It’s finally here! Opening Day 2013! (I know the Mets don’t play until tomorrow but technically OD is today for the league)
The best day of the season because everything is possible! The season is wide open for everyone and anything can happen.
Of course, it doesn’t feel that way. The Mets are in the toughest division in baseball and already have a ton of injuries on the roster. It would be really easy, albeit depressing, to just say, “Can 2013 be over yet? Can we start 2014?”
Long time readers of this site know that for the last two years, since I graduated college, I moved to Newark, NJ (completely ruining the name of the site) to become a high school teacher. One of my students this year is absolutely convince that the Mets will make the playoffs this year. He really thinks that the Mets are a good team (for basically all of the reasons listed below). While I want to call him crazy, I was the same way in high school and younger, even back in the 2003/2004 days before the wholesale changes to the Mets.
I know it’s a stretch, but the mantra I’m going to keep telling my self all season is remember the 2012 Athletics and Orioles.
The Mets, believe it or not, still have a lot of excitement for this upcoming season:
- Zack Wheeler Day!
- Travis d’Arnaud Day!
- Matt Harver and Jon Niese!
- Captian Wright!
- Ike Davis!
- Cowgill could surprise! Valdespin is Valdespin!
Look, there are some tangible events to look forward to this season. There’s a lot of player development and some real talent to look forward to in later seasons. The last couple of seasons I felt like I was lying to myself when to get excited about prospects because there wasn’t enough to truly change the course of the team. The Mets have a core group of young players that will be ready to make an impact over the next 3 seasons.
Logic tells me that the Mets will finish 4th. My heart tells me maybe if they are lucky, they might finish 3rd. I’m still excited the upcoming season, and I hope you are too…mainly I’m exciting for d’Arnaud because I don’t know how many B game rosters I can handle with Recker starting.
