Smile! It’s good to be a Met

That was an amazing weekend that just finished up in Queens.
Jonathan Niese went 6 innings, no runs and struck out 10 Cardinals and that was by FAR the worst pitching performance of the weekend.

R. A. Dickey’s complete game shutout was a hell of a Silver Medal.
Of course Johan Santana threw the great regular season masterpiece that Met fans were waiting 50 years for.

But there is something cool happening in Queens and I am slowly becoming a believer.
The Mets are tied for first.
The Mets are exciting.
The Mets are fun.

Now I WOULD eat crow and say “Man, I was wrong” when I wrote all sorts of posts saying that the Mets were no good.

But I wasn’t wrong.
And there is no reason to eat crow.

I was right.
The Mets team filled with overpriced veterans was no good.

The Mets team that is relying on Lucas Duda, Josh Thole and Kirk Nieuwenhuis is good. They are young and hungry and don’t have the whole “We’re not big enough to win in New York” BS hanging over them.

Take all of the big priced free agents and pickups the Mets have made over the past few years and I bet none of them are as popular with Met fans as Duda or Mike Baxter.

They are spitting in the face of the concept of “You need big stars in New York to get the fans attention.”

BS. I’ve been saying that is BS forever. You need good baseball players who play hard and want to win.

The best fortune for the Mets have been their bad injury fortune.
They had to play these kids.

They were given no choice except to do the thing they should have done years ago.

And it is paying off.
The First Place New York Mets… the Last Place Philadelphia Phillies.

How cool is THAT Mets fans?

   

I can’t figure out the Mets, and neither can you

The Mets got hit with the injury bug and I thought the Mets were staring at disaster.
I never thought the Mets were going to amount to squat and I’ve been screaming they need to rebuild.

And here we are, almost at Mid May and the Mets are not only above .500 but winning dramatic games including tonight against Philadelphia.

In a way, they are proving me correct.
Young players are taking the lead. Kirk Nieuwenhuis and Ruben Tejada and Lucas Duda and Jordany Valdespin are the ones showing up on the highlights.

And with Philadelphia not exactly lighting the world on fire right now and a team like Washington can’t hold onto the top spot for long, could the Mets become a contender?

I picked them to lose 90 games.
But THAT Met team was the one loaded with veterans and playing sluggish and uninspired baseball.

THIS Mets team is young and kind of exciting.

And trust me, if this team keeps playing, even if they fall far short of the playoffs, Met fans will embrace this team a hell of a lot quicker and with much more love than if they tried to pick up another expensive player.

And maybe by the end of the season every Met fan will know how to spell Nieuwenhuis!

 

It’s good to be a Met fan now

Yeah it is early.
But a 4-0 start is better than most teams. Hell, you can’t ask for better.

At the moment the Mets are better than the Yankees, Red Sox and Phillies.
At the moment the Mets are playing exciting baseball and are fun. At the moment the Mets are getting contributions from Jonathon Niese, Lucas Duda, Daniel Murphy and the immortal Kirk Nieuwenhuis.

And guess what?
There have been years when an unexpected team got off to a good start.
The 2008 Rays, after YEARS of never avoiding a 90 loss season, got off to a winning start.

And EVERYONE on the planet said “Oh that’s nice. But it is early. And they are in a Division with the Yankees and World Champion Red Sox. They won’t last.”

Or the Tigers after YEARS of irrelevance got off to a hot start in 2006. “It won’t last. Besides they are in a Division with the talented Twins and the defending World Champion White Sox.”

Guess what?
Both teams made it all the way to the World Series.

Will the Mets do that?
Probably not.

But these are 4 wins they won’t have to make up for later!