Monday, March 11, 2013

A Metsian/WBC Weekend in Review

As all of us recover our internal clocks from losing that hour we used to have, let's recap the baseball weekend for not just all of you, but for myself as well, who missed most of the Metsian news and games that occurred (and apparently a thriller of a Cuba v The Netherland Kingdom game this morning.)

On Saturday, The New York Mets beat our old friends the Houston Astros 9-6 in a game where The Duda finally broke out of it a bit with a 3-3 day. A real highlight for me, on the fan side, was watching the WBC, following the Mets on twitter, and then all of a sudden everybody giving Adam Rubin crap for tweeting too early that Bobby Parnell had a 1-2-3 inning...just as Parnell dropped the last out and kinda lost it for a second. Rubin deleted the tweet immediately, but not before several twuman beings replied, retweeted and gave crap to Adam Rubin (I'd link you some, but they have come and gone in my twitter ether...And I'm sure you can imagine them well enough.) Luckily (but only for the overall Parnell Pscyche, because come on, this is just Spring) Bobby got it together and the Mets held down the win. Here's the Rising Apple Recap for you all.

Sunday brought another Spring Dubbya to the Orange and Blue, with Shaun Marcum as strong as he's been yet in the Mets 3-0 win over the Cardinals. It was scoreless till the 8th, when Jordany Valdespin singled in Travis d'Arnaud for the 1st run of the game. A couple 9th inning insurance runs later, and the Mets locked the game down. For the Rising Apple Recap, click here.

The Mets made their first set of Major League cuts on Sunday, including Zack Wheeler, Darin Gorski and Collin McHugh, all of whom we should expect to see in the Big Leagues at some point this year. Gorski was being considered for a lefty out of the bullpen role, but with Pedro Feliciano, Robert Carson and Josh Edgin the most likely to make the team, it made sense Gorski would be sent out to Vegas to be the Depth Down Below. McHugh will be the 6th or 7th starter waiting in the wings, and Zack Wheeler....well....he'll be up soon enough.


Moving on to the WBC - after the air was taken out of all of our sails because of the flat Knuckleball R.A. had friday, the USA ballclub took on Italia Saturday night in a do or die game. Italia was up early 2-0, but the Stars and Stripes came back to tie it........And then The Captain happened.  (and it was so nice, I had to watch it twice...and watch a close-up slow motion shot over and over again.

David Wright had his place in all the success of the USA squad this weekend, for on Sunday, down 3-2 to Canada in a Winner-goes-on-loser-goes-home game, David took a walk and scored the go-ahead run on Adam Jones' double. USA then pulled away and won the game 9-4.

Mexico followed their win over the USA Friday Night with a dud to Canada Saturday, finishing 1-2 and getting eliminated from the tournament (and getting into quite the bench-clearing brawl before it was all said and done.) Venezuela could not get through either the DR or Puerto Rico, as they got eliminated from play this weekend as well (interesting note from the V/PR game: Edgardo Alfonzo threw out the 1st pitch, representing Venezuela.) 

EspaƱa FINALLY scored some runs...but in a game that didn't matter, and in a game where they lost 14-6 anyway. Clearly, they have a long way to go, but I hope their failure in their rookie WBC campaign does not lead to even less funding for the baseball program over there. 

SO. 

On this side of the world, Round 2 will include the DR, Puerto Rico, USA and Italia.

This morning in Japan, THIS happened.



Though it's too bad 3 of their starters were injured, I'm very happy to see The Dutch move on to the Final 4, especially after their mercy-ruling at the hands of Japan.

The Netherlands will take on those Japanese once more for a End-of-Round-2 tune up tomorrow morning at 6AM EST.

Until then, we have the day off from World Baseball. Preseason ball will fill the MLB Network day, but our Mets will not be televised (and neither will the Revolution...[Random Gil Scott-Heron reference.])



Have a great start to your week, everyone.
Here's the Random Song of the Day
brought to you by the Big Bad Baseball Gypsy.

WHERE'S. THAT. HOUR?!
LET'S. GO. METS.

Thanks for reading! Follow me on Twitter @convertedmetfan. And for Rising Apple twitter updates, click here.

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