The Rise And Fall of Expectations

"I'm not just going to let Sammy add to his numbers against us" Art Howe, following the season's opening series against the Cubs who beat the Mets two out of three times.

It's a poor foreshadowing of the season when the biggest accomplishment of your opening series is reduced to holding Sammy Sosa from hitting his 500th homer against you. To do it, the Mets pitching staff had to walk Sosa 6 times out of 13 at bats. In a series in which they gave up 22 earned runs in 3 games, it's about the only thing outside of Al Leiter that you can say the pitching staff succeeded at.

The woeful tales of the inept are many. Mike Bacsic, who had once vied for the 5th spot in the rotation and was then reduced to a mop up role, pitched a perfect inning yesterday which brought his ERA down to still-unfathonable 27.00. Following the game he was sent back to the minors to make room for David Cone who may no longer be eligible for Social Security benefits once he takes the mound against the Expos on Saturday.

Yesterday, much like Tom Glavine's start on Opening Day, began with a bang by the Cubs when Steve Trachsel proved incapable of getting batters to make an out. Perhaps they should plagerize the Pentagon's crack slogan squad and call this the "Shock and Awe" School of Starting Pitching. Nine of the first thirteen Cubs batters reached base in the game against Steve Trachsel, as he allowed five runs through the first three innings and believe me, were it not for some inept baserunning by the Cubs, the bleeding could have been much worse. Trachsel picked off Corey Patterson and Mark Bellhorn in succession in the second. Sosa was thrown out at the plate trying to score on Alou's two-run double in the third, then Alou was nailed at home when he tagged up on a fly ball. Otherwise, this would have been much uglier.

I found a New Jersey paper on the train the other day and in it was an article which detailed the course of Art Howe's life and what a "tough" guy he is, apparently meant to offset the press questioning Howe's laid back reputation. Jason Giambi said "he's either the toughest nice guy or the nicest tough guy I've ever known" -- Well, that's a comfort if Art Howe's got my back in a bar fight but frankly, this laid back, everyone's happy as a hippy in a bed of flowers team mentality doesn't seem to be serving much point yet.

But perhaps it is unfair to place the blame on the shoulders of a maladroit pitching staff and its manager. After all, in the first three games of the season, the Mets have struck out a staggering 27 times. Hurray for Fat Mo that he's lost a little weight but he's hitting .143 and has struck out in nearly half of his at-bats.

So far, so bad. Yes, there was that inning or two of brief euphoria when the Mets almost resembled a Major League team instead of some sort of collective Max Patkin revival the other night but otherwise, it's been one act of ineptitude after another.

*****

At the onset of the only game the Mets won out of the series, the capricious Met television color man Keith Hernandez pointed out what a crucial stat he believed an umpire's walks to strikeouts ratio was in determining how a game will play out. He asked viewers to consider the implications of an expanded or constricted strike zone both for the hitter and the pitcher. After a few innings of watching Cubs starter Mark Clement throw wild-pitch sliders all over the place, it seemed like a moot point, but I looked it up anyway later on the Umpire Statistics Page.

The purpose of the site, which provides statistics for handicapping, is to keep track of data on umpires to learn of any biases that may be inherent in the way an individual umpire calls balls and strikes or shows sentiment for or against the home team. It further notes that "psychological and other intangible factors might be used to explain why such behavior occurs."

According to this site's statistics, for the umpires who regularly worked games last season, of the four with the highest walks-per-9-innings ratio, only two are still umpires this season and the other two don't even appear on the All-Time Umpire Roster. What happened to them? Did they blow one too many calls? What do these mysterious disappearances mean? Maybe the days of Alfonso Marquez and Sam Holbrook will soon be numbered and they too, will disappear entirely, Hoffa-like, from the annals of baseball's history. Strange, perhaps even ominous stats.

Yesterday I discovered the existence of Diamond Mind Baseball which has very elaborate computer-projected standings (and analysis) for the 2003 season. They picked the Mets to finish last and while I'd like to feel disgruntled, last year they picked the Mets fourth and look where it got them.