Why Met Fans Should be Happy and Yankee Fans Shouldn’t be Worried

Johan Santana and CC Sabathia both have been habitually slow starters. Neither one exactly starts off the year in mid-season form. You usually don’t see the real Johan or the real CC till somewhere around the first week of May. So no one should read much into yesterday’s action.

Yes, the Orioles beat up on CC a little bit. It wasn’t as bad as it looked and CC was not throwing his good fastball yet. He will get LIGHTYEARS better each week from here to May, so don’t panic. You may even feel like waiting for Phil Coke in the parking lot. Don’t worry about that either.

The Yankee offense looked really good yesterday. The muscled up on Guthrie when he eventually started throwing junk. (His day should have probably been one inning shorter.) They had the long ball working and that’s the Yankees’ game these years. I would say that yesterday’s offensive product (5 runs) is going to be pretty close to their average when the season’s over. That’s pretty good.

Johan Santana looked brilliant yesterday. I should be excited about that (mostly because I’m a Mets fan), but I’m very cautious (mostly because I’m a Mets fan). Johan will probably regress from here for a couple starts - which is fine. The thing I was excited about yesterday was the bullpen. 3 1/3 scoreless innings - with Putz and KRod not allowing a single hit. That’s exactly what we were all hoping for. Shawn Green had a very nice inning and 1/3. Everybody from the pen looked great.

The Mets offense ran into some great pitching from Aaron Harang. He is definitely going to have a bounce back year if he keeps pitching like he did yesterday. He held a strong offense to two runs and looked strong the whole way.

I’m very encouraged by the Reds offense. There were an awful lot of great at bats yesterday. Three in a row against Santana in the first inning from Bruce, Phillips, and Encarnacion. This team could really go places this year. They looked a lot better to me than the Astros or Cubs yesterday. If Dusty Baker can keep this team focused (which is a BIG if) then they could take the Central this season.

But the thing that put the biggest smile on my face of the day was young Daniel Murphy of the Mets.

When Murphy came up last year, we hit a solid .400 the first couple weeks. And commentator Keith Hernandez said, “and that’s not a soft .400″. This kid is the real deal, the SNY crew all agreed. Yesterday, Ron Darling said “it sounds like we’re gushing about Murphy and that we’re overhyping him, but its because of at bats like that.” Darling was referring to the 10 pitch at bat where Murphy fought off Harang’s best to get the Mets up 1-0 with a bomb to the power alley in right. Murphy later drove in the Mets second run, giving them their 2-1 lead.

Murphy isn’t going to be a big time home run hitter - everyone’s projecting around 20 - but he is going to be a great line drive/doubles hitter. He’s gotten compared to Don Mattingly more than once - and that’s a true compliment.