Mets Are 2 for 2 On DL Stints
The Mets may be 0-2 in the standings but they’ve had success at one thing: injuries. The Mets lead the league in putting people on the disabled list during the regular season after they put a second player there in as many days.
Just one day after announcing that Bobby Parnell has an elbow injury that may require Tommy John surgery the Mets placed outfielder Chris Young on the DL with right quad strain. Young had suffered the injury while the team was in Montreal last weekend and sat out opening day as a precaution. But when he chased after a foul ball in the first inning of last night’s game against the Washington Nationals the injury was aggravated. After the chase he walked gingerly back to position but was taken out of the game at the end of the inning.
I’m not a doctor or an expert in sports medicine so there’s no way I can tell the extent of the injury before last night’s game and if the team should have kept him out of it to begin with. But as a fan this is very disconcerting. The Mets bad history with injuries continues to be a sore point but it’s getting harder to tell who’s to blame. Sometimes a player will withhold that he’s got an injury keeping him from being treated properly. Other times he discloses the injury but the extent is either misdiagnosed or ignored. Other times the player is just not in playing shape. These are just a few scenarios and I’m sure I’m missing many more.
One thing I can say with certainty is that this does not bode well as a team begins a new season. Bad news has a way of spiraling through a clubhouse and bringing it down. I’m not saying that this will happen in this situation but this is a subpar team to start with that may not be able to afford the loss of production and possible distractions that come with multiple injuries early on.
Comments to this post
Parnell On The Shelf
Meet the new season. Same as the old season.
Bobby Parnell had an MRI after complaining of tightness in his forearm after yesterday’s game. The MRI revealed a partially torn ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) in his right arm. This is the same type of injury that lead to Tommy John surgery for Matt Harvey. Parnell will rest for 2 weeks before being re-evaluated but it’s certainly possible he will suffer the same fate as Harvey.
The fact that he is injured should come as no surprise to anyone who has been watching him the last couple of weeks. His velocity is down and he’s been inconsistent. One must question why the Mets didn’t do a more thorough examination during spring training. I used to blame injuries like this on the Omar Minaya regime but so many years later that’s no longer a viable excuse.
Comments to this post
Lineup for Opening Day 2014
Here’s the lineup for today’s opening day game against the Washington Nationals:
| 22 | Eric Young | 2B | ||||
| 12 | Juan Lagares | CF | ||||
| 5 | David Wright | 3B | ||||
| 3 | Curtis Granderson | RF | ||||
| 30 | Andrew Brown | LF | ||||
| 29 | Ike Davis | 1B | ||||
| 15 | Travis d’Arnaud | C | ||||
| 11 | Ruben Tejada | SS | ||||
| 35 | Dillon Gee | P | ||||
- Daniel Murphy had been scheduled to play second base but will instead be in Florida to welcome a new child. His wife went into labor this morning.
- Chris Young was scratched due to a quad strain. Brown will take his place in left field.
Comments to this post
Davis Hiding Injury Irksome
I root for Ike Davis. Like any other member of the Mets I want him to succeed. But then the New York Post breaks a story about how Davis hid an injury and it upsets me.
The injury, to his oblique, occurred while he was struggling early last season and was on the verge of being demoted to AAA. Davis said he hid the injury because he didn’t want people to think he was using it as an excuse for his struggles. This excuse upsets me more than the act of hiding the injury.
Baseball is a team sport. When a player is hurt he owes it to his team, whether he is struggling or not, to be as honest as possible to the team medical staff, manager and front office about the injury. Even if the injury is not how his struggles started he owes it to all these people to make sure he is healthy because an injury will inhibit his efforts to get out of his funk and damage the teams chances of winning.
Comments to this post
Good Night, Ralph
Ralph Kiner played a major role in my teen years. He and Tim McCarver were the signature television game calling partnership in the 1980s and, together with Bob Murphy on the radio, were a very big influence on my development as a baseball fan.
Part of the fun of Kiner was waiting for him to say something incorrectly. We used to make a bit of a game out of telling each other the most atrocious Kiner-ism we could remember. But under that was a great story teller. The tangents he and McCarver would go off on during games were wonderful to me and taught me a lot about the game and it’s history as did his post game Kiner’s Korner segements.
In the last few years, since he suffered a stroke, his appearances on air have been few and far between. Each one a treasure. And though he obviously enjoyed those appearances I always felt sad that they paraded him out there despite his obvious issues. But each appearance was another chance to enter the wonderful mind and experience the great personality that was Ralph Kiner.
Rest in peace.
Comments to this post
How Replay Will Work in 2014
Let’s see if we understand the new MLB instant replay rules.
There are 13 type of plays that are reviewable:
- Home run
- Ground-rule double
- Fan interference
- Stadium boundary calls (e.g., fielder into stands, ball into stands triggering dead ball)
- Force play (except the fielder’s touching of second base on a double play)
- Tag play (including steals and pickoffs)
- Fair/foul in outfield only
- Trap play in outfield only
- Batter hit by pitch
- Timing play (whether a runner scores before a third out)
- Touching a base (requires appeal)
- Passing runners
- Record keeping (Ball-strike count to a batter, outs, score, and substitutions)
Managers may initiate a replay challenge by requesting one from the umpiring crew chief. If the manager wins the challenge he may call for one more review. If the manager loses the challenge he also loses the ability to call a second challenge that game. Each team’s manager may call no more than 2 reviews.
In addition to manager initiated challenges the umpiring crew chief may initiate a review from the seventh inning until the game’s conclusion. At this point of the game a manager that has exausted his challanges for the game may request a review but the umpiring crew chief has full discretion over if the review will take place. Home run calls are also at the discretion of the umpiring crew chief.
The actual review will take place at MLB headquarters in New York. The umpiring crew will have a place near home plate where he can communicate with the replay umpire who will have access to video from ballpark cameras. The replay umpire will overturn the call if he observes that there is “clear and convincing evidence” in the footage available for review. The replay umpire will also decide issues related to an overturned call such as runner placement, etc. The field umpires have no control over a call under review, will not have a monitor to watch along with with the replay umpire and must abide by the replay umpires call.
Teams may have personel in the clubhouse monitoring video and calling into the dugout with suggested plays to review. Home teams must supply visiting teams with the same clubhouse video technology that exists in the home clubhouse.
So are we clear now?
Comments to this post
Looks Like Mets Radio Is Headed To WOR
According to a report on ESPN New York the Mets have come to an agreement to broadcast games on WOR 710 AM. Howie Rose is expected to remain the voice of the Mets.
One of the things I enjoyed about the Mets broadcasts over last season was the ability to listen on FM radio. I can’t receive AM radio in the office and refuse to pay for a full season of one of the MLB audio packages for the relatively few games that are on while I’m at work. I’m curious if with this deal we will still be able to receive games on FM. WOR is owned by Clear Channel, which owns 5 FM stations in the area, so It’ll be interesting to me to see if this shakes out.
Comments to this post
Nets Retiring Jason Kidd’s Number Is A Bad Thing
Last night Jason Kidd’s number was retired by the Nets, the team he lead as a player from the 2001-02 through most of the 2007-08 seasons as a star point guard and now leads as coach. I don’t think anybody can argue with Kidd’s on court proficiency which gained him this honor but I still wonder if this was the right thing to do based on his other behavior. For that matter I question if he was the right pick to coach the Nets.
I can go on and on about the allegations that came out during his divorce. Extramarital affairs, excessive drinking, even wife beating. But, as maligned as it sounds, these things don’t have much, if anything, to do with someone’s number being retired. So let’s focus on his basketball behavior.
In the 2001-02 and 2002-03 seasons, under coach Byron Scott and Kidd’s on court leadership, the Nets were the Eastern Conference champs and represented their conference in the NBA championship finals. They lost both times but the team hadn’t even won the division, much less the conference, since 1974 and had made the playoffs only once in the previous 7 years. Despite this success, Scott did not have Kidd’s support. Kidd approached team management and said a coaching change was needed and that’s exactly what happened.
Needless to say, in the 11 years since then the team has not reappeared in the finals. In fact they haven’t even made the conference finals in that span.
The fact is that since the Nets have been in the NBA their best chance at winning a championship was under Byron Scott.* Kidd would go on to win as a member of the Dallas Mavericks but he sent the Nets franchise into a tailspin that, despite having a great comeback season last year, it has still not recovered from.
So not only do the Nets have a coach who was a coach killer but they compound this silliness by honoring him in retiring his number. No wonder they’ve never won an NBA championship.
*The team won 2 of the last 3 ABA championships before making their NBA debut in the 1976-77 season. These remain the franchises only championships.
Comments to this post
Don’t Expect Too Much From Wheeler
In today’s New York Post columnist Steve Serby discusses Zack Wheeler‘s first start, scheduled for the second game of today’s day-nigh doubleheader with the Atlanta Braves, with Mets great Tom Seaver. In it Seaver warns Mets fans not to judge Wheeler too quickly.
Seaver said the following (directed more toward Wheeler than to fans:
“It’s not gonna happen in one game,” Seaver said. “And you shouldn’t think, ‘Here I am for the next 20 years,’ either. It might be a month, or two months, before you really understand who you are and if you can or cannot do this. This is a continual learning curve.”
But just as Wheeler shouldn’t expect greatness in game 1 of his major league career so should fans not expect it. One game does not make a career. With any luck Wheeler will be around for a while regardless of how he does tonight. So rather than set lofty expectations we should just sit back and enjoy.
Comments to this post
Fun Again… At Least For Two Nights
I haven’t posted much this season because there really hasn’t been much to write about. Sure, if I were a professional writer I’d find what to write about but I do this for fun and not for work. But after the last two nights there is finally something fun to write about. Back to back come from behind wins against a team the Mets have no business beating.
This is not as much about beating the Yankees as some may think. I posted a year or two ago about how I don’t view the Yankees as a rival. The Yankees play in the American league so they’re competing in the standings with a whole other group of teams than the Mets contend with in the National league. The fact that they’re in different leagues also leads to the teams playing a minimal number of games against each other and those are the only times they are direct rivals. Yes, the games are fun and capture our attention more but these teams are really not rivals.
Anyway, the Mets came back from a 1-0 hole two nights in a row to beat a better team 2-1. In the second game they managed to beat a pitcher in a way he had never been beaten before. Mariano Rivera had never lost a game in a save situation without recording an out and he’s likely to never do it again. This does not make the Mets a better team than they were a few days ago but these were exciting games and made this team fun to watch again even if it was just a couple of nights.
But these games also showed more about what the Mets are lacking. Ike Davis continues to struggle. Ruben Tejada also continued his bad play which is now spreading to his fielding. Both of these guys would be given some time off if the Mets had anybody worth playing in their spots. And let’s not forget how thin the outfield is.
Anyway, let’s take some time to enjoy these wins but not too long. Next up is two more games against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium so this feeling may not last.
Comments to this post
