As the mid-point of the season approaches, the Mets do not seem prepared to attain the position they need to avoid a third consecutive late-season collapse. Before the season began, I boldly proclaimed that the Mets could exorcise the Phillies from their shattered psyches forever more if they built an 18-game lead with 17 games to play.

The 17-games-to-go juncture, after all, was the point of the schedule the Mets reached the last two years leading the National League East before they did their Phillies fade. They led Philadelphia by 7 games with 17 to go in 2007 and by 3 ½ games with 17 to go last year, and they finished first neither time.

Keep reading...

John Henry, meet Brian Bruney. They don’t run in the same circles; they most likely don’t even have any mutual acquaintances. And they live on very diverse strata of Major League Baseball. But after their recent remarks about other people in baseball they might want to get together to discuss the wisdom of those remarks.

Let’s begin with Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox. He was so giddy last week after the Red Sox completed a three-game sweep of the Yankees and ran their season record against them to 8-0 that he displayed his feelings for all to see on Twitter, a social-interaction Web site where even an owner of a baseball team can be as goofy as he wants to be.

Keep reading...

“Hells Bells” has traveled well from San Diego to Milwaukee. “You still have to do your job and make it work,” Trevor Hoffman said.

Hoffman, whose 569 career saves make him the all-time leader, has made it work. He has done nothing to embarrass his signature musical entrance into games. He has done his job so well for his new employer, the Brewers, that all he has been is perfect.

Entering Sunday’s game, he had relieved 18 times, allowed no runs, not even an unearned run, in 18 innings and had earned 15 saves in 15 save opportunities.

Keep reading...