Opening Day

A day pregnant with possibilities. A day of new beginnings. A day of excitement and wonder. And Scott, Shawn and I will be taking it all in from Shea Stadium.
The Mets offense should be improved this year with the acquisition of Carlos Delgado, the continued maturation of Wright and Reyes, the adjustment of Beltran, the elimination of the black hole at second and of course the addition of a catcher who doesn't choke with men on base. Now I am not a believer that the Mets will ever build a strong offensive team in Shea Stadium (as teams build smaller parks, Shea becomes statistically more difficult to hit in), but a rising tide does lift all boats. If each of the players I mentioned is a little bit better than he was or whomever was last year, you have a multiplier effect because more men are on base meaning the next guy sees more fastballs meaning he gets more hits meaning the Mets have more leads meaning we face more bad relievers pitchers, etc.
But I still think the Mets season is going to come down to pitching. I think Pedro will only be good for 25 starts and maybe 15-8 again. Glavine is consistently good enough to lose. I don't think he's been victimized by lack of run support, whenever he does get a few runs, that's when he has a bad outing. Viktor Zambrano is horrible and we are going to be stuck with him all season because Randolph and Peterson are so stubborn. We saw this a lot last year with Zambrano and Ishii. If they had dumped Ishii for Seo or Heilman early in the season who knows, they could have had 3 or 4 extra wins.
The bullpen looks strong. I don't anticipate Wagner sucking the life out of the team the way Benitez and Looper did. Hopefully this will be our strong suit because in major baseball 2006, a good bullpen is rare...and essential.
I think the Mets will win 86-90 games and fall short of the playoffs again.