Opening Wounds Day

We stink.

Look, I'm all for blaming voodoo on this one. Losses to the Phillies have taken on a mystical, surreal feeling. If it's not a ball rolling 30 feet fair up the line, or an interference call, or a lost triple in the sun, then pray tell it's Brian Schneider committing two passed balls after missing five all of last season ... or it's Carlos Delgado hitting Chase Utley in the back on a double play ball that would have otherwise gotten them out of the inning. At that moment I swear I saw various ghosts, goblins, and Allen Ludden looking into the camera and saying "for all of you folks playing at home, I'm terribly sorry."

(Not as sorry as me, Allen.)

But how did the Mets respond when life got them down? I'll give you a hint: Not with Orbitz Gum. They responded by letting the game get away from them and shying away from the challenge like lambs. And if that mental toughness is going to keep escaping this team, then it doesn't matter what the talent level is ... the Mets will continue to stink, voodoo or no voodoo.

Aristophanes, like losing to the Phillies for the 429th straight time for our last ever home opener at Shea, is ridiculous.

Maekgaibeo Kal Santana

So this is the way it's going to be this season.

Oh yeah. Just let Johan do everything, just like it was with Pedro in 2005. Let's not hit for Johan. Let's blow leads for Johan. Let's let Johan make all the spectacular fielding plays. Let's let Johan get on base for all of us. Let's not score until Johan leaves, but before then, lets turn a 1-0 deficit into 3-0. Let's make life extremely difficult because Johan Santana will find a way to get us out of it. Sure.

He gets paid all the money, what does he need with run support? He can buy runs. Sure, it's easy not to score against John Smoltz. But Johan's so good, we don't even need to score against the likes of Will Ohman and Peter Moylan. Oh, and Blaine Boyer too. Because Johan will get us out of it. He's our MacGyver. All he needs is a rubber band, a shoelace, and some lighter fluid. He'll balance pots and pans on a bag of ice that melts from heat produced by a toaster oven if he has to. He doesn't need runs!

Doesn't matter that we lost 3-0, Johan will get us out of that jam. We'll be 3-2 by the time the home opener comes around.

Que Sera Sera

With the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh inning and Jorge Sosa peering in ... I had this flashback of Kenny Rogers.

Yeah, that one.

So my conversation with Sosa at that moment ... which was one-sided because, you know, I'm in New York and Jorge can't hear me 1,000 miles away through a television, was this:

"Jorge, just throw the slider. Throw it in the strike zone, and whatever happens, happens. Que sera sera, buddy!"

That'll teach me to draw my wisdom from a Doris Day song.

It seemed like solid logic. Hell, Sosa had been striking out guys with that slider, coming back from 2-0 to get Matt Diaz. So who would have thought that Kelly Johnson would scrape the clouds with Sosa's 3-2 slider and send the Braves to an 11-5 win? I guess I should have known. And in retrospect, I probably would have taken the Kenny Rogers route rather than given up the whole bushel all at once.

Random thoughts:

• How could Tim McCarver assume that on that wacky play where the Mark Kotsay trap was called a catch and Angel Pagan passed Ryan Church on the basepaths that if the umpire had gotten the call right initially that Pagan would have still passed Church? Does he think that Ryan Church is stupid enough to go back to third base if the umpire had called trap to begin with? Sure, Ryan Church can't hit lefties ... but I wouldn't call him stupid.
• John Maine was not that bad today. He gave up four runs in four innings, but that RBI single to Jeff Francoeur was a good pitch that got him on the handle. But a combination of Maine's off season workout regimen and Francoeur's off season workout regimen caused that ball to be hit off the handle with such force and spin, that it made it all the way to the outfield and then took a sharp right turn as soon as it hit the ground. I'm not worried about John Maine.
• I'm not worried about David Wright either. But he did leave four men on base today when a key hit could have changed the complexion of the game. No, it's not a microcosm of anything, but David Wright had a tough game.
  

Keep Your Pets And Old People Indoors

A tornado watch in Atlanta until 10PM has put the kibosh on tonight's game. It'll be made up on May 20th as a day/night doubleheader. On a separate note, did you notice tonight that Keith Hernandez looked like one of those guys who showed up at a restaurant without a jacket, and had to wear one of the restaurant's spares so that he could eat there, even though the jacket didn't match anything else he had on? It was just really bizarre.

Church Of The Absurd

Small sample size alert: Ryan Church, the guy that can’t hit lefties, is currently hitting .333 against lefthanders this season with an OPS of 1.262. after his dinger against young stud Andrew Miller helped the Mets to a 13-0 victory last night. It only signifies that this regression to the mean is going to feel something like trying to quit heroin cold turkey (not that I would know anything about that. Caffeine? Maybe.)

That's Just Fowl

The early results on Pedro Martinez's MRI came in. With our exclusive super zoom lens, here's a look at what doctors found:

Those birds will do a number on hamstrings.

All this talk about who's going to be the fifth starter, and now one of them is going to be the fourth starter after Pedro's injury. At least the bullpen showed how good it can be after Petey's shaky outing ... that is, until somebody named Robert Andino took some low-80's slop from Matt Wise and deposited it over the left field fence for a 5-4 Marlins win in ten innings.

Too bad Wise couldn't hear Keith Hernandez say that you can't continue to put pitches up in the zone as he did on the 2-0 pitch. The 2-1 pitch? It's going on Andino's mantle.

As for Petey, he's quickly headed towards the Orlando Hernandez region, where your starts are much anticipated, yet nobody expects anything out of you anymore. Pedro Martinez was a number two starter in ceremony only ... as far as I'm concerned, John Maine had the better chance to team with Johan Santana to create the 1-2 punch that teams fear anyway. Pedro got the second start of the season to keep his ego massaged. Now, he'll have his leg massaged instead.

And now here's the worst part: Pedro Martinez is injured while Mike Hampton is healthy.

Here's the second worst part: I have a friend at work who is ready to put Bobby Parnell in the Hall of Fame for his seven shutout innings this past spring. Now, he's probably ready to live on a billboard until Parnell is called up ... which means he'll probably alienate his friends and family, get fired from his job, and worst of all: not shower for weeks at a time, because Parnell isn't coming up anytime soon.