Two Points for Optimism

What's up guys, A Friend of Mr. Glass' here. This isn't a full-fledged post (Sip's provided that below), but there were a couple Mets-happenings this past weekend that warranted mentioning on the site.

The big news, obviously, was Pedro's masterful return to live competition yesterday. On a windy afternoon in Port St. Lucie, the Met ace worked efficiently through 3 innings against the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles fielded what was, as far as I know, a close approximation of their Opening Day lineup, which is to say that the lineup Pedro was facing consisted of bonafide major leaguers.

As Paul Lo Duca would comment afterward, Pedro's performance was a huge mental boost. When the game began I was panicking that he would have a bad outing, that I would see my hopes for this season flash before my eyes and just as quickly fade away.

But no. With his hair puffing out from beneath his cap, Pedro threw 21 of his 35 pitches for strikes, fanning Miguel Tejada and Kevin Millar along the way. The only blemishes were a 4-pitch walk and a single on a pop up that landed about 5 feet from home plate when David Wright and Lo Duca collided.

Martinez didn't turn up the dial velocity-wise; he topped out at 88 mph on the radar gun all afternoon. But as we saw last year, velocity isn't necessarily the key for Martinez. His strikeout numbers will decline if his velocity is in the high-80s as opposed to mid-90s (we saw that happen in 2005), but he's talented enough to pitch effectively without all the Ks.

After his outing, Pedro was pleased with his performance, and said that if his toe felt like it did yesterday then beat reporters for the team should stop writing about it because it's fine.

As we all know, a healthy Martinez is critical to the Mets' success this year, and yesterday Pedro passed his first test with flying colors. Yesterday was just the first step, but you could hardly have asked for anything more.

So anyway, cheers to that.

Almost lost in the ballyhoo over Pedro's return to the mound was the strong relief work of Victor Zambrano. Tricky Vic tossed 6 innings of shutout ball in relief of Pedro, and while that probably does little for our general confidence in the guy, it sure is preferable to him getting shelled, wouldn't you agree?

So yesterday was a good day on the pitching front. And for you Brian Bannister boosters, it only got better at 6:45 p.m. when Marty Noble posted his Mets Notebook at mets.com. Citing unnamed members of the Mets' hierarchy, Noble reports that the most likely scenario is that Bannister begins the season as the fifth starter in the rotation while Aaron Heilman moves back to the bullpen.

Now I know I just wrote a piece promoting Heilman as the team's fifth starter, but I'm not going to argue this one too strenuously. As I said in that post, the debate between Bannister and Heilman was a good problem to have, and if it shakes out this way I'm not going to fight it.

You really can't argue with the logic espoused by one of Noble's sources that a bullpen consisting of Billy Wagner, Duaner Sanchez, Aaron Heilman, Chad Bradford, Jorge Julio, and a southpaw to be named later figures to "make us lights out from the seventh inning on."

And you can't really argue the importance of a strong bullpen given a rotation that figures to specialize more in 6-inning outings than 8-inning outings.

So Mr. Bannister, good luck. Mr. Heilman, I feel for you pal. Chances are this isn't your last chance to crack the rotation, so keep your chin up, accept the assignment to the 'pen with grace, and let's all get to work with winning some ballgames.

Sip thinks we're an 87-win team, the Glass thinks it's more like 93. I'm an optimistic kind of guy, what can I say?

Next year is now in 7 days. As you can read about in Sip's post, Yankees 2000 will be hosting a little function in the Shea parking lot, with 30-bangers and fresh toasted Caribbean lime Subway sandwiches.

Now if it would only get a little warmer so that we don't all freeze our asses off out there.

- A.F.O.M.G.