Gary Carter: Loss of a Childhood Idol

The Kid passed away today.  He left us much too soon at the age of 57 from brain cancer.  Today was such a sad day in so many ways.  When someone you revered in your childhood passes away, it is especially emotional.  Athletes, by and large, do not make good role models.  Gary Carter was a shining exception.

He was one of my two favorite players growing up, along with Keith Hernandez.  Yes, Doc and Darryl were flashy and represented the future of those Mets teams, but Kid and Mex represented the veteran presence, the steady hand, and the will to win.  Gary and Keith were different on the outside, but similar on the inside.  Both had the burning desire to win at any cost, Keith was street-wise while Gary was the eternal optimist.

There are so many memories that have lasted all of this time.  His first game as a New York Met?  Gary homered to beat St. Louis.  On the road after an 0-2 start to the 1986 World Series?  Gary homered twice to knot the series in Game Four.  The Game Six rally?  Gary started it. 

Gary was truly an inspiration and as the years have worn on, I appreciate him more now than I did when I was a kid.  He played a tough position, but he showed up every game.  In the face of adversity, he would not quit.  Gary was a true, born leader.  You saw it every at-bat and every inning behind the plate in every game.  Gary exhibited those values on the baseball field, but they can easily be adapted to life.

You see, there was a time I was a kid, but Gary never stopped being a kid.  We can all learn something from that.

Check Out The Mets Banter

As we turn our attention from football to the upcoming baseball season, I wanted to give all of the Mets fans out there a website to add to their blogroll.

The Mets Banter is a blog that takes an irreverent look at the Mets.  Now entering its second season, it is a great place to read about what it is like to bleed blue and orange 162 games a year.  You will not find game previews or reviews on a regular basis.  What you will find is passionate editorials from real fans.  If the names Oliver Perez, Luis Castillo, or Aaron Heilman get your blood boiling, you should definitely look in on these guys.

Wills Gillan, a contributor on Sports With The StatMan, heads up the writing staff.  Wills and his writers offer straight talk, positive or negative, about the Mets. Warning: the language can be R-rated at times, but you have to let them vent…it is tough to be a Met fan.

Flying Off The Rails

The 2010 season for the New York Mets has been a rollercoaster.  The fans have been taken for a ride and I am not just talking about the sky-high ticket and concession prices.  The season started terribly as they started off 4-8 when they returned from a road trip to face the Chicago Cubs.  Enter Ike Davis.  Davis was a defensive whirling dervish early, as his patented flip into the Citi Field first-base dugout became commonplace.  The Mets were hot and catapulted themselves into first place before the end of April riding an eight-game winning streak.  The Phillies came into town as the calendar turned to May and embarrassed the Mets’ two hottest starters in Mike Pelfrey and Johan Santana.  The Mets limped along for most of May until the final two games of the first Subway Series against the Yankees.  Two wins there and a series shutout against the Phillies and the Mets were up and running again.  The high lasted until late June, as the Mets carried the play by starting the month 13-2 and entering the last series of the month 17-6.  But, the last series of the month was the only series outside of the United States.  The series in San Juan against the Marlins would become the turning point of the entire year to this point.

The Mets salvaged the last game of the three-game set, but the artificial turf was held responsible for Jose Reyes’s oblique injury, which included him going on the Disabled List and breaking the continuity to the lineup the Mets had enjoyed since Davis debuted in April.  From that fateful series in San Juan to the All-Star Break, the Mets were 0-3-1 in series, only gaining a split of a four-game series at Washington.  After the Break, the Mets hit the West Coast.  Those trips typically undo the Mets and the trip just about undid the 2010 season.  In San Francisco, the Mets were stymied by their talented starters and lost three of four, winning the last game on Sunday in extra innings that was only in extra innings because of a bad “out” call at home plate in the home ninth.  The hitters suffered in San Francisco and the whole team busted in Phoenix.  Arizona swept the Mets and set the tone in the first game with a 13-2 spanking by a last-place team against a road-weary Met squad.  In Los Angeles, Jason Bay suffered a concussion and has not returned since the diagnosis.  Neither have the Mets after losing three of four at Chavez Ravine.  They are 5-7 since the trip and have only won one series since San Juan.

From the highest of the highs in June to the lowest of the lows in San Juan and the West Coast, the rollercoaster season has now officially gone off the rails.  The Mets were not buyers nor were they sellers at the Trading Deadline, which left them in limbo and minimized whatever impact this deadline could give them, either for this season if they wanted to make a playoff push or for future seasons by netting prospects for use in the future.  The team that was supposed to compete at least for the Wild Card this year has been reduced to playing out the string and the questions are already being posed about why this happened.  Some picked the Mets to be a .500 team.  I picked them to win the Wild Card with 89 wins, which was a few games better than most prognosticators.  I based my prediction on several factors:

• The acquisition of Jason Bay
• The rebirth of David Wright and Jose Reyes
• The maturation of Mike Pelfrey and Jonathon Niese

Jason Bay has been a disappointment in his first year.  Most free agents who come to New York need a year to get their feet wet.  Next year will be pivotal for Bay’s overall success in New York, but this year was a feeling out period for both the player and the fans.  David Wright has returned to his former self after psyching himself out of playing at the new Citi Field.  The poor production stayed with him on the road and in the field last year, and when you add a scary beaning by Matt Cain late last season, he had a lot to overcome.  Wright has come through valiantly this year.  Jose Reyes made a cameo last season and missed the first series of the year, but he has played well in May.  He has been streakier this year and his defense has hit a slump lately, but he is hardly the cause for the Mets’ overall struggles.

The real reason has been the pitching.  The problems have been the lack of execution by the staff and the lack of planning by General Manager Omar Minaya.  Mike Pelfrey started to be the number two pitcher he was slated to be last season and this season in April, but he started to teeter in May and fallen way off in June and July.  Since June 13, Pelfrey has had only one quality start in his next nine starts.  He is partly to blame for his rocky performance since May, but the problem really lies with Minaya.  You could look at Minaya’s inactivity to get an established top-of-the-rotation starter to slot behind Johan Santana in each of the last two offseasons and the last two trading deadlines as a challenge made to Pelfrey to mature before our eyes.  You could also look at the inaction as making the best of a bad situation.  But, there is no reason why the Mets have to be in a bad situation.  Minaya was the one who put the Mets in the bad situation.  The Mets have one of the highest payrolls in baseball and Minaya used $36 of that payroll over three years to sign Oliver Perez before last season.  Even at his best, he would never be considered a number two starter.  For what Perez has actually been, he deserves to pitch every fifth day in Triple-A Buffalo.

Jonathan Niese has done the opposite of Pelfrey, starting slowly and really coming on since a stint on the Disabled List in late May.  As of his most recent start on August 6^th, he was 6-3 since returning from the DL with 9 of 12 starts being a quality one and allowing more than three earned runs only twice in that span.  He has been a bright spot on the staff along with R.A. Dickey, but they are mid-rotation pitchers.  The Mets have watched the Phillies trade for Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, and Roy Oswalt in the last 12 months while holding on to their top prospect, Dominic Brown.  The Mets may not have had the minor league talent to make those deals, or maybe the Mets wanted to hold on to their talent, but you could say the Mets were two arms away from factoring in this year’s pennant race: an established starter and an eighth-inning reliever.  Those arms did not have to be attained this past July.  The seeds for this failure were sown a year and a half ago.  By now, the pitcher would have been in his second season in New York, acclimated to the media, the new ballpark, and the demanding fans.  

The time has already passed for this season’s team.  Who knows if Ike Davis, Jonathon Niese, Ruben Tejada, Jenrry Mejia, Fernando Martinez, or Josh Thole will have a big impact on the big-league club or will be used as trading chips down the line, but the Mets gave up their 2010 season because they are betting on their upside.

Random Musings: Met Indecision

Darryl Strawberry was interviewed by Matthew Cerrone at Metsblog.com this past week.  Later in the week, Cliff Floyd was on Mike Francesca’s show on WFAN.  They come from different Met eras and different times of Met success.  Strawberry was the premier power hitter on the great Met teams of the 1980s.  Floyd was one of the power sources for the Mets of the middle part of this past decade.  Both have seen New York when the Mets win.  They understand what makes Met fans go crazy.  Confidence.  Swagger.  Cockiness.

Strawberry was there for one of the two greatest moments in franchise history: Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.  Floyd almost reached a World Series in 2006, but was there for one of the greatest single plays in team history: the Endy Chavez over-the-wall catch.

In his notes on the interview, Cerrone said if the current downward trend for the Mets continues, the situation may become irreparable.  I might disagree with Cerrone on whether that has already happened.  I believe this situation may already be irreparable.  Let's look at the low points this franchise has had since that Endy Chavez miracle catch.

·       2006: Carlos Beltran strikes out looking to end Game 7 of NLCS

·       2007: Mets do not re-sign Floyd

·       2007: Mets have historic collapse in the East, allowing the Phillies to take the division on the last day

·       2008: Mets do not re-sign Paul Lo Duca

·       2008: Willie Randolph fired at the beginning of a West Coast trip

·       2008: Mets collapse again, dropping a division lead and allowing the Brewers to take the Wild Card on the last day

·       2009: Bad signing of Perez

·       2009: Bad trade for Putz

·       2009: Injuries affect every part of the Met roster

·       2009: Keystone Cop-like operation of the franchise

It has already deteriorated quickly.  This franchise, as it is currently constituted, may already have its best days behind them.  This latest round of incompetence stems from the players' health.  If they were healthy, there would be no mistrust with the medical staff.  But, they were hurt, and the medical staff, front office, and ownership botched it beyond belief.  Now, there is no trust in the medical staff. 

Beltran sought a second opinion, which happens all of the time, but right after getting that second opinion, he went under the knife.  That shows little trust in Minaya or that shows that he knew the front office and ownership would try to talk him out of it.  Beltran is not the only with little trust in Minaya having any kind of autonomy in the front office without the meddling of ownership.  Jose Reyes did not seem all that happy with the rehabilitation course, as the Mets opted to rehab his leg injury instead of opting for surgery.  Did Johan Santana pitch too long without having surgery on his elbow and jeopardize himself to a more severe injury?

This irreparable damage has not been the results of bad trades or players walking away for more money elsewhere.  Omar Minaya and the Mets re-signed people I did not think they should have re-signed in Carlos Delgado and Oliver Perez, did not re-sign players I thought they should have kept in Paul Lo Duca, fired people that should not have been fired in Willie Randolph, and kept people on that should have been shown the door, such as the medical staff and now Omar Minaya himself.

Save for the Johan Santana trade that fell into their laps, the Mets are seemingly doing the exact opposite of what they should have been doing.  The Mets should not have had to rely on Gary Sheffield or Daniel Murphy for long stretches last year.  Even though the Mets injured list read like a phone book, Sheffield and Murphy were supposed to be in the lineup most of the time when the season started.  The Mets did not have a solid second starter behind Johan Santana entering 2008, let alone last season.  To date, they still do not have that second starter. 

The Mets fixed their left field situation in the offseason by signing Jason Bay, but they could have signed the right player last season.  Does Minaya learn from the 2009 injuries?  Already, you can tell he is not planning well for possible failure at first base if Murphy and Tatis do not hit well enough.  They are still paying for a bad contract to Castillo, which stopped them from signing Orlando Hudson, who has a much better glove and could be a better fit in the lineup. 

Yes, Santana might not have agreed to the trade that sent him from Minnesota to Queens if Castillo was not already a Met, but by now, Santana is a Met and Castillo could be benched, released, or traded with the Mets eating a large portion of the contract.  Met upper management is treating the 4-year/$24 million contract like a 6-year/$100 million contract by the way they are unwilling to eat some or all of the remaining money.  Look at the Los Angeles Angels.  They ate $21.5 million of the remaining $23.5 million of Gary Matthews, Jr.’s contract to ship him off to the Mets.

Quite frankly, I am surprised the Mets have not traded away Reyes, David Wright, or Beltran at this point because that would be the opposite of good management.  At least they have had enough sense to hold on to them.  But, that has given the Met fans just enough hope to hold off on pushing the button that blows everything up and starts over again.

As I write this, not only did Ryan Garko sign with Seattle, who is trying to win now, but Kevin Millar just signed a minor-league deal.  Millar might have only hit .223 and had 4 errors in 46 games at 1B, but he has grit and fire in spades and he would prove a workable platoon player while the Mets bide their time for Ike Davis to arrive.  Millar knows how to win.  Maybe he could have taught the Mets.

What to expect from Random Musings...?

Hello and thanks for stopping by. Well, what can you expect from this blog? Mainly, it is a blog about sports, specifically, baseball, hockey, and football. But, if it catches my eye, ear, or, if something smells fishy, my nose, I will offer my two cents.

I am a 31-year-old computer consultant who would love to transition to sportswriting. But, knowing how much that job pays, I am looking to win the lottery first. I am from New Jersey and my rooting interests are with some New York teams, while other New York teams make my blood boil. My family is from Long Island, so I root for teams that play, or used to play, east of Manhattan: Mets, Islanders, Jets. I also have brothers (and sisters) in arms in Boston, so I also hold the Red Sox, Bruins, and Patriots dear. I also like the Devils for the same reason I like the Sox: we have a common enemy (Rangers and Yankees, respectively).

Essentially, my goals are to root my team to victory, stick around through good times and bad, and take solace in the little victories in life because, hey, anyone can root for a perennially good team, but what is the use if you cannot appreciate the journey? The Yankees? They are good just about every year, but the expectations are so high that they have to win just to satisfy the fans. But, for my Mets, the memories from those relatively fewer victories keep me coming back for more punishment, er, more hope.

Unlike Mark McGwire, I like talking about the past and give current stories an historical perspective. I have watched sports intently for over 20 years and I have researched quite a bit of what I missed before that. But, like McGwire, I like to keep it positive and upbeat, just minus the blinders.

Opinions and (clean) spirited debate are welcome. Also, I would love to make this blog interactive. If there is something going on in the world of sports that you want me to chime in on, please ask (gstatman@gmail.com).