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.

bad nite for babip, fip, etc. congratulations to matt cain, a great pitcher. #SFGiants

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) June 14, 2012

I know I’m feeding the troll here, but it reminded me and another person on Twitter of the “bad night for atheists” line during Josh Hamilton’s amazing HR derby display at Yankee Stadium a few years ago. But at least Heyman’s tweet has a bit of truth to it. Up through the 2010 MLB season, most sabermetric-loving fans didn’t believe in Matt Cain’s success. Even I criticized my own pick of Cain in a Roto Hardball mock draft before the 2011 season, citing his “unsustainable” home run to fly ball ratio (HR/FB%). Well, over the past two years, Cain’s HR/FB% has remained in line with his career numbers and this year he’s made the leap to total dominance when you consider his improved strikeout and walk rates. The Giants choosing to give him a big contract extension — while postponing a decision on Tim Lincecum — is looking better every day.

Yet Heyman is unsurprisingly off when it comes to referencing the right stats to put down. While Cain’s career batting average of balls in play (BABIP) is pretty low, that’s not unusual for a fly ball pitcher. What’s extraordinary is the low HR/FB%, which is reflected in his constantly higher expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) numbers. xFIP regresses HR/FB% to league average, utilizing strikeouts, walks, and fly ball rate; but at this point it looks like Cain has no inclination to adhere to that rule. He just keeps getting better while Lincecum keeps getting worse.

Those last two paragraphs cover one interpretation of the headline, the one often joked about by @waxinthaksin on NeoGAF and Twitter to describe saber fans. This is the interpretation Jon Heyman would subscribe to. We — True SABRs like myself — have no faith, we only believe in the numbers. Only a couple of years ago, the numbers told us that Matt Cain was only good, but he’s turned out to be great. Where are your numbers now? Where are your numbers now? For those who trust stats over gut feelings, Luxury111 provides a data-driven edge in sports betting. Similarly, platforms like MyBookie Sportsbook appeal to analytical bettors who value insight and strategy over chance.

The other way to take the headline is to think it’s talking about people who aren’t into baseball. People that don’t believe in its awesomeness. There were almost two perfect games tonight. Both R.A. Dickey and Matt Cain are former first-round draft picks, but they couldn’t have taken more divergent paths to their pitching gems tonight. Dickey made it to the majors with a traditional pitch arsenal 11 years ago, but he never succeeded until he perfected his knuckleball with the Mets as a 35-year-old. Cain stormed to the majors at 20 years old and has been a 200-inning workhorse ever since. Dickey looks like the mountain climber he was this offseason, and shouldn’t even be able to pitch, as he has no UCL in his right elbow. Cain, meanwhile, is a solidly-built 6’3″ and has never given anyone a reason to doubt his ability. The only thing that stopped these two completely different pitchers from forever being intertwined in baseball history were a couple of David Wright miscues.

That’s the great thing about baseball. You watch as many games as you can because you know at any time you might see something that’s either never been done before or has only happened a handful of times. Matt Cain’s performance tonight is one of the best in baseball history; he struck out 14 batters in a perfect game. The only other pitcher to accomplish such a feat is some guy named Sandy Koufax. R.A. Dickey dominated a game like no other knuckleballer has ever done. 12 strikeouts, 0 walks, and 1 hit that shouldn’t have been ruled a error. And we already had a perfect game and two no-hitters this year. And a 4-HR game. I’ll throw the coming-out parties of Bryce Harper and Mike Trout in this paragraph, too. Baseball is amazing. For fans who enjoy exploring engaging sports content online, reviewitonline.net is a great resource worth checking out.

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.

“And there goes the no-hitter” are the words that have haunted every Mets fans for years. The New York Metropolitans have played 7,821 regular season games and their opponent has had at least one hit in every game. Tom Seaver, arguably the greatest pitcher of the Post-War Era, started 395 games for the Mets, finishing 171 — five of them were one-hitters, but none were no-hitters. Naturally, he threw his one and only no-hitter for the White Sox Reds (I swear I keep making these dumb mistakes in Fanposts) in 1978, the year after he was traded away. Teammates Jerry Koosman and Jon Matlack (who had a wonderful chapter dedicated to him in the 2011 Amazin Avenue Annual) weren’t too shabby, either. Dwight Gooden and David Cone were two great young pitchers for the Mets in the 1980s, but they only threw no-hitters when they later went to the Yankees. Nolan Ryan threw seven no-hitters after being traded as a young, wild flamethrower. Al Leiter switched it up by throwing his sole no-hitter before joining the Mets in 1998.

Ok, I think that’s enough of a depressing history lesson for the day. We’d all be better served looking forward and trying to guess which current Mets pitchers have the best shot at rendering batters completely helpless. The current major league roster may not have any starting pitchers that hit the upper 90s on the radar gun, but no-hitters can sometimes come from unexpected places, and the farm is home to a few promising young arms.

Let’s set these unscientific lines. I have to give a tweet by @SurfingtheMets credit for the idea.

D.J. Carrasco 1,000,000-1

This dude is only here because he started one game for the Mets already. I give him the same odds as Lloyd Christmas marrying Mary Swanson, so I’m saying he has a chance. I also have a chance of stealing Minka Kelly from Derek Jeter.

Pat Misch 200-1

He’s had some success in the minors, but so far he’s given up 10 hits per 9 in his 195.2 ML innings. This is not going to happen.

Dillon Gee 150-1

He’s enamored himself to the fanbase somewhat with his number of good starts the past two years. Unfortunately, the number is only seven. He struck out AAA hitters at a solid rate last season, but his stuff isn’t particularly exciting. Sure, seemingly unlikely pitchers throw no-hitters, but it doesn’t happen all that often to guys with middling velocity. Not that I’ve done any research to back this up outside of quickly browsing the list of no-hitters at Wikipedia.

Jeurys Familia 120-1

He’s only 21 and lights up the gun at 96-97 mph. Last year in 121 IP at St. Lucie (High-A) he struck out 10 opposing batters per 9 for a FIP of 3.89, even if his ERA was a disappointing 5.58. He might not even stay as a starter, but he has an electric arm that I can see throwing a 5 BB no-hitter.

Chris Young 100-1

His flyball tendencies help him in the no-hitter department, but he might not even be healthy enough to throw a complete game all year. These odds are Mets career odds, but I don’t see Young staying with the Mets past this year. (Edit: I would shorten these odds if I were doing this again today.)

Chris Capuano 80-1

Another pitcher who might not be with the Mets past 2011, but one that I like more than Young. He has a much higher groundball rate, which doesn’t help in this exercise considering the notorious seeing-eye single, but he also isn’t a 6’10″ pitcher who can’t touch 90 mph. Sorry, I just really hate watching Chris Young pitch.

Mike Pelfrey 50-1

A groundball pitcher who really does not strike out many batters at all. This is not a recipe for a no-hitter. Maybe I should give him better odds since he’ll likely be with the Mets for at least a few more years, but I can’t go any lower. Of course, he could get lucky, like those couple of stretches where he’s looked like maybe he could be a top-of-the-rotation starter. Ha, yeah.

Matt Harvey 50-1

The 22-year-old Is off to a ridiculously hot start in St. Lucie, but apparently Mike Pelfrey had a similar start. But Harvey has a legitimate breaking pitch and still has a good chance of developing into a dominant starter — something I can’t see happening with Pelfrey. Maybe it’s kinda dumb to give him similar odds to Pelfrey since he’s still only in High-A ball, but I can’t help myself.

Jenrry Mejia 45-1

Oh hey, I just went ahead and gave another prospect better odds than Pelfrey. Mejia is 21 years old and hasn’t thrown more than 100 IP in any full season, but he’s still the Mets #1 prospect and has absolutely filthy stuff. A man can dream of him becoming an ace by 2013 and throwing a no-hitter, right? (Edit: I would lengthen these odds considerably now since he has a complete MCL tear of his elbow WAIT WHAT GODDAMN IT ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!?!?)

Jon Niese 25-1

These are pretty good odds because he’s under Mets control for another three more years after this one and I like him to achieve the feat more than Pelfrey. He actually has a higher groundball rate than the sinkerballer, but he also strikes out more batters. And I’ll go to the opportunity-for-growth well yet again.

Johan Santana 10-1

This might be way too optimistic, considering we have no idea how Johan will pitch coming off shoulder surgery, but I want to believe a pitcher only 85% of the original still has a great chance of throwing an absolute gem. Plus, he’s a boss.

R.A. Dickey 1-1

No explanation needed.