It’s now been over seven years since that promising Opening Day in 2006, which was only day one of a season that took the Mets just a big swing away from the National League Championship trophy, and a visit to the World Series. With the exception of a few R.A. Dickey masterpieces, and a special no-hitter, there hasn’t been much cheering in Flushing since that magical run in 2006. The Metropolitans are a team that has always been [...]

The following comes to us from the folks at the GrandstandGazette.com and penned by Christian Fazzini. At the start of the season, the Mets were desperate for starting pitching. R.A. Dickey was traded, which turned out good for the Mets since he is getting rocked in the American League. Johan Santana is out for the season with another injury. What else is new? So what would the Mets do now? Would the ace of their staff really [...]

Isn’t it amazing what kind of a player David Wright can be when he’s actually surrounded by some legitimate major league talent? Currently, Wright is enjoying some of the most spectacular baseball he’s ever played in his career, and why not? We’ve all seen what the Mets All Star third baseman could do before when he had great protection in the lineup. It was no coincidence that Wright had his best two seasons as a [...]

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, righthander Chien-Ming Wang tossed six shutout innings to lead Chinese Taipei to a 4-1 victory over Australia. The 2013 World Baseball Classic is officially underway. As the tournament kicks off, the sentiment from most fans I run into is that they view the WBC as a “big pain in the ass”. Some fans resent the fact that their team’s top players have bolted their Spring Training camps in Arizona and Florida [...]

In Part One of my story, we left off with a discouraged Collin McHugh coming off a mediocre junior year at Berry College in Georgia. McHugh found himself at home watching the 2008 MLB Draft, more out of habit than because of any expectation that he would be selected.  But then the phone rang… It was the New York Mets. By Elliot Chester McHugh was floored. Beasley had known it was coming. “I knew Collin [...]

By Elliot Chester I. Collin McHugh’s third pitch as a major league baseball player was not a bad one, a four-seam 91-mile-per-hour fastball that tailed away from Charlie Blackmon, a slap-hitting nobody who had just two hits all season entering the late August game. But Blackmon, recently installed as the Colorado Rockies’ starting right fielder due to a rash of injuries, stayed with the pitch and sliced the ball past the jutting field-level seats of [...]

In 2003, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, a book written by Michael Lewis, sparked the interest of not only baseball fans, but also management and statistical scholars across the country. [1] Recently in 2011, this book was introduced as a sports drama movie starring Brad Pitt. Basically the storyline of the book encompasses how the main character Billy Beane, General Manager of the Oakland Athletics, implemented a measurement and feedback system based [...]

When the Mets acquired Mike Piazza from the Florida Marlins on May 22, 1998, they didn’t just acquire one of the premier catchers in baseball. They also found the face of the franchise for the the next eight years. At the time of the trade, the Amazins were a team on the rise under Bobby Valentine. However, despite an 88-win season in 1997, the Mets lacked the sizzle (or star-power) that the crosstown rival Yankees [...]

The year was 2000, and the Mets had just lost to the Yankees. Being 20 and in college, I was surrounded by Yankees fans that were giving me the business. I was left with only one reply, “wait until next year!, we will sign A-Rod and take this town over!”. Then the rumblings began about how A-Rod was a 24 and 1 type of player. Well, we all know how that worked out for the [...]