Jerry Manuel is pleased with his Mets recent success, but before anyone goes buying champagne for an October celebration, Manuel reminds us, “When you’re 10 games over, I think you can consider yourselves a good team. Anything above that, you can consider yourself a very good team. We have yet to hit that particular mark, but at the same time, we still have some good baseball left that we haven’t played.”
Jerry is just trying to get his players to perform to their abilities consistently. We have seen some good signs over the last week: David Wright, although still striking out too much, is starting to get some key hits; Luis Castillo is getting on base and getting key hits, and is hitting .333; Carlos Beltran remains unconsciously hot, having hit 6 HR’s and is batting .374; Omir Santos has people wanting Schneider to be shipped out, not Santos demoted. Santos has thrown out runners at a respectable pace, and seems to get key hits regularly; Jose Reyes has been more aggressive on the basepaths, has started to hit better, raising his average to .276; and Fernando Tatis, who is batting .341 in limited duty, who is always in the middle of big innings.
Manuel believes part of the Mets success of late is that his players, pitchers especially, are getting used the way Gil Hodges Memorial Park plays. Other than Pelfrey, the Mets are a fly ball pitching team, but with such a cavernous outfield, Carlos Beltran and Company have been able to turn potentially big hits into potentially important outs.
The Mets face the Braves for a three game series starting tonight. The Mets need to do well before heading on a long West Coast trip that will take them to San Francisco, Los Angeles, and conclude in Boston, before returning home on May 25th.
Source: BEN SHPIGEL - NY Times
No comments:
Post a Comment