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!!