As I type this the Mets are flying to blistering Phoenix with the words of Terry Collins ringing in their ears and mine. The Mets followed up their 1-5 road trip with an 0-6 homestand. Collins’ post-game presser yesterday was filled with promises we’ve all heard before. “Over the next two weeks, the Mets will start playing as they did in the first half”, he said. They would b...
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Of the 30 major league teams, only six are at least 10 games behind in the wild-card standings. The Mets are only 3.5 games behind, a position which should have them as prime buyers. The problem of shopping in the bullpen aisle, say the Mets, is the cost. That translates into not expecting too much. Huston Street and Jonathan Broxton, while manageable in salary, extract a big prospect price the...
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No evaluation of the Mets is complete without a list of disappointments. While 46-40 at the break, the Mets have more to be happy about than not. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t laments. Had everything broken right in the first half, the Mets could be sitting on top of the NL East. Here’s what went wrong: The struggling bullpen: Most of Sandy Alderson’s off-season tinkering was made...
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It is possible this game in 1969 is most remembered from that amazing season. On this date in 1969, and maybe each day since for Tom Seaver, he’ll remember Jimmy Qualls’ sinking single into the left-center gap with one out in the eighth inning to break up his perfect game bid and forced him to settle for one-hit, 4-0 shutout. It was one of 31 hits Qualls had during his career. It was one of five...
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One of my favorite baseball books was “The Year the Mets Lost Last Place,’’ a diary of a three-series stretch in July of 1969 when the Mets played two series with the Chicago Cubs and one with the Montreal Expos. Dick Schaap was the author and book took the form of timeline, nearly to the minute, of those games. One of those games came on this date in 1969 when the Mets beat the Cubs, 4-3,...
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