It is difficult to understand how the Mets are winning, at least from afar. The Mets have not been dominant in any one phase of the game and have only one player —Wright —who is having what would be considered an exceptional season. The team is fifth in the NL in runs allowed (3.97 per game), 10th in runs scored (4.41), and 10th in defensive efficiency (.690). They have only two players among the top 30 in the NL in WARP, as Wright is second with 5.2 and Angel Pagan is 18th with 3.6 while filling in admirably in center field for Carlos Beltran, who has yet to play this season while recovering from knee surgery. - link
There have recently been some murmurs going around the Orange and Blue watercoolers that the Mets are looking for a starting pitcher, with names like Cliff Lee and Kevin Millwood being thrown around. Although the Mets are within a reasonable striking distance of first place in the NL East, there are a few things to analyze here. First, what is a weakness the Mets can try to improve? Here are some relevant rankings for the Mets in terms of place in the National League: Team ERA: 6th - Team xFIP: 14th - Team FIP: 10th - So the Mets may be getting a little lucky with their pitching performance thus far, but we also need to remember that those numbers include some terrible pitching from former starter Oliver Perez (now on the DL and in the bullpen upon his return) and John Maine (now on the DL). - link
The Cyclones’ roster is not complete. The Mets still have not signed four out of their first five picks, all college players, so Backman’s squad may very well have a different look later in the season. There is speculation that Matt Harvey, the team’s number one pick out of North Carolina, may be shut down for the remainder of the season after logging 96 innings for the Tar Heels this spring, but if he signs, he probably will be assigned to Brooklyn. The club is still waiting to finalize contracts with (Blake) Forsythe, centerfielder Matt den Decker of Florida, and right-handed pitcher Greg Peavey of Oregon State, the Mets’ second-, fifth- and sixth-round picks. - link
There is a long-term benefit, Mets manager Jerry Manuel said before Wednesday’s game against the Indians, in rookie Ike Davis squaring up to bunt every now and again. Really. Facing an infield shift on Tuesday night, Davis attempted to bunt along the third-base line. The ball rolled foul. Davis went on to hit a two-run homer than put his team ahead for good. “I thought,” Manuel said inside the visitor’s dugout, “he did a wise thing last night, saying ‘Well, if y’all going do this, I’m going to drop a bunt down, I just want to get on base.’ By him doing that, it spreads the field back out to where maybe it’s to his advantage versus theirs.” … “I think early in his career, I like to see him put a bunt down,” Manuel said. “Later, when he is established, he still has on that chart a bunt that shows up, two or three, then you have to respect it. That will still be to his advantage. — Newark Star-Ledger - link
Chris Carter looked at it this way: If professional baseball didn’t work out for him, if his proficiency for putting bat to ball wasn’t proficient enough to earn him a major-league career, he always had other options. There was the dedifferentiation of blood cells. There was stem-cell research. There was cloning. “I had a plan,” he said. It involved the marriage of two worlds that could hardly be more different. It is his scholastic background and an earnestness and work ethic that border on the obsessive, though, that have set Mr. Carter apart not merely from the other 24 players in the Mets’ clubhouse, but from most in Major League Baseball. He played for three years at Stanford University, batting .277 with 23 home runs during his career there, and the reason he played three years, not four, is that it took him just that long to graduate with a degree in human biology. During his time at Stanford, he studied under Dr. William Hurlbut, who has served on the President’s Council of Bioethics since 2002 and is renowned for his work in embryonic stem-cell research. “Dr. Hurlbut is on the cutting edge,” Mr. Carter said. “I was like, ‘OK, this is what I want to do. If it becomes a big thing, there have been maybe 10 people who have been studying this for 10 years.’”— Wall Street Journal - link
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