At long last, spring training is here and baseball is back! The New York Mets are ready to start a new season.
Here are the New York Mets’ news and rumors of the day:
Mets – MetsMerizedOnline: Finally, the day arrived! Pitchers and catchers will report to the New York Mets’ spring training facility in Port St. Lucie on Monday morning. Baseball season officially started!
The Mets’ official Twitter account published a video of some of the team’s stars from the mound and behind the plate arriving to the complex, with the caption “Report Day! #pitchersandcatchers.
The Mets had a tumultuous offseason in which they hired a manager, parted ways with him and then hired another one. A wild boar incident was also present to provide the “weird” touch. However, the squad is ready to leave it all behind and start a promising season.
NY Post: Ken Davidoff of the Post analyzed how both the New York Yankees and the New York Mets embraced the pitching analytics revolution. Both squads hired analytics-driven pitching coaches in Matt Blake and Jeremy Hefner, respectively.
The writer talks about the multiple technology-powered gadgets that teams will have at their disposal. That will help pitchers make adjustments more efficiently.
“I just think the gap between adjustments is a lot shorter now,†Hefner said. “Instead of month-to-month or season-to-season or half-season-to half-season, it could be game-to-game, or at-bat to at-bat. The onus is on players to make that adjustment, to actually execute on the adjustment, but the identification of the need for an adjustment is much more readily available.â€
Newsday: Tim Healy published a New York Mets’ spring training preview. He says that Monday marks a refreshing return to baseball for the franchise.
He notes that “many players already are in town and Mets spring training officially will begin Monday when pitchers and catchers report. They will take their physicals Tuesday and have their first workout Wednesday. Position players will arrive by Saturday, with the first full-squad workout set for Feb. 17.”
The offseason was a hard one, with a failed sale of the team, two managers and lots of other stuff.