Prediction: The Mets Won’t Contend

The season opens a week from Monday, and while there are smile aplenty in the Florida sunshine over the return of Jose Reyes and the fast development of some young talent, the prognosis for the 2010 New York Mets season is grim.

What about Jason Bay and Jeff Francouer and (after Carlos Beltran returns) the finest Mets outfield in years? What about the rejuvenation of the Wright-Reyes pairing on the left side of the infield? The veteran catchers? What about a deeper bench and more-than-decent bullpen and the on-the-come stances of studs-in-waiting Fernando Martinez and Ike Davis?

Forget all that. There are four reasons the Mets simply won’t challenge the Phillies for the NL East – and most likely, won’t contend for the wild car either. And those reasons are named Pelfrey, Maine, Perez and Niese.

Quite simply, after Johan Santana, the Mets do not have a rotation that can sanely be said to bear any resemblance to a championship staff.

To put it another way, these guys are bad pitchers (with the possibly exception of Niese) and show no signs of improvement on the Grapefruit Circuit.

Or to boil it down even further: Omar Minaya failed completely in the off-season to address the most obvious need on the time. He was either delusional or dismissably negligent. It is frankly hard to believe that someone with his baseball knowledge and experience could simply ignore the disaster of the Pelfrey-Maine-Perez trio. And while Bay was a nice signing – and the Mets may well boast a monster outfield – John Lackey was the clear path to improving this team, among free agents. Only Lackey afforded a true number two option behind Santana, who is now followed by four number fives.

Jonathon Niese is a special case, I suppose, a young guy with good stuff and potentially decent future – but the fact that he’s apparently the lock for the fifth spot after a tiny amount of major league experience and devastating leg injury reveals the incredible lack of starting depth the Mets have.

Ask yourself this: among those four, is there one starter you can honestly project to pitch to ERA below 5.00 or to a WHIP of less than 1.50? Further, Oliver Perez, Mike Pelfrey and John Maine all seem to suffer from a malady that kills pitching talent time and time again: weak stuff. And I mean mental stuff, toughness, the ability to fight through and gut things out. I know this, you know this, Mets fans everywhere know this. Why don’t the Mets know it?

It’s a disgrace – this is a team that flirted with R.A. Dickey this spring. There’s simply not much, short of a trade deadline deal, that can hep this staff out in 2010.

So while the rest of the team looks a lot better this season, the Mets are simply a great looking car with a broken down engine. Pitching wins, and consistent starting pitching wins pennats. And the Mets don’t have it. It’s going to be another long season.

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