Worst Spring Training Ever?

It's like clockwork.

Each morning I watch SportsNite, and each morning I hear the story of another Mets starting pitcher getting rocked.

It's not just in my head; consider the stats:

• Oliver Perez: 8.66 ERA
• Mike Pelfrey: 7.97 ERA
• John Maine: 7.94 ERA
• Johan Santana (!): 6.75 ERA
• Jon Niese: 5.65 ERA

Now, any baseball fan learns at a young age not to read too much into Spring Training. For all I know, the inflation in ERA is due to one particular inning when the pitcher decided to only throw offspeed stuff, just because he wanted to work on it.

At the same time, for a team desperate to give its fans reasons to believe, the showing from our starting five has been anything but encouraging. We all knew the rotation was the team's biggest question mark, but were any of us prepared for Pelfrey's 8 home runs allowed in 20.1 innings? (Regrettably, chances are we were all perfectly prepared for Ollie's 10 walks in 17.2 innings).

In answer to the question posed in the title of this post, I think the worst spring training ever would require injuries to key players, the freakier the better. Jose Reyes's gigantic thyroid was about as freaky an injury as you can imagine, but it appears that he'll be good to go by the second week of the season (which in Mets doctor speak probably means July 1).

Also on the plus side is that David Wright and Jason Bay are having good springs, and the fact that our key minor league talent (Jenrry Mejia, Ike Davis, and Fernando Martinez) all had terrific springs.

But the bit about our pitching is really discouraging. I've been saying it the past several months: my hope for the 2010 Mets is that they produce a season like the 2005 Mets. That is, I want them to keep things interesting, stay above .500 and in contention, and ultimately set the stage for 2011.

That's a tall order if indeed our pitchers are this bad. Surgery or no surgery, I think we all have confidence in Johan. The other guys have to earn it, however, and so far, through 15-20 innings of Spring Training, none of them has earned it worth a damn.

Come April 5, all the ERAs go back down to 0.00; if they all come out of the gates pitching effectively, none of this will matter.

But as we sit here now five days or so before Opening Day and contemplate the team's chances for the year ahead, the poor performances from Pelfrey et al doesn't do anything to bolster confidence about what lies ahead.

- A.F.O.M.G.