Monday, July 21, 2008

Do I really have to get into this?

Jayson Stark has apparently jumped aboard with Skip Bayless on the "hate the Mets" bandwagon.

We can go through the Mets', Phillies', and Marlins' rosters, position by position and add it up...but that doesn't do us much good because somebody will get hurt down the stretch. Somebody will slump. Somebody will get hot. The Marlins lead the majors in home runs, the Phillies have Utley, Howard, and Rollins, and the Mets have Wright, Reyes, and Beltran. All three teams have role-players. Bottom line is all of these teams can score runs.

But offense doesn't win championships.

Johan Santana
John Maine
Oliver Perez
Mike Pelfrey
Pedro Martinez

Cole Hamels
Joe Blanton
Jamie Moyer
Kyle Kendrick
Brett Myers

Ricky Nolasco
Scott Olsen (my boy!)
Josh Johnson
Chris Volstad

That takes care of step one, the Marlins can be crossed off this list if I asked you to eliminate one cluster of names.

Now let's cross Brett Myers and Pedro Martinez off because those two will have more health issues than starts in the second half.

Cross off Santana and Hamels because I don't feel like getting into that discussion. That leaves us with six names.

Mike Pelfrey
Oliver Perez
John Maine

Joe Blanton
Jamie Moyer
Kyle Kendrick

Say what you will about Pelfrey's track record, and how Perez and Maine have pitched this year, but Pelfrey finally seems to be coming around and Maine and Perez can come up huge in big-game situations. They've proven it. That's why I'll take the Mets' mid-three any day.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I'd take Maine and Pelfrey as middle starters any day and Perez every other day.

Travis Miller said...

the other thing that sucks is that the Braves aren't out of the race by a long shot. they can put runs up with the best of them when Teix and Larry are healthy--and their pitching can tighten up when it needs to. Tim Hudson, anyone?

Unknown said...

There's been a lot of talk about Teix being traded, so I guess you have that to root for. On the other side of the trade stick, Atlanta isn't afraid to pull the trigger on any trade if it means they'll win. I love this time of year.

Unknown said...

You're right, good point. To counter that though, most of everyone I know can't stand him. Also, most of everyone on sports forums I go to can't stand him either. Anything negative about the Mets could be interpreted into something positive by the viewer.