Jose Reyes ran in it, R.A. Dickey managed to pitch pretty darn well in it, both Jason Bay and Jeff Francoeur hit in it, and the Mets fairly frolicked in it last night.
In Year Two of the move to a different part of the Shea parking lot, the Mets have turned Citi Field from a House of Horrors into their Home.
Go figure.
The cries of “unplayable” have ceased through this homestand against the Yankees and Phillies during which the Mets have taken three of four to reinsert themselves into the conversation in the NL after pounding the NL champions, 8-0.
Fire Jerry Manuel?
It was culture shock last year for David Wright, with the Mets pretty much following their leader through a traumatic 2009 in which they still managed to go 41-40 at home, though you never would have known it from the caterwauling that went on, as if the Wilpons had forced the team to play either on a vacant lot or on the same field as the East Dillon Lions.
Now, however, the complaints are fewer and further between, like the gappers the Mets are going to need to hit in order to continue their success at home, where they have the NL’s second-best record to Atlanta at 17-9, even while going just 6-14 on the road.
“You want to build a team with speed; that’s the criteria,” Manuel said after Dickey went six shutout innings and Raul Valdes claimed a three-inning save.
“When you have a big ballpark, you want to have a lot of speed and defense.
“Those are the things that come into play.”
The Mets’ defense has improved exponentially this season. The careless, dumb plays that pockmarked 2009 are pretty much a thing of the past. Much of the difference can be traced to a spring training filled with detail-oriented instruction.
Speed? Well, that was delivered last night in the person of Reyes, who, once again ensconced in the leadoff position for which he was born, stole two bases for the first time since May 9 and then cracked an eighth-inning triple to right-center.
The diversity in dimensions from park to park is one of baseball’s last great remaining charms. It allows teams to build to the strength of the stadiums in which they play 81 times. The ballpark can provide a great advantage — if a team’s GM is acute enough to take advantage.
The Mets need to become a small-ball team. They must be excellent at building runs one at a time.
“We have to do that,” said Francoeur, 2-for-3 with a booming sac fly and two RBI’s. “We’re not going to slug four homers a night at this place, [so] we have to get runners over.”
“Hit line drives and run from first to third,” is the way Ike Davis put it. “Let the other team try to hit it out from gap to gap.”
After last year, GM Omar Minaya pledged to build the team to the park, but, honestly, he didn’t. That work remains to be done. The Mets need to load up on pitching, gap hitters and add left-handed pull power to pound the upstairs porch down the right-field line.
Instead of addressing those needs, perhaps because proper personnel were unavailable or unaffordable (same thing), the GM signed Bay, who hits from the right side and thus faces a modern-day Death Valley every time he comes to the plate, the way DiMaggio did at the old Yankee Stadium.
Citi Field is not the old Yankee Stadium.
Bay is not DiMaggio.
“We’re playing well at home, but I don’t know if we’re taking advantage of [the ballpark], because it’s hard to say what we’d take advantage of,” Bay, batting .424 throughout a current 16-game hitting streak in Queens, said ruefully. “Maybe because we’re used to it, we know how to deal with it.”
Spoilsport.