.500 ain't nothin but a number

It’s a shame I waited until the new year to write my expectations for the Mets in 2004, as I’m finding it difficult to overcome the hope currently buoying my heart, a long-suffering organ made heavy by the black pudding-like sludge my brain excreted after watching not one but two Glavines embarrass the orange and blue in ’03. It isn’t easy to be objective about the team you love when the forward thinking spirit of the season meets the absurd offseason alternate reality in which the Mets contend for more than my utter destruction.

Thankfully, the recent Braden Looper signing provided a welcome redirection back into reality. It wasn’t a bad move, and is even a little intriguing when you consider the subplot of his trading places with Benitez, yet I don’t see it having much impact on my enjoyment of the refashioned Amazins unless Looper ends up getting arrested drag-racing Cedeno down the West Side Highway. The signing is a microcosm of the Mets’ moves this winter: we’ve ‘followed a plan’, ‘filled some holes’, ‘improved the club’, yet done relatively little to make realistic on the field expectations for 2004 palatable. It’s a good thing there are other reasons to follow a ballclub, isn’t it? (You feel me, Detroit? I feel you. Uh, dawg.) With that in mind, and my new year’s resolution of avoiding sports talk cliches like saying one thing is a microcosm of another broken, here are my thoughts on some Flushing plotlines I'm looking forward to:

C – 1b: Mike Piazza’s got to polish off that home run record for catchers quickly so we can crown him one of the best ever, retire his number, buy him a Hummer, and do whatever else we need to so he can focus his full attention on the second most crucial position shift for the Mets this season. His attempt at first base can go either way, I think – he can eke out a legitimate defensive season there (that, by the way, is the best case scenario), or he can bomb like Hiroshima and have us longing for the surprising diction and smooth vocal stylings of Tony Clark. All I want to see is a good effort on his part. He’d be going from one of the toughest defensive positions to one of the easiest, and while he doesn’t look very athletic, the whole point of the shift is that he doesn’t have to be – if he can’t even try, what kind of superstar is he? On the positive side, him stretching to scoop a throw at first is probably the only way I’d be able to stomach another horrific groin tear. Also, despite Fran Healy’s half-sincere exclamations about Mo Vaughn’s “soft hands” (does that even mean anything?), I doubt Mike will be worse. He’s one of my favorites on the team; here’s hoping that the fans are the only things pulling for him this year.

Jason Phillips is one of the more likable kids the Mets thrust into roles way over their heads last year. I like that he can hit the ball hard, that he wears goofy glasses, and that he is easily one of the slowest people in the New York sports scene since Yankee Luis “Speed Demon” Sojo. He seems like a good guy, which coming from a fan means that he smiles often, is occasionally enthusiastic yet not a hot dog, and doesn’t refer to himself in the third person in post-game interviews. I also read that in college he dedicated a season or something to an old high-school teammate who’d fallen into a coma. Good kid to have around, and again, he can hit. I’m also looking forward to his catching defense and the ridiculous ballerina-style splits he’d throw down at first to catch the invariably off-target throws our AAA infield fired his way.

2b: Jose Reyes is the man, period. The other writer on this site, a fellow I refuse to refer to in type as “Big K” (yet just did) can vouch for my girlish squeal when our shortst— er, second baseman of the future floated a barely-made-it grand slam over the left field wall early into his tour of duty last year. He’s a particularly exciting player for a few reasons, not least of which being that he’s been hyped by the organization slightly more than those gorge-raising “construction cone orange” BP jerseys. He’s supposed to have Rey Ordonez’ glovework, and a dynamite flame-throwing bazooka for an arm. I could care less about the latest defense-computing metric that’s been proposed this week by a Bill James understudy – none of the ones I’ve seen so far have the ability to compute the unadulterated enjoyment brought on by a slick fielder making a ridiculous play and then casually gunning down a baserunner. He’s got that skill, and that charisma (which I would call cockiness, if he played for the Yanks). I’m not worried about him moving to second, as I think he’ll be just as exciting there. I just hope he can hit; Ordonez was only as good as his last Web Gem.

3b: Ty Wigginton’s got a great baseball name, and his style of play lives up to it. Of course, we’ve all heard too much from the announcing crew about his “balls to the wall” mentality, as they were probably trying to get more mileage out of a phrase robbed of semantic currency by its facility in describing what happened when Tom Glavine was on the hill. I loved watching him blast catchers full-on while trying to score runs that in the grand scheme of the season meant nothing. He’s a tough young guy, and I’m probably pulling more for him to succeed than anybody else.

SS: I really liked Shinjo, and at the risk of sounding like an ethnocentric uninformed American who can’t tell two Japanese ballplayers apart, Kaz Matsui seems like he’ll be bringing back some of the flair his awesomely wristbanded predecessor took back to Japan. I was lucky enough to sit through his 15-minute completely irrational introductory press conference, in which he cracked some jokes and said “I love New York” and almost erased Mayor Bloomburg’s self-serving impersonation of a Mets fan from my memory. I like that he doesn’t want to be called Little Matsui, yet I’m unabashedly in favor of setting him up on the scales opposite Hideki. Steinbrenner enjoys clean-cut, homogenized, class-act Yankees (as if a retarded deodorant commercial and a quick buzz with a Norelco can erase the wild, fun-loving image and facial hair Jason Giambi cultivated in Oakland), and I think that the Boss’ will subsumed Hideki’s personality. Needless to say, I doubt Kaz will find similar restraints in Queens, where I fully expect his eccentricities and flashiness to entertain even in a season as horrific as the last. We’re the Mets, for crying out loud! We cut hair during games, we smoke pot and pass the hell out, we flip off fans, and best of all we lose ninety-five freaking games – but at least, you know, we’ve got great personality. And unlike all of Kyle's dates, in this instance that really does count for something. In fact, I'm banking on this.

Ok, I’ll write about the rest of the team soon, like when we have one. (Just kidding, Mike Cameron! I feel you! Ugh.)