What to do when your team is in freefall

Baseball's second half has begun.

Really, we're past the midway point of the season. Going into the all-star break, the Mets were coming off an embarrassing loss at home to the Cubs, and were 46-40, a full five games past half a season.

That record of 46-40 probably should have been better, with the Mets losing four of six to the Cubs and five of six to the Yankees over the final month leading to the All-Star break. So despite the team's near-unanimous preseason projection of last place, it was hard not to feel optimistic. The team hadn't even played its best baseball lately, and it was still in wild-card contention. The surprise team of the season. "Manager of the year for Terry Collins!" they cried on ESPN.

Not so fast. The second half has begun, and the glaring fault on this Mets team, its bullpen, is making it clear the other boys from New York aren't going anywhere. What was 46-40 is now 46-44, with all four losses coming to the two teams ahead of them in the NL East, and three of the four losses coming due to bullpen inadequacy.

A sweep in Atlanta was tough to stomach, but the Mets have been streaky lately. Tuesday's game in Washington said it all though. An anemic offensive night had New York trailing 1-0 going into the eighth. Jonathon Niese had been excellent, going seven innings with one run and eight strikeouts.

Next came the bullpen, which allowed a run in the eighth to extend the deficit to 2-0. Then something amazing happened. New York scored three runs in the top of the ninth, giving itself a lead. But Mets closer Bobby Parnell, the poster-child of unrealized potential who has for some reason been given extra responsibility even though he's never been reliable, made sure he filled his quota. Three hits, one run. Since Parnell probably doesn't understand baseball, he probably felt like he had done okay. After all, those are the same numbers Niese put up in his innings.

No matter! said the Mets now lively offense, which tacked on another run in the top of the 10th. But as bad as Parnell is, his time was up. It was time to turn it over to the rest of the gang. And it was time for me to look away.

But I couldn't. Instead, it felt smarter to suffer through Tim Byrdak surrendering two hits, a walk and a run, before loading the bases with an intentional walk and handing the reins to Pedro Beato, who made sure his fourth pitch didn't quite make it to Josh Thole. Wild pitch. Ryan Zimmerman crosses the plate. Game over.

New York made it more than halfway. But the writing is on the wall now. Even that last-place projection from everyone and their mother doesn't seem far-fetched. All I can think about is that annoying phrase that sabermetricians harp on and on about, and is usually accurate.

This wasn't sustainable. Regression to the mean.

We found baseball in a hopeless place

One hundred sixty-two games. It can be easy to forget in the early season excitement of Major League Baseball (which begins tonight, at least in the U.S.), that we've got to last through five and a half months and 162 games just to get to the playoffs. And that means if your team is not very good, after a month-long (maybe) grace period of just being happy to watch baseball, the sport can get pretty old and pretty depressing pretty fast. That's not a good thing, because a few tennis Grand Slams aside, baseball's the only thing going on during the summer months.

This is precisely why I'm concerned about the 2012 MLB season. According to Grantland.com baseball writer Jonah Keri, it would be a surprise if the New York Mets (my favorite team) were to finish anything better than last in the NL East. In ESPN.com writer Jayson Stark's annual preseason prediction of the World Series winner, the Mets qualified as one of the ten teams that have "no shot to be cooking in October." And in a division that possesses expected contenders in the Phillies, Braves and Marlins, let alone the popular sleeper-pick Washington Nationals. It could be a very long season for the Metropolitans. The Amazin's are looking like anything but in 2012.

So how to enjoy a season of baseball in which the team I like will probably be 10 games off the lead within the first 40 games of the season? Fantasy baseball will certainly help. But the key to continuing to enjoy baseball lies in following individual pursuits. Will David Wright, one of the great Mets of my lifetime, finally enjoy a healthy season and return to his original form? Will any of the young players (Ike Davis, Lucas Duda, Ruben Tejada) have a breakout year and be a pleasant surprise in an otherwise dark year? How impressive will Johan Santana be after sitting out last year due to surgery? Outside of the Mets, how about Jose Reyes? Will he continue to be the dominate game-changer he was in 2011, or will he go back to good-but-not-great form after securing himself that massive contract?

With so many players, so many games and so, so, so many numbers, there is always something that can be enjoyed about baseball. Really, where else can we so easily access a hitter's batting average against a certain pitcher when he is facing a 2-1 count? Nowhere else in sports that I'm aware of. Love it. So tune in tonight, tomorrow and over the weekend.

Major MLB Moves

Alliteration aside, there are some crazy changes coming to Major League Baseball.

ESPN.com is reporting that the Houston Astros will be moving to the AL, two more wildcard spots will be added to the playoffs, and interleague play will be extended, all within the next two years. This is all coming on the heels of the sale of the Astros being finalized, and is going to make baseball look lot different, but not necessarily better.

The Houston Astros will be moving to the AL. This one actually makes sense. What doesn't make sense is why one more team hadn't been in the American League for all this team. I never understood why the AL had 14 teams to the NL's 16. It really didn't work out well for interleague play, during which two NL teams would still be playing a regular game. It was just weird. Now, theoretically, the MLB can schedule 15 interleague matchups at a time. Presumably, the Astros will join the currently-four member AL West, and that will be a good division for them, potentially creating a rivalry between them and the Rangers (if the Astros can improve a lot, obviously) in the future.

Fast forward really quickly to the third thing I mentioned, the extension of interleague play. This is the only real negative aspect of the Astros moving to the AL: it forces the MLB's hand in having interleague play throughout the season. An odd number of teams in each league (15) won't work for having all the games be AL-AL and NL-NL. Still, this is a small and necessary evil. More interleague play will not effect the outcome of the season for teams. Baseball will still be a sport in which if you are winning more than your division opponents, you will beat them to the postseason.

The second move doesn't make as much sense to me. One more wildcard spot will be added to each side of the playoffs, giving us 10 total teams to make the playoffs. While the idea of adding more teams to the playoffs is exciting to me, thinking about creating a fair playoff system for five teams on one side of the bracket makes my head hurt. Evidently, it made the MLB bigwigs' heads hurt as well, because supposedly the most likely playoff scenario is to have the two teams from each league that do not win their division (the two wildcard teams) play a one-game, winner-take-all playoff, and then the rest of the playoffs looking like they do now. Basically, its the same as the NCAA's former "Opening Round game" between the 64 and 65-seeds of the tournament.

Unfortunately, baseball is the worst game imaginable to have one game decide so much, and the reason for that is simple: in every other sport, everyone a coach expects to play in a playoff series would play in game one. In baseball, that is not the case. In baseball, the most important player on the field on a given day is the pitcher, and only one of them can play at a time. A one-game playoff would not prove anything about which team was better. And this is different than deciding which team will make it to the playoffs when two teams finish with the same record at the end of the season. In the new format, both teams would have been deemed playoff teams; in the old one, neither of them were. In the old format, it was considered a regular season game; in the new one, its a postseason game. And to let so much ride on which team has a better ace, or which pitchers is feeling better that particular day, or which infielder makes an error on that particular day, is ludicrous. To make matters worse, the team that won the series would be at a significant disadvantage heading into their divisional round matchup. Presumably, they would have started their ace in the play-in game, and then would not be able to start him twice in a five-game divisional series. It would effectively be a penalty game for "being good enough to make the playoffs, but not good enough to win your division."

"We believe after a lot of study and a lot of thought that the addition of two wildcards will really help us in the long run," was what commish Bud Selig had to say of the move. And while the thought of Selig thinking for a long time about anything makes me nervous, I agree with him in this case. Just not if he's going to make a joke out of bringing those extra two teams in by screwing them and the other wildcard teams over.

Baseball Playoffs

After such a thrilling end to the regular season, the baseball playoffs have really flown under the radar so far. Perhaps that is partially because the MLB has lost its two biggest-market teams in the Divisional series with the Yankees and Phillies making early exits. Perhaps it's because the United States is happy football is back. Maybe it's even a little bit due to AMC transitioning from people with big problems in the Southwest to people with big problems in the Southeast.
It's a shame, too, because these playoffs have been excellent. Three of four division series went the maximum five games, the Yankees/Tigers and Cardinals/Phillies game fives were both nail-biters (with the former setting a cable TV ratings record).
Maybe Phils and Yanks gone things are looking bleak for baseball as it tries to contend with a football TV schedule that between college and the pros now covers five nights a week, as well as battling for viewers with Barney's love triangle in "How I Met Your Mother." Don't let that scare you off, though. The remaining baseball games should be awesome.
Every game should be exciting because each of the remaining four teams (Brewers, Cardinals, Tigers and Rangers) all make their mark at the plate, not from the mound. Think about it. Between the four teams, there is exactly one great pitcher (Detroit's Justin Verlander), and he hasn't even been great in these playoffs. With teams that rely more on their offense than their pitching to win games, plenty of 8-7 or 13-11 type games should be on the horizon. With mediocre pitching from start to finish (the Rangers appear to have the only reliable bullpen with Alexi Ogando and Neftali Feliz closing things out), comebacks will always be available, especially to teams that boast hitters like Prince Fielder, Albert Pujols, Josh Hamilton and Miguel Cabrera.
Maybe the baseball playoffs have lost their most recognizable teams, but don't let that deter you from tuning in to these games the rest of the way. They figure to just continue the great run of games baseball has been having since the end of September.

Devastastion, thy name is baseball

Is there anything worse than quitting?
(If you're struggling to come up with the answer, it is No)
Here we are, with what is in my opinion the major flaw of baseball's obscenely long season--almost every team has to eventually decide to give up. By season's end, there are at most 6-7 teams from both leagues that are still playing hard.
That's because it's pretty obvious in baseball when you're out of it. For example, the Pittsburgh Pirates knew they were out of it about 10 games into the season (okay, maybe it took 15). From that point on, they have stopped playing as hard, only trying for a win when they are with a run or better in the eighth inning.
That is a fact of every sport though. The doormats stop playing and start dumping guys as soon as possible to prep for next year. What's weird about baseball is that can happen 100 games into the season.
Take the New York Mets, for example. They headed into the All-star break eight games above .500, in second place in the NL East by 4.5 games and a half game out of the wild-card. Just 11 games into the second half, though, the Mets have stopped trying to make it to the playoffs.
They started things with 1-3 series in San Francisco, then lost their first game at the woefully bad Arizona Diamondbacks. Then they brought back Ollie Perez, the surest sign of all that they were not concerned with a playoff run.
Make no mistake: Ollie is one of the worst pitchers in the majors. I've never seen a guy with as little control as him. If he inherits runners on first and second with two out, there is as strong a chance of him walking in a run as there is of him getting out of the inning.
So the Mets bringing him back up was their way of waving the white flag. We quit. They aren't going to use Ollie, seeing as he's their third best left-handed reliever. There aren't going to be many situations that call for him.
Essentially, it is a situation of the organization placing him on the roster because they don't believe they will contend, and they won't have a mult-million dollar player in the minor leagues.
How about this though: if you're going to call up Ollie from now on, or do anything else that signifies the team is done for this season, at least be fair to the fans. Lower ticket prices. If you aren't playing hard, why should they pay full price? At least tell the fans you are finished, and let them know you'll be gearing up to go all-out next year.
Just don't pull this "We've got our pitcher back and that's a good thing" routine. It's not a good thing. It's a bad thing. If you're gonna pull this kind of stunt, own up to what it is: giving up.

Let's Turn this thing around!

Since my last post we have learned something very important: the New York Mets evidently read my blog.

Scroll down a little bit and you will read about me ripping the Mets apart, how its unbelievable that they can spend so much and still be so bad. Well, to say that they have turned things around since that point would be an understatement.

My beloved Metropolitans have enjoyed a 9-1 homestand, including sweeps of the Braves and Dodgers. All of a sudden their pitching (with the exception of Ollie Perez, of course, who will never be good), is dominant. Mike Pelfrey has thrown 24 consecutive scoreless innings, Johan Santana is looking in form, and the rest of the gang (John Niese, John Maine) have pitched above their heads in getting some wins.

The other noticeable difference? Ike. The Mets called up first baseman Ike Davis, something they were clearly hoping to be able to hold off on at the beginning of the season, and it has coincided with the run to first place in the NL East. Now, is Ike the only reason for the wins? Of course not. Other players have finally started to hit as well, but Ike's .355 batting average has certainly made a difference in comparison to whatever garbage Mike Jacobs and Frank Catalanotto were bringing to the table. They weren't doing anything like this either.

At 13-9, the Mets actually look like a legitimate team this again. Keep an eye on their results this weekend, though, when they have to take on the Phillies in Philly. Then we'll see if they actually have a chance of contending come September.