Eric Simon of "Amazin' Avenue" the New York Mets blog at SBNation was kind of enough to exchange emails with me about the Mets this year in a series called 'Big Cat Conversations'. Eric covers the Mets daily, even more than daily sometimes, and does an excellent job at Amazin' Avenue to satisfy all fans borderline obsessed. Check out his work at Amazin' Avenue


Jim Kelly: Does blogging about every Mets game get in the way of your fan experience? You are on top of the ball after every Mets game with stat lines and comments about post game quotes from the players and coaches, but do you ever just mail it in and figure the readers will figure it out? Especially being so stat oriented too it's got to require alot of time and effort to look and stuff up and weave it into your posts. If it were me and the Mets lost due to yet another bullpen meltdown I would've just posted "they sucked" and logged off. I wouldn't have been able to complete sentences without ranting about an inadequate bullpen and still fuming from the collapse.

Eric Simon: It comes and goes, I think. I was pretty burned out by the end of last season that I didn’t even care that much when the Mets missed the playoffs. It didn’t help that the Mets phoned in the first few months of this season, but the past month has been a lot of fun and I’ve found myself as interested in this team right now as I have been at any point since 2006 ended. Where blogging diverges from traditional media is not so much the coverage itself, but the point-of-view of coverage, and that’s the biggest reason team sports fans have flocked to blogs and have started relying on the mainstream media as a secondary source of coverage instead of a primary one.

Writing about the Mets on a daily basis does take a tiny bit of the fan out of you, but I’m still a huge Mets fan and I think that comes through in my commentary and analysis of the team. I try to be objective in my analysis and emotive in my commentary. Sometimes it’s hard to strike a balance, but when you do the result is an effective means of communicating about a team and its players and other fans really latch onto that.


Jim Kelly: I may be extremely biased here (I'm allowed to be) but are there any fans that live and die by every game more so than Met fans? One look at the threads on your site and the mood is Jekyll and Hyde like after a win or a loss. I imagine there's some relaxation and understanding from the fans in cities like LA, San Diego, and even St Louis to a degree. The fans there might be behind there players for better or worse, but New Yorkers can be your best friend when you're up or your worst enemy after a quick 0 for 15. Yankee fans are rough, and Red Sox fans will let you know if you're in a slump, but I feel it's because the Mets have been starved for success for so long that they give their players the shortest leash in the league to perform.

Eric: There’s a lot of pressure to perform in New York, but there’s pressure to perform anywhere. I don’t really know what it’s like to be a fan of another team so I can’t really compare, but I suspect everyone thinks that their team’s fans are the most passionate. I think to some extent Mets fans probably suffer from a greater degree of self-entitlement than many other teams’ fans, and that often comes across via the booing of players whom they feel aren’t doing enough to earn their money. That said, New York is a great place to be when you’re playing well, and as quick as they are to boo poor performances, Mets fans will deify players who play well, especially if they look like they’re trying really hard in the process!

JK 2: Ok so lets get into this year's team. Suddenly Randolph leaves and the team see's the light and begins to perform well. Personally I don't blame Willie more so than I blame Rick Peterson. I was always a strong supporter of Peterson, with his days with Mulder, Zito, and Hudson in Oakland and reports of him using video and computers to breakdown pitchers to an exact science. I really thought he had all the answers, and that if a pitcher wasn't performing well then it wasn't the coach's fault it was the player's. Now that Jacket Rick is gone suddenly Perez and Pelfrey are the most dependable pitchers in the rotation, Maine has been a little more consistent (barring his recent injury) and Dan Warthen is being praised for it all. So what gives? Is it the laid back style of Jerry Manuel and the unorthodox "go with what works" style of Dan Warthen, or did this team just finally get it?

Eric: I’ve always been a Rick Peterson fan and thought the Mets were foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. Six solid weeks don’t completely change my mind about that, but certainly Oliver Perez and, perhaps more so, Mike Pelfrey, have shown considerable improvement since Dan Warthen took over. I can see how Peterson might come off as too regimented for some, and he’s definitely very technical and calculated in his approach to pitching. Warthen seems to shoot more from the hip, and some of the Mets’ pitchers seem to have responded well to that. Let’s check back in a year and see how those guys have done (though Perez might be doing so with another team by then).


J Kells: Exactly, time will definitely tell and what seems to work for the surging starters seems to falter to a floudering bullpen. But my biggest surprise this year: Fernando Tatis. Can you remember a guy for the Mets that literally came out of no where to be such a contributor? Timo Perez comes to mind but so far on a much lesser scale, as Tatis recently was named the starting left fielder after not even being a blimp on the Mets radar in spring training. We've all heard the Tatis money-for-church story but can we really expect his hot streak to continue? When Ryan Church returns this Mets outfield should be solid with Ryan, Beltran, and (I can't believe I'm confident in this ) Tatis. How long does Tatis last and can we really count on him in September?

Eric: I don’t know if I’ve seen anything quite like it, though there are always guys who come up and go through hot streaks. Mike Jacobs was terrific a few years ago when he was first promoted to the big club; Timo (Perez)is a good example, too. I’ve expected Tatis to turn back into a pumpkin for weeks now and it just hasn’t happened. His history indicates that it will happen eventually, because middling hitters don’t usually turn into terrific ones after taking a few years off from the game. The Mets will ride him as long as he’s hitting, but I don’t think anyone will be surprised if he wakes up one of these days and remembers that he’s Fernando Tatis and everything goes back to normal.


Eric Simon is the man in charge at Amazin' Avenue and really likes the New York Mets. Check it out.