Tempering Expectations

By Stefi Kaplan
Posted Monday, July 9, 2007

December 15, 2004. Do you remember where you were? I do. I had just gotten out of a law school exam when I ran into a friend who clobbered me to tell me the news. Pedro Martinez was a Met. Pedro in orange and blue? It was a dream come true. I remember watching the press conference and seeing him in that Mets hat for the first time. I was beyond giddy.

Pedro changed this team even more than we could have imagined. How many current Mets would be in New York if Pedro had never come here? I don’t even want to think about what the team would look like this year. But aside from the players he brought here, Pedro’s presence on the team was reason enough to watch games. It’s not a coincidence that in 2005, when the Met were quite mediocre, the Mets sold out every Pedro pack, and little else. And why not? His record was 15-8 with a 2.82 ERA, 208 strikeouts, a .208 BAA and a league-leading 0.95 WHIP. Wow, remember those days?! Sheer dominance. And even though everyone knew he would struggle with an injury at some point, we loved him so much we really didn’t care how fragile he was. But oh, how fragile he was... Sure enough, first was his toe...then his hip...then his right calf...then his left calf...and finally his rotator cuff, requiring season-ending surgery at the end of last year.

It goes without saying that we miss The Pedro (as Coop has named him) tremendously, both on and off the field. Remember the sprinkler game? (“Water is a blessing, I believe. So I got wet.”) Classic Pedro. That game sums up why Pedro was not only the ace but the face of the Mets – he is a guy you can build a winning team around, because players would give anything to play with him. Pedro’s clubhouse character was often more exciting than the game, especially if Trachsel was on the mound. Pedro has guts, will, desire, personality and a wealth of talent and the team is missing a lot of all those things in his absence. As Mike Cameron had told the NY Times, “The man has fun. He's serious about his pitching, but he has fun.” Yup, that's Pedro. Losing your ace is never easy but the Mets lost more than just an ace when Pedro disappeared from the clubhouse.

Well, the time is finally here, folks. Pedro is throwing off the mound and his rehab looks very promising. He threw 50 pitches in a simulated game last Tuesday and is now in the middle of a ten-day shutdown to see how he reacts. So far, all the news has been positive about Pedro’s rehab. If all continues to go well, Pedro could be throwing with the Mets organization by the end of July. Just writing that sentence makes me giddy like it’s December 15, 2004.

Yes, I know, I need to temper my expectations. We, as fans, have been tempering our expectations for the past year, because in reality, few pitchers return to baseball after having rotator cuff surgery and even fewer are successful. Pedro is attempting what many believe is nearly impossible. This shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows him, but it still leaves us waiting to be let down. But if anyone can do it, Pedro can. And even if he is only a shell of his former self, that may be enough to give us that push to and through the postseason.

The questions linger: Will he return in July? August, maybe? How long will he last? Will he burn out? Will he go deep into games? How fast will he throw? And will he even be effective? No one can answer these questions, which is why we must temper our expectations. But I’m not worried about fans getting down on Pedro if he struggles, because I think even the most unrealistic fans know there’s a good chance he will. Even though fans can be irrational at times, it seems like the fans understand how unlikely it is that Pedro dominates in his return. Few are counting on the Pedro of old to come back next month and have a Cy Young second half. In fact, I think the fans just want so badly to see Pedro in the clubhouse, they would accept slightly better than mediocre performance on the field if it brought his aura back into the clubhouse for the rest of the season. We, as Mets fans, are used to disappointment, so tempering expectations is what we do best in times like these.

I am also not concerned about the expectations of the Mets, who clearly have not been depending on Pedro to win us a championship this year. Even when Pedro went down at the end of last year, the Mets never let anyone see how difficult it was to lose such an important piece of the team. And I know the teammates can rebound even if Pedro's pitching disappoints. The team will be so happy to have his presence back in the clubhouse, they will benefit regardless of his pitching performance.

The only expectations that concern me are those in the head of The Pedro. Pedro’s a gamer and the guy just loves to compete. We all heard Pedro compare himself to Clemens recently (“I can do that and probably even better at this point”). Pedro expects himself to be even better than he was before, which of course would be welcomed by the Mets and the fans, but it is improbable. Sure, rotator cuff surgery can loosen up the shoulder a bit, allowing a pitcher to increase his velocity. But that does not change the fact that rehabbing is a difficult process, riddled with setbacks and disappointments.

So forget the fans and forget the team: how does Pedro adjust if he cannot meet his own ridiculously high expectations?

Deep down, I think Pedro will be fine. Pedro was really disappointed in himself last year when he couldn’t pitch, but he was most disappointed because he felt he let down the fans and his teammates. The fact is, Pedro has little to prove to anyone but himself this year and I think the Mets have done a good job of making sure Pedro knows that. Even the New York media has hesitated to hail him as the Mets’ second half savior or to even acknowledge that his comeback could ignite the team. I’m pretty sure Pedro knows that the fans just want to see him, that we miss him and that he doesn’t even need to be our ace to have our complete support. The pressure is off of Pedro in that respect. But that doesn’t change the fact that Pedro will be disappointed if he can’t meet his own expectations.

How will Pedro adjust if his on-field performance is less than stellar? If Pedro comes back and pitches like a serviceable #3 starter, does Pedro suffer a mental setback? Or even worse, if Pedro pitches well through August but then heads back to the DL and misses September and/or October, can Pedro still provide that spark in the clubhouse? Pedro is human, after all. You have to wonder how he would respond to such a mental setback. We all want more than anything to see Pedro on the mound for the rest of the season, but the return of the #1 cheerleader is equally important. At this point, we just hope that he can continue to bring that spark throughout the second half, regardless of what happens on the mound.

But how can you tell a gamer like Pedro to temper his expectations? You can’t...and you shouldn’t – they are part of his competitive personality. You just cross your fingers, hope for the best and enjoy the bumpy ride that is the 2007 season.
 

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