April Fools

I’ve yawned, bleary-eyed, through two games that were supposed to mark the start of the season but instead pinpointed the end of my patience with Spring Training. Stumbling to work after watching the Yankees begin to falter in the first game of 2004, I expected to be rewarded for my early rise. Instead of rumblings about Mike "You mean they don’t cook the fish?" Mussina, the predominant catchphrase of the day was "well, 161-1 ain’t bad". At six in the morning with no coffee and surrounded by Yankees fans, I was unable to discern how earnest their projections were. 161-1 ain’t bad. Smiling, laughing, expecting A-Rod to star and Jeter to return to whatever it is he briefly was – these abhorrent Yanks fans made me realize just how low my confidence in the Mets has sunk recently, and how little I’m looking forward to another horrible season.

Make no mistake about it: last year was horrible to watch. The baseball was fundamentally sloppy, the players were embarrassing off the field, and our best players (please allow me the undeserved qualifier) were injured more often than not. There’s only one way to derive enjoyment from following a laughingstock, and that’s serving up a Mo Vaughn-sized platter of self-deprecating jokes (See what I mean?). Laughing at the latest Amazin’ catastrophe was barely enough for me to maintain some level of enthusiasm for my favorite sport, comparable to a Bleacher Creature being limited to only four beers an inning. I watched other teams when I could, sure, and followed the pennant races, but you don’t get the same thrill witnessing achievements made by other teams. I watched the Mets mainly for comic relief.

Enter Jose Reyes and Jae Seo. I started really following Seo after I was lazily listening to Healy or some other announcer droning on about his innings-without-a-walk streak. There was a moment tucked in there where he stopped half-heartedly flirting with the strike zone and completely took it to opposing batters. I saw it and I was hooked -- good young pitching, basically out of nowhere? Why shouldn’t I have cause for optimism? Even if he faltered, he was young, he was part of the future. It could all be worked out.

Reyes was hyped so much that even a skeptic like me couldn’t wait for him to come in and make our season interesting again. In the beginning, of course, he fit right in with the rest of the club, sucking in a complementary albeit not complimentary fashion. Then he figured things out. Look, if Reyes were your standard slow, big hit, big strikeout outfielder, I wouldn’t have cared about him. But he was a fast, lithe kid playing at one of the flashiest spots on the field, and like Kyle pondering the only way he’ll get a date, had a gun and wasn’t afraid to use it. When he injured himself, I didn’t much mind, having already seen everything I thought I needed. He’d be great next year, Seo would be more consistent, and the Mets would be interesting to watch as a baseball team.

We got Cameron to improve our defense, and I liked Mike, goofy grin and throwback jersey battles with Cliff Floyd quite withstanding. Kazuo Matsui showed up, threw out an "I love New York", dyed his hair the color of Tsuyoshi Shinjo’s wristbands, and won me over on potential alone. Rick Peterson signed on, our pitching depth ballooned, and my stupid, stupid expectations soared.

Here’s why they’ve been shot down to earth:

I guess management has decided that there’s no hope of playing meaningful games in September, so they decided to pretend Spring Training mattered and
demoted Jae Seo after a rocky tuneup. As he was one of our only success stories last year, and likely our best pitcher, I have no idea what Duquette and the gang is thinking. He is being replaced by (take your pick) Scott Erickson or Tyler Yates, our new fifth and fourth starters respectively. Yates pitched well in 14 innings in Spring Training. Scott Erickson is with Lisa Guerrero. Those are their qualifications, as far as I can tell. You’re going to tell me the job market is slim?

I would pay money specifically to see Jae Seo pitch. My hope is that Peterson has seen something he needs to correct, and for some reason thinks it would be easier to do at the minor league level. This decision is flat out stupid, to the point where mocking it is difficult because there is no logical base to turn on its head.

Reyes is a walking (hobbling?) injury risk. I don’t mind him not playing to potential or having a learning curve season where he regresses in a fashion sensible to expect from a 20-year-old phenom. I can’t, however, abide watching a team rendered unwatchable by injuries. You can draw some humor from a Pat Burrell season for a little while, but there’s nothing really funny or interesting about substituted players sucking.

He joins Piazza and Floyd (and maybe Matsui with his nagging and apparently uncharacteristic ailments) on the list of Mets I am certain will miss a significant amount of time this season. I like Joe McEwing as a radio-show host and all around good guy, and Vance Wilson as a backup backstop, but I’m not spending any of my hard-earned money to see them starting baseball games. I fear I’ll be seeing an awful lot of them on TV this season, though.

Our defense stinks. Our pitching doesn’t strike guys out, so we need good fielders. We don’t have them, from what I’ve seen in ST – and hey, if that was a significant enough sample to determine two slots in the rotation, it’s good enough to tell Duquette that his pitching and defense first philosophy is missing a cornerstone.

Injuries, our potentially best pitcher in the minors, and another year of watching Piazza whipping baseballs with the accuracy of dandelion fluff borne aloft by a hurricane -- I'm dreading it, right now.

But hey, if we manage to send Erickson to the Indians for complete headcase Milton Bradley, my optimism might be restored. We wouldn't contend for respectability, but you might say we'd have a monopoly on off the field hilarity.