ever seen in DC. The only thing that comes close is the first game at Nationals Park, but even that still fails in comparison to the fans tonight. As jealous as I am, and I am pretty jealous, I'm glad for the Nationals fanbase because it is good for baseball and its good for our division.

Enough with the psychological stuff though, lets get into the numbers:

When you look at the first few numbers, the intial reaction is 2 ER over 7, thats great, but not amazing. Then you get to the last two numbers, 0 BB and 14 K. Granted he was facing the Pirates, but he fell behind hitters a lot early, and not walking them, but instead striking them out, thats a big deal. Those K numbers are something else, and will probably be the legacy of tonight. It is also worthwhile to note that his first major league strikeout was Lasting Milledge, who if you think Mets fans boo him, you should have heard Nats fans. (Actually, it was amazing to actually hear Nats fans).

A good night for Strasburg, now I start to pray he doesn't do this against the Mets.

The Mets may have gotten a steal with the 89th pick in the draft of Blake Forsythe, but more on that later. Forsythe is a junior out of the University of Tennessee and, when he's going, he is an offensive player, playing backstop (a combination that every team hopes to find). Forsythe graduated high school in 2007 and he was not drafted out of high school. In his senior year he hit a school record 13 homers, and also had 53 RBI's while batting .443. He put up good stats in his junior year posting a .385 BA, 42 RBI's and 10 homers. In college his numbers were trending towards a great junior year, but he trailed off:

The above table is from here.  The following is his 2010 batting line:

A lot of scouting reports say that he just wasn't “right” this past year. He was swinging at missing at a lot of stuff, and looked like he was trying to drive up his power numbers. If that is the case then the Mets might have a steal here. If this problem is him lengthening out his swing, then Mets coaches can get him back to a shorter, sweeter swing. I'm not saying that Forsythe will be a star, but his struggles this season is what kept him out of the first round, and I feel that, or maybe more hopeful, that he can be coached out of this and become that first round type of player he was orginally projected to be.

The MLB 2010 Draft continued today and listed below are the Mets picks through round 21. This is just a list of their names and not much else right now but later tonight I am hoping to get up some stats for at least the college players on this list, so stay posted.

The number before the player is the number that they were drafted:

The Mets start another home series tonight as they invite the dangerous San Diego Padres into Citi Field. One of the striking similarities of these two teams is they both play fantastic at home. Last week the Padres took the opener by the score of 18-6. The Mets then took the second game of the set. Santana pitched amazingly in his start against the Pad's for the rubber game, but Krod blew the save and then the Mets lost in extra innings. Both teams are coming in rather hot so this should be a good series. Tonight's game will feature Pelfrey against Richard.

Pelfrey (8-1, 2.39 ERA) was fantastic in his last outing, which was against the Padres where he pitched 8.0 innings and allowed only one earned run. In his last four games, Pelfrey is 4-0 pitching 28.0 innings with an ERA of 1.26. That last statistic is indicative of why it is fun to watch Pelfrey pitch. He is just effecitve out there, and the Mets (as 4-0 suggests) play well behind him. The Padres have these numbers against Big Pelf:

On on the other side of the rubber will be Clayton Richard (4-3, 2.87 ERA) who faced the Mets last week. In that start against the Mets, Richard got the win in 6 innings of work while allowing 4 hits, an earned run, 4 BB and 5 K. The Mets have put up the following numbers on the man with two first names:

Lets Go Mets!

You may or may not recall this from last year, but the Mets were the test run for a ridiculous idea from Majestic. Representatives of the companies contacted Mets players last year to design their own T-shirts, hats and Jerseys, and then sold them to the public. The Mets were the only team that was involved with this last year. Man, this stuff looked bizarre. Anyway there were whispers of it happening again this year, when images from Spring rose of some Mets players interacting with these representatives. Well the Mets stuff hasn't completely surfaced, but I do recall some strange jerseys floating around the web, and I believe these are the Mets 2010 line. In the mean time though, there has already been a 2010 line released for the Yankees and the Phillies. I'll review them at a later time, but what you will see is that the 2010 lines for those teams feature stars (and for the Mets as well, I have reason to believe the Mets line will have Francoeur and Bay). Anyway, the 2009 line didn't really feature that much star power, but it was memorable non to less.

Dan Murphy: His was my favorite, only because it was normal. I actually have the T-shirt which is just green with the Mets New York script on the front and his name and number on the back. Its just a more Irish version of the Irish shirts you probably see every March. Here's a picture of his jersey, the most normal looking one of all:

(Biz of Baseball)

Bobby Parnell Jersey:

(MLB.com)

John Maine: His jersey is the start of what a lot of player did this year, with a picture below the numbers. However most players have pictures of themselves…which is just weird, Anyway, take it away John:

(MLB.com)

The other players that were picked were Omir Santos, JJ Putz and Gary Sheffield. As you will see in the images I was able to find below, some stuff got strange. Like:

(MLB.com)

Seriously Gary? Your face in the 10? Some shirts for JJ and Omir:

(Biz of baseball)

If you can't wait to see the posts here of the Yanks and Phils stuff for this year, head over to MLB.com. This will be a topic I'll be following probably all Summer, because I really find it hilarious.

Some quick hits to go with your Tuesday morning Banana Waffle:

I've already done a pretty comprehensive profile in terms of numbers, analysis, etc on Matt Harvey, which can be found here. However, sometimes seeing is better than reading. Below are three videos from youtube that show Harvey. Two of them show his pitching, one of them, from high school, shows his old hitting ability:

While I know you all are really interested in Matt Harvey (click for an in house profile of Harvey), I wanted to highlight some back pages from this morning:

(NY Post)

(NY Daily News)

(CNN)

The Baseball Hall of Fame has some really weird stuff in it, and that is why it's always worth it to go to Cooperstown. They have recently opened a new exhibit called Viva Beisball! honoring the Latin America cultural impact for the game. There is one display that apparently has food in it and Reyes has item next to the Omar Vizquel Salsa. Jose was recently involved with a wine company that makes wine named after baseball players.

So as of right now, Reyes has a bottle of his wine, CaberReyes (yes I'm serious), in the Hall of Fame. And according this article, he is really happy about it, as he should be.

The Wine was made by Longball Cellars as part of Charity Wines. Being a North East product, they focus mainly on Red Sox, Yankees and Mets wines. The three wines they have for the Mets are the CaberReyes, Santana's Select and Schneider Schardonnay. As the name Charity Wines suggests, the proceeds from these wines support different charity organizations, basically of the players choice (for example, Santana's goes to the Johan Santana Foundation).

Check out their site, the wine bottles are certainly interesting to look at.