Subway Series Showed Us Something
Johan Santana could only look on in awe. Mark Teixiera’s grand slam along with a vintage C.C. performance sealed a Mets loss in Yankee Stadium. The Mets went 8-2 on their recent road trip that included two straight losses against those “damned Yankees.”
Even though Flushing and the Bronx are separated by just a few miles, Yankee Stadium and City Field might as well exist in different worlds.
Hisanori Takahashi and the Mets were all but flawless in a Friday night shutout. Mike Pelfrey gave up two home runs and surrendered 5 earned in 7 innings on Saturday. On Sunday, Johan Santana made one mistake and the Mets were shutout 4-0.
The laws that govern Yankee Stadium state that you must swing for the fences. They’re only 315 feet away, after all. Jason Bay hit a mere popup on Sunday that reached the warning track. Teixiera’s grand slam would have been a sac fly if the game were to take place in Citi field.
What we’ve learned from these games is this: both teams have the advantage at home. The Mets are a singles/doubles team while the Yankees are, well, bombers. Their stadiums dictate the style of play. What shocked me in this series was how many potential hits the Mets would have had if the Yankee outfield was bigger. The outfielders weren’t necessarily playing shallow; they were just playing shallow relative to the distance of the outfield walls. Bigger outfield equals fielders playing further away from home plate and vice versa. Yankee Stadium inherently limits shallow singles and allows short home runs while Citi Field allows more room for singles and negates short home runs. Citi is a triple haven while triples at Yankee Stadium are hard to come by.
Jason Bay has four triples and four homers, if that’s not an indication of how big Citi Field is than I don’t know what is.
While the Mets were mired in an awful 2009 season, people were screaming for them to get adjusted to their new digs. They have in 2010. Mike Pelfrey isn’t afraid of pitching to contact which is limiting the number of runners he puts on base. Hitters are finding out that an RBI double is just as good as, if not better, than a home run. Swings that used to look more like that of a golfer’s are starting to level off. Yes, it’s taken them a year, but the Mets have finally figured out that Citi Field is the best place they could possibly play.
They own the best home record in baseball and help is on the way. Jenry Mejia was finally sent down to the minors to become a starting pitcher and the timing was good, I guess. The Mets can monitor Mejia and can use him as leverage in late July. They can tell teams they don’t need a starter because they have Mejia coming up. Omar Minaya should have done this last month. Better late than never it seems. Maybe the Mets can psyche themselves into thinking they don’t need Roy Oswalt or Cliff Lee. Jake Westbrook would do just fine. A rotation of Santana, Pelfrey, Westbrook, Niese and Mejia is something Mets fans can live with. John Maine and Oliver Perez are all but out of the picture now. Dickey and Takashi could be valuable bullpen pieces come mid-September.
Carlos Beltran will soon be playing in minor league games. A healthy Beltran could certainly help the Mets. They, however, don’t have to rush him back as long as Pagan and Francoeur are healthy. Mets fans don’t know how Beltran’s brain is wired. Maybe he’ll come back and want to prove all the doubters dead wrong. We know what Beltran can do if he’s motivated, just look at the 05’ postseason where he cracked eight homers.
It’s an almost certainty that the Yankees will return to the World Series. Could the Mets join them like they did in 2000? It’d be a helluva 10-year anniversary.
