Giving Up On The Mets & Yankees

Now that I host my own daily sports show in the afternoon I don’t really need this segment to rant and rave but today might be a good time to close the door on the 2008 baseball season. I’m not talking about the high school season which brought championships to Toms River North, Toms River South, Central and Barnegat but rather the Major League Season for the two New York teams.

I know summer hasn’t even arrived yet but I’m starting to get the feeling that the Yankees and Mets may not be much better than .500 teams and what we’re seeing from them now is about what we can expect all summer long. The Mets are really a mess and there is no indication that things will improve any time soon. Their manager will be under fire all season and their lineup is filled with aging and underperforming players who are not clicking on the field or in the clubhouse. Simply put they are a roster of square pegs trying to fit in round holes and it’s not working.

The Yankees have shown some signs of breaking out of the win a couple, lose a couple mode they’ve been in most of the first 65 games. There biggest problem has been consistency…when they pitch well they don’t hit and vice versa but they have enough weapons to still be a factor and should remain at least in the wild card picture over the summer.

This is the final season for both teams to play in their current ballparks and in April there was reason to believe a Subway Series would be a perfect ending for Yankee & Shea Stadiums. However that’s a real long-shot right now and it seems more likely if you want to watch a World Series game locally you’ll have to travel to Citizens Bank Park…the home of the Philadelphia Phillies. Now that’s a fun team to watch…unless of course you’re a Mets fan!

On an unrelated note the Jersey Shore team won its first game in the prestigious Carpenter Cup Baseball Classic at the University of Pennsylvania. Toms River South’s Tyler Gebler threw three shutout innings and Andrew Nowell of Wall belted a two-run homer in a 6-3 victory over Delaware South. Next up for Jersey Shore is a quarterfinal date with Lehigh South on Friday morning.