Saturday, May 1, 2010

I'll Take My Mets With a Side of Grit

This is not your ordinary Mets team. The softness, nonchalant type of play that we've seen in years past is not present on this team. Wonder if it has anything to do with a missing center fielder? Hmmm, but in any case I'm loving the grit and intensity I've seen from this team over the past two weeks.

Running into walls, stretching doubles into triples,  and retaliating bean balls are all a sampling of the things we're seeing from this club that you couldn't have found with a fine tooth comb last year.

And it's not just veterans either. Ike Davis is jumping over railings to catch foul balls. Jon Niese is digging deep to get the most powerful lineup in the NL out while runners are on base. Mejia isn't backing down from the likes of Utley and Howard. But the key to the Mets grit is a guy named Frenchie.

Jeff Franceour is the epitome of what is great about baseball. The guy makes right field one of the most feared positions when he's out there. Did you see Jayson Werth pull a Scooby Doo skid stop in the 2nd inning when he thought he had a double? As soon as he saw Franceour had the ball it was like he saw a ghost and scrambled back to first on all fours.

Sure Franceour strikes out a lot. He swings at bad pitches too much. But this is the guy I want on my team because of his unbelievable hustle, his desire to win, and his rocket of an arm that keeps base runners at bay.

Grit. It's not an adjective used of the Mets, but this team is gritty. I love it. Let's go beat Halladay today.

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