{"id":1848,"date":"2012-07-10T02:14:35","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T02:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beta.mbtn.net\/?p=1848"},"modified":"2013-12-20T02:18:35","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T02:18:35","slug":"all-wright-at-the-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/?p=1848","title":{"rendered":"All Wright at the Break"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Half a season gone by and the Mets have been fun to watch, buoyed by outstanding performances by Royally Screwed All-Star Reserves\u00a0David\u00a0Wright\u00a0and\u00a0R.A. Dickey\u00a0and a kind of gutsy character that’s resulted in exciting baseball and lots of satisfying wins. In a lot of ways, the Mets are surprising people not because they’ve gotten so much better (though they have, a little) but that the league has come back to them. Clubs like Philadelphia and Miami (LOL and LOL) are exhibiting the kinds of struggles the Mets did in recent years and few clubs in the NL look so good that they could run away from the rest, so I think there’s a little reason to believe the Mets can’t hang around for a while (I think, in fact,\u00a0lots<\/em>\u00a0of teams will hang around for a while). It’s just that kind of year.<\/p>\n

My concerns are with their weak right-handed hitting, their poor defense and their lack of pitching depth (in that order). It will take a trade or a miracle comeback from\u00a0Jason Bay\u00a0to fix the first issue and continued health and some good luck to fix pitching concerns (I don’t think we have to go nuts trading for some other team’s closer, but bolstering the ready supply of good arms never hurt anyone). It’s the D that I can’t see improving (unless you involve\u00a0Daniel Murphy\u00a0and\/or\u00a0Lucas Duda\u00a0in a trade for that right-handed slugger) and then who knows. But I’d suspect the D will continue to be an issue, so I’m keeping my expectations modest: Let’s hope we can hang around, avoid another big dropoff like we’ve had in so many recent second halves, and see where it gets us. If we can add a bat or an armn, let’s do that too. It’s been fun so far.<\/p>\n

Speaking of David Wright, his home run July 3 “not only moved him past\u00a0Howard Johnson\u00a0into third place in the Mets’ record books, it also moved uniform #5 past #18 for home runs hit. Number 5 now trails only #20 in home runs.” This from sharp-eyed MBTN reader\u00a0Shorty\u00a0<\/strong>in the comments section.\u00a0Sure enough, it checks out: Wright’s dinger was the 378th by a player who wears\u00a0No. 5, surpassing\u00a018, which hasn’t had a home run since\u00a0Moises Alou\u00a0in 2007 (thanks for nothing again,\u00a0Jeremy Reed). Only\u00a0No. 20, with 388 home runs, has produced more but with that uni currently unassigned it looks like Wright (197 HRs wearing 5) and company (John Olerud\u00a0is next with 63) can overtake the all-time lead later this year. Re-sign this guy!<\/p>\n

Getting caught up with the recent roster moves, the Mets designated\u00a0Justin Hampson\u00a0and recalled\u00a0Jordany Valdespin\u00a0July 4, then swapped out\u00a0Jeremy Hefner\u00a0for a healthy-at-last\u00a0Pedro Beato\u00a0July 5. Beato was gone so long I forgot what number he wore, but can tell you now it’s still\u00a027<\/a>. Hampson was later reassigned to Buffalo along with Chris Schwinden, who bounced on the waiver wire to the Indians to the Yankees and back to the Mets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Half a season gone by and the Mets have been fun to watch, buoyed by outstanding performances by Royally Screwed All-Star Reserves\u00a0David\u00a0Wright\u00a0and\u00a0R.A. Dickey\u00a0and a kind of gutsy character that’s resulted in exciting baseball and lots of satisfying wins. In a lot of ways, the Mets are surprising people not because they’ve gotten so much better … Continue reading “All Wright at the Break”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[379,257,290,408,261,506,277,542],"class_list":["post-1848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-david-wright","tag-howard-johnson","tag-jeremy-reed","tag-john-olerud","tag-lucas-duda","tag-moises-alou","tag-pedro-beato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1849,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1848\/revisions\/1849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mbtn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}