This Is It. No Turning Back. Another Season In The Trenches. #LGM

Hope springs eternal. Its a phrase used frequently on Opening Day when the baseball season is about to begin. The weather is turning, the snow is melting, and jusssst enough time has gone by for the wounds of fans of 29 teams to finish healing. Being a baseball fan – and more specifically, a Mets fan – requires a certain level of amnesia and a certain level of insanity when Opening Day rolls around. You need that amnesia to forget just how devastated you were at the end of the previous season. And you need that insanity to be willing to do it all over again. A wise man by the name of Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And an even wiser man Noah Syndergaard once said “Baseball has a way of ripping your heart out, stabbing it, putting it back in your chest, then healing itself just in time for Spring Training.” And so thats where we’re at as a fan base. The scars from a hundred errors in the 2015 World Series are still all over our bodies. They’re thick and bumpy and they itch and they’ll never go away. We’ll never forget Murphy booting that ball…we’ll never for get David Wright’s lollipop over the first followed by Duda’s airmail home…we’ll never forget death by contact. Those scars last forever. The wounds of Connor Gillespie have just stopped bleeding. They’ve sealed up and scabbed over and we can now pull off the band aid. Yea, he metaphorically fucked our mothers and you cant put that toothpaste back in the tube. But up until April 2nd I couldn’t even stomach the idea of being back in that same situation dealing with that stress and heartache again. On April 3rd though?? Lets fucking go. Bring it on. Again.

Hope springs eternal once again because we have no choice. You have to believe that hope springs eternal to give your heart and soul over to this franchise once again. Life as a baseball fan isnt fun. Its not one day a week at the bar with wings and beer. Life as a baseball fan is a combination of a job and a marriage. And in both situations, you have to put in WORK if you want to survive.

So now here we are. Ready to work. Ready to do it all over again. Time for a baseball therapy session. Time to run through worst case scenario and then pray for the best. I treat my Mets fandom like a lottery ticket. You dont buy a Powerball ticket and convince yourself “These are the numbers. This is the winner. Its going to happen.” You assume failure and just pray to God for the best. Thats what this blog is. Its more for me than for you. You know me. Perpetual Pessimism. I dont understand how there’s any kind of other Mets fan. I feel like the optimistic Mets fans are either casual fans, or they’re young bucks who havent been through enough “Mets gonna Met” tragedies to be conditioned yet to expect the worst. There’s absolutely no reason to think that things are going to go well for the New York Mets. The universe has been programmed to cause heartache for this fan base no matter what. Even when we sneak some happiness by the universe’s goalie, they end up correcting course. Its either a Subway Series loss or a Wainwright curveball or losing a World Series in historically bad fashion by handing over 4 wins in which you led every game in the 8th inning and blew it with comically bad defense.

But the prevailing thought amongst these naive face ass fans is that this is the year it all clicks. This is the year we finally see that rotation perform. Noah, deGrom, Harvey, Matz, Wheeler and now Lugo and Gsellman. 2017 is the year we see some combination of these guys combine to create an unstoppable 5 man rotation. The Mets fan mantra has always been “Ya Gotta Believe” but I think I’m officially changing it to I Want To Believe

I WANT to be one of these guys who can just look at that rotation of pitchers and say “Of course we’re gonna be fucking awesome.” But I can’t. I just cant do it. I can’t get my brain to do it. Matt Harvey coming off of multiple surgeries spending his off season with Adriana “Washed Up Baby Fever” Lima doesnt inspire any confidence in me. Zack Wheeler is baseball’s Greg Oden and until I see otherwise I cant be convinced he’s an “ace.” Steven Matz is Carl Pavano. MRIs consistently coming back negative yet he still lives on the DL. Optimistic Mets fans seem to think Seth Lugo and Robert Gsellman would be #1 and #2 of the 1995 Braves. Me personally? I’ve been watching several pitchers of a much higher caliber struggle to put together full, healthy seasons where they live up to their maximum potential, so the burden of proof is on Lugo and Gza before I can just turn my heart over to them. I believe in Gsellman. He looks like a fine pitcher at age 23. I think he can be a number 3. I’ve dubbed him The ReplACEment™. But to think that we can just keep doing this “Next Man Up!” and all of them are going to pan out as aces is just silly and unrealistic. Then there’s Thor – the only guy who hasnt had Tommy John yet, so I’ll probably wake up in cold sweats every night thinking this is the year he has his turn with Dr. James Andrews. And then Jake. He and Syndergaard should be fine and should ball out. I expect Noah to contend for a Cy Young and I expect deGrom to bounce back big. But in my head the vaunted “5 Aces” is forever going to look like “2 Aces and some combination of 3 other dudes trying to make it work.” The only truly consistent thing on this staff was Bartolo. 45 wins and a 3 something ERA over the last 3 years. And he’s on the Braves.

The same logic applies to the offense for me. Yo is the only guy who I think I can count on. Everyone else on the diamond is a question mark. Travis d’Arnaud I just dont think is a good baseball player. Defensive liability and injury prone. David Wright is a dead person. Neil Walker is ripe for regression and coming off back surgery, Asdrubal Cabrera had no business performing as well as he did last year. Jose Reyes probably didnt either.  He brightened up for his return to Flushing but is a complete question mark over the course of a full 162. Granderson just turned 36. Love the guy but theres every chance he just falls off a cliff. Jay Bruce and Lucas Duda are basically the same player. Streaky and meh. The fact that Duda is actually better than Bruce lets you know how shitty Bruce really is. Michael Conforto could be the guy who mashed home runs in World Series or he could be in the minor leagues. I mean everywhere you look theres a case for a major question mark.

But everywhere you looks there’s also a chance of everything clicking. The sky is the limit. Endless potential. If that rotation does somehow stay healthy and perform up to their potential, the team should win like 156 games. Noah is a legit Cy Young threat. Harvey perhaps finally healthy and the great motivator of money is finally on his radar. If the rest of that staff can take the mound regularly and do their job, this staff could…should… be the best in baseball. Obviously starting with multiple guys on the DL and a long road back for multiple pieces makes that a HUGE could/should. But most teams in baseball dont even have the luxury of a could/should. That type of dominance even being on the table is a once in a decade sorta thing.

And that applies to the lineup as well, to a much lesser extent. You’re not gonna see any sort of greatness out of this offense. But if a lot of those questions marks are able to find some consistency and live up to the hype, you’ve got some bats to back up those arms. We saw this team live and die by the long ball last year and theres a chance for a lot of pop once again. A 3,4,5,6,7 of Yo, Granderson, Neil, Bruce, Duda could all be 20+ home run threats. Some speed at the top with Jose and a professional hitter type like Droobs could work perfectly in front of that power. You got a guys like Forto and TJ Rivera waiting for their chance again, maybe Rosario if something opens on the left side of the infield. There’s options. There’s possibilities. It will take some luck and some health and a lot of things breaking our way, but again its there.

Thats a super long and cathartic way for me to say this team could win 97 or they could win 79. And in all likelihood they probably win like 89. Thats basically predicting nothing at all, but That’s Baseball Suzyn. The game of baseball and this Mets team is too volatile to make any rational guesses. People freak the fuck out when I say it will probably end up in the high 80s because they point to last year when we were ravaged with injuries and still won that many. But I think that kind of assumes all other things from last year hold true. Its not as easy as saying “we were injured last year, this year we’re not = More wins.” You hope that happens. You pray. You brain tells you your fucked but your heart says “Maybe not.” But this is what baseball is about for me. Its a complete and total leap of faith. Its basically turning yourself over to an emotional roller coaster for the next 7 months and just HOPING you dont die of a heart attack. Because hope springs eternal.

PS – The bullpen is gonna stink.