Seeing the Forest from the Trees

wrightHOF — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:44:29 -0000

I was originally just going to reply to another post, but I'm legit getting angry at things so I'm just going to do a mad cool fanshot instead. also because i've never done one before.

We're all upset. We've been through some serious rough times the last few years. I know we're paying a lot of money for this team. We want to win. We expect to win. And we will.

Baseball is such a game of inches. They've lost 4 games by 1 run and another by 2. If a couple things go right (Eckstein doesn’t call the balk, the fan doesn’t interfere with the ball, we don’t get blooped to death, we get a few more hits sprinkled in, the defense makes those plays that they can and will make) the Mets are 8-1, maybe even 9-0. If they win 2 or 3 of those games, everyone would be all excited about how awesome of a start the mets have had. So shut the hell up, stop yelling to trade reyes or beltran or wright or every pitcher and especially stop with the goddamn "can't win the big game because they suck break up the gang lolz let's trade murphy a six pack and church for manny and peavy all socal teams are the same right"

You know why the offense has been struggling? Because Reyes hasn’t been getting on base, and we’ve gotten unlucky. But we know how good Jose is. 9 games mean…nothing. Literally nothing. Just as one at bat means nothing. When a hitter makes an out with the bases loaded it doesn’t mean he sucks. It means that even the best players in baseball make an out over 55% of the time, and this was one of those times. We seem, as a fan base, to expect 100% success, when in baseball we know, we’ve had it driven into us ever since we were a 5 year old kid sitting at the ballpark for our first game, that you simply can not be successful anywhere near that much.

Why do we focus on the negative? Why not talk about the positives (while the tiny samples let us feel good about them)? Why is there so much talk about how awkward Wright looks at the plate (and he probably does have the most awkward .900+ OPS I’ve ever seen) and so little about how Delgado is picking up where he left off last season instead of making early 2008 look good? Has anyone noticed that we all of sudden have two pitchers who are at least as good and possibly better (much, much better in Frankie’s case) than anyone we had last year? And that possibly the biggest reason we didn’t make the playoffs last year was because of that bullpen? And that the rest of the team is basically, exactly the same?

We will come around folks. This team is good. We know it is good. We know we’re going to win. And if we have patience with the team, they will reward us. Look past the details and see the big picture - everything's going to be just fine.

Mets first pick is RP Eddie Kunz from Oregon State.

wrightHOF — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 21:46:49 -0000

He has a solid fastball that reaches the mid 90s, with some nice movement. Has a bit of a slider, but nothing else. Good control though, and gets a lot of ground balls.

MILB says: "Kunz's package of stuff is well-suited to the back of a bullpen, but the lack of the third pitch may keep him from closing as a pro. His future may be as a setup man who can pound his sinker-slider combination in on right-handed hitters."

Here's what Kevin Goldstein of BP says: "He's built kinda like Lee Smith, and throws as hard, but needs secondary stuff -- almost a reach here, really."

Bryan Smith likes him a bit more: "Kunz is a huge right-hander that, unlike Moskos and Cecil, was not given the attempt to move to the rotation this year. He probably doesn't fit there, but his big-time fastball will fit in the Mets bullpen by next season. Solid, unspectacular pick."

So looks like we went the safe route here. Hopefully his live arm does more than go Burgos on us, and hopefully his lack of secondary pitches doesn't go Pelfrey on us.

SB Nation User Blog: wrightHOF

Seeing the Forest from the Trees

Mets first pick is RP Eddie Kunz from Oregon State.