Look, I can’t really say anything more than what I said yesterday. Something like this will happen even in the very best of seasons.
What is freaking me out a little is this unprecedented gap between the home record and the road record. I’ll have to check this, but I don’t think the Mets ever had a season with a better record on the road than at home. It may mean something (who knows what?) but I suspect it is just a fluke. Is it possible that our relievers are more nervous in Shea stadium?
Those three home runs in a row were inspiring. Maine was absolutely fine. Bullpens are streaky. What can you say? I still think we have a better bullpen than Philadelphia and I still think we will win the division in part because of that. But I also think that Philly is a force to be reckoned with.
So now we play the Tigers, the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Twins, and the A’s? At least we’ll get a chance to rest at the end of the month by playing the World Champions! Hey, don’t they have any weak teams in the AL we could play?
Dana,
I really thought they had turned the corner with those back to back to back homers, and that Manuel was thrown out. I realize Wagner was going to eventually blow a save, but I would rather he had done it during a winning streak.LOL! I am very happy that the starting pitching is doing well but the bullpen is starting to scare me a little. Schoeneweiss is really a liability for them. I don’t think he has done much to help the team. Can they trade him for a better reliever? They really need to get their hitting going consistently. I hope with Valentin and Green coming back this will help. It is strange that their winning record is better on the road. Let’s hope that it stays that way since they are going to be on the road awhile. Maybe that is what they need to get back on track.
The Mets have had five seasons with better road than home records, most recently in 1994. The current disparity is freaky, but since we’re roadbound, I’ll take it.
G-Fafif: Thanks for that information. What five seasons were they? Maybe there is some kind of pattern. 1994 doesn’t surprise me because fan morale was so low and there were few people in the stands (which makes the problem this year harder to understand).
‘66, ‘68, ‘72, ‘79, ‘94.
No real pattern there. Yes, ‘79 was the pits, but the Mets were on an uptick in ‘66 and had garnered real momentum in ‘68. They were in first place early in ‘72 until injuries brought them down (let’s not use that example as precedent). ‘94 was a nice little comeback year cut short by the strike. But plenty of good seats were still available.
I think 2007 is just one of those anomalies. It may very well work itself out before long, hopefully not at the expense of the fine road record. The three nightmarish losses to the Phillies aside (and who doesn’t have nightmares about LOBs and Scott Schoeneweis?), the crowds I’ve been in this year, eleven to date, have been generally supportive to a fault. Could be the Mets are pressing to impress. Or have just been caught napping.
Remember, it’s the same place where they came back and won in stupendous fashion versus the Rockies, the Cubs and the Giants, events that signaled to the faithful that the Mets would not be stopped, that this is surely our year. (Of course the prevailing Mets fan vibe of this moment would note how bad their home record would be if they hadn’t come back in those games; as I recently concluded, the two things Mets fans tend not to handle well are prosperity or the lack of loads of it).