City of Pain

If you’re the Phillies and you’re going to own one team, it might as well be the Mets. The Mets are the big name, big spending team that everyone predicts will win the division and challenge for a World Series. The Mets are the team that ate balls in the mid to late 90s, only to find themselves in a World Series in 2000 and on the road to respectability. They picked up the big name players (Pedro, Delgado, Beltran, Wagner) to put themselves in the upper echelon of major league teams, and distance themselves from lowly teams like the Phillies. Now, sitting here in 2008, it’s all crumbling around them. The Mets completed the most historic collapse in baseball history last season, and have already watched Pedro Martinez, Moises Alou, El Duque, and Luis Castillo go down with injuries by the first week of the season. Every day they are throwing out the likes of Endy Chavez, Ryan Church, Angel Pagan, and Damion Easley to put the scare into their opponents. Are YOU scared of that lineup?

The Phillies don’t seem to be. Make that nine in a row against the Mets, and 12 out of the last 15. Admittedly, it’s a long season and we all know a lot of things can happpen, and of course the Phils will eventually have to lose a game to these clowns, but this recent success against the Mets is a sign. It’s a sign that the landscape of this division is about to change. It’s a sign that paying for older, over-priced players isn’t working even when you have a couple of younger core players to keep you afloat. It’s a sign that, if the Mets want to contend for anything this season, they’re going to have to get healthy real fast. And they’re going to have to learn how to beat the team that owns them right now.

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