Weakly Update

Record: 5-7, 4th in the division, 3 GB

If you've come to our site in the past week, it may appear that I've been uncharacteristically cruel and left you at Kyle's mercy. After a little tech support, replete with the requisite cringing at my comrade's obsession with the caps lock key, I've figured out the problem. It seems Blogger scripts examined the posts I'd written for this past week, and after spying phrases like "starting pitching solid", "bullpen a nightmare", and "anemic hitting from substitutes" mistakenly assumed I was writing about last year's Mets and dated the posts accordingly.

At year's start our offense was lively and interesting -- now it's boring and unproductive. I shudder to think of what it might be looking like right now if the Duke hadn't picked up Kaz and Cameron. We could be seeing:

Spencer
Garcia
Piazza
Wigginton
Zeile
Phillips
McEwing
Duncan

And I suppose, aside from Chipper "Role Model" Jones injuring himself (probably craning his neck at another man's wife in the stands), the silver lining of this plodding black cloud is that we've seen this offense be productive and have something to look forward to. Namely:

Matsui
Reyes
Floyd
Piazza
Cameron
Garcia
Phillips
Wigginton

Not quite a Murderer's Row (though with Garcia in there, anything's possible), yet I'm still looking forward to the five games or so that these fine eight will all play together at some point this season.

Our starters have certainly been doing their jobs well. Glavine has looked like an ace and along with several quality starts has given us his first scowl from the dugout as the shaky bullpen costs him a win. Trachsel settled down and pitched well independent of the comfort provided by any run support whatsover -- he's obviously used to such treatment. Leiter, still my favorite player on the team, seems like he'll be good for five innings at an economical pace of three hundred pitches per start. I'm not worried about Tyler Yates' rocky last start, considering I caught the beginning of it on TV and turned it off because I was positive the game would be called. There was really no reason for the Mets to let Yates pitch, as the rain was falling faster than Piazza's average and he'd already endured a wait of an hour or so after warming up. The weather was truly the worst I've ever seen major league baseball played in. It occurred to me after the terrible performance was in the books that anyone who checked the box score the next day would have no clue about the mitigating circumstances. Years from now, Rob Neyer will write an article in which he cites Tyler Yates' ERA in his first five starts as an indication that Mets young pitchers were rushed to the majors -- and no one will remember that on that night it was raining cats, dogs, and the cat-dog hybrids Rick Peterson's Biomechanical Science Lab will by then be churning out. Long live subjective analysis.

I think I've already written everything that needs to be said about the bullpen so far. Until Franco and company factor in a victory bigger than the morning game of dominoes down at the home, I think I'll let their playing do the talking.

Despite all of this, I'm not really pessimistic, mostly thanks to Kaley from Flushing Local putting things in perspective. .500 is what I'm realistically shooting for, but I've been tearing my hair out over these losses as if I hadn't expected them to happen half the time. Now it's time to relax, dial down the agony, and maybe enjoy some of the abundant great Mets writing online. Max at Mets Forever is the newest member of the corps: the many, the ashamed, the Mets Bloggers.