Terry Collins will go to home plate tomorrow with the line-up card and likely get booed. Surely, he’ll hear it when he makes a pitching change. It won’t be fair, but we know few things in baseball aren’t fair.Collins doesn’t have a contract beyond this season, and his lame duck status rises to the surface when the Mets go into a tailspin, as they did last week when they lost a season-high six straight games, and [...]

Daniel Murphy had four hits and Jon Niese pitched a gem as the New York Mets beat the St. Louis Cardinals 5-2 to salvage the final game of the series and avoid the four-game sweep. The Mets got on the board in the third when Jordany Valdespin ignited a two-run rally with a perfect drag bunt in the third and then scored when the red-hot Murphy lined double to score Spin and then came around [...]

Starting Lineup Jordany Valdespin – RF Daniel Murphy – 2B David Wright – 3B Ike Davis – 1B Lucas Duda – LF John Buck – C Rick Ankiel – CF Ruben Tejada – SS Jonathon Niese – LHP Game Notes The Mets (14-23) now have a season-high six-game losing streak for the second time in 2013. They have lost 14 of 18 to drop nine games under .500 this early in a season for the [...]

Any enthusiasm and energy the Mets may have had when they broke camp in St. Lucie and headed north have slowly dissipated. The visions of grandeur that Jon Niese would be the ace of the team, that Lucas Duda and Ike Davis would have breakout seasons, that Collin Cowgill would be the leadoff hitter they haven’t had since Jose Reyes, that Kirk Nieuwenhuis would rake in right field, that the bullpen couldn’t possibly be worse than [...]

Where would this team be without Matt Harvey? Is it safe to say that as of this moment, the only proven and legit core player under the age of 30 this team has is The Dark Knight of Gotham? I like Jon Niese a lot, but is he a core player? Or just an number three pitcher who plays the role of an ace on a very bad team? I quickly threw some numbers into [...]

It must have been fate that I happened to be in my car at 1:00 pm yesterday. After listening to WFAN’s Mike Francesa, I see the other side to this Valdespin issue – in fact it goes beyond Valdespin. I only was in the car long enough to hear his opening monologue, but you know what? He was dead on. Look, Valdespin is a jerk – he’s an immature bench player who constantly finds himself [...]

Including this weekend’s 11-2 flameout loss to Pittsburgh, the Mets have lost Jon Niese’s last five starts, with him giving up 22 runs and not getting out of the fifth inning in three of them. He has not come close to resembling what the Mets think he should be, and that’s the No. 1 starter in their rotation. The first game in that slide, April 18 at Colorado, and the one preceding it, April 12, at [...]

Usually, it isn’t until after the All Star break, when we need to combine series to come up with 3 Ups and 3 Downs. This week was an exception with the Mets winning 2 out of 6 games against the Chicago White Sox & the Pittsburgh Pirates. Unless the Met offense wakes up real soon, we’re going to be in for a long season. Sorry to say, a first baseman batting .190 in the middle [...]

The Mets lost a sleeper this evening to the Pittsburgh Pirates by the score of 7-3 at a sparsely filled Citi Field. Shaun Marcum was making his third start of the season for the Mets and once again failed to last five innings. The truth is he’s looked awful every time out there, but tonight was the worst we’ve seen yet. Marcum, now 0-3, saw his ERA balloon to 8.59 for the season after surrendering [...]

There will be days like Sunday, where the meltdown is complete in all phases, beginning with Jon Niese, who had an inability to get hitters out, an offense that offered little resistance to Tim Hudson, and a porous defense. It’s not alarming the Mets couldn’t do anything against Hudson, but what should be a source of concern is Niese, who was hit hard in his fourth straight start – all lost by the Mets – [...]

This game had a definite carnival atmosphere feel to it as the Atlanta Braves beat the Mets by the score of 9-4 to split the rain-shortened two-game series at Turner Field. What a comedy of errors for the Mets even though the box score would suggest a clean game. I hate sad stories and bad endings so this will be short and sweet bitter. Jon Niese struggled from the word go and while it looks like he [...]