A Met-Ley Crew

The Mets clubhouse is looking more and more like an American Idol audition these days. At least it seems that way.

In trying to address some of their more glaring shortcomings this spring, Omar Minaya began signing just about anyone that could throw a decent fastball. Add to that the previously established young guns in Humber, Perez and Pelfrey and it’s as if the Mets are looking to solve last years pitching issues with quantity more than anything.

It makes sense; the New York Mets circa 2006 were plagued with injuries in the rotation to Pedro, a promising Brian Bannister and Tom Glavine. Because of those calamities, they were forced to ship in some of their younger talent with mixed results. Alay Soler was inconsistent, often times looking brilliant (a May 24^th game against the Phillies when he pitched 6.0 innings and tossed five strikeouts) to looking awful (a May 30^th game against Arizona where he pitched 5.0 innings and gave up 7 earned runs). Phillip Humber and Mike Pelfrey only appeared in a combined 6 games although both pitched very well and John Maine, possibly the most reliable of the four, gave up far too many home runs (15 in 89 IP, lofty numbers especially for a pitcher’s park like Shea Stadium). Finally, Minaya brings in Oliver Perez and he does nothing else if not show us that he can be effective at times and extremely wild at others (Six earned runs in 5.1 IP in a 12-0 Mets loss to Atlanta right before the playoffs!. I almost put my head through the TV).

That brings us to this year.

While they haven’t made any major signings, the Mets have added a wealth of reliable arms to compete for some spots on that rotation. No, names like Chan Ho Park, Ambiorix Burgos and Scott Schoenweis (for example) may not scare other teams, the fact remains that the Mets experienced a marked rise in team ERA after the All-Star break (from 4.03 pre-A.S. to 4.32 post A.S.). While those numbers were still good enough for a 4.15 era on the season, if the Mets want to get back to the NLCS or the World Series for that matter, they can’t afford another 29-point rise; the NL East looks better than it did last year, specifically the Phillies. Acquiring Freddy Garcia was huge for them and they already have two great young arms in Cole Hamels and Ryan Madson. Now, they’ve got pitching to go with the formidable trio of Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins (who should stop talking so much by the way Jimmy Talking Smack in the Daily News). And let’s not forget how good the Marlins actually turned out to be. They gave the Mets fits in August and September (Mets: 5-5 against the Marlins).

Although Tom Glavine and Orlando Hernandez are getting on in years the Mets do have a lot of youth on that squad (besides Glavine, Hernandez and Pedro, the average age of every pitcher on the Mets’ roster is 27.6 yrs). Youth aside, Mets fans all know that pitching was the Mets real weakness after the All-Star break last season. Pedro will be out for most of the year in ’07 and one can’t expect Glavine and El Duque to be as good as they were last season, it’s not practical. What Mets fans can expect is to see the glut of pitchers create some intra-team competition and maybe, just maybe, we’ll see a rise in performance from the staff as a whole.

Mets fans definitely have a great group to watch in ‘07. Veteran leadership flanked by a lot of young flamethrowers.

All that and no Simon Cowell to boot.

Knicks Lose...Monta Ellis cruises

So, a pretty late night for my beloved group of underacheivers, the New York Knicks, as they travelled to northern Cali to meet up with the Golden State Warriors. This was a Warriors team, by the way, that lacked their two best players (J. Rich and B. Diddy himself). Of course, in true Knicks fashion they lost the game behind lots of careless turnovers and uninspring play. I am not going to sit here and trash my team though. They showed flashes of brilliance, most of which came from the bench squad, led by Nate Robinson who dropped 23 points. However, as has been the case for most of the season, they follow a big win (against the Lakers WITH Kobe) with a bad loss to the Warriors (without their two best). Granted, Stephen Jackson held it down with 36 and 8 dimes, but there is no reason the Knicks should be losing to the worst defensive team in the league. They almost didn't break 100...enough said. One thing I did take pleasure in was watching Monta Ellis play. He can ball something serious. He reminds me a lot of a young Marbury with the strength and quickness but also of a Terrell Brandon (how many people remember that name?). He has the intelligence of TB and the potential to be a very skilled point in the future. I'd love having a young guy like that on my team. He gave the Warriors 23 points and seven dimes in the win. Big game, young gun. Finally, on my Gerald Wallace watch (I wish he played for us): 32 pts., 2 blocks, 1 steal and 4 rebounds in the win against the Bulls. I'm telling you, GW is a monster defensively. If he can develop a decent jumper, he'll be a beast.

What the Super Bowl Taught Me

It really is funny how people can make predictions about a game -- especially one as big as the Super Bowl -- time and time again and more often than not, those opinions end up being wrong. Watching the Super Bowl yesterday with some friends, we struck up a conversation about what we thought would happen during the course of the game and all four of us (myself, my buddy Jon and two very sports-smart women) were convinced that the Bears' defense would come through and shut down a Colts offense that had been stumbling its way through the playoffs. Imagine our surprise when the Colts D did what the Bears D was supposed to do: completely shut down the Bears O. Now let's not give the Colts too much credit, the Bears offense will never be confused with the Rams offense of '99, but we all thought that they would do a little better than they did. Not enough running by the Bears (Cedric Benson's injury certainly didn't help) and poor play by Rex Grossman down the stretch pretty much sealed their coffin. The Colts, despite giving up 3 turnovers and an electrifying first quarter kickoff return by Devin Hester, looked like the best team in the league last night. Peyton Manning did just enough to keep the offense mobile (249 yds, 1 TD and 1 INT) and how about Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes? These two should have definitely won co-MVP honors last night because combining for 253 all purpose yards from scrimmage is just too much of an impact to justify ignoring. The Colts knew exactly what they wanted to do coming into the game and the word that sums it up is CONTROL. In the 3rd Quarter, they kept the Bears D on the field for just under and HOUR. That's 59 minutes of chasing Addai and Rhodes. 59 minutes of blitzing Peyton and 59 minutes of sitting back and wondering why you just cannot seem to get past Jeff Saturday and a Colts O-Line that just wouldn't give. All that being said, there was one point in the game where the Bears could have made serious run at getting back into the game. with about 11 minutes left in the 4th quarter, the Bears offense was moving rather briskly down the field. Rex Grossman was connecting finding his receivers with smart throws over the middle and with the screen. Yet, something seemed very odd. Why though, during the beginning stages of that drive (which eventually ended in an ugly looking pass that Bob Sanders intercepted), were none of those receivers looking to run out of bounds and stop that clock. I laughed about this with my buddy Jon after I saw seconds continue to tick away. Sure, 11 minutes seems like a lot of time, but when you are out of timeouts, as the Bears were, you'd want to stop the clock any chance you got right? I won't sit here and pretend like I know everything, but watching that game, it looked like a poor job of clock management by the Bears O. I guess you can't really blame them though. It's not like they were really on the field for much of that game. At the end of the day, it was a great win by the Colts and Peyton, Tony and the rest of the team should be very proud of their season. Getting past New England was huge, but getting past New England AND winning the Super Bowl sounds so much better. K.A.T.

What's Up With The Knicks?

New York City is regarded as one of the toughest towns in sports. At the core of this city is a team that, for the past seven years, has languished in mediocrity and lowliness. This is not a knock on the player's themselves, but rather a staunch observation at the misguided direction the team has taken. What's wrong with my beloved Knicks? After watching the Knicks lose to Charlotte last night, it hit me: there are a lot of reasons for this team's steady decline to the bottom of the league ranks. One look at the team on the floor unearths many of them. On paper, the team is arguably one of the better teams in the league. They have a Stephon Marbury who has been playing like he's vying for the love of the city. Jamal Crawford is the team's best clutch player (although he is a lot like John Starks in many respects) and Eddy Curry is finally starting to live up to his potential. Still, despite all of this, the team lacks discipline on defense - allowing 102.6ppg in their last five - and all too often, their offensive punch disappears in key stretches of the game as evidenced in their embarassing defeat to the Bobcats Wednesday night. What is going on here? A team with all the money and all the talent that the Knicks have should not be struggling this much. Dallas did it, why can't New York. It has been talked about time and time again, money does not equal championships, and with the blank checks that Isaiah Thomas has been during his tenure as Knicks GM, that theory has become quite true for the Knicks. One of the issues plaguing this team is the chemsitry. It definitely seems like all of the players get along with one another, but I don't think that these players meld well on the court as far as their skill sets go. At team with four point guards who play essentially the same way won't usually win often. They seem to lose focus as soon as the second half begins. Think about that win against L.A. two days ago. They were playing a Kobe-less Lakers team and they still almost gave that game away with 21 turnovers, 5 alone in the 3rd Quarter. One would think, with the amount of scrutiny this team has been under this season for committing the same types of mistakes (turnovers and offensive droughts) they would try to contain the frequency of such occurences. There is no one solution to the problems this team faces. Yet, their first order of business should be to unload some of those guards in favor of an athletic big man. The Knicks could have probably used someone like Tyson Chandler as opposed to giving all that money to Jared Jeffries. Tyson would have given them athleticism, interior defense and rebounds to counter Eddy Curry's relative lack of all three (a guy 7 feet tall and 285 lbs should be avergaing more than 7 rebs and .6 blocks a game). That way Eddy can focus on his offense and let the rest come to him. Also, as much as I like him, why not try to unload Channing in a deal for a more reliable and tougher inside - outside defender. Though he sometimes doesn't put up good offensive numbers, Gerald Wallace could be a great asset to this team as he ofter averages high numbers in steals and blocks. He is a strong player, a great leaper and has quick hands. He'd be a handful for any 2, 3 or 4 in the league. At least, it always seems like it when he plays us (his numbers in 2 games against the Knicks, btw?: 35.0 ppg, 7.0 rpg, 3.0 spg, 2 bpg, pretty good, no?) Bottom line is this, the Knicks need changes on a mentality and fundamental level if they are going to make any serious noise this year or any subsequent year. Isaiah has his work cut out for him and New York City is waiting to cheer for this team in earnest again.