When was the last time the Mets faced the Yankees with the Yankees in last place in the AL East?
Never.
Whilst Mets fans can bemoan Willie's ongoing inability to form his team into one of discipline, togetherness and success, whilst they can ridicule and rain boo choruses down upon players like Aaron Heilman and Carlos Delgado, for their disappointing seasons, whilst they can sneer at the paucity of Met successes dating back to last September and piss and moan until the taps are turned off, at least they can be proud that unlike the Yankees, to date they are not in last place.
They can also be thankful that for a change it is the Mets, not the Yankees who swung the deal of the winter in obtaining Johan Santana. The Yankees,as you recall, refused to part with any of their trio of young buck pitchers: Joba Chamberlain, Ian Kennedy or Phillip Hughes to obtain Santana.
Joba the Mutt has a 4.30 ERA in May, including a staggering 11.25 ERA with runners in scoring position, lefties hitting .450 against him. Kennedy is 0-3, bounced back and forth between the Minors and The Show, has an ERA of 8.48 and frankly, makes even the likes of Oliver Perez seeem like an ace by comparison. And Hughes is 0-4 with a 9.00 ERA. Any wonder the Yanks are in last place?
A-Hole is recovering from injury, Robinson Cano is hitting even worse than Delgado (is that even possible??!), Jason Giambi is like a giant,puss-filled goiter waiting to burst and yes, with a .181 batting average is a FAR worse first base selection than Delgado, their back up catcher is hitting .204 in place of the injured Posada, etc, etc, the list goes on ad infinitum.
So be happy. The Yankees are a far worse team than the Mets right now.
Which means they'll probably sweep the series.
The Army's bold predictions:
Game 1: Johan Santana, LHP (4-2, 3.10) v Darrell Rasner, RHP (2-0, 3.00) Santana has a brilliant record against the Yankees. In a Twins uniform. In a Mets uniform, who knows, this doesn't appear to be quite the same pitcher.
But this is what the Mets paid the big bills for, having Santana as their ace in a big series and incidentally, to be great whilst he does it. This is his moment to shine. 3rd start of season for Rasner whose finger was broken against the Mets last season. Expect this to be low scoring with the victory to the team whose bullpen implodes the least. Yankees 4 Mets 3.
Game 2: Oliver Perez, LHP (3-3, 4.61) v
Andy Pettitte, LHP (3-4, 4.40) Perhaps another duel by two pitchers who can't maintain consistency but do well against each others' teams. Pettitte has made 16 starts against the Mets dating to 1997, going 7-3 with a 3.42 ERA. Perez has a 3-1 record and 3.04 ERA in four career starts against the Yanks. Lean nod to Mets as the bullpen can't blow EVERY game. Mets 7 Yankees 5.
Game 3: John Maine, RHP (5-2, 2.81) v
Chien-Ming Wang, RHP (6-1, 2.90) - Say
what you want about Santana but Maine is the defacto ace of the Mets staff
right now and appears to get better with each game. Tight, tight game.
Mets win in extra innings, 5-4.
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3 comments:
congrats - due to rain your predictions are already skewed. At least the mets had a nice air-clearing team meeting - let's see if it does any good.
you failed to predict that after the rainout, the mets and yankees would swap laundry and behave the opposite of the way they usually do on saturday. I'm still processing it all.
Hoping for the cheapest sweep ever on sunday.
well, I'm glad everyone is able to work out that a prediction that didn't include a rain out was to be felled by a rain out. Bastid American weather! Well, at least it allowed all the tension to be jacked up another notch!
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