Trainwreck Baseball

Watching last night's game was like watching the Mets and Yankees play hot potato. No one wanted to win and they were trying as hard as possible to give the game to the other team. In the first series between the Mets and the Yankees that was played earlier this year at Shea, the Mets helped give the series to the Yankees. With some better played games, the Mets may have taken that series. In this weekend's series, the Yankees were the ones that could have taken the series with a bit of execution.

You cannot complain about taking the series, but being so close to sweeping the Yankees and not getting it hurts. Now the Mets are below .500 again and the bullpen that has been relatively solid over the past few weeks could not find the plate and step up to the challange. The Mets lost in spectacular fashion and despite winnings the series, they do not leave on a high note. This type of loss hurts a lot more than a blowout would have. The umpires were on the Mets side giving them as much help as possible with some ball/strike calls and a close play with Gary Sheffield at first. Mets fans were riding high and just collectively got kicked in the nuts. Now, they are one game away from mediocrity as they head into the upcoming series with the fading Phillies.

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Minor update:

• Norfolk lost to Columbus 4-3. Angel Pagan went 2 for 4 with two doubles and two RBIs. Anderson Hernandez went 1 for 5 and is hitting .286 so far since getting promoted to AAA Norfolk. Eric Junge started the game and went six innings while giving up six hits, two runs, three base on balls, and struck out seven. Steve Coyler took the loss by giving up two runs in .2 innings. He walked three people and gave up one hit.
  
• Binghamton beat Erie 4-3. Victor Hall went 2 for 4 with one run scored, one double, one homer, and three RBIs. Kevin Deaton was the starter and faced off against Justin Verlander. Verlander went seven innings while giving up four hits, two walks, and struck out seven. He has yet to give up and earned run at AA.
  
• St. Lucie lost to Palm Beach 4-3. Lastings Milledge went 1 for 3 while Cory Ragsdale went 1 for 4 with his tenth homerun of the year. Shawn Bowman went 1 for 2 with two runs scored, a double, and one walk.
  
• Hagerstown lost to Lexington 5-3.
  
• Brooklyn beat Aberdeen 9-0. Caleb Stewart went 3 for 4 with two runs scored, one double, and three RBIs. Drew Butera went 1 for 3 with a run scored.
  
• Kingsport beat Bristol 6-5.

Classless Yankee fans cheered when Floyd hit a ball off of his knee in the top of the second inning. I will not make a blanket statement like saying they are all scumbags, but 99.9% are.

Sam Ryan had the comment of the night when interviewing Omar Minaya in the 8th inning. She had asked him what areas he is looking to upgrade the team in heading into the trading deadline and he had mentioned the bullpen. To which she replied, "Yeah, right now you are doing bullpen by committee." (or something close to that)

Huh? Last I checked, you could only do a bullpen by committee. Good commentary Sam.

Mike Piazza is not a fan of being a designated hitter.

"Honestly, I don't feel like I'm part of the game as much," Piazza said. "... I try to stay in the game, warm up a pitcher now and then. You have to stay in the mental game when you're not catching."

I just puked.


Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic about the new stadium, but I loathe the idea of this Olympic Stadium crap that hopefully dies soon. Building a 45,000 seat stadium for only baseball like they planned makes a perfect place to watch a baseball game. Citizen's Bank Park was the perfect size and no seat in the house was bad. With the Mets having to design the stadium for the possibility of 35,000 extra seats to be added, they risk making it cavernous with what seats they do have since they will not be wrapping around. If July 6th passes and New York does not get the Olympics as predicted, the plans need to be scrapped.

If they miss 2012, they will presumably not have a good chance at the 2016 games as a lot of bids are already in motion for Tijuana and San Diego doing a combined bid, Prague is making a push for 2016 or 2020 if 2016's bid fails, England, South Korea, Chile, India, United Arab Emirates, Germany, Japan, Kenya, Italy, Portugal, Netherlands, Russia, St. Paul/Minneapolis, Israel, and Thailand. 2012 looks bad and 2016 looks bad so this entire idea needs to be scraped. The Mets would be not building their perfect stadium for a possible 2020 bid to the Olympics which possibly has Denver, Los Angeles, Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, Prague, Czech Republic, and South Africa jumping into the fray already. Great. This entire Olympic bid thing is pointless. The Olympics in NY is going to be extremely hard to pull off and looks really unlikely to happen.

Gammo blabs about the upcoming trade deadline and almost put me to sleep, but check out this portion of the article.

Thanks to DirecTV, the MLB package and all the games on ESPN.com, we all get to hear local announcers throughout the game, a treat when they are analytical and balanced. A small poll I did came up with the Giants (Duane Kuiper, Mike Krukow), Yankees (Jim Kaat, Michael Kay, Ken Singleton, Paul O'Neill) and Cubs (Len Kasper, Bob Brenly) as the best announcers, although New Englanders worship Jerry Remy and Don Orsillo.

Jim Kaat, Michael Kay, Ken Singleton, and Paul O'Neill some of the best announcers? The apocalypse is coming. Find a fallout shelter and stay there until you hear from me.

He did have this interesting stat on the decline of power at the first base position.

Year  Slugging pct.  Batting average
2000     .501             .291
2001     .497             .286
2002     .480             .279
2003     .458             .272
2004     .450             .266
2005     .440             .264

I would love to see the same stats for AL shortstops. I'm betting they would be very similar to those stats. The game is 'a changing.