The positives / negatives thread

[Luv those Knicks]

Seasons early but I heard an analyst on FAN today saying that the mets lost a couple close games, but there's lots of positives for them so far.

I thought I'd get the ball rolling cause this board is kinda slow and I thought we could revisit this during the season.

This is what I see, correct me if you think I got anything wrong:


Positives:

Barajas - looks good so far. Has some pop in his bat.
Reyes is back
Wright looks OK to far.
Bay looks like a solid pickup
Francoeur is rocking
Santana has a good start
Niese has a pretty good start
Pelf had a good start
Ollie had an OK start (good movement at least, maybe should have been 3 earned runs not 4)
Tejada looks like he'll be a player
The bullpen has looked very good so far.





Negavites

Jacobs - not cutting it so far.
Luis Castillo (he's still here) - sorry, but you know it's true
Maine may not be the Maine of old.
Beltran - still out. Still hasn't run.



Undecideds:

Ollie - he still gave up 4 runs & 4 walks.
Pagan
Matthews



Overall, it looks like more good than bad, even though the team's 2-3.

[Manhattan Project]

We still don't get any timely hits and thus far there have been many to be had.

[blueNorange]

positive ... green on the dl and raul valdes up.

[Luv those Knicks]

We still don't get any timely hits and thus far there have been many to be had.

I'd had that thought too.

Two wins by 6 runs.
two losses by 1 run
1 loss by 2 runs - just a couple of hits at the right time and the mets could easily be 4-1 or, 5-0


but in the "no timely hits" argument, sometimes that's illusary. I'm not saying completely, but some of it is.

in game 1, the mets had a 2-1 lead after Santana pitched 6 and was coming out of the game. It could be said that the 4 runs the mets got in the bottom of the 6th were timely.

in game 2, the mets were down 6-1 and they fought their way back to 6-6. It could be said that those 5 runs included some timely hits.

and in game 4, it was 2-2 at the end of 5. Mets up 3-2 at the end of 6. it could be said that the mets got some timely hits in innings 7 and 8 when they added 5 runs.


Not team is going to get timely hits every game. The mets did get some nice runs towards the end of 3 games out of 5.


I guess what I'm saying is that the "timely hits" argument could be mostly perception and perhaps it's not a very real statistic. Unless somebody wants to look at batting averages with runners in scoring possition, or, perhaps, babip with runners in scoring position, or some of the new fangled stats.

[Luv those Knicks]

OK, today was a bit of a downer.

on the plus side, the bullpen still looks good, and Mike Jacobs got a timely hit.


but 2-4.

Yuk.

The mets are doing their Knicks impression.

[Manhattan Project]

Positives: Strasburg and Harper same division, same team.

[Luv those Knicks]

Negatives. John Maine is doing his Oliver Perez Impersonation. Double Yuk. It's been a bad 2 games.

[eviL]

Positive
Ollie has looked OK thus far. I thought he was going to be a total trainwreck.
Big Pelf doing his Cy Young impersonations.. Damn, he's on fire!
Pitching in general (starting/pen) has been surprisingly efficient!

Negative
Can't win without offense. Where the hell did our offense go?!
Jerry Manuel is an idiot

[King_Supreme]

Positives: We're on a little run right abut now, and we're outstanding at home. Pelf(bno called it). We're outstanding at home. Since we're still in the race, Omar might make a big trade to get another ace, perhaps Oswalt. Ike is doing his thing.

Negatives: Still behind in the division, but if we keep at it, we should be leading by a week or two.
Reyes has not shown up.

[darrendaye]

Positive: Reyes has begun to click and the front office finally made the right decision to send Mejia down to work on his control, secondary pitches, and lengthening his arm strength to start.

Negative: Johan Santana is asking the Mets to deal upper tier prospects for an ace when he should be shutting his yap and start pitching like the ace they are paying $23mm. Love Johan's competitiveness, but, let the front office make decisions. Personally, I'm not dealing prospects for Cliff Lee when I can simply wait until the offseason to sign him. The team still has too many question marks to make this a do or die season, imo.