213 Miles From Shea

Tomorrow I will do a formal preview for the first game of the series but there are a few notes and things to look out for in during the next four games:
    1) Oliver Perez looks to become the fourth member of the pitching staff to go into double digit wins tomorrow. (Santana 11 wins,        Maine 10 wins, Pelfrey 11 wins).
    2) MLB.com in their probable pitcher reports point out that he has a real test against the Braves because he has won 9 of his last 13 starts (the Mets have won a total of 11 of those 13) but his ERA against the Braves this year has been above 10. This is not the same Braves team as before. They should be easier now, so it will be interesting to see how Pelfrey responds
    3) Wright is sitting at 95 RBI's, its unlikely that he will break 100 this series, but it is possible
    4) How the Rookies play. Murphy is hitting .429, A Reyes is hitting .275, Evans is hitting .260. Evans struggled when he first came up, and now he is doing better (looking nice with those two doubles today). Reyes is hitting solidly. Murphy continues to look like amazing. Lets see if they can keep this up.
Those are the main things I am looking for during this series, and as the game previews start to roll out, you'll hear more of the specifics for certain players.

At the start of the 2008 season, there were many reasons why we needed Santana. We needed an ace on the staff, someone to go out there and expect to win. We needed a workhorse on the staff. Someone who could give the bullpen the day off, the relieve their work so they close out other pitchers' games.

For part of the season, Santana's ERA was above 3.00, a surprise to some, but he was still getting the job done. He would pitch a lot, most of the time. What should have been short nights for the bullpen (just the 8th or 9th inning) often became long nights after Santana set them up. The bullpen has blown 6 potential wins for Santana (he could have 17 wins), but Santana, out Ace, looked beyond frustration and focused on his job of pitching.

Santana over the years has been proclaimed as a second half pitcher, and he really has been turning it on since then. Lets rewind the clock before the All Star game. Since July 9th, Santana has pitched in 9 games with a record of 4-0. He has had 2 complete games (including a complete game shutout yesterday), has pitched 63.1 innings and has an ERA of 2.27. (His season ERA right now is 2.75 and he has pitched 177 innings so far this season).

This month he has really turned on his stuff. In four games, he is 2-0 pitching 29.1 innings pitched. His ERA this month? A stunning 1.84. He is mowing them down this month. This is the pitcher the Mets need now. They have a 2 game lead in the division and this is the key the Mets did not have last year, someone reliable to lead them into the post season. Lets Go Mets!

About nine weeks ago I posted that due to work I would be restrained to a few posts a week over the course of this summer. I am now back (I've been working in a camp up in the mountains) and I will resume posting a few times a day from here forward. Tomorrow I hope to resume Game Previews.

It's been quite a summer and now as August starts to wind down, as teams will start to cross the 80 game win mark, we will get into the real rush of the baseball season. I hate to talk about the collapse but its soon to be a year from its occurrence and is probably in the minds of baseball fans everywhere due to the close division races in nearly every division. Real, meaningful games are about to start, rosters are going to expand, and news will be flying every which way.

Fasten your seat belts, the 2008 season is going through its final loops.

Back on March 3rd, I introduced Daniel Murphy into the Prospect section on this blog. Back then, I did not know a lot about him and he was not getting a lot of attention at all. I remeber in late February looking at Mets' Spring Training Box Scores and I saw Murphy's name there. Not knowing who he was, I looked him up on thebaseballcube.com and saw his amazing College Batting Averages which can be found on the March 3rd entry. He was pretty average to below average in his first couple seasons in the minors, and he never wowed anyone at Spring Training, so I thought maybe something could happen to him this year but most likely not.

Then he, Evans, and Carp, started the season strong at AA. For the first several weeks they all were batting above .400. Murphy started to get attention and now everyone was looking. In his 95 games in Binghamton this year, he put up amazing numbers. He batted .308 with 26 doubles, 13 homeruns, 67 RBI's and 14 stolen bases. He showed this year he could be an all around player.

Since coming up to the Majors, he has been hitting the ball well again. In his first five games and 15 AB, he already has 7 hits including a double and a triple. He has an OBP of .556 and has 3 RBI's. I know this won't continue but his hitting should start to give a struggling Mets team some energy. They just turned around a bad set of games with the Marlins and Houston to a winning series with the Padres and that is what they have to do they need to win. Dan Murphy could be that interesting, under the radar piece to the Mets future plans that the team needs to create new energy at the ball park. Lets see what this 23 year old can do.

I was in for a huge shock yesterday. The downside of my current job is that except for Thursdays and Fridays, I have little to no connection to the outside world, which is interesting feeling. Anyway. I came home yesterday to find out that Manny was traded, Griffy was traded, Texieria was traded, and Pudge was traded. I had no idea about any of these trades until 6:00 yesterday. Now that shock of Hall of Famers and All-Stars have been traded has passed, here are my opinions on how they will impact the teams these players have joined:

Red Sox:
They traded away Manny and got Bay. I like Jason Bay a lot, I do not think he is an equal replacement for Manny. I am happy that Bay is with the Red Sox because he is an excellent player got robbed of the attention that he deserves because he was with the Pirates. He will jump to Saint status with the rest of the Red Sox because it is Boston. About Manny, he is critical to the RISP part of that lineup. Without him, the Sox will struggle a bit. This trade does not help their playoff chances, it can only hurt them. (Unless the clubhouse problems were that bad that moral will change without Manny).

Dodgers:
Getting Manny will help. Jones was supposed to be the big bat to help out LA but we all know how that story has gone. Manny will help that lineup although his RBI production will dip due to LA's lineup compared to Boston's. That division is tight, borderlines mediocrity, and any help can change the outlook for this team. Blake will also help them in their run to the division title.

Angels:
They are a lock for the division now and are starting to look like the AL Pennant winners on paper. Texieria makes their lineup that much better, and it already is great. This offseason will be interesting for LA because they might not be able to pay K-Rods demands, and they won't be able to pay Texerias demands.

Yankees:
The Red Sox didn't help their chances, the Yankees did. It cost them a piece for their bullpen but their offense was helped by adding Nady and their catcher woes have been solved by Pudge. The Pudge deal overshadows the Nady deal that I feel will really help out the Yanks. The Rays didn't do anything. I hope the Rays can hold on to their lead.

White Sox:
The Sox have been playing very well this year. This deal could be the missing piece, it could overall hurt the Sox if it disrupts their clubhouse. Overall, he helps, but not that much.

Back in January of this year, I wrote a segment about Jon Niese, who at the time was getting little attention. A few magazines were listing him in the Mets top 10, but he wasn't being talked about a lot. Now after this week, and as it starts to become clear that the Mets might need a number 5 starter, and people are looking at the young pitcher. Jon Niese, 21, could be making the next big step soon to the major leagues. Back when I wrote that article, I didn't think we would be seeing Niese at all at Shea, and that we would be waiting at least to 2010. Niese throws strikes and strikes out a lot but his ERA was not showing his true effectiveness last year. In the Minors up to that point, he had a 4.05 ERA.

Niese has been in Binghamton most of this year, and was recently moved up to AAA. In AA, he had a 6-7 record over 124.1 innings pitched. He posted a 3.04 ERA, 44 BB and then an amazing 112 K's. That drop in ERA and that split between his BB and his K's show that the has matured a lot this year. He has had one start so far in AAA where he got the win allowing one run over 7 innings. He had 2 walks and 7 K's.

In case you were wondering, the Mets drafted Niese in the 7th round of the 2005 draft.

The Mets get a break from a rough three series with a series against Houston (and then San Diego) in a full month of August ball. The Series does have a few story lines for the Mets:
    Will they regain first place?
    Will Santana or Maine become the first pitcher for the Mets this year to get double digit wins?
    How will Pedro perform?
    Is Maine all right?
The Mets will try to find the answers to these questions as they battle against Backe, Oswalt and Wolf. In 5 games against the Mets (3 starts), Backe is 1-2 over 18.1 innings with a 5.40 ERA. In his last 11 games pitched, he is 2-5 with a 5.28 ERA. He is also a worse pitcher at home. Last year, Oswalt went 1-1 in two games against the Mets with a 4.50 ERA. I have never liked Oswalt and I hope we destroy him. In Wolf's first game with the Astros, he lasted 4.1 innings and 3 earned (4 unearned) runs, leading to an early exit. He destroyed the Mets earlier this year over 7 innings allowing one run. He has not pitched in Houston this year, but in his career he has a 4.73 ERA there.
The Phillies have to handle the Cards this weekend so this is the perfect time for the Mets to start picking up steam again. They had momentum, they sputtered a little bit against the Marlins, but now is the time to get back on track and continue to push through the Dog days of summer, to get to the postseason, Lets Go Mets!

Baseball has been very turbulent in July and a lot of that has been thanks to teams going on streaks. As a team streaks, their position in their standings change and streaks are the reason why we had bizzaro baseball this year. The Mets' 10 game winning streak reshaped the NL East and made it into a legitimate three team race no matter who is looking at the division. Anyway there are a few current streaks that are causing noise right now.

Yankees 6 Game Winning Streak:
Growing up in Baltimore, I grew up hating the Yankees. So, to this day, I hate to see them do well. Their current winning streak has tightened up the AL East that got sloppy since the Rays' 7 game losing streak. With the Rays and the Red Sox tied at top, and the Yanks three out about to play a three game set in Boston, a sweep here, bringing the streak to 9 games, would cause a lot of shaking in that division.

Red Sox 3 Game Winning Streak:
Its a small streak, the only reason its listed here is to compare it to the Yankee's 6 game streak to show that the Yankees are not the only team in this weekend's match up.

Detroit 4 Game Winning Streak:
This streak has pushed out of below .500 territory and only 5.5 games out of first place. They play the White Sox tonight and if they can keep the streak alive through the series, they will be in a series position to take back the division. They can be a dangerous team and they might showing their stripes finally.

Minnesota 4 Game Losing Streak:
Before this streak started they were right up their with the Sox for the division title. Now their footing is starting to slip, and it couldn't be at a worse time with the Tigers starting to get hot. If the Tigers do damage against the Sox this weekend, then this is the time for the Twins to stop this streak.

Cardinals 4 game Losing Streak:
They would love to beat the Mets this weekend and stop this streak. It has knocked them out of the Wild Card and has made the division harder to reach, especially with the Cubs faltering as of late. There is still a lot of time left in the season, but this losing streak is starting to close their window to the postseason.

Brewers 8 Game Winning Streak:
By far the most important streak in baseball right now. This streak has taken the Brew Crew to the top of the Wild Card standings by beating the number one Cards there and now has them within a one game striking distance of the NL Central top spot. They play Houston now, the worst team in the NL Central, which means this streak can easily continue to build momentum.

I misspoke last week when I said the Mets were about to start two important series, one against the Phillies, the next against the Cards, because I didn't look at the schedule past the Cardinals. After the Cards, they have a three game set with the Marlins, and then a day off. So they have nine straight games of playing good teams that all have legitimate shots of making the playoffs.

The Mets had to handle the most dangerous, and the most wanted of these three teams yesterday, as they completed their series with the Phillies. Tuesday night was terrible anyway you cut it. It reminded me of that game against the Dbacks earlier this year where Santana went 7 innings, no runs, and 10 strikeouts, only to see his game get destroyed by Smith and Wagner in the 8th and 9th inning. The type of loss the Mets had Tuesday night, is the type that could linger, that could affect play the next night, would this be the fate of the 2008 Mets?

No! The Mets fought back and fought back Wednesday night and beat the game thanks Reyes and thanks to a better feeling Wagner who locked down his 25th save of the year. Yesterday the Mets were in a pitching duel but they were able to get out 3 runs and once again, Wagner came out and shut down the opposing team on the way to his 100th save as a New York Met. The incredible thing about about the 3 runs in yesterday's game was that they call came when the Mets had 2 outs. Getting runners home with 2 outs has been tough for them this year, and yesterday they were able to do it in a game that really mattered.

The Mets bounced back from adversity once again and now have to prepare themselves a series with a tough team in the Cardinals who are on a four game losing streak thanks to the Brewers and want to get back the Wild Card spot back. Things in the Central are tight right now with the Cubs in first, the Brew Crew one game out and the Cards only four games out. Can the Mets play Spoiler? Things are closer in the East with the Mets out in front, but Philly is only one game out and the Marlins are right behind them only two games out. July baseball is actually exciting this year.

Before the Mets started their 10 game winning streak, there was talk about 8 games that would make or break their season. They had a four game set with the Cardinals and then a four game set with Philly. The Cards were leading the Wild Card at the time, and the Phils were leading the division at the time. A lot of wins in those 8 games would mean the Mets would start to gain ground and make their name thrown around in playoff conversation.
That is exactly what happened. The Mets first split the series with the Cards, which brought them within 4.5 games starting their series with the Phillies. The Mets dropped the first game, but then won their next three as they started the 10 game winning streak that would end with them tied for first placed in the National League East. The Mets now prepare themselves, tied for first, to enter a battle with Philly where they will fight to be on top in a crucial three game set. The Phils will be sending out their new pitcher, Blanton, to the mound in the first game against a hopefully correctly rested Johan Santana. Then Myers will battle Maine followed by a Moyer vs Perez game.
To make the next week more important, the Mets will then play against the Cards at home in a three game set. Depending on how the series with Philly goes, this game could be very important in the wild card hunt. As of right now, the Cards have it followed by the Brewers (one game out) and the Mets/Philles 3.5 games out (Marlins 4.0). The Brewers will take on the currently streaking cards starting today and wild card picture could look very different at the end of the week. If this was September, all eyes would be on the Mets this week because they would be trying to make the playoffs and potentially play spoiler at the same time. Its July, so anything can be reversed, but these games still spell importance out to the Mets.
Lets Go Mets! Take the East!