• Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

April 20, 2015, Brooklyn NY  There was a time in baseball when batting was everything, but those days have been numbered and perhaps laid to rest. Since the Mitchell Report and Biogenesis Scandals rocked the major leagues, baseball has seen its share of players’ careers ended and legacies tarnished. The new age of baseball is now strategically played from a different angle. Gone are the days of the hitters, and now the age of pitchers has arrived. The MLB has seen pitchers ERA drop immensely over the last few seasons. In fact, according to CBS Los Angeles, during Clayton Kershaw’s stellar 2014 season which earned him both Cy Young and National MVP honors, he accomplished something that hasn’t been done in nearly half a century. Bob Gibson was the last pitcher to win both the NL Cy Young and MVP award, which occurred in 1968. By accomplishing this feat, Kershaw joined an elite group of 10 pitchers who can claim equal honors.

That just goes to show you how long it has been since pitching was dominating the sport of baseball. The Mets have some of the best arms in the game on their roster and even more arms in the minors ready to go. If you are a Met fan, you are well aware that Jenrry Mejia was suspended the first week of the season for 80 games for testing positive for steroids. Victor Black is on the 15-day DL disabled list. Josh Edgin is on the 60-day disabled list along with Bobby Parnell and what we thought was the last injury, Zack Wheeler. If you thought that the worst was over, the Mets lost lefty specialist Jerry Blevins to a fractured forearm on Sunday after being hit by a line drive in the forearm in the 8th inning.

But when one arm falls, the next one follows. The Metropolitans have built around the captain, David Wright, with so much pitching that even with  six injured pitchers, they have been able to plug in someone for the injured player who has filled in admirably. Jeurys Familia, who was told he was going to be the closer after Mejia failed his drug test, has been one of the many talented arms to come up in the farm system. Alex and Carlos Torres have been able to fill in the absence of Edgin and Black. Not to mention Bartolo Colon seems to have found the fountain of youth. The Mets are 10-3 with nine injured players, and the reason they have been able to remain afloat is because they have been able to have arms who are ready, willing, and able.

Some additional arms the Mets have yet to showcase are Noah Syndergaard, Sean Gilmartin, and Gabriel Ynoa. Noah has been compared to Harvey and projected to exceed Zack Wheeler but lacks a bit of confidence at the moment. Imagine what potential the Mets are going to have next year and years to come when they have all of their pitching staff back healthy. Met fans should not look at this as a setback.  They should look at it like a comeback because of what they will achieved when they are fully armed and dangerous.

By Vernon McKenzie

Graduate of New Institute Of Technology with a BA in Communications with a focus on Television Radio. Owner and Executive Producer of PureSportsNY

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