Month: April 2009

Mets News Top Stories- April 8, 2009

NEW YORK - APRIL 08: Ryan Church #19 of the N...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Mets endured one of the dreaded road days off yesterday in Cincinnati. If you’ve ever been there you know that its not one of the most exciting cities in the United States. The reports were that the most entertaining thing that the Mets could find to do yesterday was go to the movies. Apparently, the city is so boring that they decided to do a double feature and kill the whole day at the movies. If that’s not an indictment of a boring city, I don’t know what is. The Mets chance to enjoy the entertaining city of Cincinnati comes to an end today when they go back to work against the Reds.

Onto today’s top stories:

The Sporting News is reporting that Bronson Arroyo will start for the Reds against the Mets tomorrow. He’s been suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome but he had a cortisone shot and is feeling good enough to pitch. Micah Owings was going to take his place in the Reds rotation.

Ben Shipgel of The New York Times recounts the whole Ryan Church concussion saga from last season. He talks about how the Gary Sheffield signing will impact Church’s playing time.  Shipgel says he can’t understand why the Mets are pushing Church so hard this season. It’s simple… They expect more from him than what they’re getting. The Mets think Church is capable of doing more than he’s shown.

Joel Sherman of the NY Post talks about the Mets bullpen and how Daniel Murphy and Ryan Church both played well on Monday. The Sheffield signing could push both of them to step up their games or lose playing time.

Saturday’s game against the Marlins won’t be televised for the first hour of the game. It’s scheduled to start at 6:10 pm because there’s a concert by rap star Flo Rida after the game. SNY is scheduled to broadcast the game but Fox has exclusive rights on Saturday’s until 7:05 pm.

Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated writes another column about how Mike Pelfrey and other young pitchers are at risk of injury or regression in performance because of their increased innings pitched at a young age. At this point, Verducci is pretty much making a living off of this theory of his that most major league teams don’t subscribe to. I’m not saying that Verducci is wrong about this. But he needs to find another topic to write about. He’s beating a dead horse now. We all know about his grand theory about young pitchers. Move on now Tom.

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Game Preview: Mets At Reds [Game 2] April 8, 2009

Cincinnati RedsNew York Mets (1-0 Road: 1-0) vs. Cincinnati Reds (0-1 Home: 0-1) 7:10 pm

Mike Pelfrey (0-0 0.00) vs. Edinson Volquez (0-0 0.00)

TV: SNY Radio:  WFAN

What to watch: The Mets face stiff competition in Volquez, who came over from the Texas Rangers last season in the Josh Hamilton trade and quickly established himself as a front-line starter. He was 17-6 with a 3.21 ERA. He had 206 K’s in 196 innings against only 93 walks. The Mets knocked him around in his one start against them last season. He pitched 5 innings and gave up 4 runs on 8 hits and 3 walks.

Pelfrey pitched two games against the Reds last season going 0-1 with a 4.85 ERA. He also had somewhat of a breakout year but not even close to what Volquez did for the Reds.

Visit The Mets Report Live Game Chat during the game to chat with other Mets fans.

Video: Johan Satana Handshakes

Sure, opening day was great to see yesterday. It felt like so long since we’ve seen a meaningful Mets game. Of all the story lines in yesterday’s game one of the more interesting ones that’s garnering attention are the Johan Santana handshakes. He came in from the bullpen before the game and had a different handshake for every player in the dugout. Check out the video.

Thanks to Dave at Mets Lifers for the link.

New York Mets Top News Stories April 7, 2009

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The Mets had a nice win on opening day yesterday against the Reds. The weather was cold and dreary but it was great to see Johan Santana get a win that he didn’t have to pitch a complete game to get. The bullpen held up just as Omar Minaya drew it up in the off-season. Of course, every media outlet is running stories this morning about how the Mets bullpen problems are fixed. I’ve seen about 50 of those columns today and I’m sure more will be coming during the day today.

Onto the news of the day:

Dave Singer at New York Sports Dog has a great post about the Mets all-time record on opening day. He lists every opening day game result and starting pitcher back to 1962. Very cool post. Its incredible to see how things went down hill after Doc Gooden left in 1995.

Darren Rovell of Sportsbiz at CNBC has a good post about the Mets and Yankees official sponsors. Did you know that Kozy Shack is the official pudding of the Mets? I didn’t either.

Andy Knight of the Cincinnati Enquirer has a good photo slideshow of the opening day parade in Cincinnati yesterday. It was good to see Frank Robinson back in Cincy.

Adam Rubin of the NY Daily News writes sarcastically about how confident we would have been to see last year’s bullpen save the game for Santana yesterday.

The New York Post has some video of Francisco Rodriguez talking about his save yesterday after the game.
http://publish.vx.roo.com/nypost/viral/flashembed/

Mets Over Reds 2-1 Behind Daniel Murphy

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I would’ve thought that Johan Santana would be the story of opening day for the Mets but he wasn’t. The story was Daniel Murphy. He had both RBI’s in a 2-1 win over the Reds in Cincinnati. The weather was miserable with temperatures hovering around 40 degrees and a light rain falling to start the game.

Santana cruised through the first five innings only giving up one hit. That changed in the sixth inning when he gave up a couple of hits. Surprisingly, Mets manager Jerry Manuel pulled him from the game much earlier than I would have. Sean Green, J.J. Putz, and Francisco Rodriguez finished off the Reds in the last 3.1 innings without giving up a hit.

Murphy was all the offense that the Mets needed today. He hits solo shot to right field in the fifth inning off Aaron Harang and had an RBI ground out in the sixth.

Its a great way to start the season with the Mets revamped bullpen making us much more confident going into the late innings with a one run lead.

Box score