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Howard Megdal

How Bad Is the Mets Bullpen?

It has been argued (by me) that overcoming a bullpen as terrible as New York’s this season is a tribute to both the tremendous offensive talent and frontline starting pitching the Mets possess.

But as Sunday’s 7-6 loss to the Braves demonstrated, the reverse is also true. It takes a historically awful Mets bullpen to Read More

How to Win With No Relief

The Mets don’t look like a winning team customarily looks. It seems impossible to imagine that a team with a bullpen so unreliable, and utterly devoid of quality performers, could manage to make the playoffs, let alone contend for a championship.

But as the Mets showed again Thursday night in a 7-2 victory over the Read More

Mets’ Failure Is a Team Effort

The great parlor game of New York’s 2008 season has been seeing whether a team can overcome criminally negligent pitching out of the bullpen and win a division title. But as the Mets showed Tuesday night in a 1-0 loss, and over their last five games, a bullpen may be overcome—a bullpen and offensive drought Read More

Shelled Game: Mets Scramble to Assemble a Playoff Bullpen

Total Chaos for Mets Postseason Pitching Generally, the roster questions facing a first-place team are few. The Mets, who lost 7-4 to the Atlanta Braves Sunday, lead the Phillies by one game, yet the pitchers who would make up their postseason staff are still largely a mystery.

Between the 18 pitchers currently with New York Read More

For Now, 2008 Offense Beats 2007-Style Pitching

All season long, the 2008 Mets have been invariably compared to the 2007 version that lost a near-certain chance at the playoffs. Every series, particularly against Philadelphia, the team that benefited from New York’s late collapse, has been inspected for signs of a return to last year’s disappointments, or definitive proof that the Mets had Read More

Your Less-Chokey 2008 Mets

It was easy to think back to New York’s epic collapse in 2007, when the Mets lost a seven-game lead with seventeen left to play, after New York lost to the Phillies on Friday night and Sunday afternoon. The results allowed Philadelphia to move within a game of the Mets, before the series conclusion on Read More

Finding Meaning in a Pointless Yankees September

The New York Yankees entered September seven games behind the Boston Red Sox for the wild card spot, and 12.5 games behind division-leading Tampa Bay. The last time the New York Yankees entered September more than the seven games out of a playoff spot was 1992, when the Melido Perez, Andy Stankiewicz Yankees entered September Read More

LOL: Phillies Catch Mets Disease

New York’s 8-7, 13-inning loss to Philadelphia Tuesday night played out like a single-game version of the Mets’ 2007 collapse. In fact, the Mets even managed a miniature replica of last September, when they blew a seven-game lead with seventeen games to play, by losing a seven-run lead with seventeen outs to play.

But Read More

No Bullpen for a Playoff Contender

The struggles of the Mets’ bullpen in the season’s second half astounding even by comparison to the very worst teams in recent memory. Following Sunday’s 6-4 loss to Houston, in which the bullpen gave away a 4-3 seventh-inning lead, New York’s bullpen ERA since the break is 5.89. To put this in perspective, no National Read More

This Was Once a Rivalry?

In the Mets’ tiered ticket pricing plan, only Opening Day, the Subway Series and the final regular season game at Shea Stadium cost more than a ticket to any of the three games this week, a series New York swept with a 5-4 walkoff win last night.

While in years Read More