Let The Games Begin

By Shari Forst
Posted Saturday, March 3, 2007

I for one am pretty excited that spring training is here; I have been dying to see baseball since the final out of last season's NLCS. Last October we were hanging by a thread with the starting pitching corps decimated by injuries so I guess that’s why I was fairly well satisfied with 2006 on a whole. I didn’t expect too much with piecemeal pitching, and yet the team got within one well-timed extra base hit of the World Series. I was reasonably confident that the Mets would take the steps necessary to upgrade the starting pitching for 2007, but if they have then I missed it.

I am not even going to comment here on Oliver Perez’s first outing. It's a still-meaningless spring training contest which means nothing and is never a clear indicator of who will be on April's 25-man roster, let alone at the Big Dance in October.

I am, however, worried about this rotation. Glavine will be 41 years old, El Duque claims to be 37 – noone's too sure - and now he has a pain in the neck of all things. He was sent back to New York last week. There we have numbers one and two. John Maine pitched like a professional last season, raised his game in the playoffs, and is the first of the three mentioned that I have any real confidence in.

So now we have two starting spots available at the back end of the rotation and so far the only familiar name I saw acquired was Chan Ho Park. "E-gads!!", as my grandfather used to yell, this is how they shore up the rotation?

Lets hope that Oliver Perez and either Phil Humber or Mike Pelfrey show us something approaching ready for prime time status this spring and, no, I’m not forgetting about Pedro - even if he makes it back by mid-season, which I am not counting on. Physically he's a mess and seems to be falling apart before our very eyes.

Now, I’m not trying to be a downer here, and I am hopeful that Oliver Perez earns a rotation spot. I really like his energy and I believe the sky's the limit for the talented lefty. I just wish the Mets had done more to acquire a reliable veteran hurler still on the right side of thirty, that's all.

It's all going to come down to pitching again. You watch.

You can contact Shari at: shazoo418@yahoo.com