I Asked for Craig Consell, But All I Got Was Carlos Mendoza

A few quick thoughts on our new manager.

I read this weekend how impressed David Stearns and his front office mates were with Carlos Mendoza, and I was pretty sure that Mendoza would be the next Mets manager. It's not that I'm clairvoyant or particularly smart. It's just that everything I read about Craig Counsell made me skeptical of his taking the Mets job. He seemed most interested in the Mets' interest as a device to push his value up, which is certainly his right. I didn't foresee the Cubs jumping into the fray while jettisoning their manager, but it made a lot of sense once the dust settled.

Savor the Moment

The Mets earning a playoff berth was special. Make sure you enjoy it.

When the Mets beat the Brewers to clinch a playoff spot last night, it affected me more deeply than I expected. After all, despite their stumble against the Cubs last week, I've known the Mets were playoff-bound for quite some time. But I shouldn't have taken for granted the meaning of just earning a playoff spot when your team has only accomplished that feat 9 times in the previous 60 seasons. Therefore, I will ignore anyone who tries to crash this party and put a damper on the significance of last night's achievement.

Changing Perceptions

Steve Cohen and the Mets have dramatically reversed last fall's negative coverage and the perception around baseball that the Mets were an organization in trouble.

As the New York Mets continue their preparations for the 2022 season, it's startling to see how the perception of the team has changed since last fall. Unfortunately, as has become all too common in recent years, the Mets were again spectators in October while other teams vied for a championship. Steve Cohen's first year as owner of the Mets was a disappointment — not only to fans, but I'm sure to the man himself. Mistakes and missteps were definitely made, but the local and national media were engaging in a frenzy of negativity in their coverage of the team. Much of that negativity was overblown and unfair.

The Real Work Lies Ahead

In my last post, I shared some thoughts on the current punditry that the New York Mets organization has reverted to WILPON ERA DYSFUNCTION. Especially amusing was the idea that the value of the Mets had "gone backward significantly," with Steve Cohen's tweets a significant contributor to that drop in value. This was a ludicrous statement from an unnamed "former MLB executive." The Mets organization has indeed made some serious, high-profile blunders since Cohen took over. Still, the Mets are a viable franchise in the country's largest (by far) sports market. There's a difference between temporary setbacks and long-term trends that would hurt the franchise's value as a whole.

Mailing It In

The title of this post has nothing to do with the way the New York Mets are playing. Sure, they've been up and down this past week. Their offense is unwatchable at times, which predates many of their better players going on the IL. The team's chances of ever fulfilling their offensive potential now seem to hang on whether they can get their best players healthy and keep them that way. All things considered, the Mets are doing okay right now, keeping things going despite the ever-growing Injured List. Even a tough loss tonight from a tired bullpen doesn't change that.

We've Been Here Before

Turns out that the Mets won't be playing baseball in the snow tonight in Denver. Tonight's game has been canceled. They'll be playing a doubleheader tomorrow instead. The forecast for tomorrow isn't calling for snow, but the high temperature will only be around 40°, with the low dropping into the 20s. But that's okay, right? They'll do the smart thing and schedule the doubleheader for the afternoon and miss the worst of the weather... no, what am I thinking? A 3 PM start local time will ensure that the temperature will be below freezing before both games complete. I honestly don't get it. At this point, the best that we can hope for is that all three games are played this weekend, the Mets won't be forced to go back out to Colorado again later in the season, and no one gets hurt.

Normal is Good

We're a mere two weeks away from the start of the 2021 baseball season. This is a marked improvement from a year ago when the COVID-19 epidemic had already shut down baseball. Even then, we were all only beginning to understand how much of our lives would be shut down and how long it would take to return to normal. We're not quite there yet but, if you squint hard, you can actually see normal from where we are now. For a while, it seemed that we would never get to this place.

More Baseball, Less Drama Please

I woke up this morning with a smile on my face. For a baseball nerd, the first day of training camp is always special. Sure, after a couple of weeks, spring training gets boring. You find yourself pining for the regular season to start. But this year, with so many new faces around, even the spring games will be more fun than usual. In any case, it's not just about baseball coming back. As I get older, I find myself with drastically diminishing patience for winter to pack up and ship out. The start of spring training offers an early promise that warm weather will eventually return to the icy northeast. With another crappy weather forecast for tomorrow, you take all of the hope you can find.

Stuff You Should Have Learned in Junior High School

What a strange few months this has been. When Steve Cohen was approved as the Mets' new owner, it seemed that this offseason would be all about significant player moves and signings, something Mets fans like myself have been hoping to see for years. The trade for Francisco Lindor was all that and then some, but all of the extracurricular noise has overshadowed it a bit. In fact, I had to look up the exact date of the deal and was shocked to realize it went down less than a month ago. Then it occurred to me that it's only been two weeks since Jared Porter was shown the door and barely over three months since Steve Cohen's purchase was approved. Didn't he used to have a Twitter account, or am I remembering that wrong? I know time feels different since COVID-19 gummed everything up, but this is nuts. I picked an interesting year, indeed, to return to blogging.