5 reasons the Mets could make the playoffs in 2011

As you might have noticed, the New York Sports and Television blog has been a little light in its coverage of The Other New York Baseball Team.  With that in mind, I'd like to re-introduce you to one of our guest bloggers, Elissa Glucksman.  E is very passionate about her Mets, even if they do not give her much to be passionate about.  Below you will find her analysis of one sportswriter's list of reasons why the Metsies could be a contenda next year.

Image courtesy of the NY Post

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For Mets fans, this season has been a bit of a roller coaster. Pre-all-star break the Amazins were over-performing (to say the least). At the break the Mets were only 4 games out of first in the NL East. This surprising start made many Mets fans give the organization, its GM, and its manager the benefit of the doubt. Who cares that the Mets’ rotation had swiss cheese-like holes? It didn’t matter that Minaya’s main free-agent acquisition (Jason Bay) was underperforming and Carlos Beltran was home mending his infamously repaired knee. The Mets were playing some decent baseball on the backs of Rod Barajas, Ike Davis, Angel Pagan, and R.A. Dickey. But as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. After the All-Star break the Mets didn’t just come back down to earth, they crashed so hard they made a crater the size of Citi Field.

Now is the time of year most Mets fans are used to. The season is starting to really gear up for the Yankees and the Rays, but for the Metropolitans and their fans it’s time to pretend the baseball season ends at the end of August and start thinking about next year. And what do we have to look forward to? Matt Meyers of ESPN The Magazine took a relatively optimistic look at my Mets and came up with a list of five reasons the Mets could make the playoffs in 2011. After reading this list I couldn’t decide if the article made me more or less depressed.

Here are Meyers’s 5 paraphrased reasons, followed by my translations:

MM: At .500, they’re not actually that terrible this year.
Translation: Eking out a 2011 playoff berth with a .500 record is not the lofty goal you’d like to see from a $126 million team.

Even if the Mets play .500 ball again next season, all is not lost. Average teams have made the playoffs and even won the World Series in the past (see 2006 St. Louis Cardinals). Let’s hear it for mediocrity!

MM: The Mets’ players can't possibly keep playing this poorly.
Translation: Is that a challenge? Don’t tempt these Mets.

We’re going for the law of averages here people. Jason Bay can’t possibly hit .259/.347/.402 again, right? And Beltran, he probably won’t opt for a surgery that keeps him out half the season again, will he? As all Mets fans know, there is no such thing as “this (player/season/collapse) is so unimaginable and/or horrible it can’t possibly happen two years in a row.” See: September 2007 & September 2008. Besides, is this really one of the five things we have going for us in 2011? In 2011, some teams can rely on their amazing rotations, their stellar lineups, or gold-glove caliber defense. The Mets? We rely on the hope that we are so bad this season, there’s no place to go but up.

MM: The Mets will hopefully cut ties with the dead weight it’s been carrying around this season.
Translation: Our team is full of dead weight and the only person who can restock the club is the same guy who gave us dead weight in the first place.

This is the only “reason” that makes me smile. Yes, please cut anyone who is making at least $5 million dollars and yet can’t seem to bat much higher than the Mendoza Line (I’m looking at you, Jeff Francoeur and Luis Castillo.) I have been waiting to get rid of Castillo for years. I still have nightmares at the thought of Castillo dropping that pop-up against the Yankees. The Mets have their own homegrown talent that chokes under pressure. Do we really need to pay millions to continue watching high-paid acquisitions do the same? No. Which leads us to…

MM: There's no one for the GM to spend his money on in the off season.
Translation: It’s safer to do nothing rather than replace the aforementioned dead weight. Omar’s job is safe because…?

Usually having no prospects to fill holes in the line-up and rotation is a bad thing. But the Mets don’t have a general manager, we have Omar Minaya. Obviously, the Mets ownership have to deal with Omar like he's a 14 year old girl with Daddy's credit card. We hope that Minaya doesn't see any super trendy clothes in the pretty windows that we all know are way too expensive and will be out of style in about a month, but which he can't help but buy anyway.

MM: We won't have our manager anymore.
Translation: Jerry Manuel has disappointed us enough to know right now that he’s not coming back in 2011, so why is he still here?

Let’s see, what has Jerry Manuel managed to accomplish this season, aside from a .500 record? Well, he made sure that only one highly paid star player left Citi Field in handcuffs. He also demonstrated his special skill for managing the Mets’ bullpen. On April 16 Manuel had K-Rod warm up in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th innings, throwing over 100 pitches without leaving the bullpen. Now that is a good use for our $37 million closer. Jerry also loves putting lefty-specialist Pedro Feliciano (.380/.482/.457 vs. RHP, .227/.299/.318 vs. LHP) in situations facing right-handed batters. Now I know that Manuel doesn’t have much to work with in the bullpen (see: K-Rod arrest, supra) but how many times does Manuel have to watch Feliciano get rocked by a righty to realize that he should never, ever face a right-handed batter? Albert Einstein has a perfect label for Manuel’s actions: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Maybe with Manuel gone Bobby Valentine will come back to Flushing. (A girl can dream!)

If this list is the optimistic view of what Mets fans have to look forward to in 2011, I may have to start watching the WNBA next summer to distract me from another depressing season at Citi Field. That’s a frightening thought right there.