213 Miles From Shea

We finally have reached the last part of the Season Preview Series, the New York Mets. This team has high expectations after each of the last two years and now boasts not only a solid lineup, but a pretty balanced lineup in the sense that no hole anywhere in the team is too major, and every problem is balanced out. Lets start off with the offense, which the 2009 Lineup:

1) Reyes: There really isn't much to say about Reyes. He is one of the most exciting players in the game (which is mentioned during every national broadcast of the team, I really don't think I can hear Joe Morgan compliment Reyes again, he does it way too much) and he will be key leading off this team. The main thing for Reyes and the Mets is that when he gets on base, the Mets need to be able to get him home, and that is crucial for this offense.

2) Murphy: I was a little skeptic when I first heard Murphy would be batting here. Honestly, I wouldn't surprise if rotates around the lineup, but thats another topic. Murphy has such talent with the bat that he looks to impress a lot of people this year. He has a sweet swing and a youthful precense that should push this team. Furthermore, he means business, all he talks about is hitting. I can't wait for the season to start so he can carry on what he has been doing.

3,4,5) Wright, Beltran, Delgado: These players can bat in any of these spots (except Delgado, who will either be 4 or 5) and the offense will still work. Wright is a key bat in the lineup. Beltran consistently has great years and Delgado has to perform like he did in the second half of last year. When the three of these guys are on, this lineup becomes the best lineup in baseball. The problems here will be that Wright can get pull happy, Beltran goes through power streaks and power outages, and Delgado is notorious for bad starts of the of the season. Being here though will gurantee that Murphy will get good pitches to hit, and these guys should as well, because it is hard to walk around the Mets lineup.

6) Church: He started off great last year, and then had a series of concussions that he never reconverd from. Hopefully this year he will start off great again. If he hits well, then he will get pitches to hit because of the people in front of him the lineup (even though the weak part of the lineup is behind him). He is going to have a good year, not a great year, but not a bad year either.

7) Schnieder and Castro: It seems pretty clear that there will be a lot of switching off between these too, and that is mainly because of the pop to the lineup that Castro provides. Schnider's main advantage though is that he calls a very good game behind the plate.

8) Castillo: He represents speed at the end of the lineup, the question is how long will he stay in this spot. If everyone else is hitting, this is where he will be probably all season. If no one else is hitting, but he is tearing up the ball, then he will probably float around. It is time for us to see if he really has made a committment this year to play up to the best of his ability. His glove on the field though still looks to be a good partner with Reyes.

The Roation:
1) Johan Santana: He's our ace, he is gangsta as Manuel has said in the past, he will lead this staff. What we get out of Santana is predictable, the rest of the rotation is not.

2) Pelfrey: Pelfrey had a career year last year, especially going over the 200 innings pitched mark. I don't know if he will be as good as he was last year, but he still going to be one of the best pitchers on this staff. He has added a new pitch that should help his strikeout numbers and overall, if he performs well, he could start to get a lot of national attention as a 1-2 punch with Santana.

3) Perez: The question is always what will get out of him. He is lights out. He is terrible. Its the story of whenever he pitches. If he can control the game, and if the Mets can figure out a routine for him, hopefully he will be good this year. I am not expecting anything special, because with Perez, you can't expect anything, because every result is possible

4) Maine: He is a key piece for this team. If he recovered from his arm problems then this pitching staff is going to be very strong and will put a good fight late into ball games. If he hasn't, then it can be a long season. Maine's problems are the same as Perez's and Santana's in that they all give up a lot of homers. Citi is a pitchers park, so it will be interesting to see how they handle the long ball at home.

5) Livan Hernandez: If he is for real, then the rotation is set. More than likely we should expect a promotion of Niese later in the season once he gets some good work done in the minors.

The Bullpen: This was the weakest area for the Mets last year. They got Krod, they got Putz, so the 8th and 9th inning are set. This has been the first time since 2006 that is true for the Mets bullpen. Furthermore, with Green, they also have a seventh inning guy. Between Feliciano, Stokes and O'day, this looks like a pretty strong pen the Mets have put together. If the Starting pitching can go late into games, and the Mets don't need to bail them out, this pen could help the Mets get into October, and to that title.

LETS GO METS!

Generally teams have to think of creative ways to fill the stands (or, corporations think of creative ways for teams to fill the stands) and this year more than ever this will need to happen. I have spent some time going through the promotion schedules for April for about every team, and I have picked out some promotions that are eye catching, or just not your run-of-the-mill free T-Shirt (however, there is nothing wrong with a free T-shirt). The Phillies and Rays will be celebrating their pennant and World Championships all month, but what about teams that didn't win, what are they doing?

The Orioles always do something that amazes me, because they find ways to slash prices and yet still do not fill the stands (they do this thing with Chick-Fil-A every year, the Dugout club, which is $17 and gets kids 10 game tickets, including weekends). Anyway, this year they have the Birdland Stimulus Package on Thursdays which allow parents to bring their children, two per adult, free to the game. They made a logo for it too, and it looks the Presidential Seal, with an Oriole instead of an Eagle.

Do you collect pins? Well the Yankees on their home opener will be giving alway a commentive pin about the new stadium, and the Giants on the 8th will be giving out a commentive pin about Tim Lincecum winning the Cy Young Award.

The Brewers are worrking on regional pride with a five county five day affair at the end of April. If you a resident of certain counties you can get some seats half off, and the seats that you can't get half off, you get for just one dollar.

The Angels are celebratign their history this month with their new HOF'ers. They will be giving out blankets with all of the HOF'ers on them, they will be giving out model plaques as well. They are also going to honor Guerrero with a banner that has him with Babe Ruth as the only two players in the history of baseball to have 11 straight seasons of at least 25 homeruns and at least as .300 batting average.

Finally, the Athletics and the Padres are really stepping up the “free T-shirt” idea with free replica jerseys. The Athletics will be giving one out of Holliday, and the Padres will be modeling their 1969 uniform. (These are not though actual Replica like you find in the stores).

The Mets sadly did not make this list. The best thing they are giving out this month is a drawstring backpack that looks like Santana's Jersey, but they don't have to try to fill the stands right now, because that will probably happen on their own.

If you are interested in Advertising on either side of the page, please drop me a message over at eteich@umd.edu

Be sure to include your name, what you want to advertise, a description of what you want the advertisement to say and what it would look like.

Hey Mets Fans!

My name is Elliot Teichman and I am the author of 213 Miles From Shea.

I actually grew up in Baltimore, living with two parents from New York and New Jersey and a family that was crazy about the New York Mets. Because of that, although my friends in school were rooting for Cal Ripken and the (believe it or not) division champion Orioles, I was supporting the “good” 'ol New York Mets. My cousin, David Begelman, played a huge role in developing my Mets spirit. In part of an effort to get me to stop liking Pokemon (and other fads like that) he made me watch baseball games, football games and ultimately got me my first Mets Jersey, Mike Piazza. Growing up, my favorite players were (of course) Mike Piazza, Edgardo Alfonzo, and Al Leiter.

I started writing about the Mets on January 31st 2007 during my senior of high school. Since then my writing ability has changed a lot and so has my passion for the Mets as I've become older, maybe wiser, and possibly more patient (ok, not really on the last one).

Currently, I am a Senior at the Univeristy of Maryland College Park. I entered as a communciation major, but I got bored of that really quickly and I will (hopefully) be leaving with a degree in Physics and Astronomy.

I hope you enjoy your visit to this website, and I welcome any comments, questions, links, criticism, rants, etc.

Lets Go Mets!

-Elliot Teichman
elliotteichman@gmail.com

213 Miles From Shea went online on January 31st, 2007. The goal was and still is a site to think about the Mets in different ways written by a fan who is far away from Shea and fellow Mets fans. To think about the game in baseball in a new way. The site focuses a lot on statistics which is reflected in several of the key article series like Numbers Daily which then led into Game Previews, which are the bread and butter for this site. Other key article series are Get To Know a Prospect, where we look at the prospects all around baseball, but mostly on the Mets, and look at how they are developing and where they will end up. The one I like to keep as a showcase was when Murphy was barely hitting above .250 Spring 2008, I wrote a Get To Know A Prospect article about him, and look where he is now.

In April of 2008, I was contacted by Joe of Mets Merized Online to post the game previews on this site on their site as well. Since then things have been looking up for the site and we are continuing to hit our goals. On January 31st of 2009, the goal was to have at least 731 posts so it would be an average of one post a day for the last 2 years (each year I tend to have a large break between June and August where due to work I can update 3 times a week instead of 14, and November I can usually only get about 4 posts out a week) and the goal for January 2010 is 2192 Articles, or two for each day over the three years that the site has existed. It is going to be a tough goal to reach so come back often this year especially because chances are that this site has been updated in someway.

You may have noticed over the last few days that site has gone through some slight changes mainly on the left side column. I am currently in the middle of updating a lot of the code for the site, and it looks like I will be done the first wave of updates this weekend (which will be everything except graphics for the most part). Anyway, I will be putting a post up later about everything that I updated this time around later when I am done but I just wanted to note that the next three or so articles are for a few side bar features I'm working (basically, I realized I never did an about the Website article and stuff), so for now, just ignore the next few articles, or read if you want they will be interesting, I hope.
Thanks for understanding
-Elliot Teichman

Over the last six installments, we have gone through every division and started to build what the playoff picture would look like. This isn't going to be too series so here are the 2009 Playoffs:
AL Teams:
     East: Rays
     Central: Indians
     West: Angels
     WC: Red Sox
NL Teams:
      East: Mets
      Central: Cubs
      West: Dodgers
      WC: Phillies

How the series will go down (and of course there is a bias here):
ALDS:
   Rays over Indians
   Angels over Red Sox
NLDS:
   Mets over Dodgers
   Cubs over Phillies
ALCS:
   Rays over Angels
NLCS
   Mets over Cubs
World Series:
   Mets over Rays
(That was really biased at the end, so its not a jinx when its based on hope and a whim!)

The Mets won today by a score of 9-8 off the back of a terrible start by Pelfrey. The good thing about today is because of the day that it was. Today was the last day of Spring Games in Florida. The team is moving up to New York now to give Citi Field two test runs before the start of the season, and we are so close to beginning of the season! Anyway, not to many stats to look at for this today but here are the highlights from today's game:
The Good:
    Reyes 1-3, RBI, 3B
    Murphy 1-3, RBI
    Church 2-2, R
    Cora 2-3, R, RBI
    Castro 2-2, R, 3 RBI, HR
    Figueroa 1.0 IP, H, 2K
The Bad:
    Pelfrey 4.0 IP, 10 H, 8 ER, BB, 2K
    Schnieder 0-2
    Evans 0-2
I really hope Pelfrey will bounce back from this, and I know he will. On the plus side, Cora now has had a few good days, and this is the time to start hitting with the season right around the corner. Really not much to report today because tomorrow is where it is going to be at with all of the Citi Field stuff. Lets Go Mets! So close to the season!

I was so excited a few seasons ago when Sheffield went to the Tigers. Why? He is one of those players I have always loved to watch, but always felt bad inside about rooting for because of pinstripes across his body. As soon as he made the trip to Detroit, I was ready to watch some baseball games and ready watch Sheffield's characteristic swing. Well we are heading into the days where we might not be able to root for him again as the two of the three teams that want him are “enemies”. The Reds, the Braves and the Phillies have all been linked to Sheff. For the Reds it is by Bakers comments, and for the Phils, many feel that they dropped Genkins as soon as they saw Sheff on the market. There have been whispers that he also wants to play for the Rays.

Where does he go? Well, I am pretty sure we can knock off the Rays because the role that Sheff would be filling is already being done with Burrel. For Sheff I think it will come down to playing time, which is going to be a problem with these three teams because they are all National League teams. There lies the main problem with the Phillies, because their OF is already crowded with fan favorites. Another problem he would bring to the Phillies is that he offsets the power balance again. There is something to be said about hitting a lot of homers, but you can't rely on them. The Braves then seem like an ideal match. They have a weaker OF and they don't have much power in their lineup, he would actually be really wanted there. The Reds would like him not just for his power, but his veteran leadership for Bruce and Votto. Both Bruce and Votto can hit, but a consistent bat like Sheff's and his leader skills could be really nice for that club. For me, I'm just praying that he doesn't land on the Phillies or the Reds because I still want to be able to root for him.

I panicked when I first saw the box score because Santana only pitched 3.2 innings, and allowed two solo homeruns. Luckily Matt Cerrone at Metsblog has the details that it is normal for a pitcher in their last start of the spring to leave early and finish off in the pen, which is what Johan did. The pen then took over and they did a great job and are really looking good for the season. The bench players got most of the playing time today, and a lot of them are still impressing. Anyway here are some of the box scores from tonight:
The Good:
     Cora 2-3, R, BB
     Rivera 1-1, R HR, 2 RBI
     Reed 2-4, R
     Santos 2-3, 2 R, 2 HR, 3 RBI
    Parnell 1.0 IP, BB, H, K
    O'day 1.0 IP, BB, K
    Stokes 1.2 IP, H, 2 BB
The Bad:
    Tatis 0-4
    Murphy 0-3
   Anderson 0-4
The Catching depth chart has really taken an interesting turn this spring. Going into the season the back up was Castro followed by Cancel, but now you have to think that Rivera and Santos would have to be after Castro. Rivera has seen a lot of time this Spring and every time that Santos sees time, something amazing happens. Like today he hit two homers, bringing his spring total to 4, and he is leading the team.. When he starts off in the minors, and he continues those numbers, I don't know if they can be ignored. (This is going to prompt me to at least profile him so we all can learn more about him).

How about that pen today? Everyone had a good day (even Dessens, 2.0 no runs) and more importantly this was some key time for Parnell, O'day and Stokes to show they are ready to go this season. This is very exciting and I am starting to get very confident in these guys. In the preview series, the next part, part 7 will be about the playoffs and then part 8 will be all about the Mets.