Mets-Nets Comparisons: Outfield

Fernando Martinez and Terrence Williams.

Both of these players are young and talented, but they have yet to harness their talent and turn it into production. Midway through the season, T-Will got into a fight with Coach Avery and was traded. I can imagine a similar thing possibly happening with F-Mart, especially because he doesn’t really seem to have a place in the Mets’ lineup.

Fernando Martinez and Terrence Williams

Carlos Beltran and Devin Harris.

Beltran and Devin are both pretty talented players, but they haven’t been able to turn that talent into wins. Devin was traded in part of the D-Will trade and a Beltran trade also may be imminent. They are both aging (Beltran more than Devin) but still have a few good years left in them. In Beltran’s younger days, he was quick like Devin and got quite a few stolen bases, just as Devin is averaging 1.2 steals a game in his career. I’m sure that Carlos wants to be traded to a contender ASAP.

Carlos Beltran and Devin Harris

Jason Bay and Travis Outlaw.

This was a very easy choice for me. These were two terrible signings. I guess the Bay deal made a little more sense, only because he was good in his days as a Pirate (if that’s even possible) and contributed a few good years to the Red Sox as well. However, giving Outlaw $35 million just because he was the 6th man for Portland? That’s ridiculous. Since both players were signed, they have not performed up to expectations and fans of both teams are mad at them for sucking. We shall see if Bay will be able to turn his season around.

Jason Bay and Travis Outlaw

Scott Hairston and Joe Smith.

Both these players are random journeymen, with Smith playing for a shocking 12 teams and Hairston playing for 4. Joe Smith was traded almost immediately after the start of the season and the Nets could not regret making that move. Hairston currently has 1 home run (which we saw) and 5 RBI’s and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere this year. Smith averaged 0.5 points (yikes!) for the Nets and Lakers last season. The Mets probably regret signing Hairston and will try to make him a throw-in in some trade involving Beltran or Reyes.

Joe Smith and Scott Hairston

Angel Pagan and Sundiata Gaines.

These two players have the potential of being solid bench players, but injuries have really slowed them down. Pagan has only played more than 100 games in a season once in his six-year career and Gaines only played 10 games for the Nets before a season-ending injury. Hopefully, Gaines will be the backup to Jordan Farmar (the backup point guard) next year and also play some 2 guard and hopefully he will not take advantage of the Nets giving him a two-year contract and become lazy. Mets fans hope that Pagan will return at some point this year and not just sit on his ass after colliding with another Met in the outfield. Both these players might just turn into bums because of their injuries.

Sundiata Gaines and Angel Pagan

Jason Pridie and Damion James.

This was also a pretty easy comparison. Both these players are rookies and have massive beards (especially Pridie). And they both also sort of suck (Pridie does, we’re still not sure about Damion). Damion missed most of the year with various injuries and only played 25 games. It seemed like whenever he finally came back from an injury, he just got injured again. The injury bug has not hit Pridie yet, but I’m sure it will. My guess is that he will try to stretch a single into a double and pull a hamstring within the next two weeks. Hopefully Damion will have a better sophmore season and avoid all the injuries. Maybe he will even replace Travis in the starting lineup!

Damion James and Jason Pridie

Willie Harris and Quinton Ross.

These players are both journeymen and they both suck. Quinton had his famous “defensive specialist” role removed half way through the season when he was cut from the roster, thank god. Willie is currently batting .203 and that is sure to drop some more. The reason I chose this comparison was because of the way the teams acquired these players. Neither team actually wanted to get the players. The only reason the Nets got Ross was because they wanted to get rid of Yi (thank god, I could not stand one more minute of him). The only reason the Mets got Harris was because he was a “Mets Killer” while on the Braves and Nationals. Whenever the Mets were facing him up 1 in the ninth inning, he would hit a home run and the Mets would lose. Because of this, the Mets thought that they would have to get him to assure that he would not sign with the Phillies and torture them even more. They should have just let him go to the American League and forgot about him instead of signing him. And the Nets should have cut Q long before they eventually did.

Quinton Ross and Willie Harris

Yankees-Mets Recap

As Raphi put it, this was our first baseball surprise of the year and it was not predictable at all. The Mets won 2-1 in the Bronx to improve to a somewhat respectable 3-5 when we have attended their games and more importantly for them, 22-22 on the year. That is surprising enough. The Yankees fell to 1-1 in front of the KHH bloggers and 23-20 overall. After we saw R.A. Dickey lose at home to the Rockies, Astros, and Giants, he was able to win on the road at Yankee Stadium. Do you get what I mean by unpredictable? Freddy Garcia pitched well, but still got hit with the loss. There were plenty more surprises from this game but I will start from the beginning.

The first surprise of the night was that Raphi was less than 20 minutes late. This gave us enough time to go buy pizza before arriving at the Stadium. I had 2 slices and Raphi had 0, probably a very wise choice. As we were walking to the Stadium, we passed someone selling bags of peanuts on the street. There was one that was salted for $3 and one that was unsalted for $2. The cheaper one was also the much bigger one, so we thought, why not? and bought the unsalted peanuts and took them into the stadium with us. I don’t like to start eating them until at least the end of the first inning, especially because I had just eaten 2 slices of pizza, but we started eating them at 7:25, just as the 2nd inning was beginning. Before long, we had realized what we had just gotten ourselves into. This bag was ginormous, much bigger than any other peanut bag that we had had prior (and some of those were too big to handle). By the time we were a third of the way done, I was already completely sick of them and wanted to throw the rest away, but I could not disrespect the peanuts like that. We had to finish them. During the 7th inning stretch, I looked down at the peanuts and thought that I was finally almost done. The problem was that I felt that way until the top of the 9th inning when we finally finished them. We had been eating them nonstop and we only finished them at 9:45. We had been constantly eating them the whole game and it took us almost two and a half hours to finish them. Raphi deserves a lot of credit for finishing the peanuts, but I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame of peanut eaters for my performance tonight. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of how many peanuts we ate:

Full Bag of Peanuts

Empty Bag of Peanuts

Ripped Peanuts

What a Catastrophe

So Gross

Even though we ate all those peanuts, there was still more food that we ate. As I mentioned before, I ate 2 slices of pizza before the game. Raphi also bought a hot dog midway through the game to get the peanut taste out of his mouth. He should enter a Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest. He can compete against Mark Sanchez (it was against the Raiders, by the way).

Also from Mark Sanchez (we need some football in this blog):

Once the game started and I had already eaten many of the peanuts, my mouth longed for something other than the peanuty badness. I decided to go search for a drink. The first drink I saw that didn’t have a huge line and wasn’t water was a lemonade stand. I didn’t really want this, but I had no other options. And it looked bad too. It looked like they just put a lemon in a cup of water. But I was very wrong. It was delicious; maybe the best lemonade I had ever drank. It was so good that Raphi also got one later. Here’s a picture of our almost finished lemonades:

Delicious Lemonades

We have calculated that we must have eaten about 3,500 calories combined tonight. That is 1,750 each, almost the amount that you are supposed to have for a day in 4 hours. When I got home I looked at my stomach in the mirror and it looked bigger than it was before, I’m not lying. And I feel like I have to throw up. Enough about food; on to the game.

The Mets lineup was pretty gross tonight. The 5-9 hitters were Fernando Martinez (also the DH, what a joke), Justin Turner, Josh Thole, Jason Pridie, and Ruben Tejada. How that team beats the Yankees, I have no idea. Justin Turner had a bunt single in his first at-bat and had 3 hits in the game. He also broke a Mets record for the most consecutive games with an RBI for a rookie with 6. Wow, Justin Turner now holds a Mets record. Another surprise was that the only run the Yankees scored the whole game came on a Mark Teixeira first row home run in the third inning. Their offense was pretty disgusting to say the least. Yet another surprise: the Mets bullpen was shockingly good. If you remember my article from a few days ago, Mike O’Connor pitched a great 7th inning and Izzy and K-Rod shut the door for the Yankees. However, Joba and David Robertson pitched well out of the Yankees’ pen.

After attending this game, I feel the need to rant at Mets fans. First, I want to take you back to a few days ago on Wednesday. There must have been less than 1,000 people at Shea to watch the Mets take on the Nationals, and the fans that were there were very unspirited. There was not much cheering. Heck, I was able to distract Gorzy to make a terrible pick off throw. Now fast forward to today. There were probably at least 10,000 Mets fans at Yankee Stadium. And most of them didn’t honestly care about the Mets. They just want the Yankees to lose. They want to prove to all the Yankees fans that their team is bad because they lost to the lowly Mets. They don’t even think that their own team is good. They only want to annoy Yankees fans. They know that their team has no chance at the playoffs, so they might as well try to ruin the Yankees’ chance. That is all. Now it’s time for a few more pictures:

Random Fernando Martinez Stat

Yankees

The Field

Our Seats

K-Rod

In other baseball news, after the Nationals were blanked 2 nights in a row against the Mets, they scored 17 tonight against the Orioles. Typical. Blue Jays pitcher Jo-Jo Reyes pitched 7 innings and had a 2-0 lead, but the bullpen could not hang on and the Blue Jays still lost. Of note is that Jo-Jo Reyes has not gotten a win in 26 straight starts. That’s 26. Reyes is 5-18 for his career in 45 starts and his last win came on June 13, 2008 against you guessed it, the Mets (just kidding, the Angels, but I wish it was the Mets). Did you think that Jason Giambi’s power streak was just good for one game? Well it wasn’t. The Giambino went yard again tonight in Milwaukee. Keep it going big fella!