1. For a second time, I will try to explain my general policy on comments on this blog and also e-mails sent to my Post account: I try to not read them incrementally during the week and, instead, take an hour or so each Sunday to go through them. I do that for many reasons, including that between my job and my children I simply do not have the time to invest during the week on reading everything. But a big reason also is that I am a critical columnist, I know this, and, therefore, I feel I cannot complain when people are critical of what I write either in this blog or my column. But, of course, no one likes to be criticized regardless of how thick their skin is. So waiting until Sunday gives me time and perspective to absorb and dismiss the negativity easier. To read earlier in the week, I generally have to be directed to it by someone else. That happened last week when there were so many comments about my column and post on the new Yankee Stadium. And a friend of mine told me that I was getting beat up for my post yesterday about the Yanks’ performance in their season debut, notably how poorly CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira did in their first Yankee games. My friend told me he thought what I wrote was being misinterpreted, and I now agree. So I figured I could either a) Really slow things down in the writing. b) Buy everyone Hooked on Phonics. c) Offer further explanation today. I will go with further explanation.
I did not write in either the column or the blog post that one poor game by Sabathia or Teixeira means that they were mistakes or that it is indicative they will have bad seasons. What I did in the blog post is note that it made me “think of recent vintage Yankees who had extended poor starts and still managed to pull it together and have a good term with the Yankees.” The key word in that sentence was “extended” and I figured my readers would easily infer that “extended” meant more than one game, especially since the examples I used were the troubled entire Aprils for Tino Martinez and Dwight Gooden in 1996.
The reason I brought it up was to say that it is important for Sabathia and Teixeira to avoid “extended” bad starts because the number of recent vintage Yankees who have survived an “extended” Yankee bad start is not large.
For the record, I went into the season believing Sabathia would win 15-plus games and Teixeira would drive in 100-plus runs. That has not changed after one game.
Also, for anyone who cares, I am neither a Met fan nor a Yankee fan. I grew up a Reds fan because Pete Rose was my favorite player. Today I am a fan of short games with interesting storylines.
2. My column in today’s Post is about Joba Chamberlain in the aftermath of the release of the tape of his failed sobriety test from last October. I wondered was this a bad/dangerous single moment caught on film or was this a red flag? There are times I talk to or observe Chamberlain and think there goes a young man handling the quick fame well, and other times I feel the opposite. He is just 23 and much has been foisted upon him at a speed equivalent to his fastball. It is not easy to handle, especially when you live in a unreal world like that created around the Yankees.
3. I think the most telling part of the Met season is going to be about the 130-or-so games that Johan Santana does not start, a phase that begins today in Cincinnati with Mike Pelfrey starting. We received a hint on Opening Day that the Met late-game bullpen is, indeed, going to be significantly upgraded, especially early in the year as Francisco Rodriguez feasts on opponents unfamiliar with his array of pitches. We also know that Santana is a pitching genius; it feels as if we are watching a Hall of Famer during the prime of his career.
But what do we make of the rest of the rotation? We have worrisome shorthand for each. Pelfrey? Coming off a significant increase in workload. Oliver Perez? Flighty and inconsistent. John Maine? Coming off of shoulder surgery. Livan Hernandez. Tightrope walker with a high ERA.
With the remade bullpen, it is possible that the Mets don’t need excellence from the rest of the rotation, and rather just something north of competence. But in Pelfrey, Perez and Maine, you see – at the very least – starters who all have the ability to register way more than that. Pelfrey and Perez, in fact, have the skills to pitch at the top of a rotation. The closer they approximate that the easier it is to envision the Mets as NL East champs.