The N.L. East

The N.L. East

Here’s where I really start caring. Why? The Mets. That’s why. The fucking Mets. Ah the Mets. They are the reason I’m writing any of this really. I don’t care enough about the other 29 teams. Perhaps I would adopt another team were the boys from Queens not around, but perhaps not. I am not here to deal in hypotheticals, not that one anyway. Instead, let’s take a brief tour of this team as I have known them.

Growing up, my father was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. He grew up in Connecticut, and it was probably between them and the Yankees. The Red Sox were a little too distant. According to the top historian on my staff Buck 65, the Dodgers moved West in 1957 and were replaced by the Mets in the 1962 expansion.

In 1981, at 3:30 in the afternoon on the 17^th of November, I was born in Manhattan. The Mets second and most recent World Series championship was just less than 5 years later in 1986. I know much about it now, but I don’t have any firsthand memories I can claim as my own. Perhaps in the buried recesses of my memory there are leaps of elation as the ball trickles through Bill Buckner’s legs as if he was so stunned by history happening that he caused it to happen, Mookie comes into score, Jesse Orosco records the final out…

I remember the great-but-should-have-been-better Mets of 1988. I remember the front page of the New York Times when Bobby Bonilla signed an ostentatious and before long disastrous contract. The early 90s Mets slogged through those years with the unforgiving slowness of a real New York summer. I don’t know if New York gets those summers anymore. I don’t know that they don’t- my last full summer there was in 2004. I just remember there were times that the heat would pour down from above and burn up out of the concrete, and if it didn’t make you so slow, you might imagine yourself slapping away fireballs with a ping-pong racquet.

After a few years of what could only be charitably called mediocrity, hope sprung eternal when the Mets developed three stunning young pitchers- Pulsipher, Isringhausen and Wilson to go along with all star pitcher Bobby Jones. Things were looking up. Isringhausen eventually had success as a closer in Oakland and St. Louis where they called him Izzy-gonna-blow-it? His career was by far the most successful of the three. Wilson seemed to constantly be recovering from surgery, had some scattered moments of promise in Cincinnati, and that was it. Pulse, my favorite, after his stunning debut with the Mets, battled injuries off and on, and never really got a major league career up and running. The team would have to wait until the late 90s to be a force again.

It is easily forgotten, especially with the other New York team enjoying one of the greatest stretches of dominance seen in the history of the game, but the late 90s-early 0s Mets were formidable. You didn’t want to mess with Fonzie-Olerud-Piazza. You didn’t want to hit a ball near Rey Ordonez. You usually couldn’t do much against Leiter’s cut fastball. My favorite ever baseball memory is this:

The other team is at bat. No, I don’t remember who they were. All I remember is a sharp groundball, up the middle, just to the right of second base. Looks like a single. Alfonzo darts toward it and stabs it with his glove, all his momentum sending him toward left-field. Freeze the picture there and it seems that he has made a nice play, that will simply mean that this is an infield single, as opposed to one that will be picked up by the center fielder. He is several steps behind second base and running in the wrong direction. He could try to stop and throw, or the Jeter jump-throw (this was before he patented it). Neither of those was likely to work, and it probably made as much sense as anything to just hold on to the ball. Instead, Fonzie did something I had never seen before or since. Without a moment’s hesitation, he flipped it to Rey Ordonez out of his glove. Ordonez was also behind second, running the opposite direction as if he had somehow foreseen this whole thing. He caught the pass barehand and fired to first in one motion. They got the runner by a step and a half. It was breathtaking. Most of the Mets teams I’ve seen in my day- if that happened it would seem like a bizarre fluke- incredible but mostly unintentional. People would find ways to make fun of them for pulling off something like that when the basics of the game sometimes seemed lost on them. Those Mets though, they had a swagger. They expected to win if the opponent was not the Yankees or Braves, and occasionally against them as well. Those moments were magical, but all the more so because they were within the reach of that team. They really were good.

The Mets of 2010 are, like, so many Mets teams before them, trying to disprove history, not continue it. The stunning failures of 2007 and 2008 were followed with a yearlong malaise in 2009. The entire rotation had a forgettable year. Reyes went down, Beltran went down, Delgado went down. Murphy didn’t hit how we’d hoped. The baseball gods could not fell David Wright by conventional means, so he got hit in the head with a pitch. To my knowledge, two Mets had seasons they can look back on fondly. One is Jeff Francouer. The not so long ago future of the Braves brought them frustration, outs and not much else. They swapped him for Ryan Church, who they released at the end of the season. It was addition by subtraction more than anything else. As a Met, Francouer was really good. It was only 2 months or so, but heads were turned and then scratched. He is to be the Mets starting right fielder this year. Let’s do the guy a favor and not really expect anything in particular out of this. The other Met who had a good year was Luis Castillo. He got on base a lot and still has decent speed. The Mets spent all winter trying to trade him. They found no takers. Anything like last year’s production would be fantastic.

There was one other Met who produced favorable noises. That was Josh Thole. There’s a good chance that he’s the next Daniel Murphy- a guy who you haven’t heard of, plays well once rosters are expanded, makes you ponder the next year and beyond, and it turns out there was a reason you hadn’t heard of him before. Still, Thole brings up one of the more bewildering offseasons the Mets have had in a while.

Josh Thole may not amount to much in terms of wins, but he’s someone for fans to be happy enough about. At worst he’s a fun backup who you can dream on a little. And he’s cheap, and will be for a while. What’s not to like. With Thole already in the fold, the Mets went out and signed catchers as if their value was cumulative. They signed three catchers. None of them hit much. Rod Barajas hits a little more than the others, and he’ll be the starter. Henry Blanco can throw out runners like no other and he’ll be the backup. Chris Coste will walk around with a puzzle piece in his hand to symbolize that he may have made sense to a team looking to contend who was in need of a backup catcher. I hope the Mets contend, but the only thing they definitely don’t need is a backup catcher.

As for the other positions, Wright, I think will bounce back from his bizarro power outage, Bay should whack home runs and move slowly, Reyes thankfully seems to have a normal hamstring and thyroid, so, y’know, that’s good, Beltran is our $18M secret weapon, Francouer is eliciting some nice spring training-esque praise, Murphy should be serviceable at first and Castillo may just “earn” his salary again.

I doubt there is more potential swing in any rotation in baseball. Last year existed almost entirely on the crappy end of the swing. There isn’t much to say here that hasn’t already been said. I watch the middle three- Pelfrey, Maine, Perez- with the concern usually reserved for trying to figure out if a friend or relative is just a little sick or really sick. The jumble of impressive-for-a-fifth starter fifth starters are impressive, but I don’t know how much I trust them the second and third times through the order.

What happens: Perfection, beauty, indescribable goodness. Perez finds a fastball-curveball thing that makes heads spin. Pelfrey fucks you up. Maine figures out how to be a crafty snapper with neat stuff. Nelson Figueroa sings opera solos. Francouer is dangerous in the 6-spot. Beltran plays many games and does what he can do. Reyes finds that magic balance between baseball and dancing.

That’s right, I’m picking the Mets to win the division. Deal with it.

2. The Philadelphia Phillies

So, these guys are good. Utley’s a beast, Howard’s a monster, Werth is worth it, Rollins will roll you, and because of their presence, Ibanez and Polanco can be nifty complimentary players. They also have the Flyin Hawaiian and someone who plays catcher. Sure they’re good.

Then there’s the rotation. Halladay is really really good. Hamels is very good and the rest of them will elicit few complaints as long as the first two do their jobs.

But what I really want to talk about is The Trade. Quick recap: the Phillies had Cliff Lee, an ace under contract for one more year who seemed to want to test the open market after this season. The Blue Jays had Halladay, even better than Lee, who was definitely gone after this year, and there was no way they were going to contend. On the same day, the Phillies acquired Halladay for some of their best prospects and traded Lee for some good but not quite as good prospects. They then extended Halladay for the next three years. The team improved, and they swapped an ace who would likely leave for one who will stick around. Not bad.

Still, so many have looked at what they got for Lee and wondered if that deal was worth it. What if they had just accepted a crappy farm system and gone Halladay-Lee-Hamels…. I think GM Ruben Amaro saw it like this. He had three options.

1) Make the Halladay trade and see what he can get for Lee or Blanton later. I think this was rejected because if you let fans fall in love with that rotation, they will be heartbroken when you break it up. I’m generally on the side of good decisions over the feelings of the mob, but this one I understand.

2) Do it all in one fell swoop. This is what he did. The problem is that by attaching the timetable of the Halladay deal to that of the Lee deal, you don’t have much time to let a market develop and find the right trade. Maybe Blanton gets you part of that haul.

3) Keep Halladay and Lee, trade Blanton if you can. Here’s my little pet theory. Amaro had pulled off the Lee trade- an ace for some good prospects- at the last deadline, and here he was about to do it again… and he kind of just freaked out. Looking at that lineup with that rotation- something just felt wrong. That and his farm system would be barren, his payroll overloaded- no we must take steps to reduce payroll and restock the farm. An ace for an ace. Prospects for prospects. We’re still improving the team.

Fair enough, but think about the alternative. First his team would be by far the most likely of any other to reach the World Series. They would be one of the four best teams in baseball and the other three play in the A.L. East. Second, if and when Lee walks away, they get two draft picks in a stacked draft (from what I hear- I know next to nothing about undrafted prospects). Finally, they are probably doing fine money-wise, but I think that rotation is worth some extra patronage, not to mention the increased chance of advancing in the playoffs which is lots of extra $$$. Lastly, I bet someone takes Blanton off their hands to at least bring the payroll back to where they want it.

Still these guys are good. I’ll give ‘em the Wild Card.

3. The Atlanta Braves

I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see another prolonged ascension from these guys. Not sure what to make of the Vasquez trade. Thought it was kind of dumb at the time. Everyone love Jason Heyward. Chipper is still Chipper, but he needs to be more of a complimentary player now. He’ll carry the team one more time for Bobby, but then it’ll be time for others to shoulder the load. They have good pitching too.

4. Fish!

These guys are always good. At the same time, they’re usually bad. Fear the fish.

5. The Washington Nationals

I’m still not sold on their name. Like a fine cuisine, it takes time to develop a real baseball team, but these guys seem to be some version of on their way. I fear Strasburg.