Jets in January

To congratulate the Jets on their imminent playoff run, I
will repost last year’s “Jersey Sports Fan” video. Hilarious stuff.
Too bad this guy hasn’t made any new vids since this one.

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 7,800 times in 2010. That’s about 19 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 50 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 69 posts. There were 164 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 228mb. That’s about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was January 29th with 150 views. The most popular post that day was What I Want in the New Mc Fadden’s (Spoiler Alert: Unlikely to Occur).

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were metspolice.com, facebook.com, twitter.com, alphainventions.com, and metsmerizedonline.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for mike the situation, the situation, mike the situation sorrentino, mike sorrentino, and mike situation.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

What I Want in the New Mc Fadden’s (Spoiler Alert: Unlikely to Occur) January 2010
3 comments

2

The “Situation” in Port St.Lucie March 2010

3

Mets Hall of Fame to Honor ’86′ers January 2010
4 comments

4

Chin beards are never good February 2010

5

“You saying Jesus Christ can’t hit a curveball?” February 2010

We believe in comebacks!

6 runs in the 8th inning!!

Who do the Mets think they are? Kind of reminds me of the 2000 Mets with the fight these guys show night in and night out. This ball club can come from behind to win. We’re coming off a weekend of back to back walk off home run wins. Who would’ve thought the stupid slogan for the 2010 season (We Believe In Comebacks) would ring so true this season.

Now, I’m pretty sure the 2006 Mets weren’t very adept at this skill and they are still considered by many to be the gold standard of Mets teams in the past decade. For the past few years, the Mets have lived by the mantra: score lots of runs early, hold the lead, win. But they were never the team that was able to come from behind late in a game.

This 2010 Mets team however, shows a ton of fight and does possess the ability to come from behind to win games. I like this type of team better. They are gamers. They are here to play a full 9 innings. They are winners.

The icing on the cake tonight is Ike’s third flip catch over the dugout railing.

To honor the winners I will link to the MLB.com video of Chris Carter (the anti-Catalanatto) hitting the RBI double that put the Mets in the lead.

Apples and Outs 5/11/10

“If Blanco hits a home run here, I’m walking back to Manhattan,” Said the man sitting behind me in top of the 11th inning of a windy (but very sunny) saturday afternoon game.

Moments later I got to experience my first walk off homer at Citi Field, and only the second for the Mets since its opening last season.

Coming from such an unlikely source, (back up catcher) last Saturday’s walk off win is tops on my “Home Run Apples” list. And how fitting it is that the top Apple is actually a Met home run. Since it would be terrible karma, I won’t reveal my all time Citi Field record at this moment, but let’s just say I’m looking forward to my next scheduled game on June, 5th.

Apples:

1) As explained above, Blanco’s walk off and our section’s rowdy celebration in the stands. Nice to have a “Shea Moment” at the new park.

2) Mike Piazza’s quote about his years with the Mets. Mets Police does a summary and links to the actual Times article.

3) Ike Davis staying hot. Power and offense when we need it most. We like Ike!

4) Chris Carter up. Frank Catalanatto down. Now if we can just rid ourselves of GMJ and Ollie… then we’re talking.

Outs:

1) Ollie walking practically the entire Giants’ roster on Sunday. He’s already in Aaron Heilman territory, let’s see if he gets to Bonilla-levels of hate before he’s gone.

2) Met bullpen implosions. All weekend long the Mets bullpen did something it hasn’t really done much of all season… blown leads. Our formerly stellar ‘pen allowed us to experience the thrill of back to back walk off wins. But the inevitable happened, that magical hit never came, and the Mets lost the chance to sweep the Giants. Ollie blamed the wind. The ‘pen will simply redeem itself through actual talent. Maturity, folks.

3) The fear that next week’s list will be lopsided on the “Outs” side. Opening the week with a close loss to the Nats ain’t the best way to get our hopes up. At least we’re still playing over .500.

Apples and Outs 5/3/10

I’m only hitting on two points today. Otherwise, I’m holding my breath in anticipation of a bounce-back against the Reds tonight. (please!)

Home Run Apples
-D. Wright continues to bomb Citizens Bank Park… series loss aside, David Wright found his power stroke in Philly, and he should continue “knocking those home runs over the waaaaaall” over the next three games at Great American Ballpark, the best hitters’ park in the majors.

Warning Track Outs
- Santana’s rough outing… He’s allowed to have a bad night, but the cards were stacked in favor of the Mets for this series. Jamie Moyer gets bombed early and Santana gets handed a 3 run lead only to suffer an Oliver Perez-like meltdown on national TV. Here’s hoping he has a bounce-back game at home against the Giants this weekend. I’m scheduled to be in attendance and Santana owes us a win after the worst game in his professional career.

Slideshow from 4/24 vs. Braves and 4/27 doubleheader vs. Dodgers

What a homestand it’s been for our boys in blue and orange! 9-1!!! I’ve got my previously promised pictures from my trip to the game on Saturday 4/24. You’ll have to excuse the reflections on the glass in the HoF. In addition, I’ve got a few shots of my seat views from the doubleheader on 4/27. I was in the Promedade Infield for the first game of the doubleheader and by the grace of god moved to left field section 330 for the second game. (It was freezing in the promenade with no jacket on and that wild wind! It warmed up in left field thankfully!)

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David Wright’s milestone

I promise pictures will be up from the saturday game and yesterday’s doubleheader by tomorrow. For now I leave you all with this:

Here the mets.com link for the article concerning Wright’s 1000th hit as a Met.

What I like about it is this:

When David Wright singled to drive in the go-ahead run in the fifth inning of the second game, he put himself in rare company. At that point, he had 1,000 hits and 143 home runs in 868 games. The only players in the history of New York baseball to have played so few games and have as many hits and home runs are Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio.

Nowhere in that paragraph is “The Chosen One” (Jeter) mentioned.

Aww. That’s too bad.

My Opening Day

Today I will be visiting Citi Field for the first time all season for the 1:10pm game against the Braves. I’m really looking forward to seeing the new museum and the fanwalk. And of course, I’m really looking forward to seeing Jon Niese pitch and Ike Davis rake the ball. Plenty of pictures will follow this week.

Apples and Outs for 4/19/10

Last week’s road trip contained glimmers of hope and plenty of negatives. I’m pretty excited since I’ll be going to the Saturday afternoon game against the Braves and I’ll finally get to see the improvements to Citi Field. Here’s hoping for sun, warm weather, and a Mets “W.”

And now without further ado… this week’s Home Run Apples and Warning Track Outs:

Home Run Apples:

• Mike Pelfrey… Holder of a 2-0 record and a shutout performance against the Rockies. Oh yeah, and a save in the 20 inning marathon. It might be early, but I’d like to be the first to say, welcome back Big Pelf.
• The inevitable call up of Ike Davis… This kid isn’t the savior of the season, but he is sure to put up better offensive numbers than Mike Jacobs. The future is now. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a long and successful 1B tenure.

Warning Track Outs:

• John Maine… He threw nearly 100 pitches by the 4th inning last night. You can see the frustration on his face. I feel bad for him, but maybe some bullpen work can help him find his 2007 mojo.
• Mets bats… Three innings against position players and you can only get 2 runs?!?! Thanks to the players pulling their weight right now (Jeff Francouer) but what an embarrassment! At least they looked like they were having fun in the dugout, which is something last year’s team sorely lacked. If they can put together their offense, they can be successful. The pitching is starting to come together. Ollie looked awesome even in Friday’s loss. The offense just couldn’t back up his performance. We need our bats to keep us in games. Our rotation and bullpen are doing their job. If the bats wake up, you’re looking at weeklong winning streaks. This team is better than it’s W-L record.

Home Run Apples and Warning Track Outs

First off, my apologies for the hiatus. Real life and work had been quite busy. I’ll leave it at that.

This left little time for reading and writing about the Mets. Consider me back with vengeance. Although if the nice weather holds up, don’t count on weekend material.

As the Mets gear up for a tough road trip, I’m going to begin a like/dislike series I will call “Home Run Apples and Warning Track Outs.”

“Home Run Apples” are my likes of the past week. Deductive reasoning makes “Warning Track Outs” my dislikes of the past week. Here goes:

Home Run Apples:

• Jeff Francouer’s newfound ability to take pitches. Frenchy must have worked on his pitch recognition in the offseason. While he still swings at the occasional first pitch breaking ball, he manages to take pitches more often than before. This has allowed him to draw a few more walks. More importantly, this gives him more fastballs later in the count that he is smoking for basehits. After six games, Francoeur has a nice batting average and OBP. If he can keep this up, we won’t look to him as a stikeout rally killer, but a disciplined hitter capable of getting on base when his team needs it. The rest of the Mets should take a page from Jeff’s book. That near-comeback against an imploding Marlin bullpen can happen more often if our guys take more pitches and get the starters out of the games earlier than the 7th inning.
• The performance of the Met Bullpen. I know it’s early, but at least one of the question marks going into this season is functioning at a winning level. I believe the ‘pen had 11 straight scoreless innings when K-Rod took the mound on Sunday. This won’t last if we keep getting 5 or 6 innings out of our starters. It’s too early to tell how this bullpen will hold up over the course of a season with that type of workload. Probability is not good. But at least some aspect of our team is performing up to par.

Warning Track Outs:

• The invisible offense. You can’t win games if you’re only putting up 1 or 2 runs. Sorry, we just don’t have the starting pitching right now to keep us close. Hopefully this turns itself around soon. Draw some walks fellas, make things happen on the basepaths. The return of Jose Reyes can make this a possibility.
• The starters. Santana’s Bloody Sunday aside, the pitching has been mediocre, but not totally terrible. They need to go deeper into games than the fifth inning. It’s taking too much work to get outs. Focus and trust your stuff. Neise had a solid effort his first game, but it was the work of a number 4 or 5 starter. I trust he will emerge as one of the stronger pieces behind Santana, but when the other three guys are also pitching like number 5 starters, the bullpen gets overworked and we lose close games down the stretch. Not that “the stretch” matters when you start a season 2-4, but still, let’s log some more innings and keep the games close. The offense will show up eventually… right?