MIA 7 4 .636
PHL 6 8 .429
NAT 5 7 .417
METS 3 9 .250
BRV 3 11 .214
WITH NY MET TYPE DIRE HEADLINES SURROUNDING PHL’S HOWAERD, UTLEY, HALLADAY IT APPEARS BOTH OF OUR RECENT NEMESIS MAY BE BOTH SHAKEN & STIRRED DURING THE COURSE OF THE NEXT OFFICIAL 162G GRIND.

MY 2012 RAW “GUT” STANDINGS POSITION FORCAST IS:

NATIONALS
MARLINS
PHILLIES
BRAVES
METS

Also,yes, the team does have hitters. Seriously, look at their offense last year with no Ike and a crappy year from Wright. Yes, Beltran was the RBI leader, but he only had 67 for the Mets. They missed a solid month of Reyes and he limped along the base paths the second half. Somehow, they still put up runs. A full, healthy year from Wright, Davis, Murphy and Duda will not leave us wanting for runs.

True that our starters are pretty much 3 and 4 guys in a good rotation and we’re in a tough division, but thats life. It will be a tough season, but to be worse than 1962 would have to involve a biohazard.

And with healthy lineup they will score more runs but still be just as bad. They are playing sloppy inconsistent baseball and that is exactly the way the team is built – no improving the starting pitching and ignoring strength up the middle specifically catcher & second base.

You ignore the foundations of success you get the results you deserve.

As for the Starters…

Positive-other than Pelf, the rotation has looked pretty good. Everyone expect for RAD has something to prove this year…Santana, Niese and Gee have all given us a positive.

Negative-Pelf has completely sucked…all his off-season work has achieved nothing…he looks worse now then he did last year.

For the Pen…

Positive- Batista, Acosta and Parnell all are fighting for jobs and they all have looked good

Negative- I know that Ramirez, Rauch and Francisco all are supposed to be the “big upgrades” and they all suck…I’m not going to worry about them until the season is closer. I tend to believe that relievers can’t be effective in games that don’t matter.

Defense…

Positive-It’s hard to say, overall the guys who are going to be playing everyday have looked pretty good…it’s the AAAA players who have looked the worst.

Negative- Murph is still learning, on the limited times I’ve seen him make plays…he still covered the bag incorrectly once and his inexperience lead to the ball finding the 5 hole. he still plays the position as a corner infielder. He has looked good making the pivot and throw to 2nd and has made a good throws to 1st.

Hitting…

Positive- Not much, some guys look good, others still seem a little slow. But overall I haven’t been impressed. Bay is still not where I’d expect, but he is slowly looking better.

Negative-There has been no runs getting put up. I hope as we get closer to the start of the season, we’ll start seeing better results from the actual opening day roster.

The Big Negative is health. How can we get an idea of how the Mets are going to perform when we don’t see the Mets on the field playing together.

Really this just points out the biggest problem…there is no depth. Even losing one player will be too much for this roster to over come.

Good Point there Stick!

Pitchers do tend to start out ahead of batters but thats when they are all throwing fastballs early in the count. Because a Pitcher’s best pitch (the fastball) requires no FEEL to throw it, they can do so and if it has decent velocity it has pretty much all it needs.

It’s much harder to throw a mistake pitch when all your throwing are fastballs. Unless your throwing it right down the middle and even when you do the batter still has to catch up to it!

It’s not until they start working on their breaking balls that you see these scores get rung up. Thats because a breaking ball that doesn’t break properly is easily hit!

So I’m not really going to worry about what the pitchers give up at this point.
This is the time they focus on making pitches not making pitches to a particular batter. That doesn’t happen until the last week in ST when they are tuning up for the Reg Season.

As for pelfrey he went 0-4 in 2010 ST and wound up 15-9 during the reg season and was even considered for the All-Star game that year…
So lets just hope thats a pattern that repeats!

The problem is that they’re playing terribly.

They should not be focused on winning/losing/score until the last week of ST when everything should be coming together in preperation for the start of the season.

Couple all that with the fact Wright hasn’t played in a single ST game yet it really doesn’t suprise me they have lost so much.

On the other hand, the Mets–aside from a few bright spots–don’t look like a good baseball club at all. No one is tearing it up at the plate, no really great fielding, some decent starting pitching, and overall a very queasy, sickening feeling. Let’s face it: at the moment it isn’t a team that looks or acts as if it feels good about itself, plays with confidence, etc.

I have no idea what the espirit d’corps is on the team now. But if they start losing faith in one another through April, we will have just a horrible season on our hands.

Not a single friend of mine who is a Mets fan feels excited about 2012, which is really sad and a testament to how much we have all convinced ourselves that this will be one of the fastest lost seasons in modern Mets fans memories.

WHo knows maybe we’ve seen the worst of spring’s ugliness.

And don’t discount how much difference having Ike back is going to make. The way he was going last year, him going down was the killer.

And saddest for Mets fans (and madoff victims) is that this deal could, and should, have been reached well over a year ago.

But, obviously, if it was the regular season, he would have been pitching in and out, etc.

Not saying that Pelf is suddenly going to switch to some effective game mode, just pointing out why even individual performances may not mean all that much.

The last 2 weeks of ST though it is a little different. Up to now, the regulars don’t play much, and many games are decided by guys that are going to be in the minors anyway. So teams winning or losing late thanks to a bunch of guys you never heard of is not that important.

the mental aspect of it? That I can see right now, that getting a few wins will take some pressure off, but I still don’t think the team/players are that focused on it. Still getting their work, etc.

Last couple weeks though is when the MiL guys are back in their camp, and the “real” team is supposed to start playing every day and getting into season mode.

No team wants to stagger into the regular season playing like crap, though being healthy is still job #1. And plenty of teams have played like crap in ST (or looked like world beaters), and as soon as the season starts, they revert to form.