King Cranky

Johan Santana losses are like twice the size of a normal loss. That's the burden that Santana carries on this team, much like the burden that Henrik Lundqvist perpetually carries for the New York Rangers. As a goalie for a team that is scoring challenged, chances are that if King Henrik isn't spectacular, the Rangers lose. Unfortunately there are too many nights where King Henrik is spectacular, but the Rangers still lose. Sunday's winner take all for the playoffs, unfortunately, was a prime example.

For Johan Santana, it might be worse. At lease Lundqvist can start 85% of his team's games and win 35 games a year. If Johan could win 35 games a year maybe Met fans wouldn't worry so much. But he can't. And now that he's suffered a strange loss against the Washington Nationals, we know that we aren't going to see him again until Friday or Saturday. And coming off a loss heading into a series against a playoff team on the road and throwing John Maine, Jon Niese, and Mike Pelfrey at the Rockies, Sunday's loss hurts more.

Santana wasn't spectacular on Sunday. The surprise wasn't that Johan gave up a long ball, the surprise was the road to that homer, which was a triple to Nyjer Morgan and two walks. Santana is prone to the long ball early in the season, but usually they're solo shots. Though I suppose that if Felix Hernandez can hit a grand slam off Santana then Josh Willingham certainly can.

But when Santana isn't spectacular, and certainly when he shorts out in the first inning, it had to deflate the team. On the one hand, it could be correct to say that Santana could have had one of those Lundqvist games today where he was spectacular and they still would have lost because the Mets couldn't get a good shot at Livan Hernandez. But is it? Could Johan's freaky first have deflated the Mets to the point where the entire lineup pressed at the plate against Livan's slow pitch softball stuff?

And that brings me to another point, if Snoop Manuel was right in saying that the team was "unprepared" to hit Livan Hernandez, a guy that most of this lineup played with last season, then that's on Snoop and his coaches. If, however, Bob Ojeda was correct on the postgame show in saying that the Mets were in fact prepared but were simply pressing too much against Livan, who was clearly taking advantage of that, then that begs the following question: What the hell game is Snoop watching???

The Rangers?

And for the lack of a segue that works, let me say this: If Willie Harris wants to flatter himself and think that Frankie Rodriguez plunked him in the ninth inning because he made a game saving catch on Saturday, then let him do so. But if he's going to bark at Frankie for a pitch that hit his arm in an area that was just off the inner half, then he deserves whatever he gets.

Yes, I'm crawling back into "Baseball needs to be more like it was in the 80's" mode, so pay close attention: If I'm Frankie, I go one step further than simply saying "f**k you" to Harris a couple of times, and put one right in Nyjer Morgan's back after that. Willie wants to bitch and moan? Give him something to bitch and moan about. Now, I know what you're going to say: "Oh Metstradamus that's extreme! Nyjer Morgan didn't do anything!" Or: "What if Morgan charges the mound and Frankie hurts his arm?" Or: "What if the Nats retaliate and David Wright gets hit in the head again?" Valid points. I'm not Frankie Rodriguez. I don't have to be concerned with my long term health put in the hands of doctors who will probably have their recommendations squashed by ownership. All of your responses are logical, and I'm not.

But screw it. I'm sick and tired of players like Willie Harris thinking that they have latitude to hang over the plate and then be big mouths when they get hit because they're on the right side of the scoreboard. I'm tired of the "he dominated you, get over it" mentality. There are idiots on either side of the scoreboard. And maybe if Willie Harris sees Morgan take a fastball in the middle of the number one on his back, maybe he isn't going to be so quick to open his mouth when the moment doesn't call for it like Brian Bruney did (that Jacobs home run, couldn't have happened to a nicer guy ... Maybe the mere sight of Bruney was the thing that sparked Frankie to react the way he did.) What's the worst that can happen? Teams hate the Mets? Like that isn't already the case. Or Frankie Rodriguez gets suspended for the next three games? So what? Like he's going to get a save chance in Colorado anyway at this rate.

And yet, I also tire of trying to convince people that the Mets need to return to some vigilante justice just once in their lives. It's a losing battle. Everyone is everyone's friend these days, and everybody just wants to run their mouths instead of charging the mound or sending a message like Bob Gibson used to do because nobody wants to be fined. It's the way of the world and I'll just have to be happy with Frankie throwing a couple of f-bombs instead of a beanball and go on my merry, cranky way.

Xavier Nady Stole My Couch

Metstradamus comes home from work after a long day of dealing with hoards of Yankee fans using mass transit to travel to and from their victory parade, and finds a surprise waiting for him.

X: Hey, man.

MD: Who are you and what are you doing in my living room?

X: Come on, you don't recognize me?

MD: You look familiar ...

X: Yeah, you even bought a t-shirt with my name on it.

MD: Dude, that only eliminates, like, half of major league baseball.

X: Dude!

MD: Wait a second ... are you Xavier Nady?

X: Yeah man, what's up?

MD: Nothing, but I reiterate: What are you doing in my living room?

X: I heard you had meatloaf in the fridge.

MD: Uh, okay.

X: It's damn good.

MD: Yes it is. But, how did you get in here?

X: With this (holds up a giant key)

MD: That's a large key.

X: It's not just any large key ... it's my key to the city.

MD: You got a key to the city? For what??!?

X: Dude, I'm a Yankee!

MD: Don't remind me.

X: Yeah, so we're world champs, so I got this key.

MD: And ... you used it to come into my apartment.

X: Yeah.

MD: You can do that?

X: Anywhere in the city I want, I can just use this and walk right in.

MD: I thought it was merely symbolic.

X: Crazy, huh?

MD: So at any moment I could see Jeter or A-Rod in my kitchen?

X: In theory, yes. But the big players don't really use them much ... it's just the bench guys that use them to get a meal or some furniture. Not everyone can make $20 million a year. We're just trying to make a living.

MD: Furniture?

X: Yeah, I just came from Jay-Z's house. I took his couch.

MD: Dude, that's theft!

X: Hey I've got a key. The city is mine. Besides, he'll never know it's missing. He's too busy trying to convince LeBron James to play for the Nets next year.

MD: But there has to be some specific purpose that brought you here.

X: Huh?

MD: I mean, you could go anywhere you wanted, but you came here. I mean, what's it about? Is this some sort of penance that I have to go through? Is this my punishment for not watching the World Series ... I find Xavier Nady on my couch eating my meat loaf with a key to the city earned while playing for the New York Yankees? Are you a symbol, Xavier? A symbol of what my life is going to be like rooting for this team for the next twenty years? What? What is it??!?

X: Dude, do you have some ketchup for this meat loaf?

MD: No I do not have any ketchup for your damn meat loaf!!!!

X: Dude, chillax. I really just came for the meat loaf and to watch some T.V. I'm sorry if you were searching for a larger purpose for me being in your living room. It was really just hunger and television.

MD: You couldn't find a larger house with a bigger T.V.?

X: Well, I went into Frankie Rodriguez's house to watch his wall-sized flat screen. But that didn't work out so well.

MD: He didn't have meat loaf?

X: It wasn't that ... turns out he put a bullet through his television when Brian Bruney got his key to the city.

MD: Oh.

X: Yeah.

MD: Maybe you're here as a symbol that Oliver Perez will also one day get his key to the city.

X: He's got his already. Unfortunately, that city is Port St. Lucie.

MD: That sounds appropriate.


X: Hey, you got any salt for this?

MD: No Xavier. Even though you're a somewhat popular former Met, you're a Yankee who has won a championship so I'm going to have to throw you out of my home.

X: I understand.

MD: And by the way, that meat loaf is like two weeks old.

X: I knew it needed ketchup.

MD: You think Jeter will actually try to show up with his key? Because if he does I'll press charges.

X: Jeter already exchanged his for a new blazing copper Ford. And A-Rod gave his to Kate Hudson ... told her it was the key to his heart or something stupid like that.

MD: Oh lord, really?

X: Yeah. Can you believe that?

MD: What was the deal with that hat, anyway?

X: Don't ask, dude.

MD: Feel free to come back when you're a Met again.

X: With my recent injury history, that'll be soon.

MD: I'll expect the medical records in the mail.

X: I'm off for my cortisone and salmonella shots.

A Cherry On Top Of The Worst Subway Sundae Ever

There are a couple of blogger standbys that I could resort too. But as I type this, I'm not sure which one fits better. I go back and forth between:

• Proclaiming the 2009 season to be over, done, kaput, or ...
• Proclaiming that the New York Mets should volunteer for contraction and cease operations.

They both sound like decent options.

Consider if you will: I wrote a post not so long ago coming up with some too funny to be true scenarios on how much worse losses can get this season. If I had come up with Frankie Rodriguez walking Derek Jeter to get to Mariano Rivera (after throwing Derek Jeter a hittable pitch to lead off the at-bat), and then walking Mariano Rivera for his first career RBI, I would bet that none of you would have thought that was more remotely plausible than any of the others on that list.

Yet, here we are, left to pick up the pieces while we sit at our keyboards trying to make sense of another 21st century laughingstock moment for this franchise.

In the big picture, Frankie walking Rivera (and if I have to hear Jon Miller call him "The Great Rivera" one more f-ing time, I'm going to stab my eyes and ears until I'm bleeding all over both the hardwood floors and the Tuscany tiles) with the bases loaded had nothing to do with the eventual outcome of the ballgame. But in the bigger picture, gee ... how about not walking a guy with two lifetime at-bats in fourteen years with the bases loaded? How about that??? How about losing a ball game without walking Mariano Rivera on national television? Am I asking for a lot? I'm not even asking for a win, I just want to be able to be able to leave my apartment without having to wear a paper bag over my head!!!

I mean, for crying out loud, Derek Jeter is smirking at the plate!!! Everyone in the dugout is trying not to bust a gut laughing. This is a moment that's a big joke to everyone wearing gray. And Frankie goes out and turns the joke right around on the Mets, as usual. I mean, how hard is Brian Bruney laughing right now? How hard are the Yankees laughing right now? They go into their off day as the happiest team in baseball, the sun shining on their world as usual. The Mets, meanwhile, get to take a plane ride to Milwaukee to begin their own personal death march towards another disastrous end of the season. And the only thing left for Frankie to do is to whip off that mask and expose to the world that he's merely Armando Benitez in disguise.

Mariano Rivera!!! He's about as useful a hitter as Dan Warthen is when he stands in the batters' box in the bullpen to simulate a live hitter! Dammit!

And one thing I don't want to hear until the Mets reel off seven in a row is how resilient this team is. Everybody wanted to drink the Kool-Aid after the Mets won the first game after Carlos Beltran went down ... and maybe because we've all been so desperate to see some resilience in this team that to see the Mets win without the bulk of their production was cause for celebration. Well guess what? Taking three of four from the Cardinals is a distant memory. But I'm sure that if the Mets go and win on Monday, we'll hear all this chatter from Snoop Manuel about how resilient this team is and how they're able to bounce back from tough losses.

Great! Then they'll lose two more to Milwaukee ... forcing the whole resiliency cycle to start again. So Snoop, how about laying off bragging about how the team is resilient until they actually get some distance between themselves and .500, the Braves, and the Marlins, whaddaya say? And while we're at it, how about letting go of the hallucination that Fernando Tatis can actually bunt? How about that?

And about that whole "shorthanded" thing? Sorry, marginal major leaguers should be able to get through an inning without kicking the ball around as if it had metal spikes laced with acid on them. And decent major leaguers should be able to handle a guy who comes into a game with an 0-6 record and an ERA of 11.60.

Eleven. Point. Sixty.

Oh, the Mets are shorthanded, boo-hoo. I was willing to go with that against CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. Against Chien-Ming Wang? No, you're going to have to do better than that. I mean, David Wright's a legitimate major leaguer, right? Right. A bonafide major leaguer who leads the N.L. in hitting, and couldn't get a freakin' hit during this whole freakin' series. Not one!

So yeah, I don't want to hear anything about shorthanded, resiliency, nor do I even want to hear anybody tell me "But Metstradamus ... Ya Gotta Believe". Because let's get one thing straight: After Ryan Church misses third base with the winning run, Luis Castillo drops the final out of a game, and BB-Rod walks Mariano Rivera with the bases loaded in the same season, the statute of limitations on my obligation to believe has officially run out. And I don't gotta do a damn thing except pay taxes and die.

No Luck For The Irish

And the day started so promisingly too.

But even after Frankie Rodriguez went all Braveheart on Brian Bruney (which might not have been the right thing to do but to me better than than being the "nice guys" the Mets are famous for being, so it's something I wholeheartedly endorse ... and how ironic was it that Mike Pelfrey played peacemaker), the Mets followed up by being taken out by the woodshed by the Yankees. Once again, the Mets inability to get one stupid hit with the bases loaded and nobody out in the third proved to be their downfall while they were down 4-0.

Well that, and the nine other runs that Santana gave up with his lower than normal velocity. Just tell me when the MRI's coming ... because that has to be next, right?

But the Mets fans are even turning on each other. I saw a guy during the game walking on the street wearing a Wright jersey when the score was 13-0 and I told him "hey, don't turn on the highlights and save yourself some grief". Thinking I was a Yankee fan he tells me "Keep walking pal". To be fair, I was wearing a Notre Dame jersey so he probably thought from that wardrobe choice that I must have been a Yankee fan. I explained to him that I was a Met fan and that I was trying to warn him. Then he yelled "F**k Notre Dame!"

(For the record, I could give a crap about Notre Dame in either direction ... my only connection to the Irish is that my father was Irish. But I won the jersey in a raffle yesterday, so I wore it today as if it was the leg lamp from A Christmas Story. It's a major award, so I wore it. Won it at "Blogs with Balls 1.0" by the way, so thanks guys for a great event and for the free jersey ... and can't wait for the sequel in Vegas so I can lose the rest of my money. You'll be happy to know that my major award has already almost caused an international incident.)

But the kicker is that the guy waited until he was a half block away entering a cab before yelling this. Great, I try to help a brother out and I encounter the Brian Bruney of Met fans who can't even address the issue with me face to face. Must still be upset about Aaron Heilman.

(But in the future, I'll keep my mouth shut while I'm wearing my "major award.", because no good deed does really go unpunished. Wow. A red letter day all around.)

Nieve Colossal

Baseball really is full of surprises.

Of course, the surprises don't come any greater than what happened to Luis Castillo last night. But to see NYM 6 NYY 2 in the eighth inning, which is when I first caught it, in a game which Fernando Nieve dominated was a huge surprise.

Is it wrong that when I saw that score, that I was wondering how the Mets were going to blow it? More wrong than FOX interviewing Castillo after a game he had next to nothing to do with? Was I watching MLB on FOX, or Oprah?

If you remember, I was the one who decided, in my own snarky, obnoxious way, to make fun of another one of these "low risk/high reward" signings that Omar Minaya likes to treat us with. And here's another reason why I hate, despise that term: Throwing Fernando Nieve against the Yankees wasn't anything that I would call "low risk". Especially after what happened on Friday, that was less "low risk" and more "mission critical". And I had this marked for a loss.

And for the 5,498th time on this blog, I was wrong. I generally like when I'm wrong. That was an especially high risk start by Nieve, and it yielded high reward. Let me be wrong all season ... like I was wrong so far on Gary Sheffield, though the MRI tolls for thee. (Why not? Everyone else has one, what makes Sheffield so special?)

You know who else is wrong? You got it: Brian Bruney. Get a load of this, as Bruney talked about Friday night's disaster:

"Couldn't have happened to a better guy on the mound, either. He's got a tired act. He gets what he deserves, man. I just don't like watching the guy pitch. I think it's embarrassing ... You know what? I learned to play the game a different way, that's all I can say. You won't see me do that, the way he acts, you won't see that. But it doesn't matter. Guy's doing his job, he's had a great career, set the saves record. So it doesn't matter what I think. I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that but, again, he doesn't know who I am, so it doesn't matter."

Don't worry Frankie, I'll be glad to fill you in on who Brian Bruney is. Brian Bruney is the guy who got a chance to pitch the ninth inning and close when he was a member of the Diamondbacks in '04 and '05, and let's just say he was less than stellar on multiple occasions. So even if he had a celebratory gesture, he rarely had a chance to use it.

Yeah Brian, I remember you. And from what I remember in Arizona, I didn't like watching you pitch.

And when you throw in the hypocrisy of Bruney playing on the same team as somebody who's own antics have come into question (during moments where said team is behind), then you have the perfect storm of please, if you would, shut up.

Bruney For Breakfast

Let's get one thing straight, Metstradamus is not obsessed with scoreboard watching.

That's what I have the baseball television package for.

After tonight's Diamondback game, I'm sorry I wasted the $159.

They call guys like Brian Bruney "ham and eggers". That's an insult to ham and eggers. Heck, it's an insult to ham and eggs!

Why am I going to bother to watch the rest of the season, of every one of these ham and eggs closers is going to come in against the Richmond Braves and blow four run leads in a single bound? The Diamondbacks had it in the bag tonight...a 5-1 lead against Richmond, and this guy Brian "Breakfast Burrito" Bruney with the 6.31 ERA comes in, and can't get an out against a rookie, an 87 year old man, a shortstop, and another rookie. All of a sudden; POOF! The lead is gone. Let's just hand the Braves their 400th straight division title right now if this is going to be the case!

Now I know Mets closer Braden Looper may give us heart palpitations, but that can be corrected with medicine. This guy Bruney skips the palpitations and goes straight to stab wounds to the heart!

Maybe the Diamondbacks would want Looper!

Umpire Jim Wolf (who looks too much like Opie to be an umpire) was no help, calling two pitches against Kelly Johnson balls which could have been strikes (which set off probably my favorite umpire argument of the year in which Bob Melvin physically illustrated where the strike zone should be...classic!) But come on! Is there any good reason that Breakfast Burrito Bruney can't get three outs there, besides the fact that he's a breakfast burrito?

Diamondbacks TV analyst Mark Grace just said "As soon as you put on that Braves uniform, you're good." Of course! But if Brian Bruney was pitching to me, I could put on a uniform that says Chico's Bail Bonds and I'd knock it out of the park!

My second quote from Grace: "All's well that ends well." Thanks to Alex Cintron's game winner in the 10th inning, that is true. The 6-5 Arizona win means that the Mets bad loss doesn't cost them after all.

No thanks to second rate breakfast food.