New York Mets

Oliver Perez is an enigma.

While many pitchers have displayed inconsistency, Perez’s highs and lows are remarkable, not just from game to game, but season to season.

There are endless theories for Perez’s problems, ranging from the mechanical to the psychological, and many prescriptions to solve them.

He showed encouraging signs Sunday against the Yankees, striking out eight and walking none over seven innings, but he’s been so inconsistent that it’s hard to know if it was meaningful progress or just another blip. The one thread running through Perez’s numbers appears to be a simple one—if he throws even a decent amount of strikes, he will be successful.  read more »

Monday night’s 7-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals will be particularly disappointing to fans of the New York Mets, particularly if it provides a harbinger for how the Mets play over the next week.

With another three games against the Cardinals, who lead the National League wild-card race, followed by four with the Phillies, who lead the National League East, the Mets will be facing two teams that stand between them and a playoff berth.

A strong week would likely put New York squarely in the middle of the wild-card chase, and could catapult them into the division lead. But a poor week could leave New York on the outer reaches of the playoff picture; long shots for October play.  read more »

It’s only been eight games. But Jerry Manuel has made it clear that he has a very different plan to manage the Mets than his predecessor, Willie Randolph. These changes range from the tactical to the philosophical, with some tone changes thrown in for good measure.

The most famous of these changes so far has been Manuel’s freewheeling press conferences with reporters, including jokingly threatening to “cut” Jose Reyes (and not as in releasing him) over an on-field tantrum, and referring to the vocally negative feedback from some Mets fans as potentially helpful “fertilizer” at Shea Stadium.

Manuel’s tactical adjustments—the things that actually relate to baseball—have gotten much less notice.  read more »

With Moises Alou on the disabled list, Mets manager Jerry Manuel has said that the team needs to plan as if he isn’t coming back. And Trot Nixon, who has started in left field eight times since the Mets acquired him from the Arizona Diamondbacks (where he had been playing for Arizona’s AAA club) on June 15, wants to put himself squarely at the center of those plans.

So far, the results haven’t come for the longtime Red Sox standout, whose season line stands at .148/.281/.296. But Nixon, who New York acquired in part for his seemingly endless hustle, said he isn’t pressing.  read more »

If Willie Randolph’s situation with the Mets was most like that of Davey Johnson, who was also fired less than halfway into a season less than two years removed from an appearance in the NLCS, then Jerry Manuel, who was named interim manager of the Mets early Tuesday morning, is Bud Harrelson, Johnson’s replacement.

Harrelson took over a 20-22 Mets team during the 1990 season, and led them to a 71-49 record—good enough for 91 victories, but falling short of the postseason. And this standard—significantly improved play, even if it falls short of a playoff berth—is likely Manuel’s bar to clear so he can remove the interim tag from his job title.  read more »

The last days of the Willie Randolph era, much like the Mets’ historic end-of-season collapse in 2007, were both tragic and horrible to behold.

On June 15, at the end of a long, seven-hour day at a stadium that will be pulverized and paved into a parking lot later this year, the Mets announced their attendance for a Father’s Day double-header at 55,438. That was laughably deceptive.

Seats were empty all afternoon, and by the time the second game started—the Mets dropped the first half of the double-header to the Texas Rangers—it was quiet enough for the players to be able to hear the yelled suggestions of individual fans: “Carlos! Hit it to third base! They got a shift.  read more »

The Mets had no shortage of disappointing losses during Willie Randolph’s tenure, but the team chose to fire him, along with pitching coach Rick Peterson and first base coach Tom Nieto, around 90 minutes after Monday night’s 9-6 victory over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Randolph will be replaced by former White Sox manager Jerry Manuel; Dan Warthen, who had been the Mets’ pitching coach at AAA New Orleans, will assume Rick Peterson’s duties. AAA Manager Ken Oberkfell and AAA coach Luis Aguayo will also join the staff.

Randolph’s fate was the subject of speculation since the end of the 2007 season, one in which the Mets lost a seven-game lead in the National League East with 17 games left to play, one of the biggest collapses in baseball history.  read more »

It’s still too early for the Mets to make the irrevocable decision to be sellers at baseball’s non-waiver trade deadline on July 31. But just barely.

The Mets found themselves seven games out of first place Thursday evening following a 5-4 loss to Arizona, pending Philadelphia’s game at Florida. The wild card offers even worse news; the Mets trail St. Louis by eight games, pending the Cardinals’ game at Cincinnati.

The Mets have lost six of seven games; a similarly poor performance over the next few weeks, or a strong one by St. Louis and Philadelphia, could put the Mets 10 games out of a playoff spot by July 1.

While teams have managed to overcome deficits that large, such stories are rare. And with the team’s depth and talent base depleted by poor drafts and the Johan Santana trade, along with a core—David Wright, Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, John Maine and Santana—that is still in its prime, retooling for 2009 could end up being their best (only?) shot at getting back into the company of the premier clubs.

If the Mets punt on 2008—and unless things change soon, it will come to that—here are some of the selling options they have if young talent is available in return:  read more »

Martinez is Least of Mets’ Worries There are no shortage of problems for the Mets, from Ryan Church’s concussive complications, to Moises Alou’s inability to heal, and even Billy Wagner’s ability to save his only poor performances for the worst possible moments, as he did Sunday, giving up a home run to Tony Clark as the Mets lost their fourth straight to the San Diego Padres, 8-6.  read more »

Unlike in the NBA or NFL, players selected in the Major League baseball draft are not expected to contribute to the big-league roster immediately, or often for years. But both the Mets and Yankees seemed to draft with the current problems with their respective teams in mind.

For the Mets, the issues addressed were in the starting lineup and depth of starting pitching. For the Yankees, the effort was made to collect high-ceiling young pitchers, hoping enough will stick to make a pitching staff.  read more »

It is commonly assumed that if Joe Torre had been a free agent, rather than property of the Los Angeles Dodgers, he, and not Willie Randolph, would currently be manager of the New York Mets. That chorus will likely quiet a bit after the Mets completed a 5-2 homestand by defeating the Dodgers Sunday night, 6-1.

But the funny idea of the whole Torre-for-Randolph idea is that there’s no evidence that the aspects of Randolph’s managing that have come under fire most—his lack of demonstrated passion, his deference to veterans and his problems managing his bullpen—would have altered with this particular regime change. After all, Randolph learned his style by Joe Torre’s side as a bench coach for much of Torre’s Yankee tenure.  read more »

David Wright is miscast in a Met uniform.

His youth, affability and seemingly boundless enthusiasm are, by themselves, sufficient to draw a sharp contrast to the gaggle of older, often listless imports that surround him. Add the fact that he’s not only the best player on the Mets but also one of a scant few whose career remains on the ascent, and you begin to understand that by nearly every metric, Wright is the anti-Met.  read more »

The New York Mets are, in a word, awful. After collecting a cadre of superstars with big contracts and making a series of pretty shrewd trades, the Mets have lost more games than they’ve won during the first two months of the 2008 season, this after they made baseball history last fall with an ignominious collapse that cost them a spot in the playoffs.

A good many Mets fans think they’ve identified the problem: His name is Willie Randolph, the team’s manager.  read more »

Speculation about Willie Randolph’s hold on his job as manager of the New York Mets seems to be reaching a breaking point. First, Randolph was forced to apologize for public comments that, among other things, asserted that the SNY network, which is owned by the Mets, slanted coverage against him. Then he and the Mets proceeded to lose six of seven games to the Atlanta Braves and Colorado Rockies.

When Randolph reached out to Mets ownership, his call was reportedly returned by General Manager Omar Minaya.  read more »

Let this be a lesson for managers and coaches in New York: When your team is down, don't pick a fight with the media.

Willie Randolph, the Mets manager whose team is now under .500, has made two mistakes this week, at a time when his job is looking more and more unsafe.

Randolph told the Bergen Record that he was getting a lot of heat from the media because he's black, and that SNY--which the Mets organization owns--delighted in catching him at unflattering moments in the dugout.

He asked to speak with the Mets' owners, the Wilpons, to apologize, and his offer was rebuffed (instead, he spoke to the team's GM, Omar Minaya).  read more »

This weekend, as Mets and Yankees reprised their biannual rivalry, the familiar summer smell of sizzling hot dogs and grilled hamburgers was trumped by the cloying stench of mutual desperation. After 40 games and more than $347 million in payroll, the Mets and Yankees entered the series a combined 40-42. Worse still, they saw their respective divisions led by the Florida Marlins and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, two teams whose payrolls rank last and next to last in Major League Baseball.

So what’s the problem?  read more »

While the Mets and Yankees played just two games this weekend, due to a Friday night rainout, there were a few illuminating aspects to both games for the heretofore struggling New York teams.

Wang’s Increased Use of Slider is Double-Edged Sword  read more »

It is a peculiar irony of this largely disappointing Mets season that one of the loudest sustained cheers any player at Shea received this year was on Sunday, May 11, for left-handed reliever Scott Schoeneweis, quite possibly 2007’s least popular Met.

Schoeneweis kept a sense of humor about the fan reaction. He claims never to hear plaudits, only criticism. Therefore, on Sunday, he heard only an absence of boos.  read more »

It’s open season on Mets starter Oliver Perez.

Billy Wagner ripped him for failing to compete, after Perez gave up five walks and seven runs in 1 2/3 innings on April 30. Earlier, Willie Randolph had criticized Perez for failing to go deep into games, even though Randolph twice removed Perez in the sixth inning when Perez had yet to allow a run. After his recent poor outing, the New York Post led with, “The Mets are running out of patience with the maddeningly consistent Oliver Perez.”

OK, so now what?  read more »

Heading into the 2008 season, the Atlanta Braves were the fashionable pick to win the National League East. Seven different ESPN writers had Atlanta on top, with one picking them to win the World Series.

That’s nothing new, particularly. Atlanta is expected to be successful, having won 14 consecutive division titles from 1991-2005, a feat that hasn’t even been approached in baseball history.

But unlike those championship teams, this iteration of the Braves suffers from a lack of overall talent and health, particularly on the pitching staff. Those limitations were on display during this weekend’s series with the Mets, as New York won two of three games.  read more »

With Pedro Martinez eyeing a late-April return, the Mets would appear set to move forward with their planned five-man rotation intact. But if New York wants to make the decision best for the team now, later in the season and even for 2009, they ought to consider a wacky idea: expanding to a six-man rotation as soon as Martinez or Orlando Hernandez is healthy enough to take the mound.

While the starting rotation has been a strength thus far, much of that success has come from the young Mike Pelfrey’s development, and from surprise success story Nelson Figueroa.  read more »

During pre-game warm-ups Tuesday night, Lastings Milledge was a whirlwind as he prepared to show Shea Stadium that the Mets’ decision to deal him to the Washington Nationals this past offseason was a huge mistake.

He launched batting practice bombs into the left field stands, several landing in similar spots to the two home runs he hit in last season’s second-to-last game. Then he raced to the dugout, grabbed his glove, and shagged fly balls. When few fly balls came his way, he asked a Nationals coach to hit him ground balls, then pop-ups.  read more »

While Nelson Figueroa, scheduled to make his first start for the Mets on Friday night, may be unknown to most American fans, observers from Mexico to the Dominican Republic to Taiwan know the 33-year-old journeyman pitcher as an ace. So do those who have seen Figueroa dominate at nearly every minor league level for more than a decade.

At the major league level, it’s been a different story. He has pitched for seven clubs, and has succeeded in sticking with exactly none of them.  read more »

Jimmy Rollins may have killed the Mets, but he’s not owning up to it just yet.

“Last year is last year, and that team knows it,” Rollins said of the Mets following Philadelphia’s 5-2 win on Tuesday. The game was the first between the two clubs since New York squandered a seven-game lead over Philadelphia with 17 games to play at the end of the 2007 season—one of the greatest, most humiliating collapses in baseball history.  read more »

Mets fans might be forgiven for having unsettling flashbacks when New York took a 6-2 lead in the fourth inning of their first game of the season. Even during the horrendous 5-12 finish last year, the Mets had plenty of early leads—seemingly losing their advantage in the middle and later frames.

But Opening Day, a 7-2 victory for New York against the Florida Marlins, was an encouraging demonstration of why this year might be different.  read more »

It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of the collapse suffered by the Mets at the end of the 2007 season. Seven games up with 17 to go, New York finished 5-12 to land one game behind the Phillies. It was a choke to top all chokes.

And yet, to judge by the lack of radical restructuring over the off-season, the team decided that while the embarrassment was huge, the actual personnel problems that needed fixing were small.  read more »

The Mets sent a pair of pitchers, Orlando Hernandez and Mike Pelfrey, to the mound on Sunday in Port St. Lucie in an attempt to settle on someone to take the fifth spot in the starting rotation. Neither provided much in the way of results—Hernandez gave up five earned runs in three innings, while Pelfrey was touched for eight earned runs in four and one-third in a 14-4 loss to the Cardinals.

But while both are, in many ways, learning how to pitch—Pelfrey due to inexperience, Hernandez with an altered delivery due to an ongoing bunion problem—only El Duque seemed to show any progress.  read more »

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—It is said a criminal shouldn’t return to the scene of a crime. But Washington Nationals General Manager Jim Bowden was on hand Friday to see his team take on the Mets in Port St. Lucie just months after he lifted Lastings Milledge from New York for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider.

And while spring training results are often skewed, the evidence so far is making the Mets look more and more like victims.

“He’s had a very good spring,” Bowden said as he made his way down the visitor’s clubhouse tunnel. “He’s impressed with small things, too—he hits the cutoff man, he runs the bases well. He’s been a good fit.”  read more »

PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.—The Mets certainly hope that last night’s events serve as foreshadowing of the 2008 season.

In front of a sellout crowd at Tradition Field, Johan Santana quickly took command of the game against the Orioles in the first inning. A recent criticism leveled by former major leaguer Jack Morris is that Santana is relying too much on his change-up. And considering that a change-up is merely a slow fastball, such a pattern could be problematic.  read more »

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 A strong and fond memory of being a kid and growing up in New York City was my first trip to Yankee Stadium. You came out of the tunnel that led to the stands and you looked up to see the beautiful blue sky standing in contrast to the white façade above the upper deck. Then your eyes focused downward and the field came into view—and it was the deepest green you could ever imagine. The Stadium really was an urban field of dreams. Recently, major league baseball decided that more than the field should be green.

Baseball is, in many ways, a preindustrial 19th-century sport. Its pace is slow, leaving lots of time for beer and relaxed conversation between pitches and between innings. This week baseball came full circle. Billy Crystal may have stuck out, but he was a Yankee for a day. And this week both the Mets and Major league baseball went green.

The Met’s new stadium, Citi Field, will be built using recycled steel, water efficient plumbing and other green principles.  read more »

When last we saw the New York Mets, they were a defeated, injury-laden bunch that had just completed a historic collapse. Worst still, they were rife with overpaid, underproductive mercenaries more notable for what they had accomplished on other teams than anything they had done for the Mets. Curiously, Met brass concluded that the solution to the team’s troubles lay in exchanging most of the organization’s top young prospects for even more mercenaries. The net result is that owner Fred Wilpon and GM Omar Minaya have placed a large wager on what is, in some respects, the same horse that failed so miserably in 2007.
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While spring is supposed to allow fans of even the most untalented teams to dream of an October championship, the early returns of spring training have not been kind to the Mets. From a draw against the University of Michigan to a home run allowed by Johan Santana in his very first inning as a Met, there has been precious little in the way of good news to help New York move past 2007’s epic collapse.

And then there are the injuries in camp. The good news is that it’s still a long way until April, let alone October. The bad news … Well, here’s a rundown of the injuries, from least worrisome to most.  read more »

While the Mets solved the single largest question about the team’s roster with the acquisition of Johan Santana, there are still a number of issues at the margins of New York’s makeup that spring training will help to answer.

Ultimately, the number of at-bats or innings pitched in the spring is too limited, and the competition too uneven, to make any educated baseball decisions based upon the statistics compiled in Port St. Lucie. But here are a few indicators that will begin to answer the question of whether this team can be great, or merely good:  read more »

The New York Mets have completed a trade for the best starting pitcher in baseball, dealing four prospects to the Minnesota Twins for lefthander Johan Santana late Tuesday afternoon.

The Mets will give up outfielder Carlos Gomez and pitchers Philip Humber, Kevin Mulvey and Deolis Guerra. The deal is still pending both a physical by Santana and an agreement between the Mets and Santana on a contract extension—Santana is a free agent following the 2008 season—but neither is expected to be a stumbling block.

It is believed that Santana will sign for between 5-7 years, at an annual rate of more than $20 million per season.

Despite the outlay of players and likely of cash, make no mistake about it—this may be the finest trade in Mets history.  read more »

New York, evidently, needs Johan Santana.

Since the Minnesota Twins made their star pitcher available in a trade, the Yankees’ Hank Steinbrenner made it known that the team is negotiating to put him in pinstripes. Meanwhile, Mets general manager Omar Minaya is fixated on landing Santana to throw the first pitch at CitiField, and resolve a three-year obsession with landing a number-one starter.  read more »

The old baseball trade saw, “You have to give up something to get something,” only partially explains the Mets’ trade of relief pitcher Guillermo Mota to the Milwaukee Brewers for catcher Johnny Estrada.

While the trade provides the Mets with a viable catcher to pair with the returning Ramon Castro, far more important is what the trade allows them not to do.  read more »

Since the Mets are talking with Alex Rodriguez, it's worth considering how the team would make room for the All-Star third baseman.  read more »

As has been argued in this space, the Mets can put themselves in a position to win next season with a few meaningful, if not flashy, moves this winter. Signing middle reliever David Riske would solidify the bullpen, for example, but is unlikely to earn headlines from the Daily News or the Post (provided they can resist the endless possibilities his name provides).

But this isn’t to say there aren’t some potential blockbusters out there that would improve the Mets significantly for 2008.  read more »

To: Fred Wilpon

Well, as you once hoped for, your Mets played plenty of “meaningful games” this past September. Even in the season’s final week, they were involved in seven vital contests at Shea Stadium.

Unfortunately, the Mets won just one of them.

Changes are undoubtedly needed. But it’s vital here that you resist calls from fans for a mass execution.  read more »

After the loss to the Marlins that ended the Mets season, Willie Randolph spoke to his team and cried.

"I told my players this is a life lesson in baseball and in how to become champions," Randolph said to reporters afterwards. "And when you get to that road you have to seize it because you never know when it's going to come again."

The speech Randolph gave his team was a rare one. His attitude during a disastrous 5-12 run over the season's final 17 games was to reaffirm his faith in his players publicly, and to let them play without any undue managerial interference.  read more »

The Mets lost today by the score of 8-1, missing the postseason after having led their division by 7 games with 17 to play.

I know this to be true because I was at Shea Stadium to see it. Otherwise, it would be difficult for me to believe that any professional baseball team—let alone one that spent nearly the entire season in first place—could end its year in such spectacularly poor fashion.  read more »

It took until the last game of the season, but the Mets managed to miss the playoffs in the most miserable fashion possible.  read more »

After another hellish Mets loss last night that capped what may be the most dramatic collapse in franchise history, Willie Randolph, again, stood behind his players.

“I’m never going to question the character of my team,” he said during a post-game press conference. “Just cause you lose or get into a rut doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with your character.

“I know these guys and they want this very badly. Right now, it’s just tough to get a win.”  read more »

With the Mets’s 3-0 loss to the Cardinals last night, squandering the last vestige of what had been a seven-game lead over the Phillies with 17 to play, what lies ahead now is a free-for-all: three days, five teams—New York, Philadelphia, Arizona, San Diego and Colorado, separated by two games, fighting for three playoff spots.

Nobody in the National League has clinched a playoff berth—the Mets can still finish either out of the money or with the league’s best record. An unprecedented five teams could finish in a tie.  read more »

Of what indestructible alloy could Willie Randolph’s innards be made?  read more »

Mets fans, rejoice: Atlanta is set to crush the October hopes and dreams of another franchise for a change.  read more »

Again, the Mets led in a crucial game in this final stretch of the season.

And again, last night in a near-empty Dolphins Stadium against the humble Florida Marlins, the Mets blew it.

The story was remarkably similar to the recent run of bad form against the Phillies and Nationals, with their defense and pitching letting them down at crucial times, leading to an extra-inning, 8-7 loss. The Mets have now lost 6 of their last 7 games and, almost unthinkably, their lead over Philadelphia in the division is a mere 1.5 games.  read more »