Disgruntled Mets Fan

Much has been said about David Wright’s home run total in 2009.  Mets fans everywhere are wondering if Wright will have a bounce back season in 2010 power wise, getting his total back up to the thirties that we’re used to.  Well the Mets are trying to help. (Or so they think)

In what seems to be an attempt to make Citi Field more hitter friendly, the front office has decided to lower the Center Field wall from 16 feet to eight.

Personally, I don’t think the height of the center field wall had anything to do with Wright’s lowered home run total last season.   I think his swing had become bigger, and in turn slower, which would help explain his high strikeout totals as well as his lack of home runs.

Looking at Wright’s spray chart for 2009, there were only two balls hit out the part of the field effected by the change.

I don’t think anyone would say two more home runs by Wright last season would have been a make or break change for the Mets.

I’ve always been a big fan of Citi Field’s dimensions, and I think a winning baseball team can easily be fielded to give a huge home field advantage.   The Wilpon’s have said they want to build a baseball  based around pitching, defense, and speed.  I challenge any Mets fan to name a player the Mets have acquired this off-season that will help the team in those three areas.

I have low-expectations for 2010, but I wouldn’t be disgruntled if I didn’t.  I do however, think there is a lot of room for me to be wrong, and pleasantly surprised by the Mets.  Unfortunately, too many things need to go right for the team to be successful, including bounce back performances from every starting pitcher not named Johan.

Here’s to the Mets proving me wrong!

I want to point out something I noticed about D-Wright today. First I’ll fill you in on some background information.
I, like so many other Met fans, have noticed all year that Wright hasn’t been himself. I remember saying two weeks into the season, to my dad, “He’s hitting the worst .300 I’ve ever seen.” His hits seemed to all be sawed-off singles and weak line drives.
Anyway, recently, I was rewatching a game from early in the season on MLB.tv. Keith Hernandez mentioned that in addition to the “loop” in Wright’s swing this year (meaning, it’s gotten much longer, slowing down his bat), Wright was turning his hips away from the pitcher on his load. Keith pointed out how, from a straight-on angle, you could fully see his back pocket as he prepared to swing. As a former high school and aspiring college baseball player, I can tell you that what this will do is slow down the bat immensely.

Wright hasn’t been able to catch up to anything above 91 miles an hour all year, it seems, and he’s fouled off about 1000 pitches right down the pipe. Over the course of the year, I saw Wright FOUL OFF PITCHES IN BATTING PRACTICE. It’s frustrating that as a fan, I can see a flaw in his swing, and that he hasn’t adjusted all year.

Now, tonight, Wright went 3-4 with an opposite-field ground-rule double that brought home a run, and two singles. I noticed upon a replay of the double (which carried A LOT-it hit off the warning track and over the fence just to the right of the 415 sign) that Wright didn’t close his hips the same way he used to. He repeated this much sounder swing in his next few at-bats.
Anyway, he seems to have found his swing. A bit late…but hopefully he can carry it over into “Camp HoJo” in the offseason and into next year. He needs to find his swing for next year, because our lineup centers on him.

A lot of people, myself included, are giving the Mets somewhat of a pass for this abysmal season due to the $90 million on the disabled list.  It’s hard to find someone to blame (except maybe the trainers) when the team taking the field doesn’t even resemble the team that took the field at the beginning of the season.

The truth of the matter is, the Mets injuries may be just what the doctor ordered for the organization.  It may be masking a failure that was coming anyway.

The pitching staff, save for Johan Santana who was pitching through injury for half the season, has completely underachieved.

Mike Pelfrey is the only pitcher in the original starting 5 that has an ERA under 5.0, and if he continues to pitch this season there’s no guarantee it will stay that way.

The fifth starter, a spot that may not have a lot of importance on a deep staff, should have been doubly important to the Mets, who went into the season with one ace and three number three starters.

The organization addressed the problem with a trio of over-the-hill or never-was starters, Livan Hernandez, Tim Redding and Freddy Garcia.  Garcia was cut in April, Hernandez was cut this month, and Redding is now the third starter due to injury.

I know you can’t plan for this many injuries, but my point is the starting rotation was weak before the season started.

There was only a small sample of how the team would fare if all their pieces were in place this year.

Carlos Delgado went on the DL on May 11th.  The team had a .548 winning percentage with a 17-14 record.  Delgado’s bat is one the Mets haven’t been able to replace all season, as is evident by their glaring lack of power in the middle of the line up.

By extrapolating that winning percentage out to today, and the Mets would be sitting in second place with a record of 70-57.  Sure it’s better than what they’ve got now, but they’d still be trailing the Phillies.

Jose Reyes went down ten days later, but he was not exactly lighting the field on fire in his limited time before his injury.  He was only batting .279 with a .355 OBP in 36 games while swiping 11 bases.  Sure, it’s good production, but nothing to write home about.

Alex Cora’s numbers filling in at short stop were similar enough to make Reyes’ absence a little easier to deal with, and Angel Pagan’s emergence as a solid lead-off hitter made it even easier.

The Mets were able to stay somewhat competitive, staying at or around .500 ball, showing moments of greatness at times, until June 22nd.  That’s the date Carlos Beltran went on the DL.

The Mets were 35-33 at that point, but have consistently underperformed, going 22-37 since then.  Is this the fact that Beltran was such an integral part of the teams success?  Or was his injury the straw that broke the camel’s back?

His bat was on fire this season, and has been sorely missed.  He’s a true five tool player, and a nagging knee injury has threatened his career.  I hope we see him back at full strength next season, but it’s not definite.

In my humble opinion, the Mets at full strength may have made the playoffs, but they were never a championship caliber team.  They were likely not even the best team in the NL East, especially after the Phillies traded to get Cliff Lee.

The injuries are simply masking the problems that were there anyway, and may be there for years to come.

It’s been said that the Mets are on a budget for next season, so these problems may be here for a while.  One solution may be trading away some of the core players that we’ve grown to love so much in New York.  If I had to part with anyone, it would be Jose Reyes.

He’s a great defensive short stop, and a spark plug every time he takes the field, but he’s severely over rated as a lead off hitter.  Sure he steals a lot of bases, but that’s not the job of a lead off hitter, his job is purely to get on base.

Reyes has a career OBP of .337.  You don’t have to look far to find what I would consider a great lead off hitter, Derek Jeter.  Jeter has a career OBP of .387, and has put up one as high as .438.

The rest of the core, David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Johan Santana, would all retire as Mets if I had any say.

I’ve been looking forward with hope for 2010, but the truth is, we may have a lot more disappointment in our near future.

Dear David,

I understand that you might consider yourself a “character guy”.  Fisticuffs, and the bad attitude associated with them are not really the image you’re going for.  After all, you’re the face of the franchise;  a highly marketable personality with a squeaky clean image that you don’t want to tarnish.

I also understand that retaliation is a part of the game.  After a guy like Albert Pujols gets plunked, you can bet someone on the Mets is going to take one in the back…

That’s right, in the BACK.

Brad Thompson threw one at your eyes, and intentional or not, you needed to make some sort of response.  A lasting glare out at the Thompson, walking out to the mound and having the catcher restrain you.  Something.

Something more than the response you showed.  Staring at Razor Shines is not a response David.  I’m sorry.  You looked like a $@%^@.

I personally would have charged the mound, and love the types of players that would have reacted the same way.

You are not that player, and never will be.

Regards,
Disgruntledmetsfan

Could you imagine a guy like Paul Lo Duca in Wright’s shoes in that situation? The benches would have cleared for sure.

This was another example of the glaring lack of “marbles” (see Major League 2) that this team is suffering from.  Johan added some two seasons ago, but he’s not out on the field every day.  He’s not enough.

I believe that Omar the lack of “marbles” is an issue that Omar should consider addressing in the off season.  You might not find them on a superstar, but they’re out there, and we need ‘em.

Let’s go 2010.

A lot has been said about David Wright’s hot and cold streaks so far this season.  It’s time to take a look at the numbers.  I’ve charted Wright’s batting average for each game as the season has moved forward.  It seems that Wright had steady growth from the 18th game of the season all the way up to the 41st, increasing his average from .271 to .362.  In the 10 games following, Wright’s average dropped a full 41 points to .321.  In that span, in his 35 at bats, Wright struck out 13 times with only 6 hits and 4 walks.  From game 52 to game 62, Wright brought his average right back up to .365, in a span where it seemed he could not be retired.  Wright had 24 hits and 7 walks in 43 at bats while only striking out 7 times during an 11 game hitting streak.  Since that streak ended, Wright has failed to get on base in 3 of the last 6 games, striking out 9 times.  One ray of hope for Wright is that he notched 3 hits in the Mets loss last night without striking out.  Maybe this slump will be a shortened version of the one he pulled himself out of after 10 games earlier this month.

Wright’s batting average has been a talking point for the Mets announcers all season.  Instead of talking about how well Wright is hitting, how about they discuss his lack of RBI?

Wright is on pace for 94 RBI this season.  Sure that’s a decent number for most players, but it’s well below the production we saw last year.  He only has 8 multi-RBI games on the season so far.  To date, Wright has been to the plate with a total of 232 runners on base and is responsible for 17%, or 39 of them scoring.  That percentage is on par with Wright’s career percentage of 18%, and is only 2 percentage points off of last years 19%, a year where Wright drove in 124 runs.  The lack of production must be coming from other areas.  Possibly a lack of base runners in front of Wright?  A lack of protection behind him?  Both are possibilities due to the injuries of Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado.  The Mets are also not making things easy for themselves by giving up extra outs.  The team as a whole has been caught stealing 20 times, although 8 of those can be attributed to Wright himself.  They have also made 36 outs on base, be it trying to advance on a fly ball out, or trying to leg out an extra base on a hit, which is the most in the Major Leagues. These types of mistakes shorten innings, giving you less of a chance to score runs.  When your team is not hitting home runs to create instant offense, you need to manufacture runs, and running yourself out of an inning makes that a lot tougher.

I’m going to the games tonight and tomorrow.  Hopefully it doesn’t suck as much as I fear it might.  It should be fun to see Citi Field try and contain a ball off Albert Pujols’ bat.

Let’s…
Go…

Never mind

We all new this day would come…
Frankie Rodriguez has fallen back down to earth.
Just what the doctor ordered.

After a well played game, where the Mets had a combination of good defense and timely hitting, it was the bullpen who let the team down for the second consecutive night, allowing the Orioles to score runs in the eight and ninth innings to tie the game and eventually pick up the walk off win.  It was a loss that seemed to sting a little less than the rest of the losses this week.  I must be getting numb.  The one thing that makes it hurt a little more, is that the Mets could have made up some ground on the Phillies, with the Blue Jays finishing the sweep earlier in the day.

The Mets offense strung together nine hits, plating four runs, although they left nine runners on base and were only 3-11 with runners in scoring position.  David Wright went hitless again, strengthening my belief that he’s going back into one of his slumps where he can’t hit the broad side of a barn.

Livan Hernandez pitched well enough to get a win, and was able to provide some comedy in his last inning, when he experienced what seemed to be cramps in his side with two out in the seventh inning.  The training staff came out, but Livan was all smiles, and was able to stay in the game.  Livan went seven innings giving up two runs on eight hits.  Hernandez seems to give up a lot of hits in all his starts, but is a master at minimizing the damage.  Pedro Feliciano was somewhat ineffective for the second straight night giving up a hit that turned into a charged run later in the inning.  Sean Green was good again, giving up a hit in his two thirds of the eighth inning.  The Mets did everything they were supposed to do tonight, keeping the lead going into the bottom of the ninth and handing the ball to the best closer in the game.  Unfortunately, Frankie did not have great stuff tonight, struggling with his control throughout the inning.  He walked two, including the tying run and was only able to record one out before Aubrey Huff struck again to drive in the winning run on a single.

The Mets get to come back home tomorrow as they start a series against the Devil Rays.  This begins a stretch where the Mets will play teams with records above .500 until the All Star Break.  We’re all going to learn a little something about this team in the coming weeks.  Let’s hope it’s not too disappointing.