Note: I submitted this as a Fanpost over at Amazin’ Avenue weeks ago, but I figured I might as well post it here, too.

We’ve all had a little while to process and grieve the loss of Folk Hero Robert Allen Dickey. The trade rumors dragged out for a few days and then once the actual deal was done we still needed to wait for Dickey to sign an extremely accommodating contract extension with the Blue Jays. If the Mets were in a position to win now (not three years from now), and if the Wilpons weren’t broke criminals, maybe he’d still be here. Unfortunately for the hearts of many Mets fans, Sandy Alderson felt the need to sell high, treating the most beloved Met as a valuable commodity. Considering the circumstances and the haul coming back in return, it was probably the right move. And one that has bothered me on an emotional level much less than most Mets fans.

As popular as R.A. Dickey has been in New York, the face of the team has obviously been David Wright, despite his (relative) struggles from 2009-2011, which caused many fans to cry TRAID. Wright is the only Met left from the heartbreaking teams of 2006 and 2007, while Dickey, whose ascension to the summit of knuckleball-dom made him a big draw last September, was on the team for just three seasons, during an era of crushing despair. At times, Dickey was the lone bright star in a Mets’ universe approaching heat death (tolerable if the Wilpons were also wiped out). Yet that description of Dickey’s tenure helps explain why it’s not too hard for me to let him go.

Dickey has pitched for three irrelevant Mets teams, consisting of the flotsam lovingly referred to as #OmarsTeam. The last year the Mets competed was 2008, when the team was still legitimately good, but let down by a trash bullpen that led MLB in meltdowns. Sure, 2010 and 2012 looked decent halfway through the season, but spectacular crashes on the far side of the All-Star Break ended hopes quickly both years. 2008 was also the last year the Mets brought in a great player: Johan Santana.* I remember driving home from a night class and turning on WFAN, only to hear the words “trade”, “Mets”, and “Johan Santana”. I yelled and slammed the steering wheel over and over, envisioning a playoff run with the best pitcher in baseball acting as the Mets’ savior after the Collapse of ’07. As already pointed out, it didn’t turn out that way.

*Even before he turned into a mannequin, I would argue Jason Bay was merely “good”. There’s a reason he came at half the cost of Matt Holliday.

Santana, though, was as amazing as advertised, doing everything short of getting the clutch hits the team desperately needed at the end of the season. From July 22nd on, he averaged 7 1/2 innings a start at a 1.82 ERA clip. He pitched a complete-game shutout on three days’ rest on the penultimate day of the season, a game I was lucky enough to attend. It’s tough to beat experiencing an all-time pitcher at the height of his power in a playoff atmosphere. I was there the last time Shea Stadium rocked.

That game was enough for me to go and buy my first authentic jersey (for 50% off, of course): a Santana home jersey with the Shea patch, the same uniform he wore that game. Santana remains, along with Wright, the last link to good Mets teams. As Wright had his best season in years, everyone described him as “the old Wright,” the player who, in 2008, Bill James chose as the one he would want to build a team around. As devastating as those 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons were, I have to imagine any Mets fan preferred them to the drudgery of the last handful. Baseball games in September with playoff implications (not to mention actual playoff games) are cooler than games where a pitcher is going for his 20th win.

No-hitters are also cooler than one-hitters, even if each are usually the result of bounces one way or the other — or blown foul ball calls. As Dickey was entering his Pedro-level run, right after he had thrown two straight 10+ K games, Santana had to go and throw the first no-hitter in Mets history, after lifelong fans had sat through 8,019 games without one, cringing at the tally every time the opposing team got their first hit of the game. No longer would the Mets be clumped in with the Padres, a team that never had a Tom Seaver or Dwight Gooden.

And once again, somehow, maybe due to wearing his jersey, I was there to experience a legendary Johan Santana performance. My dad called me in the 8th inning to double-check that I was at Citi, since I had told him a few days before that I might be going. My dad was watching the game with his dad, who was in a rest home recovering from hip-replacement surgery. Three generations of fans awaiting history. Up to that last out, I didn’t think it would happen. When Santana went 3-0 on David Freese with his 131st pitch of the game, I thought for sure it was over. Either he would walk Freese and his pitch count would continue to pile up, or he’d lay a meatball over the plate. Instead he threw an 86-mph fastball on the inside corner, followed up with a changeup fouled back, and then another changeup at the ankles, vintage Johan, to strike Freese out. I was hugging my friends, high-fiving strangers, and yelling on the phone while I talked to my dad, both of us in disbelief. Going out in Astoria afterward, I had people “congratulating” me at the beer garden, and fellow drunks yelling at me from across the street at 4 AM, all due to wearing that Santana jersey. There was really nothing Dickey could ever do to top that experience.

I don’t mean to denigrate Dickey’s incredible season, but emotions are inevitably stronger when the stakes are higher, even if they are just the result of randomness over a 50-year stretch. We’re lucky to have seen such a collection of games from a man who throws a baseball differently than anyone in the history of the world. We’re even luckier that it was easy to turn him into a folk hero: a man who toiled for years, but managed to unlock the secrets to an ancient pitch, all while missing a ligament in his elbow; a man with a glorious beard and a locker filled with books that would get a high school baseball player beat up; a man who climbed a mountain to raise awareness for human trafficking and has bunnies named after Star Wars characters.

I would just argue that Dickey’s great run with the Mets occurred in a relatively meaningless vacuum. He appeared in 2010 and has only improved since then, giving us those back-to-back one-hitters which are probably the most dominant consecutive starts in baseball history (Johnny Vander Meer walked 8 hitters in his second no-hitter!). He was even willing to play for this rebuilding franchise at Ryan Dempster-money, but he was instead used to help bolster that very future Sandy Alderson is building toward. That is the future of Zack Wheeler, Travis d’Arnaud, Noah Syndergaard, and the already-arrived Matt Harvey.

Only 23 years old, Matt Harvey exploded onto the Mets landscape this season, throwing 99-mph fastballs and 88-mph sliders to the tune of a 2.73 ERA — the same number as Dickey, arrived at with an arsenal on the opposite end of the pitching spectrum. While most of the Mets world embraced Dickeymania, I was more interested in watching Harvey. I even got together with some fellow Mets fans for his first start against the D-Backs, braving a derecho to drink beers while watching Harvey exceed all expectations. The future was finally here, and it looked brighter than the present, especially if Zack Wheeler was supposed to be better than this pitcher who had just blown away major league hitters.

Maybe I’m being too optimistic about the future (I think my optimism is limited to baseball). I remember back in 2010 looking forward to 2012 and the Oliver Perez and Luis Castillo contracts coming off the books. I also believed that, after the crushing end of 2006, a new Mets’ dynasty was beginning, a sentiment shared by many others.

But this regime appears to have a well-thought-out plan, one where there’s literally no player on the books for 2014 other than Wright and Jon Niese. You can take issue with the amount of money spent on middling relievers or the Angel Pagan trade or the complete lack of legit starting outfielders, but I think all that has been shuffling around ultimately insignificant pieces on a bunch of teams without a realistic shot at contending in a strong NL East. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to look at 2014 and 2015 as the light at the end of the Wilpon-Madoff Tunnel. Matt Harvey represented the first beam of light trickling in, and that’s why he was my cause for excitement in the second half of the year, even more than Dickey.

Dickey could have been part of the future, too, of course. Instead, he’s left to help the Blue Jays’ present, with two catchers in tow, to team up with Jose Reyes again. And I’m happy for him. Through the magic of MLB.TV, we can still watch R.A. Dickey. He might even get to pitch in some big-time September games, or, if current Vegas lines are to be believed, October games. The entire nation (two nations, actually) would get the chance to embrace Dickey the way New York has.

Meanwhile, I’ll be content with waiting for the future, watching Jon Niese and Matt Harvey, hoping Zack Wheeler and Travis d’Arnaud come up and contribute, and praying the infield continues to form a solid base. Johan pulling a Beltran and bringing back a prospect mid-season would be a bonus. Such a move would signal the end of the transition to the Alderson Era. It would finalize the process begun by cutting Ollie and Castillo — the same process that chose Wright as the cornerstone player to retain, since position players of his caliber and age now hit free agency with scant frequency. It would only be fitting if the Dickey trade became the best move of these lean years. He’d be the folk hero who disappeared just as we got to know him, leaving the world behind him with a path toward a better future.

I recently read a book called Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior that mentioned how the people who are actually best at self-evaluation are usually depressed. Most human beings are optimists because otherwise our species never would have gotten this far. It reminded me of the overthinking, doubting mindset of prospect Billy Beane in the book Moneyball, which left him at a disadvantage when compared to the headstrong Lenny Dykstra. I’ve always been Beane when it comes to writing (or women) and it becomes difficult after a while to write knowing you’re not really bringing anything original or exceptional to the table. How much writing is out there on the internet? There are countless movie blogs manned by teenagers, manchild 20-somethings, and hipster 20-somethings. There is an almost depressing amount of smart baseball writing — both sabermetric-focused and not, but all adhering to that movement’s basic truths. There are half a dozen reviews of every goddamn television show that miserable people watch. Even animated .GIFs are everywhere now, although sadly mostly in shitty Tumblr form. What is a regular dude supposed to blog about?

I had a conversation with NeoGAF and Twitter buddy @m_scoular a few months ago and it’s as if he had the opposite effect on me as he hoped. He said how pouring himself into movies and classic books and writing about them (mostly privately) had helped him make some sense of, or at least come to peace with, his current lot in life. And he said he enjoyed reading my thoughts on movies, and suggested writing constantly — if not on this blog — in a personal journal. But this conversation came at a time just as baseball was starting up, and I fell into the usual mode of being obsessed with grown men playing a game.

I’ve questioned my commitment to watching the Mets — and baseball in general — many times. I’ve mentioned on this blog (by linking to a Flip Flop Fly Ball infographic) how much time is sunk into following an 162-game season. I’ve thought many times that I enjoy talking about baseball more than watching it. What am I getting out of being such an intense baseball fan?

Then something like being in attendance for the first Mets no-hitter happens. There are movies that can really get to you, making you either cheer or cry, but this was real. This was watching something almost miraculous. Down to the very last batter I had lingering doubts. Tom Seaver had three chances in the 9th inning to close out no-hitters for the Mets and never did it. Johan Santana was less than two years removed from shoulder surgery that has ended lesser careers and had a pitch count greater than any game he had thrown before said surgery. With two outs, with his 131st pitch, he went 3-0 on David Freese. I thought it was over. Either Johan would walk Freese, requiring a bunch more pitches, which would add to the already ridiculous burden on his recovering shoulder, or he’d lay a very hittable pitch over the middle of the plate. Johan chose option C by striking out Freese with a devastating changeup.

After witnessing Johan’s short-rest shutout in the penultimate game of the 2008 season, I didn’t think anything less than attending a Game Seven playoff win or World Series clinching-game would top that baseball experience. But I wasn’t hugging my friends after that game. Or high-fiving dozens of strangers all around me. Or calling my dad after he watched it along with his dad. This was baseball — as cliche as it sounds — as religious experience.

Feeling that way about baseball brings me back to the conversation I had with @m_scoular. He was curious about my thoughts on This Is Not A Film, an Iranian documentary about a filmmaker under house arrest awaiting the results of an appeal for a jail sentence and a 20-year ban on directing. I fell asleep during it. Meanwhile, he detailed how and why it affected him unlike any other movie and how he wished I could have felt like he did. And I wish I appreciated the passion and humor on display, and maybe I would have a bit more if I didn’t fall asleep or watch it in a very dead theater, but I’m still a budding movie buff and even then that feeling doesn’t compare to my passion for baseball or even sports in general.

Perhaps it’s not a perfect analogy, because even a casual baseball fan can appreciate a no-hitter, but someone who watches countless Mets games is going to understand the significance behind it on another level. After the no-hitter, as my two friends and I sat in an Astoria beer garden, I rattled off the great Mets pitchers who had gone on to throw no-hitters for other teams: Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden, David Cone (Philip Humber’s perfect game was just a cruel joke). And then there are the good pitchers who could have easily thrown one if everything lined up right. Finally, the Mets were the recipient of a great pitcher with enough left in the tank to do what hadn’t been done in 51 seasons of Mets baseball. It was enough to make a man get so drunk that he gets unidentified stains on his Santana jersey while black out drunk.

It’s that feeling that spurs me to write something. It’s watching a Game Seven between the Heat and Celtics. It’s watching a Nadal-Djovokic French Open final. But even more, it’s watching El Clasico in a packed NYC bar among people who obviously care about soccer a lot more than I do. And I do occasionally get that feeling when watching a great movie, but there’s nothing like the communal experience of watching sports history. Something like that is enough to get a person to blog again.

Also: What I Want Out Of This Season

Turn the clock back about two and a half years. The Mets, after a mediocre start to their 2008 season, had managed to build a small lead at the top of the NL East standings. But they are seemingly in the middle of another (albeit much less epic) collapse after the disastrous ending the previous year. Mets fans, including myself, can’t imagine having to endure the same heartbreak again yet also feel a sense of inevitable doom.

I remember hearing about the decision to pitch Johan Santana on three days’ rest in the second-to-last game of the season and feeling everything was over right there. Taking the one great pitcher in the rotation and forcing him to pitch on short rest when you’re going to end up pitching Oliver Perez in the final game anyway didn’t sit right with me. Granted, Oliver Perez wasn’t the worthless pitcher he became once he signed a 3-year, $36 million contract, but he was no better than average in 2008. On top of that, down the stretch he had been strikingly awful. He had just given up five runs in his previous start and going right back to him on three days’ rest was the best course of action? I can’t honestly say I remember which pitcher would have started the penultimate game instead of Johan, but I felt any downside would be mitigated by giving Johan normal rest.

Boy, was I wrong.

At the time, I was in my first job out of college — a job I might have gotten due to sharing Mets fandom with the boss — and we had a suite rented out for that very game. As apprehensive as I was about Johan, how could I not be excited to be in a luxury box for the first time in my life, even if it was the very last one in right field? Little did I know I wouldn’t get out of my seat past the fourth inning, making sure I had a good seat to witness the dominance. I watched as the Mets $137.5 million offseason acquisition put up zero after zero, managing to do more than anyone could have expected. I kept wondering if Jerry Manuel would pull him, ready to flip out if another pitcher walked out to the mound in the beginning of the 8th or 9th inning. I didn’t care about his ballooning pitch count; apparently, neither did they.

I have always remembered one at-bat in particular, and I was worried that going to BrooksBaseball.net to look it up would prove my memory incorrect. In the 9th, Dan Uggla stepped up to the plate with 1 out and a man on second. Josh Willingham had just hit a double, but Jerry was leaving Johan in. He had been the best pitcher in baseball in the second half and it was his game — and season — to lose.

The crowd had been on its feet from the beginning of the inning, and numerous suite denizens were bashing the advertising sign directly below their seats at this point. On the first offering, Uggla swung and missed at a changeup right down the pipe. Incredible. Johan followed that up with the same pitch and Uggla swung through it yet again. Hilariously awesome. On the 0-2 count, he threw yet another changeup, this time in the dirt. Uggla swung and missed the ball by a foot. Outside of Games 6 and 7 twenty-five years ago, I’m not sure Shea was ever louder than it was after that strikeout.

Here’s the at-bat in PitchFX form via www.brooksbaseball.net:

Beautiful.

The Mets were really going to win this game. We all knew it. Johan wouldn’t be stopped. A starting pitcher who’s only out on the field every fifth day shouldn’t be able to put an entire team on his shoulders and take them to the playoffs, but here we were watching it happen. And we didn’t find out until later that he carried the load with only one functional knee.

When the next hitter drove a fly ball almost the warning track, I think the entire stadium missed a breath. But when it was caught, it was pandemonium. Everyone in that moment didn’t care that Oliver Perez was slated as the starting pitcher the next day. I went home and immediately looked on StubHub for tickets to the last game at Shea — I was that excited and optimistic. The possibility of having front-row seats to the final depressing game in such an awful stadium did not enter my mind. Of course, once I saw the prices, I quickly came to my senses, but the point still stands: the Mets were faced with what was practically an elimination game with Oliver Perez on the mound, and I couldn’t wait to watch. That was the effect of Johan Santana for that one day. I also still believed David Wright and Jose Reyes had it in them to come through in that last game; I knew they’d be able to overcome whatever deficit Ollie left them with. Carlos Beltran’s legs were still under him, and Carlos Delgado had put together a monster second half. There was still confidence left on a very basic level. The Mets were a damn good team. They wouldn’t let the Marlins end their season yet again.

I think we know the story since then. I don’t need to delve into the hell that was 2009 nor do I have to go over some of the awful acquisitions. Sure, I started to think the Mets had a legit shot at the All-Star Break last season, but the quick fall to start off the second half brought me back down to earth in a hurry.

The current narrative is Sandy Alderson and his all-star front office. As a proponent of sabermetrics, I have no doubt that he’ll right the ship, as he has already started to do. But as much as I trust the guys now running the show, I want to have the same confidence in the guys on the field. And right now, how could anyone? There’s the injury questions for Beltran and Bay. There’s Wright’s schizophrenic hitting, and Reyes’ leg and OBP issues. Johan Santana, the man who once inspired so much confidence, might not even pitch this season.

But you can still have excitement without confidence. I can’t wait to see if Ike Davis can mash taters at an even higher rate, and to find out whether or not Brad Emaus is for real. I want to see Josh Thole develop into a solid backstop the Mets can depend on for years, and watch Jon Niese grow into the reliable workhorse we all want him to be. And I pray everyday that Bobby Parnell will take the closing job away from Francisco Rodriguez solely on merit. There’s plenty to look forward to this season — just most likely not a playoff race.

My hope for 2011 is that by the end of year, the state of the Mets will be easier to quantify and that the subsequent offseason will be that much better as a result. If Reyes’ fate is to be traded for prospects, and Ruben Tejada needs to take his place, then so be it. If Chrises Young and Capuano don’t work out, it’s not like the Mets have huge albatrosses to deal with going forward. All I ask for is a couple of things to go right, like Fernando Martinez or Reese Havens staying healthy for a whole year, or David Wright reverting back to the hitter he was pre-2009 — anything to keep me excited about the future, because that’s what this season is about. It may not be a rebuilding year in the traditional sense, but it’s no doubt a transitional and evaluational year.

Like I mentioned, I have confidence in the front office to do what’s right. I just can’t wait to feel the same way about the on-field product again.

I love Johan. He’s been one of the few guys on this Mets team that I’ve never been truly disappointed in. And I’ll never forget that gem he threw in the second-to-last game of the 2008 season.

But: he’s signed to a massive contact through at least 2013, with a club option for 2014. Roy Halladay will be making less over the same period and at this point looks like he will easily be the superior pitcher over the next few years. I can’t get on Omar for the contract, but I really hope Johan can stop his decline and at least maintain his performance of the past two years. I’m just not sure that’s going to happen. Pedro Martinez was all but done being Pedro at 33. I see Johan as basically Pedro-lite, and he turns 33 in two years.

If you want to see pretty graphs detailing Johan’s decline since his epic 2004 season, hit the jump.

Striking out guys at a progressively lower rate is never good.

Walking guys at a progressively HIGHER rate is never good, either.

Combine the two and you get:

Well, that’s just bad. Shit.

Of course, when you strike out less guys, that means more guys are making contact. Hopefully those guys making contact aren’t making good contact.

I guess not. Now, pitchers don’t have much control over their BABIP, but they do have a bit. Johan is fooling batters just a tiny bit less each year.

So more guys are making contact, and that contact is apparently getting better (or the Mets’ fielding is just worse than the Twins’, which is very possible). That equals:

So far this 2010 — no thanks to that debacle on Sunday — batters are hitting him like he’s an average pitcher. Fuck.

So guys are hitting for a higher average off of him and also walking more. That can only mean one thing:

More and more baserunners.

Now, I don’t get why Fangraphs doesn’t have graphs for FIP and xFIP, and I could easily make graphs for them myself, but instead I’m just going to post his SIERA for the past 7 seasons in big bold digits. (SIERA being a superior metric for measuring future performance than xFIP.)

2004 – 2.38
2005 – 2.73
2006 – 2.74
2007 – 2.76
2008 – 3.61
2009 – 3.55
2010 – 3.80

He hasn’t been the same pitcher since he came to the Mets (and you can argue it started his last year with the Twins), but he’s done a damn good job of hiding that fact most of the time. It’s just the times where he gives up a grand slam to Felix Hernandez, or walks 71-year-old Jamie Moyer, that one can plainly see he’s past his peak.

All graphs courtesy of Fangraphs.

I got invited into a league at the eleventh hour, and once I heard that there were seven Yankee fans among the twelve managers, I knew I had to fuck with them. Having the first nomination of the draft fall into my lap provided the perfect opportunity to kick off the festivities perfectly. But before I go into a short narrative of the draft, I guess I’ll do some explaining.

For the uninitiated, a normal fantasy draft takes the 12 (or 14 or whatever) managers and plops them in a random order, and flips the drafting order each round, e.g., whoever picks second in the 1st round picks second to LAST in the 2nd round. This goes for however many rounds as there are player slots designated for each team. But I’m sure anyone bothering to read this post already knew this.

Now, the auction draft — like all other fantasy drafts I’ve taken part in — was on Yahoo!, so I don’t know if the exact rules apply, but I’m sure that even within Yahoo! (yes, I’m totally gonna keep adding the exclamation point) there are plenty of options to fiddle around with, so not every fantasy draft is the same anyhow. But for my draft, each team was provided with $260 monopoly dollars to fill 21 slots (C,1B,2B,SS,3B,OF,OF,OF,Util,SP,SP,RP,RP,P,P,P,BN,BN,BN,BN,BN). Feel free to ask if you’re clueless and actually interested in knowing what those stand for. From there, the managers are put in a random order just like a normal draft, but in this case, each manager nominates a player instead of drafting him. This means that the manager effectively bids $1 for this player and from then on anyone can bid up to whatever they want, short of bankrupting themselves from filling all their slots — meaning $1 is left for each empty slot no matter what, limiting the maximum bid by a few dollars. For every player nominated, the projected and average draft values are displayed, so there is at least some sort of benchmark to which even the most clueless manager can refer.

Yet when I nominated Phil Hughes — whose average draft value couldn’t have been more than two — the Yankee fans fell over themselves and hilariously bid him up to $7. By comparison, Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman also went for $7 later in the draft. Sadly, I think that obscene bidding war might have been the high point of the draft. But the sprawling length of the draft did provide for many other moments, like when the lone Braves fan bid $20 for Mariano Rivera, assuming at least one of the Yankee fans would bite. They didn’t. I guess they had learned their lesson with Hughes. Or when the same Braves fan kept bidding up the price for Santana just to annoy me –even after joking for weeks about how his elbow is going to explode — and I finally conceded, much to his dismay. Or when one of the Yankee fans tried to bait me in particular by nominating John Maine. He ended up spending his first dollar and roster spot on John Maine. Awesome.

The high point of my draft personally had to be snatching Roy Halladay for $35. Not a huge bargain, but considering Tim Lincecum went for $47, and C.C. Sabathia and Zack Greinke for $39, I think I made out alright. He will totally decimate the NL, especially when you consider that he won’t be facing the best offense in the league. Oh, and somehow Chris Carpenter went for $37 AFTER I picked up Halladay, but that was someone who missed the draft having the computer draft for them. And that’s why you always make auction drafts.

So if you’re ever a manager of a fantasy league, make sure everyone can make the draft, and then set up an auction draft. It’s the American way.

I never thought I could be so torn — or so prideful — when it comes to wanting to be right. I mercilessly ripped the Jeff Francoeur-Ryan Church trade, but yet Francoeur has been the perfect shot in the arm for a team that desperately needed it. I can’t describe how painful it was to write that sentence. I still believe he won’t keep this RBI per game up, because there’s nothing to suggest he will, but what if he does? I assume at one point I will accept I was wrong, but such a realization is not going to come anytime soon. It’s fucking JEFF FRANCOEUR. He sucks! The elation I should feel when he hits a home run is almost outweighed by the shame I feel due to ripping the trade. I can’t help but ask myself, “Is Omar Minaya actually a better GM than I give him credit for?” And then Monday’s press conference happened.

There’s little point in rehashing the ridiculous story that has already been blown out of proportion by the New York media that no doubt wants to show solidarity with Adam Rubin, but it’s just another example of how this Mets organization can’t do the simplest tasks without falling over itself. While not as embarrassing as the way Willie Randolph was fired, calling out a beat writer while announcing the firing of your VP of Player Development is just…insane? Bizarre? Petty? All three?

But such a fiasco hasn’t seemed to affect the major league team, and why should it? I hate it when the media acts like such a front office issue might actually manifest itself in the play of major leaguers who don’t give a shit about this garbage. The only thing that such a PR disaster reflects is a poorly-run organization, which can negatively affect a major league team, but only in very overarching ways — such as terrible contracts, a subpar farm system, and terrible medical personnel.

All these grips fade away — hopefully — when Johan Santana takes the mound. I want him to have a strong second-half, not for this season, but for my own psyche going into next year. If I can’t believe Johan can dominate, what hope do the Mets have for 2010? Especially if the Phillies trade for Cliff Lee.

Since I passed out FOREVER after I got home from the game yesterday, and I’m actually writing right before the last game of the season, I’m going to keep this short. Johan is indeed God. You should all worship him. I will pay tribute by buying his home jersey as soon as possible.

Here are their career stats on three days’ rest (not including when Santana was a reliever):

Santana: 3 GS, 14.2 IP, 6.14 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, .919 OPS

Perez: 1 GS, 2.2 IP, 13.50 ERA, 3.75 WHIP, 1.338 OPS

Not good.

Let’s break this down. Knight or Niese tomorrow could be awful, but Perez on three days’ rest on Sunday could be awful as well. The difference is Santana on three days’ rest or four. Santana tomorrow means most likely six to seven decent innings. Santana pitching on Sunday would probably mean another dominating performance, and at most one inning from the bullpen. Well, at least I’ll get to see him pitch tomorrow now. I guess we’ll see just how much of a god he really is.

And oh yeah, there was a game tonight. I’m not going to talk about that. In retrospect, I should have watched the presidential debate. But I had another trainwreck to watch. I got to watch the Marlins once again come out guns blazing, ready to spoil the Mets season, while the Mets played like it was a spring training game. Fucking pathetic.

If it weren’t for Tim Lincecum being an extremely talented and dominant man-child, Johan Santana would be getting consideration for the NL Cy Young after tonight’s performance. He delivered in the biggest game of the Mets season so far, throwing the most pitches in his career.

125 pitches, 86 strikes, 8 IP, 10 K, 2 ER. Just what the Mets needed.

As the season has progressed, Santana has risen to the occasion. Earlier in the season, he came out after 7 innings and 100 pitches regularly, allowing the bullpen to blow game after game for him. Tonight, he did all in his power to stop that from happening. He even hustled out a potential double-play, which allowed Jose Reyes to hit a bases-clearing triple to make the score 6-2. Santana made sure the lead stuck this time, as he has been doing as much as possible lately. It seems he throws more and more pitches every outing, all while lowering his ERA at the same time. Even though his fastball has lost a few MPH, he’s as dominant as ever. I can’t think of another ace pitcher whose best pitch is a changeup.

The Yankees sure could have used him this year, what with their young guns totally flaming out and all. I’m sure they’ll pick up C.C. Sabathia or Ben Sheets or another free agent pitcher next year. God knows the market is the best in years. It’s just a shame they had to fuck up the last year of Yankee Stadium after over a dozen years in the playoffs. But I’m sure Jeter has enough ladies lined up to give herpes in October and A-Rod has some more trannies to bang. 

Meanwhile, the Mets are in the midst of another playoff race, and this time they have Johan. If this were last year, they would’ve trotted Tom Glavine out there tonight, and he would’ve shit the bed. Of course, it’s impossible to be confident after watching this team for so long, but it does give me a bit of piece of mind knowing Johan will be the pitcher on the mound for the last game of the season if the playoffs are on the line — and not Glavine.

WHAT HAPPENED!?!?

3 HOMERS!!!

5 RUNS!!

SANTANA IS A BUST!!!

…

Oh wait, he still has the lowest WHIP on the pitching staff. (Nelson Figueroa doesn’t count!)

This wouldn’t be post-worthy if it weren’t for fans in attendance at Shea BOOING as Santana walked off the mound to the dugout. What the fuck is wrong with Mets fans? And when asked about it, Santana owned all of them:

“If they boo, that’s fine,” Santana said. “That’s a history they got from not being so good, I guess.”

The man’s got a point. He has one bad game — after throwing two gems — and he’s getting booed already. Mets fans are just way too angry and impatient for their own good after the epic collapse last year. The team is .500 even without Pedro, El Duque and Duaner Sanchez, the last of which is a big question mark coming back. The Mets bullpen would be about 150% better with Sanchez in 2006 pre-taxi-accident form.

Getting back to the booing, I can’t believe it happened as the Mets were going for their 4th straight win. Maybe if they had lost their last three games it would make more sense to me, no matter how little, but I mean COME ON. He’s the savior of the Mets pitching staff! Instead of booing, they should be offering him their first born, even after letting up the third HR of the day.