If April has produced the template for the rest of the season — fly extraordinarily high, descend without necessarily crashing and then up, up and away in our beautiful balloon — I'll take it.
No broom for sweeping, but no Electrolux for sucking either. The difference between the Mets and the Braves on Sunday came down to one attachment: Atlanta is attached to Jeff Francoeur and we're not. He brought his rake to the park and that was that. Some days you have to decompress like a leaf blower and move on.
So it's only a 2-1 visit to the heretofore Horrible House and only a 6-4 road trip that included two stops three time zones away and only a 16-8 record and only a 6-game lead over everybody.
If only always felt like this, I think we'd all want to drink alone come October. Oops, did I mention the O-Month? Too soon? Of course it is. Let's not end the suspense even if the only two teams to enjoy greater April leads were the '77 Dodgers and '01 Mariners and they both extended their seasons beyond Game 162. Never mind that they didn't win ultimate prizes or that the previous Mets team to secure 16 April victories was the 2002 edition. That bunch won 59 more from May through September, so let's not get carried away.
Instead of the big picture, a few smaller snapshots:
• I sure hope Cliff Floyd starts hitting. He's shown signs. He's lined a ton of hard fouls and atom balls. He's had a handful of bouncers and bloopers fall in, the kind that are supposed to change your luck. Yet he's driving from Georgia to New York in the slow lane of the Eisenhower Interstate System. I'm watching Cliff lunge and flail and I think back to Bernard Gilkey in '97 and Howard Johnson in '92, two Met outfielders coming off huge seasons and not coming close to repeating them. HoJo got hurt and never recovered. Gilkey needed glasses or something. Cliff is doing more than either of them in their dark forest period. However many wins Glavine winds up with, he must insist that his Cooperstown plaque specifies one of them was made possible by the mitt and moxie of Cliff Floyd. His two catches on Saturday night — one off Pratt, one off Francoeur (a sneak preview of his Sunday matinee raking) — were the difference between “same old Turner Field curse” and “no more Turner Field curse”. It's a team game and Cliff is contributing to the team in almost every way he can. Here's hoping he can contribute in his most characteristic way. Though he's filling the Anderson Hernandez all-field/no-hit role with aplomb, I don't think that's what he wants to be doing.
• Carlos Beltran can run and hit. We persevered and practically thrived in his absence. Our world didn't end while he healed…a good advertisement for caution amid the long season.
• The heart of the order back intact may mean less pressure for David Wright, a young man who has been issued a ridiculous amount of it by well-meaning folk such as ourselves. Metstradamus offers the only kind of take he is capable of producing, an excellent one, on how our Wright-loving instincts and interests are best-served.
• The untouchables need to be embraced. Jose Valentin hasn't hit for spit, I grant you, but didja see the take-out check he laid on Marcus Giles to break up a DP? Applaud that. Jorge Julio, stray gopher notwithstanding, put in two more solid innings. Get behind that. Kaz Matsui saved the day throughout the trip. Put your hands together for that. Victor Zambrano hasn't done a damn thing well, but he's one-fifth of the rotation. Ya like your first-place Mets? Like all your first-place Mets. Not one of these fellas deserves to be booed Monday night. They return 2-1 from Atlanta, 6-4 from the road, 16-8 from April, 6 up from everybody. These are your returning baseball heroes. Greet them all as such. You're nuts if you don't.
Unsolicited Metsosphere Plug: Piazza, Cameron, Jacobs, et al are gone, but we have one Mike we can still count on, the Mike who writes Mike's Mets. This Mike, making Connecticut safe for Mets fans since 2005, is an incredibly solid read when it comes to keeping up on everything in our world. Make him a part of your Metsian rounds.
What happened to throwing high and tight to someone who has gotten too (excuse me, Fran) “comfortable”? I asked for one high and tight pitch to Francoeur, about two pitches before he hit it out. It wasn't too much to ask for. The guy was comfortable, and dare I say it, confident…
This is why we must maintain a large lead, so we can do stuff like that and not sweat the consequences. Perhaps the way to maintain a large lead is to do just that, but chicken/egg stuff was never my strong smoot.
This also seems to be the weekend for foulups, bleeps and blunders.
My local WB11 affiliate couldn't keep the satellite signal from WPIX on the air. And that was the Saturday night win.
And now Gotham Baseball has been down for 2 days.
On the money, Greg. At 16-8, after that road trip, nobody deserves booing, even Zambrano. Although if he turns in another stunning performance (see the first inning and a third on August 2, 2005 at Shea), I could certainly understand it…
Did you see the way Atlanta fans cheered Julio Franco? We booed Marlon Anderson. The fans at Shea are getting severely misanthropic. This is a big game for Kaz, here, his first at Shea this year. Now, if the crowd shows some self-restraint and doesn't rain boos down on him, he might be able to take that 0-fer, toss it away, and pick right back up where he was–namely hitting and fielding like we've rarely seen (but certainly expected) from him. Maybe.
Speaking of people we booed a bit unfairly, my heart goes out to Mientkiewicz. Make the final put-out of the World Series, play beautiful defense in New York (struggle at the plate, get injured when you're breaking out of slumps, get booed and benched) and then you're in Kansas City. Ouch.
Your bloggers rocked Shea that particular night that Victor gave up all the goodwill he collected through June and July. Given the many comebacks of the evening, I kind of forgot Victor's role in making those comebacks necessary.
I was there too, in fact. I have a theory that Piazza was behind the whole thing. He sat unassumingly in the dug-out, orchestrating each successive come back, like flashing signs to God. Then at last it came time for Mike to seal the deal. “Now pinch hitting for the Mets, #31 Mike PIAZZA!” Up from the bench he rose and strode to the plate. He looked out at Julio Santana and suddenly his presence filled the stadium, and gone was the aging hero from yesteryear, and in his place stood an immortal legend, a towering force beyond reckoning! Surely this man, if he was even a man, would take any pitch near the plate and drive it so far into the night that it would take its place among the stars….
Well, Santana decided, there's only one thing left to do. And he did it. The fourth straight pitch missed way down and away and Piazza's mastery was complete.
To your point about not “raining the boos” down on Kaz for his oh-fer…I'll take it one step further and hope the Shea faithful gives him a warm welcome. He was superb on the road trip, and it certainly wouldn't hurt his psyche to feel the love from Shea. Maybe, just maybe, the momentum will build…a big year from Kaz would be such an unexpected bonus.
Well, Kaz had another damn good shot there to get us all in his camp and he couldn't deliver. I'm not ready to hang him out to dry just yet–he's still a lot more productive than Hernandez–but there's certainly a feeling of Kaz is Kaz is Kaz…keep plugging away, Mr. Matsui, we believe, even if we wring our hands…you've still got a shot to deliver a huge game tying/winning hit before the night is out. Good luck.