TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

The interesting thing about baseball is no matter how much drama has gone on over the course of a marathon season, it can still come down to the last week and have a six month emotional investment come down to a final six games. It seems like a thousand years ago that I wrote the Willie Randolph piece and went on to be horrifically wrong about the Jerry Manuel era.

Tonight was a fine example of the drama you find at the end of a season. The Mets won, the Phillies lost, and the Brewers won. The Mets creep to 1.5 in a division where they own the tiebreak and narrow the timeframe on the Brewers. They’re still a game up in the Wild Card and a game back in the division. The team had the benefit of incredible pitching by Johan Santana — 125 pitches, 7H, 10K, 2BB, 2ER — and random things that only happen to the Cubs in September. Santana was at the plate, hit a grounder that should have been an inning-ending double play, but broke his bat. The bat preceded the ball to second and the ball hit the bat again and deflected away from the fielder. Everyone was safe and David Wright would knock the both of them in after a Luis Castillo walk. It’s enough to make a Cubs fan wonder if they really are cursed.

This week is going to try the fan’s perseverance. It’s like a playoff series but not. So far, they’ve stuck to the script. They’ve lost with their five-starter and won with their ace. They pieced together three outs with two pitchers in the ninth. It’s what they need to do with a bullpen that isn’t going to make anything easy. Tomorrow, we get Ollie. There’s been very few appearances by Bizarro Ollie down the stretch. Thursday is Pedro. I’m not sure which of those two starts to be more nervous about. Ollie loves the spotlight. Let’s hope Pedro can reach back and find a little bit of that magic to grit out a few more starts.

What tonight told me, more than any other night this season, is that Johan Santana is worth every penny the team is paying him. He’s stepped up in almost every big spot this year and pitched gems (even if the bullpen would eventually blow it). If the time calls for a huge start, he delivers. He’s a hell of a weapon to have in your pocket on Sunday if you need a win.

In a semi-related note, Seven Nights At Shea - Part 1 was linked on Metsblog.com. The comments went in much the way I’d expect them to. Half of them we’re “you’re totally right” the other half we’re varying degrees of disagreement from “suck my **ck, Keith!” to well thought out and thoroughly wrong replies.

There are no good reasons to boo your team at home. You can try to justify them to yourself. You can say that “you have to earn love in New York”. You can call people who want to be supportive corporate lapdogs. All that is perfectly fine — but the vitriolic response to the accusation is because the truth hurts. You’re part of the problem and you don’t want to hear it. You’d rather put all the blame on the players and say things like “if I’m part of the team, where’s my check” because you think of it as “us and them”. That’s where the “don’t boo them” people disconnect from the “OK to boo them people. We think of this as family. You think of it as fans and players. This is where the argument over calling fans and players “we” comes from. People who use “we” think of the team and fans as one collective unit who all want the same thing. People who don’t use “we” think of the team as one collective unit with various fans watching them and hoping for the best. If you want to see the results of a crazy fan base who loves to boo their team, check and see how well the Jets have done for the last 20 years. This is what you want for the Mets? Really?

It’s likely none of the people who read yesterday’s post (if they even did and, based on the comments, I’ll assume they only read the bit that MB excerpted on their post) will read today’s. It was framed as “blaming the fans” when it was more meant to be “pleading with the fans to be supportive.” I understand that the fans are not on the field playing the game. I also understand that the cold stat-heads out there will say that atmosphere and the crowd stuff is overrated. Maybe that’s true. But I think fans can and do affect games. Their job, though, is to throw the AWAY team off their game — not the home team. The Shea fan seems to have forgotten that. They’d rather try to get in Aaron Heilman’s head then in Carlos Zambrano’s. There’s no universe in which that helps us. Someone has to go in and get outs. This is what we have.

At the end of the day, you can bitch and moan and boo and try to be an aloof fan and tell everyone how much you don’t care… and if that’s the way you want to be that’s perfectly fine. I don’t understand it, but it’s perfectly fine. But, there are times to moan and boo and criticize and there are times to put all that aside. You can complain to each other all you want about how bad the team is and how much they’re not going to win. But that’s for US to hash out behind the scenes. It shouldn’t be on display on the field. The field should be the place where the only goal is to beat the other team. No agendas. No moaning. Just winning. You’d never let someone call your mother a whore and agree and say “yeah, she really IS a whore.” That’s what you guys are doing to this team. You’re letting the Phillies and Cubs and Brewers to call your family member a whore and agreeing with them. WE can call the team a whore. THEY can’t.

For the Mets’ family, the time to be unified is right now. We’re all in this together. Next week, if they don’t make it, we can go right back to picking and criticizing and talking about how Omar Minaya does not deserve a four-year extension. We can even do that on blogs and newspapers and podcasts right now. But at the stadium either be happy to be there or don’t go. Give them positive energy. Save your venom for when they actually deserve it. They don’t deserve it on every pitch. They deserve it at the end of the season if they finish without a playoff seed.

For now, they’re the Wild Card, they’re a game-and-a-half from winning the division — for f*ck’s sake, what’s there to be unhappy about?

Thanks Matt!.

Well, here we are. After 155 games, the Mets have managed themselves in to a situation where they are 2.5 games out of the NL East and one game up on the National League Wildcard. The Brewers and the Mets are in a race to see who can collapse harder. The Mets face the NL-best record Cubs and crushed-their-spirit-last-year Marlins. The Brewers face Pittsburgh (against whom they’ve gone 11-1 on the season) and the Cubs. The Phillies face the only-play-the-Mets-hard Braves and the NL East toilet Nationals. The Metropolitans control their own destiny. Win out and they at least get the Wildcard. Lose any and they risk another September collapse.

The Board Room did an excellent job here. It really couldn’t be scripted any better.

The Mets could have gone up by 2 games in the Wildcard tonight. They didn’t. Instead they had the lights blown out in 4th inning when they, for the second time this season, gave up a grand slam to the opposing pitcher. I’ll repeat that. For the second time this season — the first being Felix Hernandez hitting off Johan Santana — a Met pitcher gave up a grand slam to an opposing pitcher. In the fourth inning, Jon Niese delivered a pitch to Jason Marquis that landed in front of the scoreboard. The bullpen came in to stop the bleeding and promptly gave up another home run to Derrek Lee to send the game into a 7-2 blowout. The bullpen continued to bleed runs to a 9-4 laugher that was never really close.

Slowly but surely, the toxic environment at Shea Stadium is becoming more and more a problem. The fans are still on edge. Everyone in the bullpen can expect to be booed when they enter, on every walk, and on every hit. Half the line-up can expect to be booed when they do anything but get on base. The fans are doing the opposite of helping. I can’t even imagine what the final game at Shea ceremony will be like if the team doesn’t make the playoffs. I might not even watch.

The bright side to this loss is it was the one game they could lose without being crippled. Jon Niese is a September call-up who probably isn’t ready for primetime. He’s had 3 starts. One was an 8-inning shutout against the Braves. The other two have been a combined 6 innings with a combined 11 runs. If there was one game they had to pencil in as a loss, it was this one. A guy making this third start against the best team in the National League.

Here’s the problem: after tonight there really isn’t any more wiggle room and there really aren’t any more excuses. The team is throwing Santana, Perez, Martinez, and Pelfrey in its next four starts. On Saturday, if the team doesn’t have something locked up, they’ll have some tough decisions to make. Throw guys on short rest? Throw Santana on Saturday or Sunday and effectively keep him out of the playoffs until Game 3?

Second problem: The Brewers have been having a terrible run of luck lately, going 5-15 in September and dropping 8 of their last 10. There’s got to be some sort of feeling in the Brewers’ clubhouse that it’s gotten as bad as it’s going to get and they’re still only 1 game out with 6 to play. On top of that, they get the benefit of playing a team who they can officially claim ownership of while the Mets are apparently playing against both The Script and Destiny.

Third problem: Even if by some miracle the Mets limp in to the Wild Card, they still have to go to the playoffs with this bullpen. One issue I’ve had with Jerry Manuel is his dogged insistence that this pen will work through their problems. They obviously are not going to. At this point, throw three rookies and John Maine on your post-season roster and see what happens. At least with those guys we can go with the devil we don’t know — which, in this case, is better than the devil we do.

I’ve gone from cautiously optimistic to completely resigned. This bullpen is either going to end this season this week against the Cubs or next week against the Cubs. It’s very symmetrical, really. All that said, the Shea fans deserve a heaping-helping of “F*ck You” for helping to make the team tighter and worse. Have you ever seen an abused dog cower in the corner when it knows it’s done something wrong and is waiting to get beaten? That’s the entire Mets team. It can’t fail in peace and, in a game of failure, that’s a problem. They are treating every pitch and every at-bat as the end of the world because of the completely unsupportive home crowd. Way to go, guys. Glad you bought your tickets and feel justified in booing. It makes it awesome for the rest of us.

If the season ends with the Mets out of the playoffs, I’m relatively certain I’ll lay about a third of the blame on the home crowd. The Shea crowd, somehow, is a spoiled child. They went in to this season mad about last year. They’ve thrown tantrums and booed and expected this team to make the playoffs as a foregone conclusion. What these idiots don’t realize is that they’re in the midst of one of the more awesome pennant races in baseball right now. There are three teams slugging it out for two playoff slots. All three teams are separated by two games. If not for last season, Shea would be rocking and rolling and the fans would be supportive and having a great time. Because last season gave the Met fan some sort of entitlement complex about getting to the post-season this year, they’ve decided to be as assy as humanly possible. It’s not helping, dummies.

I’m one voice in the midst of 100,000 but I think they can do it. I’m continuing to think positively.

We can do this.

W/W - Falcons -4 over Chiefs, 38-14, Falcons cover. No real surprises here. I wonder what the record is for points given up in a season and whether or not the Chiefs can challenge it.

W/L - Bills -9.5 over Raiders, 24-23, Raiders +9.5 (* - last minute change to Bills cover). Because some fan made a totally convincing argument about why this spread made sense, I changed my pick in my spread pools to Bills cover. I will, in fairness, take the win against the spread away from myself because I deserve it for changing my mind… which is never ever a good idea and I need to be reminded. The other lesson in this is to never take spread advice from a guy who’s as good against the spread as the Chiefs are against football teams.

W/W - Titans -5 over Texans, 31-12, Titans cover. I picked the Titans correctly. I’m just happy to be nominated.

W/L - Giants -13.5 over Bengals, 26-23, Giants cover. I enjoy that I wrote a whole paragraph about over-thinking picks and then proceeded to overthink this pick. The Giants don’t cover large spreads… they just don’t. I know this and went against it anyway. Stupid. They go in to the bye undefeated. The bye has been poison to the Giants in the last few years. I’m glad to get it out of the way early.

W/W - Redskins -3 over Cardinals, 24-17, Redskins cover. It looks like my new rule held up mightily. It could also be a Kurt Warner on the road rule. Not sure.

L/W - Dolphins +13.5 over Patriots, 38-13, Dolphins +13.5. Funny thing — I was in Boston this weekend and decided to stick around on Sunday to catch football on my buddy’s 52″ hi-def. This meant I had to watch the Patriots instead of the Giants so I got to actually see the Dolphins play. As it turns out, they decided this week to run pretty much the exact offense I assumed they would run when I picked them as the outta nowhere team for the season. Short passing routes to take advantage of Pennington’s close accuracy and grinding out near yardage with Ronnie Brown and Rickey Williams. Pennington didn’t try to make one pass over 20 yards and the quick, young offensive tools tired out a much, much older defense. Funny thing happened on the way to “the Pats will be fine”. Without an accurate passer, their receivers aren’t much use. Since they’ve specifically built a passing offense at the expense of their running game, they don’t have a running game to really fall back on. Oh yeah, and their defense is still really old. The Dolphins used the Giants’ blueprint against the Patriots’ defense — grind out drives and tucker out the old dudes.

L/L - Bucs +3 over Bears, 27-24, Chicago covers. Griese passed 67 times in this game. The fact the Bears couldn’t stop this doesn’t reflect well on the Bears. The fact he didn’t doesn’t reflect well on the Bucs chances for continuing success.

W/W - Vikings -3 over Panthers, 20-10, Vikings cover. Somehow, I still haven’t seen one second of a Vikings or a Panthers game.

W/L - Seahawks -10.5 over Rams, 37-13, Rams +10.5. The Rams officially enter “no spread is too big” and “official pick against in knockout pools” all in the same week.

L/L - Niners -3 over Lions, 31-13, Lions outright. And thus ends the fabulous and awesome run of the Jesus-wagon. If the Lions can’t score, and give up 30 to the Niners, turn out the lights in Detroit early.

L/W - Broncos -4 over Saints, 34-32, Saints outright. The Broncos might be the most fortunate team in the league right now. After being handed a victory by the officials in San Diego, the Saints insisted on handing them a second one. This game saw New Orleans fail to score on 1st and 5, 2nd and 1, 3rd and 1, and 4th and 1 forgoing a field goal to bring the game within 3 at the end of the first half. Then, in one of the more bizarre decisions in football history, instead of QB sneaking from the one, Cutler drops eight yards deep in the end zone to hand the Saints a safety with 27 seconds left in the first half. Martin Grammatica misses two field goals (33, 47) that would have swung the game. Unreal. I’d also like to thank the Saints for taking Jeremy Shockey’s official month or two off away from the Giants this year.

L/L - Eagles over Saints, 15-6, Steelers. I guess my rule didn’t need a caveat. If the Eagles line was able to molest Roethlisberger this much, the Giants and Cowboys pass rush is going to kill him.

L/L - Jaguars +5.5 over Colts, 23-21, Colts cover. It appears that picking the Colts against any team with good running backs is back to being an awful, awful idea. I should also keep in mind two things here. First, the Jags and Colts always seem to play to 3 points or less regardless of how good or bad the other team is. Second, the Lucas Oil Dome with all their rules, policies, and family-friendliness has essentially sucked all the fun and advantage out of the Colts home field. The crowd for that entire game was dead and you could barely hear them. I look forward to this happening at Giants Stadium next year.

L/L - Ravens -2 over Browns, 28-10, Browns outright. I think we can declare the Browns and Derek Anderson a fluke. The Courageous Brady Quinn Era should be starting relatively soon. Week six or so.

W/W - Cowboys -3 over Packers, 27-16, Cowboys cover. God, how I hate this team.

W/L - Chargers -9.5 over Jets, 48-29, Jets +9.5. So, here’s a question. Is LDT actually hurt or is he just using his toe in case they lose? Also, how is this guy not getting skewered in San Diego media? The New York media would be all but questioning his manhood at this point.

5 points: Indy -5.5 over Jacksonville - L
4 points: Lions +3 over Niners - L
3 points: Redskins -3 over Cardinals - W
2 points: Browns +2 over Ravens - L
1 point: Chicago -3 over Tampa - L

And I guess we can declare that I don’t like funky new pool and am happy I decided to test it out for a year before taking the leap.

Standings
Straight Up: 9-7 (26-21)
Spread: 7-9 (22-24-1)
Point Pool: 3/15 (17/45 - .378)

Also deserves mentioning: all the spreads I thought were wacky I picked correctly. The ones I lost I generally thought were normal. Gambling rules.