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.

2K Sports MLB 2K9 vs. MLB The Show 09

I’m an XBox 360 guy. When I went to buy a new system 2 years ago, there were no decent games for the PS3 and it was a good $150 more expensive than the 360. Since then, I’ve wished at times that I bought the PS3 (my XBox has proven “glitchy”), but overall I’m satisfied with my 360.

Every year I go out and buy the latest baseball game. For us XBoxers, its 2K Sports MLB 2K9 (with Tim Lincecum on the cover instead of last year’s Jose Reyes version). I’ve been playing this game for about a week now (not as much as I could be, but enough that my thumbs are sore) and I like this year’s version a lot better than last years.

The old announcing duo was the always dull Jon Miller and his semi-retarded cohort, Joe Morgan. Listening to these two in video game form was even more painful than listening to them during a game. Can someone explain to me why Jon Miller insisted that his name is ru-BEN Sierra when no one else in the world - include Mr. Sierra - hits the Ben instead of the Ru? But I digress.

This year’s duo is Gary Thorn and Steve Phillips. Gone are the idiotic catch phrases of Joe Morgan - trying to share information like an autistic John Madden. Now we get to hear the nasally refrains of Mr. Thorn while Steve Phillips sounds both rushed and disinterested. Its a wonderful combination. But lightyears better than Miller/Morgan, so I’m happy.

The actual game play is totally different. My first game saw Johan Santana get lit up by the Reds because I couldn’t find the strike zone (Edwin Encarnacion hit a grand slam that probably hasn’t landed in video game land yet). Now instead of guessing whether I’ve held the button too long and my easy throw from second will wind up in the seats, there’s a clever little meter that tells me how hard the throw will be. The drawback: the meter doesn’t kick on before the player has the ball. There’s no pre-loading, so a bang-bang play where you need to get the ball out of your glove sometimes causing no throw and a lot of yelling from the player.

During my first game with the new version, I had no less than 4 Come on!’s, 3 You Gotta Be Kiddin’ Me’s, and 3 F*ckin’ Bullsh*t game!’s. All in all, pretty good for a new release. Those numbers significantly decreased in the second game (where John Maine and solid bullpen beat the Reds 8-4). And I think this is going to become one of my favorite games ever. It really is a quality game where its hard to be a lazy cheat.

I give it a 3.5 out of 5 possible points.

But I will always wonder, what if I had bought the PS3 and was currently playing MLB The Show 09? What would I think of it? Hopefully we’ve got some industrious PS3 fans who can compare my new baseball game to theirs… HINT HINT