MVN - Most Valuable Network

You know how I said the Nats needed to get lucky?

Yeah, last night that didn’t happen. A couple of crappy light hits and the game is over.  The Nats need not only good play - but good luck too. They haven’t gotten much of either.

Losers walk, Winners talk.   Still somehow MVN’s Mets site “Take the 7 train” did a couple of Q&A’s with me.  To make things right again, I did one with them.  Here’s Jessica Bader’s answers to a couple of Mets questions that I had on my head.   Read it - if only to read the rare completely reasonable fan speak.

The Mets collapsed historically last year (sorry).  The national media seems to have put that behind it but as a WFAN listener I know that’s not the case with all fans.  Is it still hanging over your heads and if so, isn’t this season really just a long trudge until August to see what happens when the Mets get there?

I think that if the collapse is still hanging over some fans’ heads (and the people who call in to WFAN tend to be the more fatalistic segment of the fanbase even without a historic collapse as a motivating factor), it’s because certain segments of the local media continue to smack us in the face with it. Last time I checked, the previous season’s record is not a factor in this year’s standings, and I would like to think that the players who were here for the collapse are approaching this season with the motivation to make sure it doesn’t happen again rather than the fear that it will. The season is going to be a long trudge any way you look at it - the Mets have chosen to construct a team that is heavily reliant on players with considerable talent but significant injury concerns, and the ability to keep those guys on the field will determine how far this team goes.  

Nats fans are hating having the lying, cheating, slap-hitting Paul LoDuca around, do Mets fans feel the same way or is he permanently in their hearts for being an Italian from Brooklyn who palys the game hard, if not well?

Lo Duca garners mixed reactions from the fanbase. There are those who look back happily on his good 2006 season and the qualities you’ve mentioned, and think of him as the sort of fiery leader the team is missing. Then there are those who remember his subpar defense, his poorly-timed temper tantrums, the way he argued his way back into the lineup before he had fully recovered from an injury (and provided a week of uselessness at the plate before re-aggravating the injury) when backup catcher Ramon Castro was hitting well, and his tendency to run his mouth about his teammates. I think it’s fairly obvious which camp I belong to, and quite frankly I’ll be embarrassed if/when he gets a warmer reception at Shea than certain other former or current Mets, especially given his extensive presence in the Mitchell Report.

Trading Lastings Milledge for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider seems ridiculous to me.  Most Nats bloggers were big supporters of Church and think he has a couple good years in him, but Lastings was matching him at the plate age 22.  Would you do it again?
 
I hated the trade when it happened, and while Church represents an upgrade over Shawn Green and both he and Schneider are off to hot starts, my feelings haven’t changed. The Mets traded their most ML-ready positional prospect for reasons other than his on-field ability, and they did so at a time when those other reasons had pushed his trade value below his actual value. The thought process behind the trade bothers me as much as the trade itself, if that makes any sense.

What does Johan Santana have to do to not be considered a bust for the Mets?  Can he win only 16 games?  Can he win 20+ but have the Mets miss the playoffs?  Would it all be forgiven if he finally got the Mets that no-hitter?

The fact that this question can even be asked is a sad commentary on the way sports fans react when their high (often irrationally so) expectations are not met (no pun intended). I was at Santana’s first home start, and I was appalled by the way a certain portion of those in attendance behaved after one of the best pitchers in baseball, the sort of pitcher most fans dream of their team having, had a rough start against a team that devours left-handed pitching. I think that for many to consider Johan’s first year as a Met to be a success, he’ll probably have to win his final start of the year, and that start will have to take place in October; given that this scenario involves a lot of things over which he has no control going a certain way, it may not be fair to expect/demand that, but since when does fair have anything to do with it? (And any pitcher who does that which no Met pitcher has done before will get a lifetime pass from many fans, myse lf included.)

I’ve been to Shea and while it’s sad to see an old park go, it’s time.  What will you miss most about Shea and do you think CitiField can live up to expectations, especially with the Bronx Colisseum going up at the same time?
 
I think that what I’ll miss most about Shea is the ability to decide on any random summer morning that I feel like going to that night’s game because I can buy a decent ticket when I get to the ballpark an hour before gametime. I’ll always have the memories of the games I’ve attended there and the people I’ve attended them with, but somehow I doubt that I’ll have the opportunity to be so spontaneous in my decisions to take myself out to the ballgame in a park with 15,000 fewer seats. I think Citi Field can live up to expectations - it looks like it’s going to be a beautiful place to see a game and an upgrade over Shea in many ways, and it may have an easier time of winning over fans’ hearts than the new Yankee Stadium will because of the disparity in sentiment over the ballparks being replaced.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 8:33 am and is filed under Uncategorized. 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.