213 Miles From Shea

Alright, that title was a little mean considering that Kunz is only 24, but yes, yesterday was not a good day for Kunz, who after being handed a 4 run lead gave up 4 ER in one third of an inning. Anyway, now since that is out of the way. The Mets played the Braves for the second time in two days yesterday in Disney (or Away for the Mets) and unlike yesterday the Mets left with a 9-5 loss. It was also the second straight game that very few starters made the trip (setting up for today). Anyway here are some Highlights and Lowlights:

Players Helping Their Cause:

Players NOT Helping Their Cause:

Game Again Today! Lets Go Mets!

It was the first spring training game today in St. Lucie for the Amazin's as they played against the Braves. For the Mets, today was going to be the first time fans would see Mets starters in a game since October, but the weather had other plans and thanks to the rain a lot of Mets players got scratched from the lineup. There were also a few other bugs in way today. For people like me who tried to watch the start of the game on MLB.tv, the broadcast started later than it should have due to issues on their end. Also SNY started their presentation on time, but the umpires started the game early.

The game was a good one for the Mets as they beat the Braves to the score fo 4-2 notching their first win in the first game of the Spring. Alas, this time of the year has a lot of focus on individual performances. The following pitchers made a good name for themselves today:

Hitters that made a Good Name for themselves:

Players that Did NOT help their cause:

Other Notes: Hanson on the Braves is in form and looks to have a good year.

Over the past few weeks, the battles for who will play what and when for the Amazin's were being set up, and tomorrow begins the real fighting. Tomorrow at 1, the Mets will take on the Braves and players will start to get their chance. Clear cut starters will start to get their work in, some players will be presented with a great opportunity and others will get sent down to Minors camp. In years past we have seen surprise players shine in March. Last year it was Murphy and Parnell. Other players like Joe Smith made themselves in Spring. Its a big deal.

Here are some of the larger battles shaping up:

Who will play first?
Which Catching Pair will go to Queens? (More of a question before the signing of Barajas)
Who will be the fifth starter?
Who will be Set-up Man? (Parnell? Igarashi? Green?)
Will their be a suprise Bullpen Pitcher?
Who will be on the bench?

And then their are questions like:

How will Perez do?
Will Wright have power?
How will Green's new delivery work?
Will Ike Davis wow us?
How wild is Meija?

Baseball games start tomorrow!

Earlier this month I posted the MLB.com rankings for the Mets players, I also have the Yahoo and the ESPN rankings. Before I get to the rankings, here are couple of notes about the two providers this season. Yahoo is introducing Auction style Fantasy Baseball to their lineup, which may be an interesting thing to try. Also, ESPN has a very comprehensive preview and is extremely sortable. They also did projections for about every player, something that I will be commenting on in a future article. First up is Yahoo. After the player name, the first number represents and an overall top 100 listing, and the second number represents a position listing:

Now for the ESPN rankings. First number is the overall rankings, then the ranking on the team and finally the ranking for their positions. I'm not kidding when I said they were comprehensive, I could have kept going but I decided to stop.

Note: When it came to ranking pitchers at their position, ESPN listed all pitchers in the same category. In other words Santana and Krod are both on the same list, where in some places they would be in seperate lits (SP, RP) and then together on the general P list.

First up, I posted an article at Fan Huddle about the state of the first basemen race. Basically I explain that Davis could be a more serious contender this season then previously thought, however, it still seems that Murphy will play placeholder at the major league level all season.

The other point I wanted to make here was based off of this photo taken by Michael G. Baron. If you notice, Francouer is sitting at table apparently designing a jersey. Looking in the background you can see the designer jersey last season made by Sheff as part of that line of creative Jerseys. I have one of the T-shirts from that line, the Green Murphy one, which has very classy writing on the front and the back. You can see some of the previous jerseys here. I guess from the photo at the start of this paragraph, this clothing line is being created again. (On a side note, look at the players that were involved last season, Sheff, Parnell, Murphy, Santos, and Maine. Out of them, only Maine, Murphy, and probably Parnell will be with the team this year and next year could very well only be Maine.)

As an Mets fan not living in New York, before I subscribed to MLB.tv, I generally only saw the Mets via TBS, FOX and ESPN. TBS was generally the worst because, well I really really really do not like the Braves, and to suffer through with their announcers was just awful. I remember one game in particular, but I can't recall the year, the Braves announcers were making a HUGE deal about a new commericial that Delta Airlines was releasing featuring Jeff Francoeur. Anyway, if you can stand to see the Braves logo's everywhere, the commericial is below:

I have a completely different take on Spring Training this year and the entire reason is Metsblog. Generally every year I am excited for Spring Training, but during the first part, the weeks before the games start, I am anxious for the games to start and to see the Mets back in action. Those first two to three weeks is like knowing the food you just ordered at a restaurant is ready, and you can see it over the counter, but nobody has brought it from the kitchen to the dining room.

That has changed.

Thanks to Matt Cerrone (Metsblog), this stage of waiting is gone! Cerrone is doing something really incredible where he is streaming live batting practice and bullpen sessions. If you log onto his website during these events you can see live baseball. How awesome is that? No longer are we subjected to people writing about how someone looked throwing or hitting (I know something I do a lot, except when I do it, I'm writing about other's writing, which is probably a bad habbit), but you can actually see how that player performed.

Its amazin'. Simply amazin'.

Some people collect baseball cards, others collect stamps, some may collect coins and the Mets collect catchers. (This was the only way I have been able to mentally justify the amount of catchers we have signed this season, with the large amount we already have). The latest signing of Rod Barajas probably makes Barajas the starter (which sends Santos spiraling down to playing back up for Thole). In other words instead of having an average hitter, we will have the best defensive duo (including Blanco) in all of baseball (Personally, I like defensive catchers so I'm alright with this).

However, although it seems like Barajas and Blanco (I feel nicknames tying these two together brewing, especially if they both perform poorly like the B-Squad) have these jobs locked up, there is room for competition to crown some of the other catchers in camp to the MLB roster.

Which leads me to the ultimate point of this article. Its going to be crazy out there for the first few spring training games. The Mets could easily have 6 catchers catching in the same game. Talk about Spring Squads, its going to get ridiculous out there. Thats why I'm hoping that, although there is a lot of competition for these catcher spots, they decide starter and back up soon because its important this Spring for pitchers to get comfortable with the catchers they will be working with during this season.

Baseball Tonight (the flagship MLB show of ESPN) starts part 7 of their Spring Training tour today. Every day they have been looking at a different team, where they were last season, what they did in the offseason, how camp is going and where the team is going. Today is day 7 and today the Baseball Tonight Crew will be looking at the New York Mets.

So if you tune into ESPN at 3:30 today you will see them preview the Mets. I've caught pieces of the other team previews and they have been interesting, so I'm sure this will be interesting as well (although probably not agreeable).

Not only is Spring the time when optimistic views run high, it is also the time when cynical people like to criticize those with hopes. That being said, I talked at length here about why I am happy the Mets leaders like Santana and Wright stepped out and talked about World Series aspirations.

The other thing I focus on is why articles like this one, are wrong. This article was from ESPN, and basically makes fun of the Mets for having WS hopes, which is ridiculous, because if there is a time in the year to have hope its now. Also, you cannot go into a new season already feeling defeated, which is another topic I talk about in the first link.

This link has a lot of pictures of some cool baseball cards.