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 had, and the attendance reflected it.

Piazza’s first game in New York represented a few of the changes that would be evident during his time in New York. Before Mike’s arrival, the Mets were only averaging 18,177 per game. 32,900 flocked to Shea to see Piazza’s debut as a Met against the Milwaukee Brewers on May 23, and that number would continue to climb as the season continued.

On a Saturday afternoon before Memorial Day, it was Piazza behind the plate and hitting third in the lineup for the Mets. His first two at-bats were uneventful, as he grounded out and then struck out. But in the bottom of the fifth, the Mets’ slugger drilled an RBI double to right-center off of the Brewers’ Jeff Juden to give the Mets a 2-0 lead.

The crowd roared in approval, sounding much louder than the actual capacity at Shea that afternoon. As Daily News writer Mike Lupica said, “hope always seems to pad the house.”

The Mets beat the Brewers 3-0 behind a complete game shutout from Al Leiter. But the story of the day was Piazza. The fans got a tiny glimpse of the greatness that was still  to come

Safe to say, for the first time in a decade, they Mets a face for their franchise.

* * * * * * * *

This Fan Shot was contributed by Michael Rappaport. Have something you want to say about the Mets? Share your opinions with over 17,000 Mets fans who read this site daily. Send your Fan Shot to GetMetsmerized@aol.com. Or ask us about becoming a regular contributor.

Through the use of the scorecard, let’s take a look at how David Wright did this week:

Wright continues to impress everyone this year, and his batting average for the entire year sits at .412. His strikeout count has decreased quite a bit this year, he is not chasing many pitches out of the zone and thus is also getting more walks this year.

Honorable Mentions

These players, although not winning the Player of the Week award, had a very strong showing this week and deserve to be recognized. We will also show how strong a showing they had through the use of the scorecard.

Mike Baxter

Lucas Duda

Miguel Batista (Now on DL)

Tim Byrdak

Rob Johnson (Catcher in Relief)

Not So Hot

The Not So Hot area mentions a few players who did not have a good week this week.

Manny Acosta

Jon Niese

Jon Rauch

Dillon Gee

Mike Nickeas

Andres Torres

Ike Davis

Kirk Nieuwenhuis

Player Of The Week Scoreboard

This area shows the scoreboard of the Players of the Week, and who has won already this season and how many times.

1. David Wright – 3

T2. Kirk Nieuwenhuis – 1

T2. Johan Santana – 1

T2. Andres Torres – 1

Trivia

To finish off the Player of the Week announcement each week, I’ll be asking you a trivia question. The answer will be announced during the next Player of the Week announcement, as well as the first person who answered correctly. Another question will then be asked. Last Week’s Answer is: 16 wins for Tom Seaver in 1967. Adam was the first person to correctly answer the question. So here is this week’s question:

When did David Wright make his Major League debut and against what team?

Put It In The Books! The Mets 2011 season is finally over! What can I say about the Mets 2011 season except thankfully it has finally come to an end. Coming into this season I didn’t expect much and in turn we didn’t get much from this team Sandy Alderson and Terry Collins put out there this year.

I know there are people who will for some reason say this was a good season. I honestly can’t fathom what is so good about a team that finished their season 77-85, just 5 games out of last place. In fact the Mets actually finished worse than last year. That is not what I would call good. Far from it in fact!

I guess the writing was on the wall on how the season was going to go when our GM didn’t offer Jose Reyes, who won the NL batting title yesterday, an extension last off season. In fact he didn’t do much at all last offseason to improve this team. There were some free agent signings of course, bad free agent signings like Chris Young who after starting just 4 games had season ending surgery. That was no shocker, I fully expected to see him wind up on the DL. I know the Alderson defenders will cite that he was cheap but what does that matter? He was brought here to pitch for the season and if the season was only a month then it would’ve been a great signing but that’s not the case. How can we forget the great signing of Taylor Buchholz who went home and was never seen again? Let’s not even get into the mind-boggling 2 year deal that was given to D.J. Carrasco. Capuano was another bad signing by Alderson. R.A. Dickey was not deserving of a 2 year deal for one good year in 2010. Not good!

I know everyone just loves the trades Alderson did for K-Rod and Carlos Beltran. Paying most of K-Rod’s contract for what we got back was a horrible move! These guys are nowhere near worth that kind of money. In fact Alderson got played by Milwaukee. As soon as K-Rod got there, the Brewers got K-Rod to waive his option as K-Rod obviously wanted to test free agency at a year younger. It should’ve been obvious that K-Rod wanted to be a free agent next year when he enlisted the services of Scott Boras.

Beltran’s trade is another instance of paying too much. I thought Alderson was supposed to be great at saving money? Wheeler, a Single A pitcher is not worth 4 million or so dollars. If he was a Triple A pitcher on the cusp of the majors then I wouldn’t have minded so much, but of course Alderson botched this trade, I wouldn’t expect anything else from him.

Normally I would say I’m excited for the World Series to end and wait until next year, but we have to be realistic, Sandy Alderson is not a big market GM. Next year is already off to a bad start. With DJ Carrasco and Tim Byrdak returning to the pen and Terry Collins guaranteed to be back there’s not much hope. Adding to the Mets woes will be the departure of one of the best position players in this franchise’s history Jose Reyes and it wouldn’t surprise me if David Wright is traded.

In conclusion this year was bad and we should expect an even worse one in 2012.

Let me start out by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed myself at the game in Milwaukee on Sunday, in which the Mets salvaged a game and avoided a sweep to a team that previously had a horrible home record.  We recently moved to Madison and a friend with Brewers season tickets invited my wife, 2-year old son and I to the game.  In addition to the outcome being awesome, there were several other observations I had.

First, I saw three other people in the stadium with Mets gear on–THREE.  Being a holiday weekend, I would have thought more folks would venture to the Midwest to see the Mets, but maybe I’m naive about that.

Secondly, that stadium is gorgeous, clean and everyone who worked there was extremely nice, even though it was about 90 degrees with 100% humidity.  Luckily, we had seats in the shade.  Furthermore, getting in and out of the stadium was about as easy as putting mustard on a hot dog–you exit the freeway, turn right and you’re in the parking lot, where someone guides you in.  Now I admit we left in the 9th inning because our kid was being 2, it was hot and the Mets were crushing the home team.  But leaving took about the same time as entering.  Turn around, exit the stadium, turn onto the freeway and you’re heading home.  No traffic in the parking lot or the freeway.  I’ve been to many ballparks, and I’ve never had an in-and-out experience like that one.  I know it’s the kind of thing that is important the older you get, but I thought it had to be mentioned.

Finally, and this is the best part.  I went to fetch my kid some Gatorade, and I missed Luis Castillo’s RBI single in the 6th.  But when I got back to my seat, my wife says, “You’d be so proud of your son.”  Turns out that while everyone in the park was booing Castillo’s hit (or more accurately, booing Jeff Suppan), our 2 year old looks at the field, looks at his mom, and starts clapping.  That’s my boy!

Now before I begin, I’d just like to express my gratitude to him not only for doing the interview but also for his speedy responses.

For the past few weeks all the buzz around baseball has been focused on Hot Stove talk. So I figured why not change things up a bit and talk to a player about baseball in general.

For those of you who are not familiar with him, McClung is a six year veteran in the big leagues and has pitched as both a starter and a reliever for both the Tampa Bay Rays (2003, 2005-2006) and the Milwaukee Brewers (2007-present).

His best year statistically was in 2007 when  he went (6-6) with an ERA of 4.02 in 105.1 innings pitched.

McClung is one of the growing number of MLB players that maintains a Twitter account to interact with his fans on a personal level.

What is pretty unique, in my opinion, is that this interview was conducted entirely over Twitter, which means that both my questions and his responses had to be 140 characters or less (although in the interest of improving readability I have spelled out some abbreviations that were used to accommodate such a small amount of space).

For more on McClung’s use of the popular social media website check out his interview with OnMilwaukee.com’s Andy Tarnoff.

Now without further adieu here is my exclusive Twitterview with Seth McClung:

PH: Throughout your major league career you’ve been a starter and a reliever which role do you prefer and why?

SM: Starting, but I am always one to put the team before myself. I want to win more than anything, therefore I will do what I am asked to do.

PH: The Brewers came so close to winning it all in 2008. What needs to happen for the team to return to the post-season in 2010?

SM: The team that shows up to camp just needs to work hard, I’ll promise to do that and do my best and we will see what happens.

PH: During your years with the Tampa Bay Rays, the team struggled. Could you have imagined them turning it around and reaching the World Series as quickly as they did in 2008?

SM: I always thought that I would be on the team when they did it. I knew they had talent, but I didn’t think it would happen so fast for them.

PH: What was it like watching the players on the New York Mets become so decimated by injuries? Have you ever seen anything similar to that in your career?

SM: It was a hard year for them, but I really didn’t pay that much attention to their fate though.

PH: In your opinion who is the toughest hitter in the National League to get out while you’re on the mound? In the American League?

SM: It’s the big leauges buddy. They’re all tough!

PH: Baseball bloggers these days love to talk about sabermetrics. What’s your personal take on them? Do you look at sabermetric stats when preparing to pitch?

SM: There is a place for numbers, but the only one I care about is the zero at the end of the inning. It’s easy to over evaluate.

And that concludes my candid interview with Seth McClung of the Brewers. Once again I would like to personally thank Seth for doing the interview with me.

But of course, the Mets never make things easy.  Four straight wins later, two against a team they are chasing for the wild card, Colorado, and there is an air of optimism again.  We’re still 5.5 games behind Colorado and San Francisco, with Florida, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston and Milwaukee all there to climb over.  But this thing is far from over, and who knows what the likes of Roy Halladay could do for this team?  Heck, if the Mets did somehow manage to win the wild card, they would have to have a guy like Halladay to pair with Johan Santana in a short series with the Phillies, who now have Cliff Lee behind Cole Hamels.  But it’s hard to imagine the Mets even having the goods on the farm to land a Halladay. 

So what does Omar do now?  As crazy as this sounds, the games tonight and tomorrow afternoon are probably going to determine if something happens before Friday’s trade deadline.  Lose both games, and we might be selling.  Win both and we could be buyers.  Split the games and it could go either way. 

What do you all think?

In the off season we saw both Sabathia and Sheets leave to free agency. Sveum was relieved of managing duties and replaced by Ken Macha (with Willie Randolph as bench coach no less). The Brewers looked doomed!

Entering action this week, the Brewers were in a virtual tie with the St.Louis Cardinals in the Central Division of the National League. How could that be? Forty percent of their starting pitching staff, the number one and number two guys from last year are gone. At first glance the starting five for the Brewers don’t look like much: Braden Looper, Yovani Gallardo, Seth McClung, Jeff Suppan, and rookie Mike Burns who will be making his second big league start against the Mets on Tuesday night.

The Brewers also happen to have some pretty good players on their team. Prince Fielder, JJ Hardy, Bill Hall, Ryan Braun, veteran catcher Jason Kendall, veteran utility man Craig Counsell.

Yes the Brewers lost 40% of their starting staff during the off season, the front end of their staff. For the most part the Brewers have remained healthy, everybody is contributing to the winning. Maybe our Mets should take note.

O’Day reported to Rogers Centre for a game against the Toronto Blue Jays before there was a chance to stitch up a jersey with his name, so he was forced to wear Texas minor-leaguer Kason Gabbard’s jersey. O’Day was thrown into the game in the 11^th, with runners in scoring position in a tied game. Kevin Millar drove O’Day’s offering into the outfield for the walk-off single.

Rangers 7, Blue Jays 8 (11)

In other news, the Philadelphia Phillies were almost no-hit against the Milwaukee Brewers. Brewers starter Dave Bush held the Phillies hitless through 7.1 IP before giving up a pinch-hit HR to Matt Stairs.

The Brewers got HR’s from Ryan Braun and Bill Hall, and a bases-loaded double by Prince Fielder.

Bush became the sixth pitcher this season to lose a no-hit bid in the 7^th inning or later, following Tim Wakefield, Ted Lily, AJ Burnett, Randy Johnson, and Trevor Cahill.

Brewers 6, Phillies 1

Till Next Time