Some Home Grown Goodness
August 11th, 2010 by slangon
In case you haven’t noticed, I haven’t spent a whole lot of time recently addressing the trials and tribulations of the New York Mets, other than to occasionally throw out an exasperated comment here and there. I guess that happens when you have a team that was looking pretty good prior to the All-Star break, and that team takes a horrendous slide in both the standings and the hearts of the fans.
Going into the All-Star Game, the Mets were sitting in 2nd place in their division, 4 games behind Atlanta. They were also sitting just 1 game behind Colorado and L.A. for the Wild Card. At the time I was a bit perturbed that they had slipped a game or two in the standings, but overall, they were in pretty good shape. Since then, they’ve gone 8-17, dropped down to third place, and are now 8 1/2 games out of 1st and 7 games out of the Wild Card with 50 games left to play. Not good.
I don’t want to sound like a whiner, but after all that’s happened with this team over the last few seasons, and the way this season is shaping up, I find it a little hard to actually sit down and watch games these days. Last night, I sucked it up and forced myself to watch. Yesterdays matchup against the Rockies had all the earmarks of being another disappointing, painful-to-watch game what with Mike Pelfrey facing Ubaldo Jimenez. If you don’t follow the Mets, Pelfrey has been horrible the last month or so after starting the season so promisingly. And even if you don’t follow the Rockies, I’m sure you know all about Jimenez.
Anyway, much to my surprise, Big Pelf pitched really well last night, going 7 innings, letting up 4 hits and no runs. He only walked 1 batter and struck out 4. Of course Ubaldo pitched really well, too, but the Mets anemic offense was able to scratch one skinny run off of him and the bullpen was able to protect that skinny run. A bit of a tough luck loss for Jimenez, but like I said, Pelfrey actually pitched really well.
Anyway, my point in writing this post wasn’t to get all excited about 1 lousy win for the Mets. I wanted to acknowledge something very interesting that I noticed about the Mets starting lineup last night. Seven out of the nine starters happened to be guys who were drafted and brought up by the Mets farm system. Actually, you could argue that it was eight if you want to count Angel Pagan who was drafted by the Mets in 1999 and spent 6 seasons with the Mets farm clubs. Either way, despite all the disappointment and frustration thats surrounded this team for the last month or 2, it felt really good watching all these home grown guys scrap and bite and scratch out a much needed victory. It almost made me feel like despite the fact that team might be going down the toilet this year, there’s good things to come.
So although the Mets may not have the flashy Heywards and Strasbergs, here’s to some of the home grown talent that have and hopefully will make an impact on the team in the days ahead.
Now that’s how I like to see a Mets fan appreciate a decent team. (sorry, born and raised not to take the Mets seriously)
still love for the home-drown…I have been enjoying the Milwaukee Home Brew Crew for years now…plus I like Ike.
I really respect that in a system. It’s becoming more and more rare, I suppose, but having talent come up in the system and then stick with an organization just makes for a great story.
From a Red Sox fan (since we got a couple), here’s to the scrappy Mets being the best and certainly the classiest baseball team, by far, in all of New York, including the Bronx. Ahem.