Beware the Ides of March

Granted its one day past the Ides, but as a life long baseball fan I have become accustomed to people over emphasizing spring training performances both good and bad.  This year of course is no exception, will Niese be ready?  Who plays center field?  Hey EY Jr.'s OBP looks good!  Tejada has more errors than hits!?!

Granted some bench roles and bullpen spots will be won and lost, trips to minor league camp and players being optioned are common place.  So why don't we follow suit and over emphasize some of the Mets current predicaments.

Josh Edgin was sent to the minors, sorry Josh, you can't pitch like crap and only hit 88 MPH and expect to be with the big club.  At least there is a level of seriousness here that the team is asserting, perform or we will find someone who will.

The bullpen may be better off than expected.  Parnell needs to get his velocity up but he looks healthy, Black has the goods but needs the control and consistency to go with it.  Rice was solid last year and the addition of the veteran Valverde should be the glue that keeps this thing together.

Jon Niese, is he hurt or is he out of shape?  I didn't care for hearing Niese's response after his MRI stating he didn't work that part of his shoulder over the off season.  Hey Jon, you have been with the team long enough to know what to do to be prepared for ST let alone the regular season.  Bronson Arroyo throws all year long and he does nothing but pitch 200 innings and win 10-15 games yearly, pay attention!

Ike or the Dude?  Well here is the classic "holy shit" moment.  The hope was that one of these guys would step up and grab the job by the balls, however, they both got hurt and are relegated to minor league side games where they can DH only.  Not very helpful when you play in the National League boys.  The sad part here is the team could just sign Kendrys Morales, who will hit better than the two combined but lacks the defensive prowess and on a team with some defensive deficiencies we can afford no more.

The starters should be the teams strength, even sans Harvey, look for Wheeler to take steps forward and hope Gee can continue his solid pitching from the second half of last year.  Colon is a professional and should win more games than he loses.

The one thing that needed to be addressed this year was the offense and may I say mission NOT accomplished.  Wright and Granderson are pros in every sense of the word and I do not subscribe to the theory that you are merely replacing Byrd's production with Granderson's addition.  No pitcher in the league was saying, "I have to pitch to Wright cause I don't want face Byrd."  Grandy will prove different and Murphy is a really good hitter who should get more respect.  Mikey F. from the FAN called him a soft .300 hitter last year, he had 191 hits on a team bereft of offense.

Chris Young needs to justify his $7.25 million and I'm playing Juan Lagares hands down in center.  The problem this leads to is who leads off?  You can play EY Jr. in left and have him lead off but then who sits?  Having outfield options is great but not when it compromises your ability to have an everyday (Jose Reyes) lead off man.  This lineup doesn't look particularly deep especially since C. Young, d'Arnaud and whatever 1B and SS we have are huge question marks.

While there are still two weeks before a real game is played and trades and/or signings can still happen as it is right now I would worry that this rendition of the Mets will be much like last years, not enough runs to win games.  Too often the bases are loaded or we have second and third with less than two outs and we fail to score.  That's not good enough, it wasn't last year and it will not be this year.

Et tu, Sandy?