The Mets Police

Good observation from Ceetar in the comments:  the Mets have announced that tickets go on sale on March 7th, that’s just two weeks from now and there’s no talk of a lottery for the opener.

Can we assume there will be no lottery for Opening Day tickets?

Let’s think this through:

1.  The Mets just haven’t announced a lottery for Opening Day tickets YET.  Totally making stuff up, they could hypothetically send out an email on Monday announcing a Thursday lottery, then a pre-sale sometime the next week.

2.  Is it possible that they’ve decided a lottery isn’t warranted?  Could ticket sales be that far down?  As negative as I can be accused of being, that would surprise even me.   My memory gets foggy as I age but I think even in the dregs of the 90’s there were Opening Day lotteries.

Below is how it went LAST YEAR LAST YEAR LAST YEAR LAST YEAR

REGISTRATION PERIOD BEGINS:	10:00 a.m. ET, Tuesday, 2/17/2009
REGISTRATION PERIOD ENDS:	11:59 p.m. ET, Tuesday, 2/24/2009
RANDOM DRAWING:	on or about Wednesday, 2/25/2009
SELECTED INDIVIDUALS NOTIFIED VIA E-MAIL BY:	Friday, 2/27/2009
SALE FOR WINNERS:	selected individuals will be notified of sale dates via e-mail

Again that was LAST YEAR’S LOTTERY.  That was for a brand new stadium.

Looking back at 2007, in an old stadium with life left, coming off a playoff year, the lottery was happening by February 5th.

This policeman’s guess is that there is no lottery this year.  That makes me wonder about ticket demand.

Busy Saturday…

I don’t have anything more to tell you other than what several of the beat writers tweeted…Fred Wilpon described the off-season as “torture.”   I am off to swimming lessons (Daddy Saturday) so I bet I will be futzing with twitter @metspolice and here’s a good list of beat writers and cool Mets peeps to follow.

In other news, Mrs. Mets Police found the ever so elusive Shamrock Shake…visit my non-Mets Shannon’s Other Blog for more.

If you’d like to get Mets Police free in a daily email or in Google Reader you can and if you’d like some non-Mets stuff (often baseball, and occassionally Shamrock shakes) cut and paste this into Google Reader or just bookmark Shannon’s Other Blog.

Single game tickets will go on sale on March 7th. More details including Jason Bay bobblehead day in an hour. Right now I need to root for number 13’s basketball game at the YMCA.

Follow my Twitter @metspolice where I am sneaking retweets.

UPDATE:   Junior’s basketball team won big, the full list of promotional dates and 2010 single came ticket info is here and below are some highlights.  Tomorrow I will do my annual “overanalyzing the giveaways.”

There are LOTS of promotional dates this year, the below is only a small sample.  Again, the full list is here.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Pyrotechnics Night — The Mets will celebrate Independence Day with a pyrotechnics display following the Monday, July 5 game against the Cincinnati Reds at 7:10 p.m.

Hall of Fame Induction presented by Citi — Fans can celebrate Frank Cashen, Dwight Gooden, Davey Johnson and Darryl Strawberry being enshrined in the Mets Hall of Fame during an on-field ceremony prior to the Mets facing the Arizona Diamondbacks Sunday, August 1 at 1:10 p.m.

Mr. Met Dash — All kids 12 and under in attendance will have the opportunity to run the bases at Citi Field – weather permitting – during Mr. Met Dashes after the game Saturday, April 24; Sunday, June 27; Sunday, August 1; Sunday, August 15; Sunday, August 29; and Sunday, September 19.

Continue reading “Single game Mets tickets on sale March 7”

Now that the pancakes have kick-started my brain….when I was growing up there were two groups of Mets teams talked about, 1969 and 1973.  Then 1986 happened and we had three teams to talk about.

As time has gone on, 73 (fair or not) has merged into a subset of the 69 team, and a third team circa 2000 has come into the discussion.

Let’s leave the Seaver years and the Gooden years in the distant past, where unfortunately they now are.

I want to look at the franchise’s pitching for the last twenty years.  There’s not much.

This will be unscientific, but I’m going to throw out anyone that my brain associates with the Seaver teams or the Gooden teams, and start roughly around 1990.

Most Wins: Leiter with 95.  Next are Bobby Jones and Steve Trachsel.   That’s not exactly Seaver/Koosman or Gooden/Darling.  The next two are Tom Cylon Glavine and then Rick Reed with 59.  Your next “modern day” winningest pitcher is Franco out of the bullpen.

Shutouts: Leiter’s 7 and Bobby Jones with 4.  That’s 20 years of stats folks.

Strikeouts: Leiter again, then Bobby Jones.

I just find it interesting…it doesn’t mean that the Mets haven’t had any good pitchers (that Santana guy seems good), but it’s just  further reflective that the franchise really hasn’t had anyone stay for a full 15 years.  Even The Franchise left the franchise, twice.

This post isn’t meant to be negative.  I just find it interesting that the two best Mets pitchers of the last TWENTY years are Leiter and Bobby Jones.

Fox News’ headline “Mets are confident but deluded” is too juicy to pass up.  However, once you get into the meat of the article, it’s much more reasoned.

Wright may believe it’s now his job to serve as the Mets’ spokesman, given that Carlos Delgado has moved on. The other elder statesman, Carlos Beltran, will be on the disabled list for the first six weeks of the season. And he was hardly Winston Churchill.

But Wright loses much of his credibility when he says the 2010 Mets are “basically the same core group of guys (from) 2006” who got to within one pitch of the World Series.

Actually, this year’s edition bears no resemblance to the ’06 team. All that’s left are Wright, Beltran and Jose Reyes. There’s not much corporate muscle-memory of the better times. More recently, the Phillies have done more than just catch and pass the Mets in the East, they’ve become the league’s most fearless team.

More here.