MVN - Most Valuable Network

Rizzi’s “Met of the Month”: Ryan Church

My first ever “Met of the Month” award goes to the Amazin’s new right fielder Ryan Church. The former National tore it up all April, and was arguably the Mets best player both at the plate and in the field. David Wright was well on his way to this award all month, but in the final week Church overtook him and he has earned it.

Ryan leads the team in batting average (.316), runs (21), and hits (31), and is second on the team in slugging percentage, RBI, and homeruns. He has picked up plenty of clutch hits, knocked in key runs several times, and hit the ball with authority on a nightly basis. He has been a leader by example on the field and never seems to take an inning off, let alone an entire game. I ripped the trade that brought Church over from Washington when Omar Minaya first made the deal, but now I can barely remember who we traded away. (Oh yeah, he was that rapper we had for a while, wasn’t he?)

The big rap on Church was that he could rake righties, but looked lost against lefties. That has not been true at all thus far, as he dominated left handed pitchers all month. He is actually hitting better against lefties than he is against righties so far, hitting .343 with 2 hoemruns and 6 RBI vs. southpaws.

Along with being the Mets most consistent hitter, Church has combined with Carlos Beltran to form a fantastic defensive 1-2 punch in the outfield. He gets great jumps on balls, covers a lot of ground, and has a cannon for an arm. Church has two outfield assists and has yet to make an error. He also has arguably the best defensive play of the season, when he robbed Mark Teixeira of an extra base hit in a 6-3 win against the Braves on April 27.

The bottom line is Church has been reliable every day all month, and there’s no other position player I can say that about right now. Church deserves this honor, and I can only hope that he keeps this up for 5 or 6 more months.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Met of the Month, Ryan Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.