Revelation

So Ronny Cedeno lines a single on a 1-2 pitch off of Aaron Heilman this past Monday ... a pitch that probably should have been nowhere near where it was ... and a Notre Dame fan comes up to me the next day and says to me: "Clearly, Aaron Heilman is the stupidest player to ever come out of Notre Dame."

From that, I waited for the next time Heilman imploded to use that to put together a new way to voice my displeasure with the way he's pitching. Thus came Thursday nights post.

One of the problems I have when I write is that I expect everyone to be in on the joke that was said to me in a one-on-one situation. It's a stupid assumption to make. Obviously, Aaron Heilman, a Notre Dame alum, is not a stupid person. thus the jist of the joke. Some people got it, others did not, and that's my fault. Sometimes, jokes don't work. Hey, every once in a while, a comic tells a joke in a club that bombs. It happens. The comic that doesn't tell bombs is the one that gets the HBO specials.

The comics that do? Well, some of them become lame bloggers.

(And let's face it, guys like Aaron Heilman ... or Joe Smith for that matter ... could care less about bloggers such as me saying they're stupid. Just sayin'.)

Does he made stupid decisions on 1-2 pitches that are up in the zone? Absolutely. Was that still bothering me at the time? You bet. Did my thoughts come clearly from brain to keyboard? No. What you got was less of a joke and more of a visceral, raw, childish reaction from me ... and that was the jist of the flak that came back at me from what I wrote yesterday.

The criticism is valid. Sometimes, I let a little of the visceral seep out in the matter that I did last night ... it took my best efforts not to just come on the blog and write "you suck" 500 times, which is how I was feeling at the time.

Here's how I'm feeling at this time: it's slowly becoming clear to me that it does me no good to get frustrated and call players stupid. To get that way about the 2008 New York Mets is to assume that this team is underperforming.

In actuality, and from what they've shown me not only with this 21 game sample size, but with their putrid offensive effort against the Atlanta Braves tonight, is that maybe ... just maybe ... the Mets aren't that good a baseball team.

At least, they may not be as good as we all think ... or as good as I thought. That's not to say they're that bad, and that's not to say that the season is over by any means. If anything, it looks like the rest of the teams in the N.L. East have been stuck in mediocrity as well, and that the Mets could still pull out this division with one quasi-hot streak somewhere down the line.

But I think we're slowly realizing that after 22 games, a sample size that isn't so small anymore, that 2006 may be forever dead and buried, and those that are expecting 2006 again should temper their expectations just a bit. Twenty Oh-Six was built on a record setting lineup, and a dynamite bullpen. Of course, everyone complained about the lack of starting pitching, but the 2006 dynamic worked until Game 7 of the NLCS.

It's two years later, and I think we all expected this team to basically be 2006 plus Johan Santana. Well, Johan is Johan. But 2006 is no longer. The bullpen outside of Billy Wagner (and now, Filthy Sanchez) isn't quite as deep as it was then. And this team does not have the monster lineup it once had. Part of it was evidenced by the two hit performance they put out tonight. Yes, we had to endure Raul Casanova and Damion Easley where Brian Schneider and the Ghost of Carlos Delgado should have been. But with Jose Reyes, David Wright, and Carlos Delgado all in slumps of various length, there's nothing around the rest of the lineup to pick up the slack. Two years ago, Jair Jurrjens would have been toast in that third inning where he was walking the park home and ticking off home plate ump Tim McClelland, because somebody would have gotten a huge knock to bring home two or three runs.

This season? No such luck. And unfortunately, if guys like Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran can't find their stroke, there are going to be more of these kind of nights than there were last season, which was more than there were the season before. Because counting on guys like Brian Schneider (when healthy) and Angel Pagan to keep up their torrid paces is just ... plain ... not realistic.

(You were waiting for another word, perhaps?)

Twenty-two games into the season, I see a team like the Arizona Diamondbacks that's dominating with their starting pitching, yet also unexpectedly dominating with their lineup. I see a team like the Chicago Cubs that have seemingly adopted a whole new approach to hitting that has seemingly rejuvenated their team this year ... but with the Mets, I see the same old song and dance that killed them last year. And it's frustrating. It's maddening!

It's stupid!!!

But it just may be what we have to deal with the rest of the season. At least until that hot streak we're all hoping for. And that is my revelation.