Tag Archives: mets

1999 Project

1999 Project: Games 32-34

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

dinger.JPGMay 10, 1999: Rockies 10, Mets 3

On a frigid night in Colorado, Al Leiter was left in just a tad too long yet again. He scattered four runs over his first six innings, a small victory in the offense-happy confines of Coors Field. Then, after a leadoff triple to Dante Bichette in the seventh, Leiter began to unravel, eventually giving a three-run homer to rookie Henry Blanco. Mike Piazza came into the game hitting .449 at Coors Field, but was limited to one single by former battery mate Pedro Estacio.

In the colorful words of the Daily News, “the Mets’ starting rotation continued to possess the hue and smell of sewer water.”

May 11, 1999: Rockies 8, Mets 5

Before this game, Mets starter Bobby J. Jones said simply, “I don’t like pitching here.” That became abundantly clear very quickly. He gave up two homers to Rockies slugger Todd Helton, and eight runs total in 5 1/3 innings. His counterpart, Colorado starter/future Met Bobby M. Jones, held the Mets to two runs in his five innings of work. In a bit of meaningless trivia, this marked the first time in 100 years that two pitchers with identical first and last names had faced each other.

At the end of the day, the Mets starters were 11-14 on the season with an unsightly ERA of 5.30. Pitching coach Bob Apodaca recalled his days coaching in triple-A Norfolk, when his staff allowed 108 runs in only 10 games. “It’s a contagious disease that no one can be immune to. We’re just waiting for one starter to stop it.”

May 12, 1999: Mets 10, Rockies 5

After an early exit in his previous start, Rick Reed took the ball on two days rest, preventing the combustible Orel Hershiser from taking the mound at Coors Field. He went five innings and gave up four runs–not bad for short rest, particularly in the thin Denver air. Thanks to an offensive outburst, this was enough to snap the Mets’ three-game losing streak. Scoring early runs hadn’t been a problem for them; tacking on had been. But the Mets led 6-0 after two innings in this one and never looked back.

The Mets held their breath when Reed was nailed in the posterior by a line drive off the bat of Angel Echevarria. But Reed stayed in the game, and wouldn’t blame the blow for a homer he gave up to Dante Bichette in the fifth inning. “My ass didn’t throw that pitch; my arm did.”

Baseball, The Worldwide Leader

Bring Me the Overly-Coiffed Head of Steve Phillips

Not long ago, I was forced to back-handedly apologize to Newsday‘s Wallace Matthews, my most hated sportswriter. For years, I insisted he was one of the worst writers ever. Then I ran into Howie Carr, and even I had to concede there are worse humans than Wally.

I find myself humbled again. Last week, I penned a post on the execrable play-by-play work of ESPN’s Chris Berman and Rick Sutcliffe. I even said they were worse than the unholy trinity of Jon Miller, Joe Morgan, and Steve Phillips.

Trust me, after last night, I will never write such words again.

Miller, Morgan, and Phillips decided to forego the piddling baseball game between the Mets and the Giants. Instead, they regaled the audience with a master class on Gut and Grit and Edge. To wit: The Mets don’t have it. They proceeded to discuss which member of the ‘core’ should be traded.

If you don’t listen to sports talk radio, you might not know what this refers to. Over the winter, Mike Francesa made quite a bit of hay positing the following theory: The Mets have a core of David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Beltran. Since they haven’t won in the last three years with this core, then one or more of them must be dealt away.

Francesa has no stated opinion on which of the three should go. Or rather, he has no coherent strategy. In the offseason, he advocated trading David Wright. After Wright started to hit and Reyes made some baserunning blunders, he spent an entire week begging the Mets to trade Reyes. Way to stick to your guns, Fatso.

He also has no idea how you’d replace the production that would be lost if any one of these players were traded. That hasn’t stopped him from hammering this point over and over again, when not shoving buttered Suzy Q’s into his snack-hole. Other NY media types followed suit, because everyone bows down to The Sports Pope. And now the national sports media has picked up the narrative–particularly lazy, unimaginative types like Miller, Morgan, and Phillips.

Keep in mind, the Mets had won 11 of their last 13 going into Sunday. Keep in mind that the Mets are in first place right now (though if this team has proven anything, it’s that first place in May means nothing). Keep in mind that they had come from behind to win the first two games of the series, including one game in which they trailed 5-1 to reigning Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum.

But if you just watched this broadcast, you woulda thought the Mets were 12 games out with no relief in sight. Kafka couldn’t have written a more hopeless script than the one delivered by the ESPN crew.

Do I think the Mets are perfect? Of course not. There’s a lot of things about this team that bother me and make me fear for its long-term success. And I’m perfectly willing to hear bad things about my favorite team. But I think the announcers might want mention at least one positive sign from the last two weeks, at least in passing, before shitting all over the team for three hours.

There was no room for this in ESPN’s telecast. Obviously, before the game, the hateful trio had decided they were gonna talk about Grit. And talk about it they did. For three goddamn innings.

Joe Morgan’s idiocy is well documented. His tortured ex-player logic is the epitome of low-hanging fruit. Although I actually laughed out loud when he said, despite the Mets winning 11 of 13, they hadn’t been playing well. They just took “advantage of other team’s mistakes.” I guess so, but only because you could technically define any good outcome for one team as a mistake made by the other. One team’s three-run homer is another team’s hanging slider.

Jon Miller is a homer and a clown. He didn’t contribute much to the Grit Argument. But he didn’t try and stop it either. How can you stand by and watch such atrocities take place in front of your own eyes?

Then there’s Steve Phillips. Look at this man. Just look at him.

steve_phillips.jpgEven if you have no idea who this is, isn’t that a face just begging to be slapped?

Who did Phillips want to trade? Carlos Beltran. You know, one of the best centerfielders in baseball. The guy putting up MVP numbers. That guy.

Of course, as Metsradamus points out, Phillips tried to trade both David Wright and Jose Reyes while he was the Mets’ GM. So by default, he’d have to pick Beltran, since the other two options wouldn’t be here now if it were up to him.

Beltran is hated for not being A Leader, but I’ve never seen a better centerfielder in my life. The man gets to balls that should not be caught and makes the plays look easy (as opposed to someone like Jim Edmonds, who got to balls that shouldn’t be caught and made them look hard so he could get on Web Gems).

And if you wanna talk Grit, how about breaking your face open trying to catch a ball, then coming back only a few weeks later? How about running up a fucking hill that shouldn’t be in the outfield in the first place to make a total Willie Mays catch and save a game? Is that enough Grit for you? No. Beltran is just a little too Brown to be gritty.

Just in case everyone forgot, Steve Phillips ruined the Mets. He took a team built on slick fielding and a solid bullpen and turned it into a fat, slow sieve with the likes of Mo Vaughn and Jeromy Burnitz and Roberto Alomar. And he got Bobby Valentine–the best manager the Mets ever had–fired because he couldn’t do anything with the blobulent mess he gave him.

To me, hearing Steve Phillips complain about the Mets is like hearing Dick Cheney complain about the Obama administration. You had your chance, you fucked up royal, and yet you still won’t go away and leave us alone. You keep flaring up like the festering little boil you are to insist that you could do it better than the current guy–even though there’s an enormous body of evidence proving your thorough incompetence (although in Cheney’s case, it was something more sinister than incompetence).

It doesn’t take Freud to figure out that Phillips is projecting his failures onto other still-employed baseball executives. When he blasts the Mets for assembling the team the way they have, what he’s really saying is Fuck, I traded Melvin Mora for Mike Bordick? I really am a douchebag, aren’t I?

Boomer and Sutcliffe, all is forgiven. I will take one of your information-free broadcasts any day of the week over Miller, Morgan, and The Hair Helmet.

1999 Project

1999 Project: Games 29-31

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

dbacks_future_uni.jpgMay 7, 1999: Diamondbacks 14, Mets 7

In 1998, the Mets took four out of six games against the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks. But the 1999 Diamondbacks were an altogether different team. They bolstered their rotation with Randy Johnson and Todd Stottlemeyer, and solidified their lineup with Steve Finley and Tony Womack. This was also the year in which Luis Gonzalez was suddenly transformed into an offensive powerhouse (through totally natural means, I’m sure).

By the time the Mets traveled to Arizona, the Diamondbacks were a game over .500 and just getting ready to roll, which they made abundantly clear from the very first inning. In the first game of the series, Orel Hershiser turned in a horrific start, giving up nine runs on nine hits in 4 1/3 innings. About the only good thing that could be said of his performance is that he only spent 79 pitches to allow such damage. So his meltdown was efficient, if nothing else.

The Mets fell behind 5-1 early, then rallied to take a 6-5 lead. That prompted Bobby Valentine to let the ineffective Hershiser bat for himself in the top of the fifth, and to also leave the 40-year-old in after he loaded the bases with one out in the bottom half. Hershiser immediately allowed Travis Lee to unload them with a bases-clearing double.

The Diamondbacks then torched relievers Josias Manzanillo and Allen Watson for five more runs, though they were hardly necessary. The Mets just managed three hits the rest of the way. Armando Benitez celebrated a nigh-meaningless eighth inning strikeout by twirling his finger, which prompted some grumbling from the Arizona bench.

After the game, Hershiser defended blamed himself, not Valentine. “We went over the situation and then he left me to ruin the game. I let him down. He didn’t let me down.”

To add injury to insult, Rickey Henderson went on the DL with a strained right knee. Bobby Bonilla was also dealing with some knee issues, but with Henderson sidelined, the oft-booed outfielder would continue to play through the pain.

May 8, 1999: Mets 4, Diamondbacks 2

Masato Yoshii turned in another encouraging start, throwing six scoreless innings (a cracked fingernail prevented him from going any further). The Mets got homers from Matt Franco and John Olerud and took a seemingly comfortable 4-0 into the ninth. Despite it not being a save situation, Valentine turned the ball over to John Franco, who hadn’t pitched in five days.

Franco proceeded to give up a leadoff single to Womack and a bomb of a home run to Jay Bell. A single by Gonzalez, a potential double play grounder that instead went for a fielder’s choice, and a walk to Finley put the tying runs on first and second with only one out.

Valentine gave Franco the hook and brought in Benitez, with the blown save against the Astros still fresh in his mind. Benitez gave up two very long, loud fly balls, but both were caught to end the game.

Later, Benitez defended his antics of the day before by simply saying, “It comes in the blood.”

May 9, 1999: Diamondbacks 11, Mets 6

Asked for a word on his outing, Reed answered, “I got two. I stunk.”

Rick Reed did Orel Hershiser one better and gave up eight runs in only 1 1/3 innings. He gave up a third-run homer to Gonzalez in the first, and the only out he recorded in the second came on a sac bunt. The final score looked much closer than it should have, after homers by Mike Piazza and Mike Kinkade plated three runs in the top of the ninth, but the Mets were never in this game. The bad pitching performances in this series were particularly galling with Coors Field looming in the next series.

Back in New York, Lisa Olsen of the Daily News mused about Alex Rodriguez’s impending free agency. The title of her article: “A-Rod Would Look Good in New York”. Be careful what you wish for, Lisa.