But first, a quick rundown of the LCS predictions I made and how they turned out.

Round 1 of the 2009 MLB Playoffs has completed, and I did not do very well in my predictions, which you can point and laugh at here.

Of course, predictions are just that. Results you expect to occur, hopefully with some rhyme and reason to back it all up. Whether they actually become reality or not, is a whole nother story.

So first, a little wrap-up of the ALDS and NLDS before moving onto the ALCS and NLDS.

Reality: Yankees in 3 games

The only prediction that I got right, and I suspect that a lot of people got right too. The Twins weren't good enough to compete with the Bombers, and even during the games that they might have actually taken from the Yanks, they couldn't win. Game 2 was the ultimate in that case, with the Phil Cuzzi blown call in leftfield taking center stage, but the Twins had numerous opportunities to score in that game and never did.

Closer Joe Nathan continued his terrible postseason by giving up a game-tying HR in the bottom of the 9th of Game 2 to A-Rod, and also gave up 2 hits to the Yankees in the 9th inning of Game 3. Those hits led to 2 Yankee runs which were charged to other Twins relievers, but Nathan couldn't stop the Yankees from scoring. As great as Joe Nathan is during the regular season, he's been quite awful in the postseason, posting a 7.88 ERA.

http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/mets/mets-don-t-have-plans-to-speak-to-jaramillo-1.1524107 Often when Met fans want someone fired, they don't have a solution to who the replacement is other than someone from the 1986 Mets, or Bobby Valentine. But in this case, if there was ever a person in MLB that could be a significant upgrade over Howard Johnson at the hitting coach spot (and mind you, I don't put a ton of stock into hitting/pitching coaches unless there's significant data that you can't ignore) it'd be Rangers' hitting coach Rudy Jaramillo. Like Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan, Jaramillo isn't going to stick with his former employer come 2010, and as it would have it, the Mets COULD bring him on board if the club felt Howard Johnson was not the best man for the job. As it turns out, the Wilpons love HoJo, and based on the Mets' team BA of .270 this season (tied with the Dodgers for 1st in the NL), and relatively strong RISP hitting numbers, you can't necessarily find cause to fire him either. From a political perspective, with Rudy Jaramillo once a former managerial candidate for the Metropolitans, you can understand why the club might be somewhat loathe to bring Jaramillo on board in any position other than hitting coach for fear it would be perceived as him waiting in the wings to take Jerry's or Howard Johnson's job. 

It's the most...wonderful tiiiiime of the year!!!!

I've been somewhat neglectful again of updating this blog on a consistent basis. The reason? Real life interferes.

But hopefully I'll find a little more time between all the sports action going on with the Mets and Angels, and other baseball playoff matchups, college football season now underway, and the NHL season starting in October.

So, with that out of the way, let's briefly talk about the New York Mets.

Through 143 games played, the Mets are 63-80. There are 19 games remaining in the season, so the chances of going 81-81 are virtually impossible unless the club goes 18-1. Now it's a matter of 70 wins instead of 81. Can they get there?

Back on August 6, I predicted that the Mets were going to end up with a final record of 77-85. However, even that seems unlikely unless they can go 14-5 to finish out the season. Possible, still not very probable, especially considering how the club has played over the past month.

Now, at best, the Mets are in the role of potentially playing spoilers to the rest of the NL East as they'll be playing Atlanta, Florida and Washington the rest of the way. None of them are in a strong position to take the NL Wild Card away from either the Colorado Rockies or Los Angeles Dodgers, although mathematically, Atlanta and Florida are still in the hunt.

As for 2010, there's going to be a LOT of talk going into the offseason as to what this Mets organization needs to do in order to rebound. The desperate need for a power-hitting leftfielder. How will the team fill holes at catcher, 1B, and the starting rotation? Will the bullpen undergo another overhaul outside of Frankie and Feliciano? That will all be covered in due time.

Right now, the Met players that are still healthy simply need to focus upon doing the best they can on the field. For many of them, this is an audition for a spot in the majors come 2010, never mind the Mets.

After a 3-game sweep at the hands of NL East rivals and current division leaders Philadelphia Phillies over the July 4 weekend, it's time to call it. The season for the 2009 New York Mets is basically over.

Understand that unlike a lot of Met fans, I'm not the whining complaining blame & flame-throwing type. I don't fault any one person for the failure of the 2009 New York Mets. I don't beat drums about firing everyone in the front office, or demanding that they trade away part of "the core." I'm generally pretty optimistic when it comes to all things baseball. But I'm also realistic.

And the reality has finally set in for this team. It's not Jerry Manuel's fault. It's not Omar Minaya's fault. It's not Fred and Jeff Wilpon's fault.

It's the fault of overwhelming injuries to a multitude of players.

Injuries are the great unequalizer in sports. It's what makes fantasy sports such a tough game to win. You can draft the best players in any fantasy sports league, but if your #1, #2 and #3 picks go down for an extended period of time, you're going to have a very tough time of winning your fantasy league. Now translate that to REAL sports, and you've got a serious problem.

The 2009 New York Mets have lost a lot of players this season to injury. Some minor, many major. Oliver Perez was first to fall. To some, that's not a big deal. But then Carlos Delgado went down with a hip injury. Then Jose Reyes's calf and hamstring. Then JJ Putz with his elbow. Then the oft-injured starting pitcher John Maine and his shoulder.

But the biggest loss on top of all of the others that had already accumulated, was Carlos Beltran and the debilitating and painful bone bruise on his right knee.

There were periods of time in which the Mets were also without starters Ryan Church (RF), Brian Schneider (C), and backup utility man Alex Cora (SS/2B). There's a revolving door/platoon in LF once the Daniel Murphy outfield experiment ended. Fernando Tatis is not hitting at even close to the pace he was in 2008, and the backup players (Alex Cora, Gary Sheffield) are being worn down by playing nearly every day.

David Wright has become a very streaky and inconsistent hitter who has lost his power swing. Despite being the only major Met starter to remain healthy all season, he is going to have a career year in most strikeouts at his current pace, and his final BA could end up being .260 or .350, depending on what streak he ends the 2009 season on. But even assuming the best for David Wright, he's one player. Even Albert Pujols has a superior supporting cast surrounding him.

There are some Met fans who want to blame GM Omar Minaya for not providing a better set of backup players, forgetting that backup players are just that. Backups.

They're the guys who alternate in to give the others rest on a Sunday day game after a Saturday night game, and occasionally a couple of them can fill in for extended periods of time over the course of a season when needed. But when your backup players get hurt, and then you're calling up minor league players to fill-in for THEM before they are ready to produce at an MLB level a la Fernando (K-Mart) Martinez, Nick Evans, Argenis Reyes, etc. it's an unplanned recipe for disaster.

There are some Met fans who want to blame GM Omar Minaya for not having already traded for another offensive player, like an Aubrey Huff, Mark DeRosa or Matt Holliday. The three major problems with these concepts is that one player alone isn't going to turn the Mets around. The second is that despite the simplistic belief of many a baseball fan no matter which team they support, other GMs have to actually agree to the trades. The third is that Minaya has gone on record stating he wasn't willing to mortgage the future prospects of the franchise for short-term solutions. A very wise decision. However, the pill of potentially giving up on 2009 to have a shot at legitimately competing in 2010 and 2011 is proving to be a tough one to swallow.

The indisputable facts are this:

• Through 81 games, the halfway-point of a MLB season, the New York Mets have gone 39-42. They are 3 games under .500, and 4.5 games behind the Phillies.
  
• Last year, the 2008 Mets were 40-41 at the halfway point, 3 games behind the Phillies. They went 59-32 over the 2nd half of the season, which was still a game short of the NL wild card. And that's a team that didn't have nearly the number of injury problems that the 2009 team has endured.
  
• There are SEVEN teams currently ahead of them (Giants, Rockies, Brewers, Cubs, Marlins, Reds, Astros) in the wild card race, with Atlanta just a half-game behind the Mets in both the NL East and wild card race.The Mets are 5.5 games behind current wild card leading San Francisco Giants.
  
• Since June 1, the team has went 11-21, which would only be slightly palatable had they not gone 9-12 in April. Even though the team went 19-9 in May, things started to slide when June came, and went to hell in a handbasket once Beltran went on the DL (5-9 since June 22), including series sweeps against the Yankees and Phillies.

The Mets have their next 6 at home going into the All-Star Break. 3 against the Dodgers, owners of the best record in baseball, and the Cincinnati Reds. Figure the Mets go 3-3 over that span, losing the series to the Dodgers, winning the series against the Reds.

After the All-Star break, the Mets go on the road for 4 against Atlanta, 3 against Washington, 3 against Houston. If this were truly the 2009 Mets with all their healthy starters in the lineup, it would not be absurd to expect them to win 8-9 of those 10 games.

But without those starting players in the lineup and the team's inability to score runs at a consistent pace, the more likely outcome of that 10-game roadtrip is 4-6.

The Mets will finish up July with a 4-game set at home against the Colorado Rockies, and a 4-game set that extends into August (1 game in July) against the dying Arizona Diamondbacks. Over those 5 games, I'll give the Mets a 3-2 record.

Taking into account all the series remaining in the month, that would bring the Mets to a July finish of 12-14, and a total record of 49-53 through 102 games played.

For the New York Mets to actually have a reasonable shot of winning the NL East or even the wildcard, they'd have to amass at least 88-90 wins by season's end at the bare minimum.

In a perfect world, you get back all your healthy players PLUS Billy Wagner in the bullpen by August 1, 2009. Maybe you already have some of then back already. But the Mets would then need to go around 39-14 over the rest of the season, and pray that other teams in the NL East encounter troubles of their own. While that's not impossible, it's certainly not very probable. Keep in mind that this is also assuming that the team doesn't suffer any additional injuries to major players.

Whether the Mets should be buyers, sellers, or neither at the end of July will ultimately be determined how the team plays their next 21 games. Will they still be in the race? Will they be completely out of it? Will they barely be hanging on? And can GM Omar Minaya afford to publicly wave the white flag at the risk of lost ticket sales and other revenues at Met home games in August and September, and depending on what moves he makes, 2010?

Only time will tell, but you can put this one in the books. The 2009 Mets will not make the postseason because they've gone too many games without their horses. By the time the cavalry comes back, it will be too late.

I really hope to be proven wrong, but this time, I highly doubt it.

Go Angels.

Every year, MLB begins their All-Star game balloting near the end of April, which is far too early. I advocate for voting only after June 1, as you simply cannot elect players to the All-Star game based on less than one month of baseball.

2 violent episodes raise questions about safety at Angel Stadium

After two violent incidents at Angel Stadium this season, one in which a man died while in a fight, and now an off-duty cop shot two people who were allegedly attacking him with bottles, there is a growing perception that the slimebag criminal and thug element that infests Dodger Stadium like a cancer is spreading to games in Anaheim.

Is this true?

Too soon to tell, and probably not. The fight that occurred earlier this season where a man died, was not between fans of different teams. It was, "Angel on Angel" violence so to speak, and the death was a freak accident that was not intended. The man hit his head on the concrete and died as a result. He was not stabbed nor shot, and while being punched in the face doesn't make things better, it's not quite the same thing.

The incident that occurred on Wednesday night is tragic, but still unclear as to what was going on. It is not believed to be a matter of Rockies fans attacking an Angels fan or vice versa. But what exactly happened, we only have the cop's version of. His story is that he was being attacked by two men with bottles, and he shot them to protect himself and his family. Both men are in the hospital, so it should be interesting to see what their side of the story is.

But these are extremely isolated incidents.

Violent events are not isolated at Dodger Stadium, and it is well-known that if you go to Dodger games rooting for the opposition, you are taking your safety into your own hands. Especially if you're a Giants fan.

America saw what kind of fans the Lakers had the night the team won the NBA Championship as they rioted and destroyed downtown Los Angeles. If you saw footage from the victory parade at the Los Angeles Coliseum 3 days later, you could see a lot of those same "people," just better-behaved due to the overwhelming police presence and "zero tolerance" criminal behavior policy they had in effect for the parade.

The Dodgers share that same element of fans and if they ever won the World Series, Los Angeles would be decimated.

The Angels do not typically attract the same type of fan because most Angel fans have class. There will always be people who are the exception to that, but the organization has a well-deserved reputation for being family-friendly and having a fanbase that is primarily well-behaved. The same cannot be said for Dodger fans.

Longtime Angel fans quoted in the L.A. Times article above may fear that things are getting worse at the Stadium, but that doesn't seem to be a valid fear at this stage. Hopefully it never will become legitimate.

Game 2 of my liveblogging baseball doubleheader. Wheeeeeee!!!!

Face it.