By walking off the field freshly triumphant after 13 innings, the Mets continue to provide free advertising for the most relevant blog of them all [1], and everything is fairly wonderful, but I'm surprisingly bugged that in his six May starts, including last night's sublime pitchers' duel, Pedro Martinez's won-lost record was 0-1.
That's not Pedro Martinez. That's maybe Pedro Feliciano. Or Teddy Martinez in mop-up duty. Pedro should have been Maydro. According to Metsblog, he posted a 2.14 ERA in the merry, merry month. How on earth is that 0-1 material? At worst, it should be 0-0-6 because I continue to be in Pedro's (or K-Dro's) Corner (or Korner) from last Friday night. He said then he didn't lose. He's right. He doesn't lose. At least he hasn't in 2006 from this vantage point.
I don't usually get caught up in pitchers' records because they're subject to so many variables. The only number that ever mattered was 20 and twenty-game winners are an extinct species in these parts; Frank Viola was our last. If starters, almost by design, almost never finish, decisions are bound to be community property with the bullpen. So why dwell on an ND when you can revel in an Endy? Besides, Pedro needn't win another game to gain induction into Cooperstown five years from the minute he retires. But he's entitled to those he's earned on our behalf.
There aren't enough words or awards to shower on this man. What he has done for this franchise is positively Keithish (the fierce first baseman, not the lovably loopy analyst). Yesterday, Lee Jenkins wasted a lot of space in the New York Times picking over the carcass of the Scott Kazmir trade as if we're all donning sea-green armbands every time he starts in St. Petersburg. I'm with the informed dissenters [2] who are convinced that if Kazmir stayed, Pedro never would have come, that the overhaul of this team would have never taken place the way it has. When you consider where we were pre-Pedro, 2005 and 2006 to date have marked a remarkable renaissance for what was, twenty short months ago, a floundering franchise.
That's not to excuse a transaction that even I, who didn't hate it [3], can't defend any longer. It's just to say I like very much what's happened to the Mets since the end of 2004 and if we had to, in essence, give up a budding stud to get a transcendent one (along with a first-place future to be named not that much later), then I chalk Scott Kazmir up to the cost of doing business.
On the First of June 2006, I'm not worried about departed Devil Rays or decrepit palace intrigue. I'm not even overly overwrought about Pedro officially being 5-1 instead of the 11-or-so-0 he deserves to have next to his name…though his teammates not hitting Brandon Webb a lick is no shame. Like our ace, he was as crisp as a bag of Baked Lays. But Brandon Webb's not my cause.
Mets got the win, right?
Milledge threw out Counsell at third on a speeding bullet, right?
Jose Valentin owned second base [4] on both sides of the ball, right?
Endy Chavez took drama lessons from David Wright, right?
Duaner Sanchez promises to take good care of Pedro's W, right?
Then all is right with the world.