I Hate This Team

Man this sucks. This entire series was tough to watch as the Mets almost universally destroyed our pitching, and our anemic bats couldn't do crap.

The only joy I had was watching Carlos Beltran's bomb (or was it Delgado's? Floyd's? Wright's?) bounce off the facing of the mezanine in right as Jose Guillen, last year's fence whiner, stood there without moving. The ball was hit so hard it bounced back, and halfway to Jose Vidro, this year's whiner. Memo to los dos Joses: STFU!

Vidro ripped the park and said that the team doesn't care about its players. Needless to say, team officials weren't pleased with that:

Vidro and Tavares met in a hallway outside the home clubhouse in the hour or so before yesterday's game. The two men -- one its longest-tenured player, the other its outspoken president -- yelled at each other about the issue, in part because Vidro accused club management of not caring about the players, in part because he had done so publicly.

"They were in each other's faces," one source said.

I really hate this team sometimes. If they're not going to win, at least have some likeable players.

What pisses me off about Vidro's comments are the short-sightedness, not to mention their stupidity. RFK's dimensions have greatly helped the pitching staff over the last year. Further, he's whining about high fly balls to centerfield. RFK isn't any bigger than any other park to dead center. Unless the ball's scraping the wall, it's going to be an out in 28 other major league parks, too. So shut the hell up, Jose. Hit the farking ball down the line, where the Mets showed time and time and time and time again that it can be crushed. Idiots.

Livan Hernandez sure earned his Lame Duck for today's crappy pitching. I read on a Mets forum that one of the Mets announcers (Darling perhaps?) indicated that he felt that Livan was tipping his pitches. That could certainly explain the barrage of homers. Coming into the season I was optimistic that Livan's frosting-filled knee would allow him to pitch better than last year. Is it tipping pitches? Are years of thousands of pitches affecting him? Is it just a bad stretch? On a pitching staff with thousands of questions, Livan was practically a certainty. Shows ya what I know, huh?

In Wednesday's game, Tony Armas pitched brilliantly. His slider was deadly, breaking in ways that I hadn't seen before from him. Last year, his slider wasn't all that different from his fastball. Last night, it had more of a frisbee action, with a hard, late break. Combine that with the extra zip on his fastball, and Armas is poised for a breakout season. We were looking for someone to fill the Loaiza role. I think he's going to be able to do it.

Brandon Watson earned the Lame Duck for Wednesday's game, with Jose Guillen's soul-crushing bases-loaded GIDP almost stealing it. But Watson added zippo with the bat, and completely misplayed two balls to center, leading to two Mets runs. This team just doesn't have that kind of margin for error.

The defense, in general, has been uniformly pathetic. This is one of the problems with how defense is measured. Watson clearly misplayed those two balls, yet neither affects the team's fielding percentage, which is the only stat most people cite. You can't make an error on a ball you can't get to!

Alfonso Soriano misplayed a single into a triple. Jose Guillen's had a number of bad throws, including one in Wednesday's game which directly led to a run. Livan failed to cover first base on a pickoff play in Houston. Jose Vidro flubbed a ball, preventing the team from getting a double play. None of those count as errors. But they all affect the play and are all plays that a good team would make.

Maybe subbing Church for Watson will help? But it can only help at one spot. They simply need to play better.

Watching today, it seemed like the Nats changed their offensive strategy halfway through the game. Instead of trying to rip the hell out of pitches, they started going with them, and strung together a bunch of hits by going the other way and deposting balls in front of the outfielders. I don't know if that was a conscious decision, or if that was just a function of the terrible Victor Zambrano on the mound.

Joey Eischen stinks. And he's a loudmouth. Free Bill Bray.

I'm really down right now. This team has sort of sucked the life out of me. I'm looking forward to seeing a team other than the Mets, and a team that's more of the level we're at. Of course we get to face Dontrelle tomorrow night, so I'm fully prepared for another loss.

Fire Bowden!