Who’s afraid of Mike Maroth? The New York Mets!
Posted by Tino Evangelou on June 25, 2007
SNY has generally avoided being too blatant about being a Mets propaganda network for its first year and a half, and their in-game broadcast team of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez is fantastic. Sometimes, however, I can’t help but wonder what goes on with the rest of the network. SNY’s postgame show tonight starred Steve Overmyer and Lee Mazzilli, and this was heard during Overmyer’s analysis of Mike Maroth’s performance against the Mets:
“Mike Maroth is a guy the Mets wouldn’t like facing, but is he a guy any team would like facing?”
Really, Steve Overmyer? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that yes, teams do like facing Mike Maroth. Before tonight’s game, this is what Mike Maroth had done this season:
5.06 ERA, 1.66 WHIP, 28/33 K/BB, .319 (!) BA against.
These are the numbers of a pitcher who shouldn’t intimidate anyone, much less a team that supposedly has one of the best offenses in the sport. Normally teams don’t “like” facing a pitcher with a 4.81 career ERA, they LOVE IT. That is, unless your team goes up to bat trying to imitate what hitting with blindfolds on would be like. That team is the New York Mets and they made Mike Maroth, a bad pitcher, look like Tom Glavine circa 1995. Don’t tell that to Overmyer though because, gosh darn it, he says the Mets just wouldn’t like facing him!
The Mets had three hits against the Cardinals’ pitching staff tonight (Maroth was followed by fellow superstars Ryan Franklin and Russ Springer) and were lucky to win in extra innings, but I’ll take it. It looked frighteningly similar to the Suppan/Weaver debacle of ‘06 with the difference that they eventually managed to overcome their own offensive ineptitude. Many thanks to Carlos Gomez and Shawn Green for bothering to show up. I’ll be at the game tomorrow and probably post a report on what I see.
