Over the next few days I will do a first half breakdown of each aspect of the Mets and try to predict how they will look in the second half. For now, let's take a more macro look.
The Mets are 46-40 and in third place, 4.5 games out of first. This puts us about on par with where we have been at the break in past years but far past what people (including myself) expected from us. Coming into this year we were all pretty much braced for an early 60's or mid 90's level of ineptitude and incompetence. I was expecting a team that struggled to win 70 games and sat comfortably in last for the whole season. Now I am faced with a team who is on pace to win over 90 games and is a legitimate threat to play October baseball.
The craziest part? Nothing really shocking happened to get us here. Johan Santana showed up and pitched the way he always does, he has never had a bad year, we just kind of expected he would because he was hurt for so long. Dickey has been getting better every year and he just continued to improve. David Wright finally started playing they way he did in the mid 2000's, Lucas Duda is hitting a serviceable number of homers, Jason Bay sucks, Gee and Niese are above average middle of the rotation guys. What about any of this is shocking? It is amazing that the Mets have blown away expectations so fiercely yet in a totally predictable manner. In fact the biggest shocker of the season is how bad Ike Davis has been and we have still succeeded without him.
The big spectere here is the fear of what has happened to the Mets the last few years after the break.
At the
break
|
After the
break
|
Season
|
|
2009
|
42-45
|
28-47
|
70-92
|
2010
|
47-40
|
32-43
|
79-83
|
2011
|
46-35
|
31-40
|
77-85
|
As you can see we are pretty much in the same position we are in now that we have been in the past few years. It is vitally important we come out swinging against the Braves next Friday and wipe away the shadows of the past few years. I will see that I have confident. This is a blog about stats so I hate to say this, but these Mets feel different. There was a time last August when the Mets and Cardinals were in pretty much the same boat. The Mets just seemed resigned to mediocrity and let the season slip away. The Cards kept battling and when the freak occurrences occurred were in a position to take advantage and hop into the post season. I feel like these Mets are ready to fight until the last day.
The Mets have been a wonderful surprise so far and I have a feeling the biggest surprises are yet to come. The second half of 2012 is going to be a sigh to see.
I, unlike many people, am not surprised at all that the Mets are playing so well. That is why it is stupid to listen to "sports anaylsts" and "pundits" because they are wrong more often than they are right.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that was unexpected for me was the good start they have gotten off to. In the recent years, the Mets would really stumble out of the gates into mid-April, and then play better baseball. This year, they have managed to stay above 500 all year.
You are quite right about not being many surprises. Dickey has been fantastic and probably more than we expected, but he's shown he can put up good numbers before. Niese and Gee and Young have given us what we expected. The bullpen was already an unknown before the season, so there weren't that many expectations anyways; the same can be said for Santana. However, one surprise has been Mike Pelfrey. He had been a horse for a lot of years so it was surprising(although not unwelcome) that he got hurt and had TJ surgery.
On the hitting side, Wright has played like a superstar and while it might not have been predicted, it certainly wasn't unexpected. Hairston has been a pleasant surprise for the Mets, which somewhat offsets how atrocious Ike had looked for the first 8 weeks of the season. Meanwhile, the rest of the position players either pretty much played how we expected them or were unknowns and had no expectations(Kirk, Torres. Oh yea, and Bay has been terrible of course.
The key between this year and the rest of the years has been the SP. This group of SP is the best we've had in the last 3 years, and there's no reason why their success cant continue.
Derway,
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more about the SP. In my opinion they are playing at the level their numbers indicate they should be playing at and therefore their success should be sustainable.