B-Mets:
SP Mike Antonini got in trouble early once again, and put up another disappointing outing: 4.2 IP, 7 ER, 5.95. That’s 23 earned runs in 23.2 innings pitched.
The Mets accomplished something that’s very difficult. They scored six runs in the first seven innings, on only two hits. Lots of walks and balks and other things like that.
One of those two hits was OF Carl Loadenthal’s first home run of the season.
The B-Mets tied it up in the 8th with back to back singles by Nick Evans and Josh Thole.
Gnats:
3B Jefry Marte has played 40 games… and has 21 errors. He is well on his way to break the Sally League record for most errors in one season for an infielder.
Gnats:
3B Jefry Marte has played 40 games… and has 21 errors. He is well on his way to break the Sally League record for most errors in one season for an infielder.
RP Josh Stinson is going the wrong way, posting a 5.27 ERA for the season, and 6.19 for his last two appearances. Even worse is his last two outings, where he gave up 8 earned runs in 2.2 IP. Not good timing right before the draft.
Queens:
Queens:
The bottom line: In the first two months of 2009, Wright homered less frequently and struck out more often than he normally does. Neither is a good thing, to be sure. But Wright has had similar power outages in his career, most notably in 2006, when he hit only six home runs after the All-Star break. That instance was chalked up to either fatigue or a change of approach following Wright’s impressive performance in the Home Run Derby, but it could just as easily be coincidence.
The strikeouts are more troubling and tougher to explain, especially because Wright’s strikeout pace decidedly picked up in the second half of 2008 and hasn’t really slowed down. Still, Wright has whiffed with some frequency for the length of his big-league career, and I’m sure a stretch of 53 K’s in 48 games really falls safely within the realm of standard deviation.
It’s natural to try to diagnose Wright’s problems in the early goings of 2009, but ultimately imprudent. I know I sound like a broken record, and I know it’s tough to keep in mind two full months into a season, but this season’s stats fall across a relatively small sample compared to the much larger one that is Wright’s entire career. The good news is that, due either to luck or some adjustment that can’t be accounted for in Wright’s rates, the balls he has put in play have fallen for hits at an enormously high rate. If that’s something real and lasting—which I doubt—then, well, great: A .432 on-base percentage makes Wright an incredibly valuable player even without a ton of power, and even with a lot of strikeouts.
More likely, though, it’s just the specter of random chance rearing its head again. I’ll resist grandiose statements about Wright’s season and tendencies until there’s much more evidence to support them.
How does that relate to Valentine? Only that he remains the most logical response for the Wilpon family if the Mets fail to conquer the Phillies this year. The longer Valentine has been away from Flushing, the kinder history looks upon his reign; it’s clear his firing by Steve Phillips in 2002 was driven solely by personal dislike and not by sound baseball judgment.
Phillips’ acumen largely has been discounted now that he works for ESPN and mindlessly decrees, among other things, that the Mets can’t win with Carlos Beltran. Not that Valentine is gloating or even talking about his former boss. To the contrary, Valentine has his hands full with his present-day employers, the Chibba Lotte Marines, who decided months ago to fire him after this season.
Valentine laughs when he says, “It’s a challenging situation.” All-out war is more like it. Fans loyal to Valentine are protesting, conducting daily vigils to convince Marines’ ownership to bring him back.
Valentine, however, doesn’t expect a thaw.
“I really don’t think they’re going to say, ‘We made a mistake, we were only kidding,’ ” Valentine said. “You either appreciate what I’ve done here or you don’t. And they don’t.”
http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/newsstand/discussion/klapisch_dont_count_out_bobby_v
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