Quote
For this guy to have any shot at all, this is what he has to do. This gives him better chance to have more consistent release point. It makes his off-speed stuff better.
– Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson on fixing Aaron Heilman‘s mechanics to return to the low three-quarters motion he used earlier in his career.
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My Take on the St. Louis Series
It wasn’t a totally lost weekend for the Mets as they dropped 2 out of 3 to the St. Louis Cardinals. The team had been playing well going into the series and this was a good test of how this team would perform against a top notch club. You don’t really know how much a team has improved when they play teams that they are supposed to beat. You really only learn about them when they play teams that are better than them. Such was the case against the Cardinals.
Tom Glavine had a great outing on Friday night indicating that he does, indeed, have something left in the tank. Then on Saturday they overcame a bad outing by Pedro Martinez to keep themselves in the game until Roberto Hernandez allowed two runs to score in the 8th inning including a RBI sac fly by Larry Walker. The Mets went on to lose by one run, 8-7. They could not overcome bad outing by Aaron Heilman yesterday and ended up losing 4-2.
I don’t look at this series loss as such a bad thing. In the series the Mets got a good lift from an aging pitcher we all thought was done and showed character by staying in the game when their ace didn’t have his best stuff. Though it’s 2 losses in 3 games in the standings the weekend wasn’t a total wash. Now the team must use a 3 game series against the Cincinnati Reds at Shea to gather themselves and get ready for next weekends series against the Yankees.
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Notes from a Gameless Thursday
- Our friend Ken Rosenthal at FoxSports.com has some more Mets dish today. In his latest online column Rosenthal discusses teams who are interested in Mike Cameron. According to Rosenthal the Padres have the stronget interest in Cameron who has been on a tear. Since coming off the DL last week the Mets center fielder turned right fielder is batting .476 with 2 HRs and 4 RBIs. Other teams interested in Cameron include the Orioles, Yankees, Rangers and Astros.
- Steve Popper discusses the plight of Tom Glavine at NorthJersey.com.
- The last month or so I’ve been reading The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together. Although it’s been hard to find time to read due to work and the new baby I’m most of the way through it. It’s been a nice read for the most part and I’d have to recommend it to any New York baseball fan or NYC historians. I’d be interested in hearing what others who have read the book think about it. To leave your comment click the comment link below.
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The Metropolitans on John Sterling
The Metropolitans has a post titled John Sterling is a Hack. It’s obvious what he’s talking about based on the title and it echoes my own current thoughts about Sterling.
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Go to Sacramento, Phil Jackson
There’s been alot of talk recently about the possibility of Phil Jackson becoming the next head coach of the Knicks. In reading about this over the last few weeks I have come across a recurring theme whenever anybody “close with Jackson” is quoted. The frequent refrain goes that Jackson wants to go to the team that is closest to winning a championship. What ever happened to the days when a coach wanted to go to the team that provided the best challenge to him? A team with raw talent that he could mold into his grand image of being the best team they could be?
I’m still trying to figure out why so many people are interested in Jackson’s services. Despite his championships he has not proven to me that he can coach a team beyond managing egos and even that skill was a failure to him last year as he left the Lakers and the team was broken up due to a clash between two of his players ( Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant). I know that’s a pretty bold statement but both of the teams he’s coached had hall of fame caliber players on them (O’Neal and Bryant in LA and Michael Jordan in Chicago) capable of making any coaches job easier.
The latest rumor I read (in today’s Post) has Jackson interested in coaching the Sacramento Kings. If Jackson goes to Sacramento then current Kings coach Rick Adelman would become former Kings coach Rick Adelman. Adelman wouldn’t be a bad hire for the Knicks. I’d certainly endorse him more than I would Jackson.
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Zambrano Has Good Outing
Click here for a recap of yesterday’s game.
VÃctor Zambrano had a good outing (6 IP, 3 H, 3 ER) with the exception of the second inning where he allowed all 3 of the runs scored against him. If he can take this through to his next outing then he’s going to back the Mets brass into some tough decisions when Kazuhisa Ishii is ready to return.
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RSS Feed Problems Solved
An interesting thing happened on my way to post this morning. No, I didn’t get box seats from Omar Minaya. I discovered that my RSS feeds weren’t working properly. Though this really isn’t Mets related I figured I’d share the details about this issue here as a public service to anyone else in the blogsphere who may be interested.
I started to try to figure out what may have caused the problem by thinking about what I changed recently that may have caused this issue. Yesterday was a big day as I added 3 plugins (Countdown, Notes and Subscribe me). I also upgraded from WordPress 1.5 to the newly released 1.5.1 version. The upgrade was the biggest change so I began my research there. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one who upgraded and ended up with this issue.
The fix involves replacing one line of code in one of the WordPress files. I’m assuming that if you are still reading this post you are technically adept, not afraid to make a code change and probably even did the upgrade on your own. If my assumption is wrong and you are running 1.5.1 and want to make this change then either proceed with extreme caution or get one of your techy friends to help.
The code change needs to be made in a file called wp-blog-header.php. This file is located in the WordPress install directory. Open the file in a text editor (or in cPanel or whatever way you normally edit files) and search for the following string:
if ( ($client_last_modified && $client_etag) ?
Immediately under this line you will see two lines that begin as follows:
((strtotime($client_last_modified)
Replace the whole second line with the following:
(($client_last_modified && strtotime($client_last_modified) >= strtotime($wp_last_modified)) || ($client_etag == $wp_etag)) ) {
If your text editor has a search and replace feature then search for the following:
((strtotime($client_last_modified) >= strtotime($wp_last_modified)) || ($client_etag == $wp_etag)) ) {
And replace with the following:
(($client_last_modified && strtotime($client_last_modified) >= strtotime($wp_last_modified)) || ($client_etag == $wp_etag)) ) {
All of the code nippets above are single lines of code. My layout wraps them to two lines so when you search and replace be sure that to convert these snippets to single lines.
For more information on it click this link.
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New Features
I’ve added a couple of new features to the sidebar on the right of the page.
- At the end of the links section there are some new links so you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the log using services like Bloglines or MyYahoo.
- Underneath the MLB Scoreboard is a new section titled Upcoming Games. This section lists the next 10 games the Mets will be playing in order of their dates.
I’m always looking for ideas on how to improve the sidebar (and the blog, in general). If you have any suggestions or comments feel free to let me know. My contact information is in the sidebar.
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Quote of the Day
First time I hit a home run and felt guilty about it.
– Mets first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz on his eigth inning, game winning home run against former teammate LaTroy Hawkins
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Doug Mientkiewicz for President
Click here for a recap of yesterday’s game.
Doug Mientkiewicz came up big again with a game winning home run. He’s now hit as many home runs in the first 33 games of the season (6) as he hit in all of last season. I don’t think anyone expects him to continue to rip the ball like this but let’s enjoy it while it lasts. I think he’ll end up with about 15 on the year. Mientkiewicz has turned out to be a great addition to this team with his defense, timely hitting and leadership ability.
Mike Piazza continued his hot hitting in the victory over the Cubs as well. Piazza hit a 3 run homer in the first and knocked in an insurance run in the ninth. The homer tied him with Harold Baines for 48th on the all time list. Congratulations, Mike!
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