Michael Cuddyer was at Citi Field today entertaining some local kids at a charity event. Afterward while speaking to reporters, he responded to the hype surrounding the Washington Nationals being the best team in the NL East and comments by ownership and management about their powerhouse rotation.
“I think the ‘Baseball Almanac’ would be written a lot differently if you donned a champion in February every year.”
During the Nationals press conference to introduce Max Scherzer, GM Mike Rizzo lauded his new starting rotation which will be headlined by Scherzer and followed by Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Doug Fister and Gio Gonzalez.
“We’ll stack our rotation up with anybody’s in our division, our league and maybe in baseball,” Rizzo told reporters.
Teams owner Mark Lerner called his rotation historic, saying that they could possibly allow the fewest runs ever in the National League.
The plan is to keep Zimmermann and Strasburg, and neither will be traded as some have speculated. At 88, the principle owner Ted Lerner wants to see the Nats win a World Series in his lifetime and is prepared to do anything to make that happen.
The Nationals have owned the Mets in recent years, compiling a 41-15 record against them over the last three seasons, and beating the Mets in 15 of 19 contests, outscoring them 95 to 52.
That said, they lost Mets killer Adam LaRoche and that’s gotta make some of our starters happy. Still, the road to the playoffs for the Mets goes through Washington, have we done enough to make up the 17 win gap from last season?
Is good health, a couple of bounce-back seasons, and improved performances from returning players plus the addition of Cuddyer enough to bridge and overcome that gap? It’s not impossible.
There’s a lot of optimism in Flushing these days, and sometimes great things happen when you least expect it. But silly me… You already knew that… You’re Mets fans.
