The Team to Beat

“Let me tell you this: Without Santana, we felt as a team we have a chance to win in our division. With him now, I have no doubt that we’re going to win in our division. I have no doubt in that... So this year, to Jimmy Rollins, we are the team to beat.” - Carlos Beltran, February 17, 2008

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My, my, my, what a long, strange trip it's been from February 17 to October 27. As I write this, the Phillies aren't yet World Champions. It's 2-1 in the bottom of the 5th. Kazmir just got screwed by the ump and it's two runners on with no one out. Either way, one gets the feeling where things are headed.

When I think about the 2008 Phillies, I don't think of some unstoppable juggernaut. I think of a good, but by no means great, team.

That's no discredit to them. Certainly, worse teams have won the World Series (hello, 2006 Cardinals). To consider them undeserving wouldn't be fair.

More than anything they've done one thing really well: they've built on the success, and perhaps more importantly, learned from the failure of 2007.

It's all so different from the Mets.

Indeed, what's disconcerting about this group of Mets is the consistent failure to grow in any real sense. They've failed to learn from their setbacks; instead, they seem to succumb to them.

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The last Mets team to make the World Series, the 2000 team, was a group that grew over time. In 1998 they fell just short. In 1999 they made it to Game 6 of the NLCS. And then in 2000 they made it to the World Series.

Other teams show similar progressions. The 2002 Red Sox finished with 93 wins and missed the playoffs. The 2003 team made it to Game 7 of the NLCS, and the 2004 team, well, you know.

How about the Phillies? In 2006 they finished a game short of the playoffs. In 2007 they won the division but got bounced in the first round of the playoffs. In 2008, well, stay tuned.

The point is, many championship teams don't appear out of nowhere. They face adversity and the ones that win are the ones that learn from the setbacks.

For whatever reason, the Mets were unable to maintain their organizational momentum. They made strides in 2005, made it ot the NLCS in 2006, and have fallen on their faces ever since.

Today the Mets are an organization without momentum. They used to talk about becoming a model for other franchises, of becoming a year-in, year-out presence in the playoffs. Look at them now, they're basically a national punchline, or at least the poster children for unfulfilled potential.

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It's with that history in mind that we need to look at 2009. Indeed, 2009 is the make or break season for this group of players.

What I like about Jerry Manuel is he seems to understand the value of teaching. He has said that one difference between himself and Willie Randolph was that Willie didn't want to talk about 2007, that 2007 was in the past and there was no use in talking about it.

Jerry thought otherwise. He thought the Mets needed to think abut their failures, they needed to understand them, accept them, and most importantly, learn from them.

There's little evidence they've done any of that since Game 7 of the 2006 NLCS. If this collection of players is ever going to script a positive future, they need to start by owning up to their past.

That doesn't mean making defensive preseason proclamations; it means understanding why they've fallen in the first place. It's the only way they can ever pick themselves up again.

- A.F.O.M.G.