We tell kids that baseball is just a game, and we try to say it with a straight face. Maybe baseball is just a game to the littlest of Little Leaguers, but to the grown men and women who devote three-plus hours to watching their team every night from April to October, baseball became more than a game long ago. For us, baseball is serious. Yet as seriously as we fans like to think we take the sport, baseball could vanish from existence tomorrow and we’d all find a way to get on with our lives. For many young men, baseball is more than serious. It’s their only shot.

Sugar, a film opening this weekend in New York and Los Angeles, follows the career of Miguel “Sugar” Santos, a pitcher from the Dominican Republic who signs a paltry contract with a major league squad at the age of sixteen in the hopes of someday earning a major payoff for himself and his family. The sprawling narrative begins in Santos’s native country and follows the young ballplayer across the United States.

The film is a work of fiction, but it might as well not be. Everything feels authentic from the start. The images from the DR—a truckful of chickens, a gardener working immediately alongside the baseball complex, all shot on-location—are some of the movie’s best. Although there is no evidence that Sugar had to use a milk carton for a glove, as Jose Reyes once did, it is clear he comes from extreme poverty.

Our protagonist trains in the Dominican baseball academy of a major league franchise. His instructors try to teach him key English phrases like “line drive” and “home run” and “I’m still working on the mechanics.” It is perhaps unfortunate that the academy’s director is played by Jose Rijo, who also served as a baseball consultant for the film. Rijo was recently fired by the Washington Nationals after a Dominican prospect Rijo found turned out to be four years older than he claimed. Still, Sugar’s world in the DR feels perfectly rendered, so maybe having Rijo around was a net positive.

Indeed, this perfect rendering of Sugar’s world draws the viewer in even more than the storyline. The plot does not follow the traditional arc; instead it unravels and takes u-turns, stopping and starting much as real life does. It is a credit to the film that I stayed invested throughout.

Without the stellar performance from Algenis Perez Soto in the lead role, everything would’ve crumbled. A Dominican who has played baseball since age nine, Soto has never before appeared in a film. His natural presence on screen works wonders. This is not an actor playing a ballplayer—this is a ballplayer. Sugar is drawn so true to life that the character never really learns English, instead showing only very slight improvement during his time in the U.S. In one fantastic moment, a woman asks Sugar to speak in Spanish so that she may try to understand him, and when he does the audience is not given subtitles for the first time in the movie. What better way to show us Sugar’s constant battle with the language barrier?

I suppose I’m glad I didn’t realize, as I watched Sugar, that it was the latest offering from writer/directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Boden and Fleck’s first full-length feature, Half Nelson, is probably my favorite film of the last five years. If I’d known the pair were turning their attention to baseball, my insanely high expectations would’ve doomed Sugar from the beginning.

To be fair, there were some disappointing moments. While the film typically relies on subtlety and puts its trust in the viewer, it does occasionally hit us over the head. There are three shots of Sugar hiding his head in a towel after he’s disappointed with his performance (we got plenty from the first shot), and there is a drawn-out shot of Sugar walking through an arcade which I guess is meant to symbolize his strange new world. These moments seem inconsistent with the stark realism of the other scenes. Additionally, a few entirely too predictable and unnecessary plot points make their way in, including the “and then he turned to steroids” angle which I was praying they’d avoid.

Quibbles aside, Boden and Fleck make splendid choices. The soundtrack features inspired selections, including a great cut from TV on the Radio, and a Spanish-language cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” The casting too, feels perfect. To contrast with all the Dominican coaches and players (who are all real-life coaches and players), the classically-trained actor Andre Holland gives a nuanced performance as Brad Johnson, the American college graduate with the big signing bonus, and stands out as the most compelling among the lot of very compelling minor characters.

Sugar feels much longer than its 114 minutes, but only because it gets more out of each minute than audiences have come to expect. The film has real weight, which it attains because Boden and Fleck know exactly when to cut a scene and when to let it continue. If you’re at all interested in either baseball or film, then you owe it to yourself to see this movie.

Anthony, my colleague, recently suggested a few ways to improve the Mets by subtraction. I’m going to flip things around and suggest a few ways to improve the Mets by addition.

First, let me say that this Mets team is not as bad as its record. This team has enough talent to win the same 88 games it won last year. indeed Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA-adjusted projections still had us winning 90 games before last night’s win, despite the 23-26 start, and the meager +1 run differential. There are a few reasons for this. We’ve played a tough schedule so far, with 27 road games and 23 home games, mostly against tough teams. We’ve gotten unlucky. I know everyone likes to attribute all the outs on the basepaths, the mistakes in the field, and the balls hit right into the defense on a lack of focus. Of course some of it is lack of focus. But a lot of it is luck. BP says we’ve been the second-unluckiest team in the NL so far (the Rockies are first), and that with normal luck our record should’ve been 25.4-23.6 going into last night’s contest. I doubt fans would be so panicky if we were over .500 right now. Also, we’re just not this bad. All of our regulars are hitting below their projected OPS with two exceptions. Oddly enough, one exception is Jose Reyes, who has come on at the plate lately. The other overachiever is, of course, Ryan Church. No one else has hit as well as they were expected to. Not only that, John Maine is our only starting pitcher who is overachieving. The rest of the rotation has underperformed relative to where they were projected. If just a handful of the underachievers could get their act together, the team will start to look a lot better.

Now that that caveat’s out of the way, it must be said that of course every team can improve, and certainly the Mets should try to better themselves over the next year. Here are two approaches they could take.

In a dream world, the Mets will look to build a team the way a certain Floridian franchise out of Tampa has—by stocking up with young talent, never taking on a bad contract, and locking up their superstars for many years at cost. With that philosophy in mind, here are three money-saving measures the Mets could possibly take to improve the franchise.

1) Hire minor leaguers to perform big league roles for low salaries. In the future, instead of spending millions on the likes of Jorge Sosa, Marlon Anderson, Matt Wise, and Scott Schoeneweis, the Mets should promote their most competent AAA players to do the same thing at one-third the cost or less. Honestly, how much worse could our best AAA guys be than these “proven” veterans? (Yes, I know Schoeneweis is pitching well this year, but his performance last season alone makes his contract laughable.) We could save a bunch of money this way with basically no loss in expected production, and with far more upside. Who knows, one of the AAA guys may actually turn out to be good! (See Ludwick, Ryan.)

2) Sucker a general manager into trading away young talent for some of our crusty veterans. This can be done. Giants GM Brian Sabean, for example, is known to overvalue veterans and undervalue young talent, so much so that he was rumored to be shopping phenom Tim Lincecum this offseason. Even Sabean isn’t dumb enough to part with Lincecum now, but Omar Minaya still might be able to pry away Matt Cain or Jonathan Sanchez for one of our expendable old dudes. Either Cain or Sanchez would give us a great young pitcher at cost, and Sabean just might be foolish enough to trade one of them. If he isn’t, there are other GMs around to hoodwink. It’s worth a try.

3) Draft Cutter Dykstra. The upcoming minor league draft is hugely important for our franchise, and I think drafting Son of Nails would be a great PR move with little downside. It would get the fans excited, and having an excited fan base would allievate a lot of the Mets’ headaches right now. Also Cutter is a top-tier prospect who projects to be a legitimate first or second rounder, and no one really knows how these picks are going to turn out anyway. Let’s gamble on a Dykstra with one of our three picks in the top 33 this June.

Of course, since the Mets are the Mets, and Omar is Omar, they probably won’t go the cost-effective route. Instead, they’ll probably try to spend, spend, spend in the offseason to create the team that will pay the most immediate dividends. Fine. Here are three strong options in the 2008 free agent class if you want to go on a buying spree.

Pat Burrell. This Met-killer has been underrated by Phillies fans (and their management, who tried to trade him) for years. He has a solid 855 career OPS, and he hasn’t posted an OPS lower than 890 since 2004. Yes he plays in a hitters’ park, but he’s still managed an 1106 OPS in 85 road at-bats during his current season (which has been a career one, to this point). If the Phillies don’t want him, the Mets should scoop him up. He’d be an ideal fit in left field.

Adam Dunn. Another beast of a player who’s underrated by his front office. The Reds were supposedly trying to trade Dunn as recently as last season. They’re going to try hard to trade him at this year’s deadline if the Reds are out of contention (which they certainly might be). Dunn is an even better hitter than Burrell, with a career 902 OPS. He’s hit 40 or more homers in four straight seasons, and is still only 28. If the Reds shop him, the Mets should be major players for Dunn. To say we need a first baseman is an understatement, and Dunn has logged plenty of games over there.

Mark Teixiera. He’ll probably be the best free agent available this winter, and that fact, combined with Scott Boras’s negotiating power, probably means he’ll be the toughest to get. Expect the Yankees to break the bank on this guy. But if they don’t, the Mets should try to swoop in and steal him. Teixiera has the same career OPS as Dunn and is the same age, but Teixiera is a significantly better fielder by most accounts, and wouldn’t cost prospects (just money). He’d be an amazing fit for the Mets, if he’s attainable at all.

Some of these ideas may not work, but I firmly believe a few of them could. The good news is that it’s not an either-or situation. The Mets could look for places to cut cost in-house, while at the same time spending in the free agent arena. They can be smart and rich at the same time!

It’s time for the Mets to try something different–to get people talking, to take the pressure off the slumping regulars, and to prove that they won’t overpay for the same mediocre veterans time and time again. Let’s get creative, Omar. Your job may depend on it.

As I exited the 7 train and headed down the new steps (does anyone else miss the ramp?), the wind barely even registered on my radar. It seemed the perfect day for baseball. In what has become a mini Mother’s Day tradition in my family (at least in the years the Mets are home), I met my mother, father, and brother at the stadium to take in the game. Believe it or not, this was Mom’s idea. Mom probably watches more pitches per year than I do, and I try to watch every game. She helped toilet paper the Stony Brook campus in October of 1969 (sorry to be hinting at your age here, Mom), she watched the last out with me in 1986, and she even suffered with me through all the horrible teams of the mid-nineties and early 2000s. Mom’s a real fan.

We rounded Shea, passing gates E and D, and Mom wondered if we shouldn’t just enter at the next gate, lest she risk missing out on the pink Mother’s Day Mets hat. I assured her I’d scour the stadium and secure a hat for her if gate A (the gate printed on our tickets) was out. No problem, there were plenty left, and after Mom collected her hat, we headed up the escalator to the Mezz box. Whoops! The escalator stopped at the Loge level and we had to walk up the rest of the way. “They just don’t care about Shea anymore,” my brother said.

I found my seat and, still convinced of the warmth of the day, removed my jacket. I checked the lineups and said to my brother, “I don’t think Junior Griffey is playing, he’s not number three, is he?” A woman in the row in front of me interrupted: “He’s three. He’s playing.” I love Mets fans.

Twenty minutes later I put my jacket back on. The wind swirled around the stadium something fierce and it turned out to be lousy baseball weather after all. An older woman next to me said, “I came prepared.” When I say “older,” I’m wildly underselling it. This nice lady had to be eighty, at least, and she had on a fairly light jacket herself. If she could brave the elements, I would’ve had to be the biggest wuss on the planet to complain about them myself. So I didn’t complain.

“What’s the score?” the elderly woman asked. I told her the Mets were winning 3-0.

“Who’s pitching?” she asked. I told her Oliver Perez.

“We always see Oliver Perez,” she said.

Later in the game, she told me she had “been a Met since 1962.” (Note: she definitely said “Met” and not “Met fan,” which I found endearing.) By the end of the game, she was saying, “Jose always pitches when we come.” Hey, she held it together for quite a while, and she has been a Met since 1962, so I think we’ll all cut her a little slack.

Mom enjoyed the win, and the lack of the boos that went with it. Seriously, I don’t think I heard a single boo of a Mets player. Even Scott Schoeneweis got applauded. See Scott? All you have to do is pitch well!

As for the rest of the baseball, Ollie threw a nice game, but still walked too many guys (four, which was one more than the line I’d set when my brother asked me, “what’s the over/under for walks by Oliver Perez?”). Carlos Beltran looked completely locked in even on the pitches he lined foul. I don’t think he’ll keep up his pace of 4 RBIs per day, but I think he’s going to have an excellent season. I was happy to see Joe Smith come on and get a strikeout. I still hold out the faint hope that the Mets won’t send him to New Orleans, and will instead part with the largely useless Jorge Sosa (11 strikeouts, 9 walks, and a 5.66 ERA—who cares if he’s out of options?). Mets.com, however, is trying to quash all optimism by printing sentences like: “The move, now not likely until Wednesday, appears to be what it was initially — Wise activated, Joe Smith optioned.” Come on Front Office, that’s the move of a poorly run franchise.

After Smith closed out the eighth, our offense staged a mini-rally before faltering, and the Reds were due up for one last time. Then we transported to another baseball universe. I could’ve sworn I saw David Ross get up, make an out, and then, after the umpires had a long discussion with the managers, come to the plate again. For those who haven’t heard, Ross wasn’t supposed to lead off the inning, Corey Patterson was. But they got up in the wrong order. My eyes hadn’t deceived me; it turned out that after Ross got up, they realized that he had batted out of order and declared him out (even though he had already made an out), but then he was up again, in his correct spot in the batting order. After Ross’s second at-bat—a hit, no less—an even longer discussion ensued among the umpires. I started yelling out things like, “You’re the best, Dusty!” and “Thanks a lot Dusty, none of us wanted to go home anyway.” In looking over the rules, it seems the umpires got this one right—if Ross had got the first time, he still would’ve been declared out and then come up again. I can’t believe there is a scenario where the same guy is allowed to get in the batter’s box two straight times. Baseball, you learn new things about it every day. Maybe that’s why Mom and I come back year after year.

Happy Mother’s Day to all Hot Foot Moms. And of course, Let’s Go Mets.

Before the season I took a stab at guessing the OPS of all our regulars, and I even dared to stage a mini-contest between my haphazard guesses and the exhaustively-researched PECOTA projections of Baseball Prospectus. I figure a rainout is as good a time as any to check in on how each of us is doing.

Carlos Delgado. My guess: 790 OPS. Baseball Prospectus’s projection: 815 OPS. Current OPS: 645.

Boy does his current number (and our entire season) look a lot better after Sunday’s game. I personally don’t care if Carlos never does another curtain call, so long as he keeps hitting like he did against John Smoltz et al. Carlos posted a 522 OPS last April, so believe it or not, his start to this season will constitute an improvement. As I’ve noted in other posts, Carlos rebounded in 2007 and managed an 837 OPS from May on, so I’m still holding out hope that BP’s number will prove better than mine for 2008.

Luis Castillo. Me: 715. BP: 702. Current: 680.

Castillo draws walks, hits singles (his two doubles are his only extra-base hits in 84 plate appearances so far this season), allows base stealers in front of him a chance to do their magic, and runs the bases pretty well his own self. These skills are overvalued by most, but they are skills nonetheless, and at the very least Castillo does what you expect him to on a consistent basis.

Jose Reyes. Me: 775. BP: 788. Current: 664.

We all know Jose is off to a slow start, but he has shown flashes of the brilliance we all know he possesses. Thankfully the handshakes are back, a decision 97% of SNY viewers agreed with (best poll question ever, by the way), and I still believe Jose is going to have a highly successful year. His OPS last September was a mere 612, so maybe we can look at this April as the beginning of an upward trend.

David Wright. Me: 900. BP: 935. Current: 980.

What can you say about David Wright? Actually, I said it in my last post so I won’t repeat myself here. Suffice to say, he’s really, really good.

Brian Schneider. Me: 700. BP: 664. Current: 700.

Schneider’s 309 batting average and 391 on-base percentage might lead a Mets fan to believe that he’s far exceeded expectations up to this point in the season. But Schneider does not have a single extra-base hit in 63 plate appearances. That, and his inability to stay healthy, have severely cut into whatever value he has (and I’m not even mentioning his three passed balls). His catcher ERA is, however, more than a full run better than Raul Casanova’s in a small sample size, so maybe there’s something to his defensive value after all.

Moises Alou. Me: 850. BP: 852. Current: NA.

Sigh.

Carlos Beltran. Me: 880. BP: 864. Current: 771.

Because they’ve had similar batting averages for much of this season, the two Carloses have often been lumped together when discussing the Mets’ early struggles. The difference, of course, is that Beltran has six more walks and six more extra-base hits than Delgado. Beltran will be just fine, thanks. Even in his banner year of 2006, Beltran had one month where he posted a 769 OPS (September). We have little reason to worry about our center fielder.

Ryan Church. Me: 800. BP: 821. Current: 834.

As with his fellow ex-Nat, it feels as though Church has overachieved more than he actually has. This might be because he’s second on the team in RBI (which isn’t a great indicator of how he’s really performing) and leading the team in batting average (another misleading stat). But he’s only taken nine walks (tied for fifth on the club), and has exactly the same number of extra-base hits as Delgado (6). Expect Church to be right around his projections this season.

Endy Chavez. Me: 705. BP: 696. Current: 476.

The key number here is not 476, but 29–that’s how many plate appearances Endy has received in the early season. With Angel Pagan playing over his head to start the year, it seemed reasonable enough at the time for Endy to appear as rarely as he did. With Pagan coming back to Earth, and Alou still out for who knows how much longer, and the spring starting to fade into later spring and early summer, I predict Endy will begin to see more starts at all three outfield positions.

Ramon Castro. Me: 780. BP: 787. Current: NA.

Sigh.

BP is off to the early lead, beating me for five of the eight above players who’ve actually appeared for the New York Mets this season. I am, however, a Luis Castillo home run away from tying this thing up. Of course, when you’re counting on a Luis Castillo homer, you’re going to be counting for a long time.

Let’s go Mets!

Here are some thoughts while I’m wondering why we don’t see Wrigley Field again this season.

David Wright is good. Yes, I know this isn’t exactly an original observation, but it’s worth remembering just how good this guy is as the offense slumps and the team endures a three-game losing streak. David has compiled an 1126 OPS over the first 19 games. The scary thing is that this number is short of his career-high OPS for a calendar month–he posted an 1173 OPS in August of last year. If he finishes April in the quadruple digits, that will make three straight months of OPS over 1000 for David going back to last year. Wow.

Willie Randolph’s bullpen management is bad. Again, this isn’t news to anybody, but seriously, what is Willie doing out there? Aaron Heilman is tied for the major league lead in appearances with 12, but don’t worry, Joe Smith and Jorge Sosa are right behind him with 11 each. Does Willie not remember anything about last year? About how the bullpen was overused early in the season and had nothing left for the end of the season? Yesterday’s game was a perfect example. Nelson Figueroa (more on him in a minute) had thrown only 92 pitches, and it was only the sixth inning, but Willie still went to his bullpen to bring in Scott Schoeneweis. Why? Going to the pen early might be a better strategy for winning that one game, but it’s a horrible strategy for sustaining your team over a 162-game season. Just ask the 2007 Mets.

Nelson Figueroa is good. Yes, he’s a wonderful story, but I actually think this guy is a good pitcher. He throws strikes, has good movement on his breaking stuff, and doesn’t seem to get nervous if he gets into trouble. I’m not saying he’s a savior, and his .115 BABIP coming into yesterday’s game certainly indicates that he got lucky in his first few starts. But his 16 strikeouts in 20 innings are plenty good enough, and he threw some 280 innings in various forms of competitive baseball last year, so he’s unlikely to flame out. I think there’s a chance Figueroa sticks around for a while.

“Takin’ Care of Business” is bad. They play this song at Shea after Met wins, and I think it’s a bad idea. Granted, I’m always happy when we win so I’m not going to get too bent out of shape over this. Still, I don’t like the idea that when we win a home game, it is simply a matter of taking care of business. If fans start to take on the attitude that we’re supposed to win every game, we’ll become, well, like the Yankees. Obviously, none of us want that. Even very good teams lose a third of their home games, so please, let’s lower the expectation bar a little. I want to be somewhat pleasantly surprised if we win a game. I don’t want to think of winning as routine. Oh well, at least everybody starts clapping in unison.

Phillies fans are ugly. I ranted last column about a few loser Met fans who cheered when Milledge got hit by a pitch, but that was nothing compared to the outright celebration among Phillies fans when Jose Reyes hurt himself diving into second. True, some Mets fans can do some pretty disgusting things, but at least we’re better than Phillies fans. It’s a start.

Johan Santana is our nine-figure stopper today. Let’s go Mets!

Forty-four degrees Fahrenheit ain’t exactly baseball weather. That’s one thing I learned attending the Mets’ eighth home game of this season, their 45^th and final season at Shea Stadium. Yes, Citi Field looks amazing. The bricks have that brand-new pinkish-red quality, as if they’ve yet to be rained on. And the whole complex looks as though it will be sprawling in an inviting sort of way—more a collection of neighborhoods (The Rotunda, The Concessions, The Park Itself) than a cylindrical stand-alone entity like Shea.

But on to the game itself. I was still finding my seat when my man John Maine walked the first batter of the game, Cristian Guzman. Then Guzman went in motion and Met-killer Ronnie Belliard poked a single through the hole. Was that a hit-and-run, or just a straight steal where the batter happened to swing? It looked like the latter from the third base-side field box, although my perception of the play might have been tainted by my knowledge that Manny Acta manages the Nationals.

After Maine got out of it only allowing one run, I went on a food run (pretzel for my girlfriend, dog for me). I missed Jose Reyes’s at-bat, but I returned in time to see Ryan Church hit one a long damn way. “I guess he can hit lefties,” I said as he rounded the bases. The stadium blared “Whoop, There It Is.” I flashed back to painful high school dances.

Maine continued to look scary in his subsequent trips to the mound. Our old friend Lastings Milledge (more on him in a minute) looked to be robbed of a home run by a gust of wind, as he absolutely crushed a two-strike fastball and it ended up short of the left-field fence. Then the next guy, Austin Kearns, really crushed one and no wind could’ve kept it in the park. I’m not gonna lie, I thought we were in for another long night. Leave it to Reyes and Carlos Beltran to come to the rescue. I’m not letting Maine off the hook, though. Four walks, one home run, and at least two near-home runs? Against the Nationals? Not good enough, my man. You’re a better pitcher than that.

I heard some of the booing I’ve been reading about. My take is that most of the people who booed Met players last night, during a victory, were idiots—or at the very least, soulless, mirthless sad sacks. For example, after Beltran hit the three-run homer, Carlos Delgado followed with a strikeout. A few people booed. The Mets had just taken a three-run lead with a mammoth home run, and people booed the next batter. How bad does your life have to be that you can’t enjoy a home run long enough to avoid booing the next guy who comes to the plate? Worse than the booing, however, were the people who cheered when Milledge was hit by a pitch, and cheered louder when the trainers came out. I can understand booing Lastings (though I applauded when he came to the plate), but how does a person become so morally bankrupt that he cheers when another human being has possibly broken his hand? I think some of the “fans” who come to these games think the players are fictional characters.

But I am not a despairing blogger, so enough about the bad fans. There were plenty of great fans at the park, and this was a great win for this team. Reyes looked fantastic, and Joe Smith looked like a legitimate major league reliever, coming in and striking out Ryan Zimmerman with two on. I don’t see how we send that kid down when Matt Wise is ready to come off the DL. And finally, you gotta love Beltran’s basket catch to start the ninth (another ball that appeared to be knocked down by the wind, by the way).

Let’s try to stay above .500 the rest of the way, shall we boys? Let’s go Mets!

Last season, I watched Opening Day from Row U of the Upper Deck of Shea Stadium. This year, having advanced in age, I decided to watch Opening Day from the comforts of the couch in my rec room. Each method of game-watching has its advantages. As it turns out, I’m very glad I didn’t have to wait for the 7 train amongst a mass of angry fans after the disaster that took place out on the field yesterday.

Before I get into the negatives from the game (and of course, there were plenty), let me mention two very small positives to take away. I enjoyed the cut of the outfield grass. I can’t remember seeing Shea in that particular triangle pattern before, and the contrast in greens really showed up well on the broadcast. Our stadium looked as good as it can in its final opener.

Also, I was weirdly happy for the home plate umpire, veteran Doug Eddings. Eddings has had his share of hard times (see his indecisive umpiring in Game Two of the 2005 ALCS for the most obvious example), but maybe those hard times forced him to perfect his craft. I think I agreed with every one of his ball and strike calls—and I never agree with the home plate umpire on balls and strikes. Not only that, Eddings was clear, immediately declaring “ball outside” or “ball low” as soon as the pitch hit the catcher’s mitt. He’s come full circle from his own Buckneresque moment of a few years’ back. If we get quality umpiring like this all season, I’ll have that much less heartburn.

Unfortunately, neither of these positives has anything to do with the quality of our baseball team, but I think right now we should take whatever victories we can get.

The game itself started to go bad for us when Oliver Perez walked the 45-year-old opposing pitcher who was trying to sacrifice bunt. It continued to go bad when every other one of our pitchers continued to walk everyone else. Met pitchers had seven walks yesterday against two strikeouts. That’s just not going to get it done against a good team.

Then, of course, we have the glaringly obvious problems with our team that were on full display in the home opener. 1) Our manager doesn’t know how to use his bullpen. Many of us have been saying it over and over—Scott Schoeneweis should never face a righty. And yet Willie Randolph had Show in there against two righties yesterday. Unfortunately, I don’t expect this to change. Show faced more righties than lefties last year. Utterly ridiculous. 2) Carlos Delgado is not good at playing first base. His lack of defense was much less of a problem when he was hitting 38 home runs. Now that those days are past him, it’s clear we’re going to get well-below-average production from the first base position this year, much as we did last year. 3) Many of our guys are old. Case in point, 32-year-old Luis Castillo pulls himself out of the game (presumably because it was too cold out), and he is replaced by someone six years older. A lot of our regulars are teetering on the brink of the DL all the time, and we’ll have to deal with it all season long. 4) We’re just not that good, especially without Pedro Martinez. I’m sorry, but it’s true. Over our last 162 games, we are now 86-76. Even if Johan Santana adds five wins to our total (and that’s a monster number for one player to add, considering that he’s replacing a serviceable major league pitcher in Glavine), that makes us a 91-win team. Ninety-one wins would be all fine and good, but it’s foolish to think we’re an elite team who can threaten 95 or 100 wins. We’re a decent team, but certainly a flawed team, at least for now—and we’re going to need some things to go right to beat out the Braves and Phillies for the division title.

But there is always hope. Today, hope comes in the form of our beleaguered starter Mike Pelfrey. I think I speak for all of us when I say Go Big Pelf! Let’s put the seven walks, one error, and two passed balls behind us and let’s actually enjoy baseball tonight. Let’s Go Mets!

This Opening Day left us little to complain about. Production from the bottom of the order? Against a left-handed starter no less? Check. Johan Santana looking dominant? Check. David Wright and Jose Reyes looking like their old selves? Check. Keith Hernandez discussing food during the broadcast? Check. (At least I think I heard him discussing food—I was watching from a sports bar at Foxwoods and may not have got it right.)

It might be a different story when the Mets face a real lefty on Wednesday in young phenom Andrew Miller (and we all know how the Mets usually do against rookie pitchers), and we’ll see what happens when the Mets face a bit tougher lineup with something less than their ace on the hill, but for now all is grand.

Well, not all is grand. Carlos Delgado didn’t exactly leave me brimming with confidence after watching his at-bats today, and it was kind of sad that we needed three pitchers to get through the eighth inning, but most everything is grand. In fact, I would go so far as to say that merely seeing Santana take the mound has put all our collective fears to rest. We have a legitimate team again. The guys who were out there today looked far more professional than the guys who were out there at the end of last September. Of course, we looked pretty damn professional during the opening series against the Cardinals last year, too.

The beauty of the game is that we don’t what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone the rest of the season. It almost doesn’t matter that the Mets looked great in the opener. It matters far more that the Mets are finally playing games that count. Welcome back baseball! Too bad there are only 161 of these left.

In part I, I took a stab at predicting the 2008 OPS for Met hitters, and comparing my guesses to those of that publication most revered by sabermetricians everywhere-Baseball Prospectus. This time I’ll go to work on the pitchers, predicting the ERAs of everyone who we think will see regular time on the mound for us this year.

Johan Santana. My guess: 2.32 ERA. Baseball Prospectus’s projection: 2.94

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Santana has a 2.16 ERA in 16 career starts against the National League, and he should only benefit further from getting to pitch at Shea Stadium half the time. Frankly, assuming nothing horrible involving words like “rotator” or “ligament” goes down, I can’t imagine Santana having an ERA over 3.00. How crazy is it that I’m able to type a sentence like this about a Mets pitcher and actually mean it?

Pedro Martinez. Me: 3.15. BP: 3.37

Call me a believer. I think Pedro’s as healthy as we’ve ever seen him, and he’s going to have a tremendous year. I think he’ll dial it up to 90 MPH+ when he has to, but I think 90 percent of the time he won’t need to pitch that fast to get people out. If Rick Reed was a poor man’s Greg Maddux, then Pedro, at this point of his career, is a rich man’s Greg Maddux.

Oliver Perez. Me: 4.00. BP: 4.22.

Ollie’s ERA benefited from some good luck last season. He gave up a ton of unearned runs (20, to be exact), which means a lot of the Bad Ollie performances we all experienced didn’t count against him in this particular statistical category. It would be too much to ask him to repeat his 3.56 ERA of 2007, but I see no reason that Ollie can’t repeat his strikeout rate of one per inning. That alone should keep his ERA below the 4.22 that BP projects.

John Maine. Me: 3.58. BP: 4.03.

I’m trying not to buy into the hype of all these fantastic spring training performances, but I just can’t do it. I mean, what is spring training for if fans aren’t going to get overexcited about a very small sample size and amazing results. Maine looks as though he picked up right where he left off (you all remember where he left off? one swinging bunt single and 14 strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings? the anti-Tom Glavine? yeah, I remember too), and he’s at the age where many pitchers start to hit their peak years. And yes, he’s looked amazing this spring. I’m predicting a huge year for John Maine (and I’m sure everyone reading this hopes I’m right).

Orlando Hernandez. Me: 4.50. BP: 4.08.

I feel stupid trying to predict anything about El Duque. We don’t know anything about him. We don’t know how old he is, we don’t know what kind of windup he’s planning on using, we don’t know how healthy he’s going to be–we don’t even know if he’s going to make the team at all. What we do know is that he was tremendous last season, posting a 3.72 ERA and a 1.17 WHIP in 147 2/3 innings, to go with a 2-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. When he’s been healthy, he’s been great for us, so maybe my ERA guess for him is too high. Still, I can’t get his most recent spring training start out of my head. Yikes. Let’s hope this is just a small sample size bias on my part.

Mike Pelfrey. Me: 4.83. BP: 4.32.

When was the last time Big Pelf pitched well? I think I remember a start or two towards the end of last season where he looked OK, but it’s been downhill ever since. I gotta think that at some point this season he figures it out and pitches effectively, only because it wasn’t all that long ago when Pelfrey was mentioned in the same breath as Cole Hamels when discussing the next set of elite pitching prospects. If only we could’ve found a way to trade them straight up at some point. BP seems to think the skills that made Pelfrey so successful in the minors and in college will finally translate to major league success this season.

Billy Wagner. Me: 3.45. BP: 2.77.

I hate to say it, but Wagner is due to decline. He turns 37 this year, and his strikeout-to-walk ratio last year was the worst of his career (not counting 2000, when he only pitched 28 innings). The good news is that a declining Billy Wagner is still a very strong pitcher, and even his career-worst k/bb ratio was 3.64, a number almost any other reliever in the league would take in a heartbeat. Luckily, BP sees only a very small drop-off from last year’s numbers.

Aaron Heilman. Me: 2.95. BP: 3.47.

If you had to guess Heilman’s ERA from last season, what would you guess? I think most would pick a number higher than 3.03, his actual 2008 earned-run-average. His WHIP was even more impressive at 1.07. Heilman did have some problems, though. He had the lowest strikeouts-per-inning of his career (though his best ever k/bb ratio), and the eight home runs he gave up were the most he’s allowed since becoming a full-time reliever. Still, Heilman is only 29 year old, and I see no reason why he can’t improve on his ERA just a little. BP is worried that Heilman’s relatively low strikeout rate of 2007 represents a trend.

Duaner Sanchez. Me: 3.20. BP: 3.60.

I don’t expect to see the Duaner of 2006 (2.60 ERA), but I expect him to do better than his career ERA of 3.81. He appeared to be heading towards his prime before all the injuries, and we all hope he can head back in that direction in 2008 (maybe getting ready to inherit the closer’s role in a few years?). BP also sees Sanchez better than his career numbers, though significantly worse than my guess for him.

Scott Schoenweis. Me: 4.90. BP: 4.05.

I refuse to write about him. OK, OK–he should be used only against lefties (who actually only hit .204 against him last year), and only in non-critical situations (we have a better lefty for critical situations). But this won’t happen thanks to our manager, so I refuse to write anything further. OK, fine, I’ll just drive the point home. Over the last three seasons, lefties OPS 554 against him. Righties, 849. I don’t know what BP was smoking with this projection. Schoeneweis has a career ERA of 5.01 and he’s 34 years old.

Pedro Feliciano. Me: 3.30. BP: 3.43.

This is the better lefty I referred to above. Feliciano was positively dominant against lefties last season. Lefties hit .168 against him and posted a 478 OPS. He holds his own against righties too. They only managed a 697 OPS against Feliciano. Our bullpen is deep enough that Schoeneweis should never enter a high-leverage situation. We’ve got plenty of better guys for that. Let’s all just hope Willie figures this out before it’s too late.

Jorge Sosa. Me: 4.15. BP: 4.33.

I’m not a believer. Braves fans were thrilled when Sosa left their team, and I think we were all starting to understand why by the end of last season. His 4.59 ERA in 14 starts last season was acceptable. His 4.18 ERA in 28 bullpen appearances was not, although it was pretty much in line with what he’s done as a reliever over the past three seasons. He’s turning 31 next month, so I think it’s too much to ask for Sosa to improve. He’s just an innings-eater, not a reliable arm for tough situations.

Matt Wise. Me: 4.15. BP: 3.91.

Again, I’m not a believer. He’s 32 years old and he had a 1.45 WHIP last year. He was equally ineffective against lefties and righties. Opposing base stealers are successful 92% of the time against him over his career. I just don’t see what he’s bringing to the table. BP notes that he might’ve been a little shell-shocked from hitting Reds infielder Pedro Lopez in the face with a pitch on July 25 of last year. After that point, Wise posted a 10.45 ERA. Let’s hope he’s ridded himself of whatever demons he might’ve been facing last August and September.

On the Joe Smiths and Nelson Figueroas and Steve Registers of the world, I’m not even going to pretend to guess what they’ll do. They could combine for zero innings, or 200, or anywhere in between. It’s not for me to speculate, and so I won’t.

My next post will be an Opening Day recap. How sweet do those words sound?

It has come time for me, one opinionated fan, to take on the unbiased statistical season projections of the venerable Baseball Prospectus, and see who comes out on top. This idea came from sabermetrician Tom Tango, who theorized last year that maybe a group of fans could do as well or better at projecting their team’s stats than the various projection systems out there could. In year one of the experiment, it certainly looks like he was right.

So on to year two! Here is an opinion on how our regulars will do this season, from a guy who watches almost every game and follows the numbers, but has no claims of being any good at forecasting. I’m making guesses at OPS (on-base-percentage plus slugging percentage) for the hitters, and ERA for the pitchers.

Carlos Delgado. My guess: 790 OPS. Baseball Prospectus’s projection: 815 OPS.

Delgado’s 2007 was much worse in my head than it was actual practice. In my head, he posted about a 320 OBP and a 410 SLG, when in real life he had a 333 OBP and a 448 SLG. He started off so bad that I suspect many fans would make the same mistake I did, and not realize he had an 837 OPS from May 1 on. After learning of these stats, I like BP’s number a lot better than I like my number for Delgado—so my guesses are off to a rollicking start!

Luis Castillo. Me: 715. BP: 702.

Castillo, at this point in his career, brings exactly one skill to the table—he gets on base slightly more often than an average major leaguer. His range in the field is severely limited. He won’t make many errors, but he won’t get to very much either and should be considered a below-average second baseman both offensively and defensively. Given his age and his bad knees, I have no idea why Omar Minaya decided to ink him to a four-year deal. But he did, so we should all get used to seeing Castillo hit singles and field the occasional groundball for the next few years.

Jose Reyes. Me: 775. BP: 788.

I’ve come around to the idea that Jose is not going to be a power hitter, and my guess for him reflects this belief. That said, he’ll provide us plenty of value with his speed and defense, in addition to being a plenty serviceable hitter at the plate. In short, I still love you Jose! Bring back the Professor Reyes bit!

David Wright. Me: 900. BP: 935.

David is a beast at the plate, and I expect him to continue to hit like one well into the next decade. I would say his fielding is underrated, but then again he won a Gold Glove last year that he probably didn’t deserve, so I guess his fielding is overrated. But know that David has excellent range at third, and I expect him to cut down on his throwing errors as he gains more and more major-league service time. BP and I both have him coming down from his mammoth 962 OPS in 2007, but I have him coming down a little further. Maybe my subconscious is just trying to lock in that 900 number and be satisfied. I mean, I personally would take a 390 OBP and a 510 SLG from David right now. Anything above that would be gravy.

Brian Schneider. Me: 700. BP: 664.

I don’t know much about Schneider, so my opinion doesn’t really add anything here. From everything I’ve read, though, he’s pretty much useless at the plate. I expect him to hit his career OPS of 700, while BP is seeing him as more like the player of last year, who posted a whopping 662 OPS. To be fair, Schneider did have a 649 OPS in 2006. (Sigh.) I don’t care how good he supposedly is defensively, there’s almost no way Schneider adds value to our team if he’s this disastrous at the plate.

Moises Alou. Me: 850. BP: 852

We all know Mo can hit. No one knows if he ever actually will.

Carlos Beltran. Me: 880. BP: 864.

Underappreciated by many Mets fans, Carlos Beltran is a tremendous hitter when healthy, and a pretty damn good hitter even when he’s a little nicked up. My guess for him represents cautious optimism that he’ll be slightly less nicked up this year than last, although I am worried about his molasses-like start to spring training this year (and by that I mean his inability to get on the field). BP sees Carlos doing basically what he did last year. I expect slight improvement.

Ryan Church. Me: 800. BP: 821.

Here’s another guy who was underrated in the minds of many baseball people until the Mets traded for him. He wasn’t worth giving up Lastings Milledge—not by a country mile—but Church can hit. We’ll see how he does in a full-time role, but I don’t expect a major drop-off from his rate stats of last year. Interestingly, BP actually sees him improving his rate stats. That’s good news.

Endy Chavez. Me: 705. BP: 696.

Endy is not much of a hitter, unfortunately. If he were, he’d be an everyday player easily given how he good he is in the field. He’ll make a great fourth outfielder for us, as he’s been for the last two seasons.

Ramon Castro. Me: 780. BP: 787.

Ramon, on the other hand, is an excellent hitter for a catcher. He hasn’t ever played a full season and the Mets don’t expect him to. I (along with everyone else) just hope he’ll be healthy enough to play about half the season, preferably the half during which Schneider is unable to play because of some injury or other. The days of Sandy Alomar Jr. and the like (as players) better be long over.

So there’s my take on the hitters. I’m going to make BP the early favorite in our prediction war (no surprise there), and I certainly hope their numbers are better than mine, as their numbers are higher for six of the ten hitters listed. Next week, I’ll take a look at the pitchers in Part II. And then it will be almost time to play ball!

With Moises Alou likely out for at least the first month of the season, it remains somewhat of an open question who’ll be filling Mo’s shoes and playing left field for the Mets to kick off 2008. Here’s my take on some of the names that have been tossed around. I’ll give you the perspective both as a stats guy, and purely as a fan.

Barry Bonds

Stats guy says: Fantastic! This guy has a career OPS of 1.051, and his OPS last year was even higher! That shouldn’t really even be possible. We can play him in left for a few weeks, spelling him in the late innings and in day games with Endy Chavez, and it will be even better than if Alou were healthy. Come to think of it, why don’t we just sign this hitting machine to be our left fielder for the entire season?

Fan says: Barry Bonds? Are you kidding me? You want me to root for Barry F’ing Bonds? This guy is not only a cheater, he desecrated one of the most sacred records in all of sports and did it with a smile on his face. Plus, haven’t you noticed he’s just a tad on the surly side? I was booing this guy back when he had a normal-sized head. And now I’m supposed to root for him? I want a world championship as much as the next guy, but I seem to remember renouncing Satan somewhere along the way. Also, we’re not seriously thinking of replacing Moises Alou with a guy older than Moises Alou, right?

Endy Chavez

Stats guy says: Meh. His career OPS is under 700, and even during his renaissance of the last three years it’s 720. Sure, he’s a great glove and a good baserunner—an excellent choice for a fourth outfielder. But Chavez doesn’t have the bat to be an everyday player.

Fan says: How can you not love Endy Chavez? Don’t we all remember that catch he made? When Scott Rolen’s ball was heading towards the wall, even though we all knew it had the distance, we somehow all believed that Endy would make that catch. It’s not just that, though—he won a game with a drag bunt last year, and he hit a homer against the Yankees, and he made about a million other awesome catches that weren’t quite as well remembered as that other one. Yes, let’s make Endy Chavez the left fielder. That will have me smiling every day.

Kenny Lofton

Stats guy says: He did a very serviceable job in the AL last year, compiling a 781 OPS and 23 stolen bases to go with only 7 CS. He’s a lefty, though, which would mean we’d likely have a lineup that goes SSRSLLLLP (S = switch, P = pitcher), if you care about such things. Still, he’d be a fine fit for a month, in my opinion.

Fan says: You really want to replace Moises Alou with a guy who’s almost as old as Moises Alou?

Xavier Nady

Stats guy says: Well, at least we know he can hit left-handed pitching—to the tune of an 881 OPS over the last three seasons. He would give us the lineup balance we’ll be missing in Alou’s absence. But it’s not as though we can just go out there and grab Xavier Nady. The Pirates are now run by someone intelligent, and why would he hand over Nady without us giving him something of actual value in return? And since we’re not looking to give up any value, we’re just looking to plug a hole for a month, we probably shouldn’t be trading for Xavier Nady.

Fan says: I love Nady! Remember when he was here and he hit the hell out of everything? (Stats guy interrupts: actually, his numbers last year were basically the same as his numbers with us.) And the only reason we ever traded him in the first place was because Duaner Sanchez got in a car accident. And remember when Nady had that appendicitis? We all felt bad for him then. We should do whatever it takes to get Nady back. I miss him.

You can imagine that overall I’m a little conflicted about the whole left field situation. I’d probably be in favor of just living with Endy and the rest of the bench for a month. What I’m really in favor of is getting Alou healthy as soon as possible.

By now, we’ve all heard the rundown. Of the Mets eight starting position players, five of them are suffering with some form of injury, and one of the supposedly healthy is Moises Alou. Of the Mets five projected starting pitchers, one is hurt, and another is Pedro Martinez. Of the 12 bench players and bullpen members, at least four are dealing with injuries. All this, and we’ve got four solid weeks before the games start.

“I’m sure they will all be fine,” my colleague Matt Cerrone writes over at MetsBlog. I wish I could share his optimism. Carlos Delgado, Luis Castillo, Ryan Church, Brian Schneider, and Carlos Beltran, the five nicked-up starters, have an average age of about 31 and a half. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that one or more of them will have trouble staying healthy throughout the season, given that they’re hurt already. Then of course, Alou is 157 years old, and a mortal lock to visit the DL at some point in the near future. With the bench players almost equally banged up, and the AAA replacement options mostly traded away, and two-fifths on the starting rotation taken up by frail old guys, we’re on very thin ice here.

It gets scary when I start asking myself the what-ifs. What if Marlon Anderson actually has to play first base for the entire season? (I assume everyone saw the collision in right field, yes?) What if Church really can’t hit lefties, and no one on the bench can either? What if John Maine or Oliver Perez can’t repeat their successes of last season? And, heaven forbid, what if Jose Reyes or David Wright is actually not as good as we think he is?

We are the clear favorites in the NL East, but anyone who’s treating this season as a celebratory march into the playoffs is out of his mind. It’s easy, ridiculously easy in fact, to envision a scenario where we win between 83 and 87 games and have to endure another offseason of hand-wringing.

So, everyone please get healthy. Everyone please get ready. And please guys, get all the wins in April and May that you can. We may very well need them in September.

Tomorrow, the Mets take the field against players in opposing uniforms for the first time this year, and few outside of Port St. Lucie will care. It’s merely an exhibition with some college kids, and the Mets will feature at least two pitchers I’d never heard of before a few days ago (apparently Nate Field is a 32-year-old who spent a couple seasons in the Royals bullpen and has a career ERA over 5, and Ryan Cullen is a 28-year-old who has spent eight years working his way from rookie ball to AAA—he actually pitched well in relief for New Orleans last season). But then there’s Friday. Ohhhhh, Friday. Friday will feature the first game we New Yorkers actually get to see (1 p.m., SNY), and it will feature the Mets debut of starting pitcher Johan Santana.

This will be the most anticipated spring training game in Mets history. There, I said it. I don’t mean that it’s a must-win spring training game, or even that I will care who wins the game. The days of important exhibition games died with the Mayor’s Trophy, and the beginning of interleague play and the regular season rivalry with the Yankees—though I still remember gloating to Yankee-fan friends over an 11-0 Mets spring training victory in the early nineties (if anybody finds a date for that, you’re my hero). I mean that I’m looking forward to this spring training game as I’ve looked forward to no other.

First and most obviously, Santana, the biggest offseason acquisition in Mets history, takes the mound. Never before has there been so much hype around seeing a player in a Mets uniform. I’m sure people were excited back in 1966 when the Mets won the Tom Seaver lottery, and I know people were excited when the Mets signed Bobby Bonilla and paid him (what was then) a ton of money, and of course we can all still remember the Carlos Beltran and Pedro Martinez celebrations. But Seaver was just a college pitcher, and though the other three were elite players, none of them could’ve be considered the best in the game at the time we got them. In Santana, the Mets have the best pitcher in the game, at his prime—or at least, that’s what everyone (including me) seems to think. We get to see him on Friday.

Second, this is a sorry time of year for sports, made even sorrier because the NCAA hoops schedule is running really late this year. We should be getting ready for conference tournaments this Saturday March 1. Instead, we have another entire week of regular season still to go. The major conference tournaments don’t start until March 12, and the NCAA tournament doesn’t start until March Freaking Twentieth. With nothing else to focus on, I’m certainly more excited than I ordinarily would be to watch the orange and blue on Friday.

Finally, this is our chance to lose The Collapse once and for all. The last time any of us watched a Mets game was on that fateful Sunday, when by 1:30 p.m. the big decision became whether to go somewhere to catch the Phillies game, or to stick it out with the likes of Jeff Conine, Jorge Sosa, and Sandy Alomar Jr. In the end, of course, it didn’t matter which game we watched. We all found out the result. On Friday, we get to see something completely different.

It’s time to enjoy baseball again. It’s time to watch what might be the best Mets team of the last 20 years. It’s time for us to see this new pitcher we’ve been hearing so much about. This Friday, it’s time to get started.

Baseball Prospectus has once again made its painstakingly-considered PECOTA projections for the new baseball season. Happily, the Mets are projected to finish first in the NL East by ten games. Based on this projection, some might even consider us “the team to beat.” (Hah!)

Last year I made my own predictions for each hitter’s OPS and each pitcher’s ERA and tracked my progress against BP’s throughout the season. In the end, BP came closer on nine of the 16 players for which I made my guesses, but at least I put up a respectable fight.

While we’re at it, let’s look at some other things I said in columns at various points last year.

“I expect us to be in the top three (in the NL) in runs allowed.” (March 13, 2007)
WRONG. Six freakin’ teams (the Padres, Cubs, Giants, Dodgers, DBacks, and Braves) all alowed fewer runs than we did.

“I expect to be in the top three (in the NL) in runs scored.” (March 13, 2007)
WRONG. We finished fourth behind the Phillies, Rockies, and Braves. You could argue that we had a top-three offense and that the Phillies and Rockies were benefited by hitter’s parks, but I specifically predicted runs scored.

“I expect us to win a lot of games–more than 90.” (March 13, 2007)
WRONG.

“I expect Mike Pelfrey to have a fantastic year.” (March 13, 2007)
WRONG.

“I expect Lastings Milledge to play the bulk of the innings for us in rightfield.” (March 13, 2007)
WRONG. Man, that one still hurts.

“I expect Paul Lo Duca to have a down year.” (March 13, 2007)
RIGHT. In poker, we say even a blind squirrel can sometimes find a nut.

“I expect Carlos Delgado, who quietly played hurt most of last season, to have a big year.” (March 13, 2007)
WRONG.

“I expect Jose Valentin to fall off considerably.” (March 13, 2007)
RIGHT.

“I expect Jonathan Adkins to prove more valuable than anyone thinks he will be.” (March 13, 2007)
WRONG. Boy, why did I ever think that Omar Minaya might’ve traded Heath Bell and Royce Ring for somebody halfway decent?

On projecting Jose Reyes - “This is one where I’m quite confident I’m going to beat the staff of Baseball Prospectus.” (April 23, 2007)
WRONG. As we all know, Jose got off to a torrid start, only to be mired in a second-half slump that eventually dropped his season-long OPS to a mere 775. I had predicted 890. BP had predicted 766 (these guys are good).

“David Wright is not going to hit the 29 home runs that BP projected” (April 23, 2007)
WRONG. Hey, he hadn’t even hit one at the time I wrote that!

“I have a lot of confidence in Aaron Heilman, and predict that he will end the season with a lower ERA than he has now (3.07).” (May 10, 2007)
RIGHT. He ended with 3.03. Phew.

OK, so I was wrong about a lot of things Mets last year. The only good news is, if you look at the stuff everyone else was writing, I wasn’t the only one. So why, then, would I keep making predictions about stuff when it seems pretty clear I don’t know what I’m talking about? Answer: because it’s fun.

I’m not quite ready to make this year’s predictions just yet, but I do want to post some leanings I have about BP’s new numbers.

David Wright: OVER 21 SB. BP projects David to steal 13 fewer bases than last year, and I just don’t see it. He was successful on 87 percent of his attempts last year, and he’s still young. There’s no reason for him not to steal.

Moises Alou: UNDER 406 Plate Appearances. He didn’t have that many last year or the year before, and he turns 42 in July.

Ramon Castro: OVER 256 Plate Appearances. God willing.

Johan Santana: UNDER 2.94 ERA. I read about this guy somewhere. They said that in 16 career starts against NL teams, he has a 2.16 ERA and a 0.83 WHIP. Also, apparently fewer than half of those games were played in Shea Stadium.

Oliver Perez: UNDER 4.22 ERA. He posted a 3.56 last year, though he gave up 20 unearned runs, which is never a good sign. Still, I see Ollie improving, not regressing, and would be very surprised if he doesn’t beat his 4.22 projection in 2008.

Scott Schoeneweis: OVER 4.05 ERA. I have no confidence that Willie Randolph will use him correctly (i.e., he’ll put him in against more than zero righties), and therefore predict doom for his ERA.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Fuller predictions coming soon. Enjoy spring training!

It’s just three short days until pitchers, catchers, and David Wright report to Port St. Lucie to start their work. What a glorious time to be alive! The expectations for the 2008 season might be higher than any I’ve experienced in my 24 spring trainings as a fan. This is a Mets team that is supposed to win the National League, and is supposed to have an excellent chance of taking the whole damn thing. Wow.Some might say that nothing short of a World Series win can be considered a success for this club. It’s true that a championship would be the ultimate accomplishment, and gratify us as fans for years to come. After all, none of the teams I root for, in any sport, has won a championship since 1986—and even if they had, I would trade any number of victories in the lesser sports for just one more New York Mets World Series championship. Having said all that, I disagree that nothing less than a championship will do. I tremendously enjoyed the 1999, 2000, and 2006 seasons. Sure they were bittersweet in the end, but they were great rides while they lasted.

How much better is it, then, to have not just a great ride, but a title to go with it? I mentioned in my last column that it’s hard to evaluate how good a trade is from a fan’s standpoint, because we don’t really have a metric for measuring fan gratification. Indeed, most of the analysis of the Johan Santana trade fell into two camps: “Yeah, we got Johan!” or “Boo, we spent way too much to get Johan.” In my view, neither camp has it quite right. The “Yeah!” camp overlooks the idea that it might be tougher for the Mets to compete in the future because of the Johan trade and signing. The “Boo!” camp overlooks the idea that Mets fans don’t care if we paid a little too much to get Johan, so long as we still have money to spend, and so long as Johan brings us a championship.

The fans mostly only care about what happens to the product on the field, not what it cost to put it there. To evaluate the Johan trade in terms of dollars doesn’t really make sense. It would make more sense to evaluate the trade in terms of what it brings to us, as fans. In an attempt to come up with a measure to accomplish this feat, I propose the following totally arbitrary point system for fan gratification:

World Series championship: 1,000 points
LCS win: 50 points
Divisional series win: 50
Division title: 100 points
Wild card playoff appearance: 50 points
Regular season win: 1 point

The championship is the mother lode, but getting to the playoffs is still far better than not, and winning a playoff series enhances a fan’s enjoyment that much more. The 1999 season is far more memorable to me because of Todd Pratt’s walk-off homer in the divisional round, and the 2000 season would sit far differently in my mind without John Franco’s strikeout of Barry Bonds, or Mike Hampton’s complete-game shutout against the Cardinals. Also, even if you don’t win a playoff series, getting to the playoffs as a division winner is better than getting in as a wild card. (The clinching celebrations in 1986, 1988, and 2006 seemed far more warranted than those of 1999 and 2000.) To fans, getting to the playoffs matters, how you get there matters, winning playoff series once you’re there matters, and winning world championships matters a lot.

Based on this system that I just made up, here are fan gratification point totals for some Mets seasons.

2007: 88 points
2006: 246
2005: 83
2003: 66
2000: 244
1986: 1,258
1969: 1,250

The two championships are each more than five times better than any other season in our history—as it should be. 2007’s dismal ending made it only about a third as gratifying as 2006, but still 33% more gratifying than 2003, when we won a mere 66 games. If we ever do win a World Series in the current playoff system, it will likely be more gratifying than the championships of 1986 and 1988 because of the extra playoff series involved. This seems right to me. It’s a lot tougher to win three playoff series than two. Also, even though we got to the World Series in 2000, that season scores about the same as 2006. The playoff run in 2000 was great, but so was the regular season/division title of 2006. The scores reflect this fact.

The system isn’t perfect; for example, Robin Ventura’s grand single is nowhere accounted for, and that ain’t right. But while it’s not perfect, and while I completely pulled these numbers out of…the sky, I like this system that I’ve invented. If someone could tell me accurately what our chances of winning a title, a division championship, a playoff series, or a playoff berth were before and after the Johan trade, and then do that for every season of Johan’s contract, I would feel comfortable applying my own system to form an opinion about the trade. Without that information, however, I think I might’ve just wasted some time playing around with numbers before the season starts. Oh well. I guess the point I was really driving at is this—let’s win the World Series this year, shall we?

Here’s what we know: Johan Santana is a Met. Over the last three seasons, he has probably been the best pitcher in baseball. Just look at the numbers: 100 starts, 684 1/3 innings pitched, 144 walks, 718 strikeouts, 2.99 ERA, 1.01 WHIP. Staggering. Mind-blowing, really. When you consider that he’s moving from a pitcher-neutral park in a hitter-friendly league to a pitcher-friendly park in a pitcher-friendly league…well it just makes Mets fans drool.

Here’s what we don’t know: Was the Santana trade a good one for the Mets organization? Wait a minute, didn’t I just get finished telling you how great Santana is? Yes I did, but there are many other factors that play into evaluating a trade like this one. First, we must consider the price. We gave up four prospects in order to get the trade done. Evaluating prospects is an inexact science, but none of the four we traded were considered blue-chippers. So far, so good. Next, we have to consider what we got. Wait, we got Johan Santana, right? Not exactly. We got Johan Santana for this year, and the rights to exclusively negotiate a contract extension for him.

Some people marvel that we got Santana for less than the Diamondbacks paid for Dan Haren, and less than the Mariners will likely pay for Erik Bedard. One difference is that Haren is under contract for three more years. Bedard is a little tougher to explain, as he will become a free agent after this season. Maybe the Mariners will overpay. Maybe the deal won’t go down at all. The point is, a team doesn’t just trade for a player, it trades for his contract. The Mets could’ve decided to wait a year, and then tried to land Santana via free agency. The downside was that Santana’s contract would’ve cost more, we might not have been able to sign him even if we’d made the best offer, and the Twins might’ve traded him to another big market club, taking away our chances to ever get Santana. The upside was, we could’ve potentially landed Santana and kept our four prospects. This is why I disagree with my colleague Matt Cerrone when he writes, “instead, we could have collectively hoped and prayed that one of Mike Pelfrey, Phil Humber, Kevin Mulvey or Deolis Geurra would turn in to Santana.” No, it wasn’t that black-and-white. We could have possibly had Santana, and still had all those guys. Just not in 2008.

So how do we analyze the trade? I don’t think we, as fans, are interested in whether the Santana trade will be a profitable one for the Mets organization in terms of dollars and cents. As fans, the value of our team should be measured in championships, and to a far lesser extent divisions titles, playoff appearances, and wins, probably in that order. A championship is the ultimate prize, though. Most fans I talk to would probably enjoy a championship ten times more than a mere playoff appearance. Just ask those of us who were along for the ride in 2006.

If Johan Santana appreciably increases our chances of winning the World Series, then I am all for the trade. The problem is, it’s very hard for one megastar to appreciably increase a team’s chances of winning the World Series. No matter how good a player is (and as I noted above, I think Santana is a masterful pitcher, the best in the game), there is still so much luck in baseball’s playoff system that no team can have more than, say, a 25 percent chance of winning the title going into the season. If we’re going to be optimistic, the Mets went from about a 10 percent chance to a 20 percent chance of winning the 2008 World Series with the Johan trade. (These are not scientific calculations, they’re just numbers I’m using to make a point—but I do believe those guesses are pretty reasonable.) But we don’t know the front office’s plan for 2009 and beyond. Pedro Martinez, Oliver Perez, El Duque, Carlos Delgado, and Moises Alou all become free agents after this season. With our prospects now depleted, it will be very hard to replace these guys from within. Do we really have enough money to replace all these guys with quality options via free agency? Are there even enough quality free agents out there to do it? Does the Santana trade double our chances of winning the World Series of 2008 at the expense of lowering our chances in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013? Do we drop back down to a 10 percent chance in all those years? And if so, should we have maybe held off a year and tried to pry Santana loose via free agency?

I don’t know these answers, and because I don’t know these answers, I objected to many of the trade offers I heard rumored for Santana. Specifically, I was against including Jose Reyes in any trade, I was against any four-prospect trade that included Fernando Martinez (who is supposedly the only blue-chip prospect we have), and I was against any trade that involved more than four prospects. Let’s give Omar Minaya some credit. He got the deal done for four second-tier prospects. Omar’s refusal to give up Martinez means that this trade clearly wasn’t a bad one for the Mets. But it wasn’t clearly a good one either.

As we approach Spring Training without having decided on a starting rotation, we fans, and indeed the Mets front office, seem to be getting desperate for a solution. We’re so desperate, in fact, that it was recently reported in the Rocky Mountain News that the Mets were “close” to signing Livan Hernandez. Thankfully, sources within the Mets have refuted the claim, but they acknowledge that Livan is one of the veterans they will look to sign should the Mets fail to land Johan Santana.

I’ve heard bandied about many reasons why signing Livan would be good for the Mets. 1) he will “eat innings”; 2) he is the best choice in an atrocious free agent class; 3) he’s El Duque’s half-brother, and wouldn’t that be fun? 4) the signing would allow us to push our younger pitchers to the side for a few years while they develop.

In case you haven’t guessed, I think all these reasons are bunk.

First, “eating innings” isn’t an asset. You can find a steady stream of AA and AAA pitchers to throw as many (poorly-pitched) major league innings as you want, provided your only goal is to “eat innings.” You could even do it without burning prospects. There really isn’t much value in having one lousy pitcher eat the innings versus having twenty lousy pitchers eat the innings. Who knows, one of the twenty lousy guys might even turn out to be good.

Second, even if Livan were the best choice in the free agent class, that’s not a reason to sign somebody. In fact, it may even be a reason not to sign somebody, because you’ll almost certainly be overpaying (see Zito, Barry). You sign a free agent because it benefits your organization to do so. If none of the free agents will benefit your organization, you don’t sign one just for the sake of signing one.

Third, it might be fun for Livan and El Duque if they got to play on the same team, but it doesn’t change Livan’s value as a pitcher, and we certainly shouldn’t spend millions of dollars on someone just to make El Duque slightly happier. He seems like a pretty happy guy already.

Fourth, if our younger players are going to be just as good as the veteran we sign, then we want to push our younger players into the big leagues. I’m sure many of my readers have heard the stat guy’s adage, “there is no such thing as a pitching prospect.” Those who already agree with this idea need no further explanation. For those who don’t agree, let me ask you this: if one of our best prospects, a prospect you considered close-but-not-quite-ready for major league action right now, were to (God forbid) suffer a career-ending injury in 2010, would you rather he’d pitched for the Mets for two years first, or would you rather he never wore a Mets uniform? Put another way, would you rather our prospect became major league-ready in the minors, where he threw major league stuff for a year or two before we had room for him; or would you rather he became major league-ready in the majors, so that every one of his major league caliber pitches were actually thrown to major leaguers?

It’s fun to refute all the bogus arguments for signing Livan, but while we’re at it, why don’t we make a rock-solid argument for not signing Livan? And here it is: he’s a terrible pitcher. Last year he struck out 90 batters in 204 1/3 innings. He walked almost that many (79). His WHIP was 1.60. Here is an exhaustive list of the Met pitchers who had a higher WHIP last year: Mike Pelfrey, Jason Vargas, Aaron Sele, Brian Lawrence, Chan Ho Park, Lino Urdaneta, Willie Collazo, and Dave Williams. Not exactly a Cy Young Award ballot. Jorge Sosa’s WHIP was 1.33. You want to say that last year Livan Hernandez had an off-year? Fine. In 2006 his WHIP was 1.50, and he struck out 128 batters in 216 innings. If it’s ERA you’re interested in, he posted a 4.93 last year, and a 4.83 in 2006. There’s no other way to spin it. He stinks. And we shouldn’t exactly be expecting him to improve at age 33.

Signing Livan to a two-year deal, as the Mets are reportedly interested in doing, would be a colossal mistake. Just look at Mike Bauman’s (of mlb.com) article defending a Livan signing. The best he can say is that Livan has a pulse, and he’ll show up for work every day. If that’s not faint praise, I don’t know what is. The Mets would be much, much better off going with their younger players in the number 5 starter’s role than in signing a washed-up veteran to a two-year deal. I guess I should hope we land Johan Santana—even though I’m not in favor of trading the farm for him—just to avoid the Livan disaster.

There once was a team who thought it had its division title entirely wrapped up, only to fall apart in the final weeks of the season. That team, of course, is the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals.

Exactly one year ago today, the Cardinals were feeling pretty good. The Mets had just clinched their division title the night before, and the Cardinals had to assume they would soon follow. Sure, the Mets were 92-58 with a 14.5-game lead, but the Cardinals were 80-69 with a 7-game lead over the Reds, and were assuredly next in line. Over the next seven days, the Cardinals lost seven games. The Houston Astros, meanwhile, won seven games over that same stretch. On September 19, 2006, the Astros, 8.5 games back, had probably left themselves for dead. On September 26, 2006, the Astros were a mere 1.5 games out of a playoff spot.

In case you’ve forgotten, both teams went 3-2 over their final five games, and the Cardinals held on to win the division by a game and a half. And oh yeah, they wound up winning the World Series.

I can’t offer proof that both the Mets and Phillies will win seven games the rest of the way, thus ensuring a 1.5-game victory for the New York side. I can say, however, that these collapses happen, and they don’t have to be fatal.

These are the times that try men’s souls–and I’m talking more about the souls of the fans than the souls of the ballplayers. Management is gambling that Baseball Prospectus, and their cockamamie math that still gave us a 95% chance of winning the division going into yesterday, knows what its doing. Management is gambling that we can go with a six-man rotation and rest our veterans, at the expense of running guys like Brian Lawrence out on the mound. Management is gambling that we can pull Moises “I get a hit every at-bat” Alou if he feels even the slightest stiffness in his quad, just as a precaution. Management is gambling that we can do all these things and still win the division. Management makes this gamble because it is confident that the 2007 New York Mets will not screw this up, just as the 2006 Cardinals didn’t. It may be a heart attack for us fans, but if this patchwork squad (we have, after all, been dealing with some serious injury or other for basically the entire season) can still manage to win the division title, all of the other stuff will be forgotten. Some of you younger fans may not know it, but there’s a saying we Mets fans cling to at times like this (and by the way younger fans, there will be many, many more times like this over the course of your lives): Ya Gotta Believe.

Let’s Go Mets!

(And yes, I plan to claim, once we finally do win that title, that my return to posting here after a long hiatus was the cause of the Mets resurgence.)

Since the last time I posted one of these, we’ve gone 5-11. That’s five wins against eleven losses. Yikes. But we all need to keep in mind the big picture (and maybe, just maybe, that 2-0 win over the Yanks last night will help everyone to do just that). The fact is that we are currently on pace to win 92 games, which is pretty much exactly what we were expected to do going into the season. Considering that we’ve had three different position players and one starting pitcher miss significant time with injuries, and considering that Mike Pelfrey didn’t pan out, and considering that Carlos Delgado is drastically underperforming, I’d say we’re pretty lucky to be where we were “expected” to be right about now.

So how are we doing it?

Overperformer #1: Jose Reyes. Baseball Prospectus projected Jose to post a 766 OPS this year. He’s currently at 866. (I picked him to post an 890.) As badly as the middle of the order has struggled, thank God for Jose.

Overperformer #2: Shawn Green. This one caught everybody by surprise. I picked him to post a 740 OPS, and BP wasn’t much more optimistic, projecting 760. He’s sitting at 823 right now, with an impressive .465 slugging percentage. Green has bailed us out a lot on offense. (We won’t speak of his defense.)

Overperformers #3 and #4: John Maine and Oliver Perez. I don’t think anyone needs to be reminded of how these two guys have so vastly exceeded expectations. Together, they’ve given up 54 earned runs in 162 2/3, for an ERA of 2.99. Let me say that again. When Maine or Ollie are on the mound our ERA is UNDER THREE. Absolutely incredible. Neither BP nor myself projected them to be anywhere near 2.99, or even under 4.00.

Overperformer #5: Orlando Hernandez. His ERA is even better than the kids’. No one in the world thought he’d have a 2.38 at this point of the season. His strikeout rate, however, is down from last year.

Overperformer #6: Jorge Sosa. That he’s performing at all makes him an overperformer. That he’s 6-2 with a 3.42 ERA makes him the most pleasant surprise of the entire team.

I like to be a positive guy, so I won’t say too much about the underperformers. But…

Underperformer #1: Carlos Delgado (obviously). Projected OPS, 876. Current, 686.
Underperformer #2: Carlos Beltran. Projected OPS, 906. Current, 819.
Underperformer #3: Scott Schoeneweis. Projected ERA, 4.30. Current, 6.95. Ugh.
Underperformer #4: Mike Pelfrey. He seems to be getting his act together in AAA, though.

For those who were enjoying the Me vs. BP prediction battle I started at the beginning of the year, the current numbers are below (OPS for hitters, ERA for pitchers). Let’s go Mets this weekend!

Current/BP/Mine
Reyes 866/766/890
Wright 881/925/910
Beltran 819/906/940
Delgado 686/876/930
Alou 819/839/NA
Green 823/760/740
Lo Duca 707/726/695
Valentin 755/776/750

Glavine 4.15/4.05/3.88
El Duque 2.38/4.18/4.42
Maine 3.05/4.33/4.00
Perez 2.93/4.46/4.00
Pelfrey 6.53/4.38/3.85
Wagner 2.15/2.32/2.41
Heilman 3.86/3.81/2.45
Feliciano 1.93/3.90/2.98
Schoeneweis 6.95/4.30/3.67

BP is now beating me for nine of the 16 players we both made picks for. Come on Carloses, put me back in the lead!!