Hold The Pity Party

Is there anyone out there who watched the top of the first inning today and thought "oh, what a pity about these Marlins, having been torn apart twice in their short history...and now, in Bad News Bears style, they can barely field a ground ball"?

Not me. Screw 'em.

I say, get your licks on these guys now while you can, as the Mets did in their 7-3 victory today.

Sure the Mets scored four in the first inning before while barely getting a ball out of the infield, and by all rights and purposes, shouldn't have scored any. But Jeffrey Loria is going to sleep better at night knowing that the rest of the league handed over some bees knees prospects to help him win the World Series in 2013 (at which point they'll be wheeled again). And these same guys that couldn't turn tailor made double plays now are going to get big October hits in the decade of the 10's (with Joe Girardi as the manager no less...if Joe Girardi is ever a World Series winning manager, it will ensure that Mike Francesa will never, ever shut up.)

It's easy to be jealous that the Marlins, a team that's been around 13 years have as many World Series as a team that's been out there for 45 seasons. But that's due to getting great prospects from fire sale number one (A.J. Burnett for Al Leiter...Juan Pierre for Gary Sheffield by way of Mike Piazza and Preston Wilson...Derrek Lee for Kevin Brown). And now they have another bumper crop that has arrived with Ramirez and co. But there's another reason to be bitter here (there's always another reason to be bitter).

Where were all the damn prospects coming in return for the Mets' 1993 team?

Who was the genius that decided that at 35-68 on July 30th, there was no reason to get rid of everybody? Who was the genius that decided that this was the team of the future?

They traded Gallstones Fernandez for Darrin Jackson...thirty year old Darrin Jackson.

They traded Wayne Housie for Josias Manzanillo.

And that was it.

They waited until 1995 to trade Saberhagen for Juan Acevedo and Arnold Gooch (Gary Coleman's character obviously wound up marrying The Gooch in the "Different Strokes Reunion Special"...different strokes indeed!) In other words, they got nothing for Saberhagen.

They got nothing for Eddie Murray.

They got Kevin McReynolds for Vince Coleman.

They got Kenny Greer for Frank Tanana.

And in the ultimate circle of hell, Ryan Thompson...who was acquired for David Cone in one of the Mets' plethora of genius moves...was traded for Mark Clark...who was traded for Mel Rojas...who was traded for Bobby Bonilla.

So they started by trading one member of the 1993 Mets...the 59-103 Mets...and in the end got a member of the 1993 Mets back.

Where were our Hanley Ramirezs and Reggie Abercrombies and Jeremy Hermidas? No, our 1993 "fire sale" got us Bobby Bonilla back. Damn you Al Harazin.

So shed not one tear for the Florida Marlins and hold your pity to a bare minimum.

***

All right, now that we got that out of the way...

Orlando Hernandez was 5th Starter-licious today, doing what fifth starters are supposed to do, and what fifth starters have been doing for the Mets lately. Three runs, five innings, one meatball to Hermida. I've always thought that if you're patient, and if you sit on fastball with Orlando, you can have success. The problem is, when is the fastball coming? As Ron Darling so eloquently put it, Hernandez works backwards...setting up fastball with off speed stuff.

When teams are patient, you get more of what you got today: five innings, one thousand pitches, and the results might not be as good. But that isn't going to matter when the bullpen does what it does today.

Speaking of which: I like this "Heath Bell As Long Reliever" experiment. But why is it that whenever I see "The Movement" in a game now, the word that comes to my mind is showcase?