End of first …
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- March
- 23
Cardinals 3-0 after the first. Duque threw 32 pitches that inning. Still wonder if they’ll sing the same old refrain after the game that he could be ready.
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on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm by John Delcos.
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Annie: It looks bad for Siena… Pitt last night, Siena today… I guess it is time for baseball.. Tuesday morning it starts to count!
Thanks JK for answering….
Did El Duque throw 80?
Maybe I am over reacting but El duke has no fastball. I can't see him getting by major league hitters throwing 83 miles an hour.
Boy, I love coming onto a blog for my FAVORITE team and reading snide comments from what is supposed to be an objective reporter.
Once again, not a comment goes by without some shot at the team, deserved or not.
Hi Sloppy – I am actually watching the Mets!! About a couple of times a month Channel 11 from New York carries a game – today is one of those days.
Sorry about Siena, but the 'brackets' are just something to get me to Opening Day.
El Duque is not 38, or 42 no matter what Gary says – in fact he's probably got an AARP card. Still, he's worth watching.
Who let Bobby Knight loose?
El Duque's done and Jack i think your pretty wrong, John Delcos' blog is actually really good and if you don't like it go somewhere else.
Oh, it's great cuz it's informative for up-to-the hour things going on. But I don't need his harping on every single thing the Mets do.
Honestly, he's lucky players/coaches don't read the papers very often (and wouldn't read a Westchester one most likely) because no one would give him spit for an answer.
Criticizing a team/player when they deserve is 100% acceptable. Reading the same thing over and over again no matter WHAT the particularly topic is just annoying.
Nothing this team does is good enough in his eyes. Maybe that's why so many Mets fans are the way they are. They take their cue from the beat writers.
Jack: You are so wrong abpout Delcos. He is objective and that's why those with rose colored glasses only, don't see it. This isn't SNY or its slave blog site metsblog where mets are perfect. This where we debate and the host is objective, pro and con.
I think instead of end of first, the title should have been end of ElDuque…. We'll see if the Wilpons have the guts to swallow 6 mil or make him the long man and cost the team another pennant by not eating a contract.
Maybe if he'd have gotten the surgery that he SAID he had gotten as opposed to the surgery(ies?) he actually got…
Is there a law in the Mets clubhouse where once you turn thirty, you get to lie about your injuries with impunity?
El Duque's basically El Done.
Well, on the plus side, El Duque pitched better than Zito did in his first spring outing. On the down side, it's probably not good enough to be ready in about 10 days when they will need a fifth starter. And they want to go with 5 starters right out of the gate. Willie said so. So unless Pelfrey bombs coming up, then I think he's it.
jack, this is Delcos' blog after all. Don't you think he's entitled to his opinion? He's a beat reporter but he's also a normal human being with opinions, like anyone else. Wouldn't you rather get an objective viewpoint than someone who just spouts the company line? Or simply reports the plain facts, lineups, and the news du jour? I don't always agree with him but I respect and appreciate that he lets us know what he's feeling too.
Also, if there is a negative timbre to Mets discussion on the internet this spring?
Its because they've got maybe the best one-through-four starters in baseball and it could end up wasted by an organizational over-emphasis on hoping that a bunch of ancient former stars, injury wash-outs and Expo cast-offs would all have career years at the exact same time.
This goes out to Jack: Just finished talking with Orlando Hernandez. I must say, the five runs today he gave up are nothing to worry about. In another week his fastball should be up to 95 as opposed to the 80 it was today. I got him penciled in for at least 17 wins easy.
You want all positive? How is that?
Positive, but also all crap.
If it's positive news you get it. If it's negative you get that, also.
I'm the belief the readers of this blog want to know what's going on, and sometimes that means negative.
Most of the readers here are sharp and know BS when they see it. That's why I tell them what I see and what I think. I'd be cheating them if I didn't.
Understand?-JD
If Jack was a true mets fan he'd know most mets news is negative. Also El Duque stinks but w/e so does pelfrey lol.
Well they always got the long man Sosa who they stretched out but deny its for a possible start. Or that guy who makes T-shirts for a living….....I'm watching hoops … did Pelfrey suck again? I thought everyone would be happy. I see in box our boy steeple got a hit…... 2 days in a row…
And this goes out to John. I like objectivity, that's what I want, in case you couldn't tell.
My whole point was that each and ever post you make that has to do with something "controversial" is laced with sarcasm, innuendo without knowing true facts.
I don't care if YOU don't believe what's going on. I don't want your opinion…I just want to know what's being talked about so that fans without access can get a first-hand account.
I don't need to know if YOU "buy" what the Mets are selling you or not.
el duque is done, and not just for the day. i mean, i'm rooting for him certainly, as a successful and capable el duque is better for the mets. but as things stand at the moment, if the line on how many starts he makes all year is 7, i'd take the under.
that said, pelfrey, who is seemingly being handed the job on a platter, seems unwilling (or incapable) of seizing it.
suffice to say, it's a bit worrisome (though a viable 5th starter is less of a problem big picture then say getting consistent production from delgado).
i wonder if the mets shouldn't reconsider using sosa as the 5th starter at the start of the year. this would allow them to more easily keep both register, smith and even possibly sanchez (should he prove himself ready by the end of next week) in the pen. where they obviously have more depth.
I am an avid reader of this blog. I come here on a daily basis because Mr.Delcos gives us great up to the minute updates. However, Jack is right to an extent. Delcos always throws a few jabs the mets way. It's great to have a journalist tell it "how it is" but i feel as if he focuses more on the negative than the positive. That's just my two cents.
oh and jack…
this is john's blog. not his column in the paper.
blog's by nature are vehicles for people to express their subjective opinion on the stories they normally objectively report on.
of course, blog's are also forums for discussion as well…and so you are completely entitled to disagree with john's (or anyone else's) assessment of things.
Pelfrey's shakey and certainly could use more time in AAA on a perfect world but… I'd certainly say that he's a better #5 starter than Sosa or Duque would be.
Faint praise, for sure, but there we are.
He gets into tons of trouble but he gets out of more of it over the course of a long-stretch of games than it seems from watching any one given game.
Whereas El Duque's throwing BP out there and Sosa kind of… can't get lefties out, something you can paper over as a long-man in a fashion that you can't as a starter.
Thank you, Matt. Everyone here can hate me and disagree with me, but what Matt said was my whole point.
Everything the Mets do, save a fantastic outing or performance (and even then sometimes) has a verbal jab thrown in. I don't want to read how everything is fine and dandy when it's not, but I could do without having to see that stuff in every post.
And for a team with a 1-4 rotation that rivals what the '86 Mets threw out there and an offense that should be sufficent, I can't believe the negativity that is prevalent here.
sosa can get lefties out.
last year for a stretch he might have been the mets best starter. what did he win, 5 starts in a row? i don't remember who he beat, but i'm sure there were plenty of lefties in those lineups.
the problem for him is that he falls in love with his slider. and it's easier for lefties to lay off it then it is for righties. thus, he falls behind in the count when he can't generate swings on the slider. that leaves him susceptible to lefties sitting on a fastball when sosa falls behind in counts.
his fastball is a good pitch, if he threw it more earlier in the count to lefties, he would have better success.
Matt: Other than the fact that the Mets have Santana/Pedro/Perez/Maine, things are… kind of uniformly negative, this spring.
They have Reyes and Wright as hitters and Beltran when he's healthy, Alou if he's ever healthy again and… other than that, there are basically no bats on this club.
Gotay, if they ever let him try might develop INTO a hitter if they gave him the time to but they're not gonna give him that time. Fernando is years away from being a major league starter.
Other than that, they've got the ghosts of Luis Castillo's and Carlos Delgado's careers, two benchwarmers from the Expos and fifteen flawed players in a demolition derby to fill in for Alou.
A solid bench full of players that… are great bench players but don't have the defensive skills and/or the health to actually start.
An above-average bullpen that's one weakness is that they're none of them the kind of horses that can eat the kinds of innings that they had to during The Great Collapse and… might have to again, if Pedro and Pelfrey can only give them five innings a start.
Other than a great starting rotation, there's kind of only negative things to say.
You want him to just start making stuff up like "Delgado's gonna have a bounce-back year" or "Willie is smart enough to never let Schoeneweis pitch to a right-handed batter" or "Church can hit left-handed pitching" or "Schneider can hit at a major-league competency" or "Castillo's knees aren't still completely wrecked"?
"El Duque will take the end of his career with dignity and quietly retire instead of being a lingering clubhouse problem for the entirity of the season"?
We could play this game all day, Matt.
every team in baseball has weaknesses. every single team. for all of the people who like to turn every question mark and turn it into a guaranteed negative, go over every other team in baseball and look them over with that same critical eye and tell me what you see.
Mike C
Do you think the Mets will win the NL east?
I'm very curious of your answer since you are oh so negative.
I think Minaya will be claiming every starter DFA'd this week…. I'm sure lots of bad pitchers will hit the market and we can hear how great all the one's we get are…...
EL DUQUE WINS #5 STARTERS ROLE!!!!
BY DEFAULT!!!
I'm not sure which guy looked worse. What an ugly display of pitching by both of these guys. Time to send Mike P down to work on his pitches and his head. Talk about not taking the bull by the horns Mike P.
Who else is available?
Sosa will have to be like the 6th man in Basketball and be ready to come in for Eldud in the 4th inn every start.
The Mets could well win the NL East, winning in the low nineties, just because they're in such a weak division and great starting pitching can go a long way in a weak division. Sure. That's what I'm rooting for and hoping for.
Do they have the bats or the depth to be a World Series contender?
No. No, they don't.
Let El Duque and Pelfrey go head to head one more time next Friday. Then decide. I'm not sure why a decision needs to be made right now.
And yes, the Mets have holes, question marks and weaknesses. Bot so do all teams. If there's one place I'd rather have a big strength in, it's the rotation. And both their rotation and bullpen are improved a lot from last year. I'd rather they be built this way than the way the Phillies are constructed – big bats but a very suspect rotation.
In 2006 our corner outfielders were a combination of Xavier Nady, Shawn Green, Cliff Floyd and Endy Chavez. None of these players were anything above average offensively. Valentin had something like a .310 OBP. Yet our offense was more than enough back then… well we thought it was.
Church is likely an upgrade over whatever we had in RF. Alou, when healthy, is a marked upgrade over what we had in left. What we have when he is hurt in left isn't much worse than what we used to have.
Reyes and Wright are both better than they were in 2006.
But yea, our offense is DOOMED.
I wouldnt call the NL East weak by any means.
Mets, Phillies and The Braves are all going to be strong teams.
The Marlins have a few terrific hitters and are a dangerous team to face.
And the Nats are the Nats.
How dont the Mets have the Depth to win a ws? Johan, Pedro, Maine, Perez in a short series…
I guess thats not good enough for you.
Phillies can't pitch, the Braves pitchers are an average age of 45, the Marlins conceded the season with that Detroit trade and… the Washington Expos have embarassments of riches at first-base and in the outfield and pretty much nothing else going for them.
However, it is 2008 and… Castillo and Delgado are gonna bat 2 and 5 instead of 7 and 8 as they should on a team with any kind of decent hitting in 2008.
But that's kind of the whole story, isn't it?
"They were great five years ago so lets just hope they magically are great again out of nowhere."
Because that worked SO well with Green and Floyd.
If you've only got three position players with any hopes of both being able to hit everyday AND stay reasonably healthy, there's only so much that your pitching can do.
The Phillies couldnt pitch last year and they won the division. So, i dont think it would be too smart to right them off.
The braves have a powerful offense and smoltz and hudson are number 1 starters. And as much as i hate to say this Glavine is going to help solidify their rotation.
And i can understand your negative comments about Delgado but why Castillo?
He's prob gonna hit between 290-310. He takes walks and play gold glove defense.
I guess you rather have Gotay start since hes proven to play such a great 2nd base….
I agree Mike C., its a tragedy that Mets were not able to go out this offseason and get Mark Teixeira, or get Albert Pujols. What were they thinking sticking with Delgado and all his money? Teams should openly throw money out the window. As for Castillo, how did Omar get the amazing David Eckstein to man 2nd base for us? Even though he wanted to be a SS, Omar should have convinced him otherwise. What a special player that Eckstein is. And speaking of special players, why don't we have Chase Utley yet?
My problem is less with Castillo for this year as a complimentary bat… and more with the idea of him masquerading as a two-hitter as he deteriorates more and more.
As the seven-hitter behind Reyes/Milledge/Beltran/Wright/Alou/Estrada?
Sure, a fine empty-average bat at the bottom of the starting eight to help turn over the order with his patented empty banjo singles as his legs quickly grind to dust.
But to rely on?
Feh. Feh and meh.
Luis Castillo gets on base at a .368 career clip, he doesn't strike out and he takes long at-bats. That sounds to me like someone who you want right there between Reyes and Wright. He can move Jose over and he can put his ass on base so that Wright and Beltran can knock him in. Why would you waste him in the bottom of the lineup is beyond me.
and LOL at putting estrada in there for what would appear to be your dream line-up. a fat slob who is injured and doesn't get on base. awesome.
How about some perspective? So the Mets have problems. Sure. But what about the team that's costing another $200 million this year? ...
—Their #1 isn't an ace and has been bombed this spring.—Their #2, has had elbow and recurring back problems causing him to miss spring starts and making his first start of the year questionable—Their #3 (Mussina?) has little left and is coming off a bad year.—Their #4, Hughes, a supposed boy wonder/savior, has a spring ERA almost as ugly as Pelfrey's.—Their #5, Kennedy, has had a fine spring but he's a rookie who's never pitched a full year
The Yankees have a great lineup and closer and setup man, but how many games can you win by 10-11 or 9-7?
As for the Red Sox …
—Their #1 has had back issues all spring and may miss the season's opener—Their #2 didn't have a great first year in the majors—Their #3 is perhaps Lester who has never pitched 160 innings at any level—Their #4 is Wakefield had an ERA of nearly 5.00 last year and is 41 this year—Their #5 is who? Bucholz has a spring ERA that is currently worse than Pelfrey's!
And Schilling may not come back till after the all-star break, if at all.
Detroit, which looks to have a superb lineup, has serious big time bullpen issues.
Even with the Mets' question marks in their lineup, I'm confident their rotation will make them the team to beat in the NL. Now if they can only solve that fifth rotation spot.
Estrada is far from my dream catcher… if we were talking dream catcher, we'd be stealing Russel Martin (how y'all been!) from the Dodgers.
But he IS the only catcher the Mets have had in the last year or so who shouldn't, by rights, be an automatic eight-hole hitter.
And the eight-hole is where Carlos Delmovaughn needs to be buried until they can unload his deadweight.
As for Castillo, those Was Statistics sound good for the two-hole, sure.
But the Mets need to talk about the Is and not the Was and… as Castillo's legs further and further regress, his numbers will regress with them.
Actually, Castillo's numbers are pretty consistent so far and there are no signs of major regression. His career line is .294/.368/.358 and his 2007 line was .301/.362/.359. He can't steal 40-50 bases like he did in five year ago, but he's pretty much the same hitter he was his entire career.
Castillo is the same hitter b/c he has always been a slap hitter. He should not lose much in production. He looks to be moving fine. His contract could end up being too long, but if another viable option was available they could have done it. Too bad Orlando Hudson is still a yr away from FA.
Alex has it right about what this blog is. As JD has reported many times the Mets says everything is ok and the readers here complain about it.
This is his blog so he throws it out there with talking points and we respond. If you don't agree with him say so.
I happen to like his comments. It severs to act as further commentary on how he sees the team.
To be fair, what are the Mets supposed to say???
This isn't something unique with them. Unless someone is blatantly hurt, ANY team will put a positive spin on said issue.
This isn't a Mets thing, it's a sports thing.