Lack Of Surprises So Far Is Biggest Surprise

By Mike McGann
Posted Sunday, April 15, 2007

Two weeks; fourteen days. It’s not a lot of time to make judgments about a baseball team or a season.

But…here goes. Summing it up, the biggest surprise is the lack of surprise.

First off, let’s look at the Mets. They might be the least surprising team in baseball. What most folks seem to agree on is that they appear to have picked up right where the left off in 2006. The pitching isn’t terrible, and for the most part has been serviceable. The offense is nothing short of awesome. At this writing, during Saturday’s game against the Nationals, they are 7-3 and haven’t played exceptionally well — other than Jose Reyes, no one in the lineup has been putting up insane numbers.

No surprises, there, but you wonder whether the Mets’ panic squad (a small subset of the fanbase and the media) is still fretting about this team, or is so busy enthralled with American Idol that there’s not a whole lot of panic fodder in Flushing these days.

Down the turnpike, the Phillies are a mess — undone time and time again by a lousy bullpen — but not a team that you can quickly write off. Don’t forget how lousy they started last season before turning in on after the All-Star break. Further south, the Braves have played well, but they have long-term pitching issues and a still rocky bullpen, despite the hype for all the guys they added in the offseason. Nothing I’ve seen so far tells me that the Phillies aren’t still the better of the two teams — and the team that will stay in the hunt with the Mets into September.

The Nationals are every bit as lousy as everyone thought they’d be. Manny Acta might be a really, good young manager — but there isn’t enough talent on this team for anyone to win. Hopefully the new ownership gets the farm system working again.

Barry Zito is having another lousy start — an 8.18 ERA after two games. Maybe more concerning are multiple reports that his velocity, never impressive, is downright lousy. One could imagine the gnashing of teeth were Zito getting hammered like this near Jamaica Bay, instead of near San Francisco Bay. But, while it seems likely Zito will fare better as this season, most smart baseball people felt like the Giants wildly overpaid for the pitcher.

Beyond the awful April weather — and moving the Indians-Angels series to Milwaukee just seems like an unnatural act — baseball seems oddly settled in this year, no rookies hitting .600, no vets flaming out and retiring. Everyone, including my cat, apparently, will be wearing no. 42 today — although it looks like most of the games on the east coast will get washed — or snowed — out by a lovely Nor’easter. Hey, honoring Jackie Robinson is great — he certainly deserves it. But baseball’s hamhanded, clumsy way of doing it — again makes you think the entire MLB front office resembles nothing so much as a couple dozen clowns as they exit a tiny car.
 

One other non-surprise: the high-resolution MLB.com is still crappy. Now, you, the lucky baseball fan can squint and enjoy games in lush 400kb/sec. stream — or pay a bit more and get the luscious 700k/sec. For those of you keeping score at home — or not techno geeks like me — that’s one-third of the resolution of full-profile standard definition video, and maybe half the video data you might see via the local cable or satellite company. The picture quality, to be blunt, sucks. I say that not just as a fairly knowledgeable baseball writer, but one with Imaging Science Foundation video certification — and a number of years of professionally evaluating video performance in magazines such as Home Theater and E-Gear.

The audio is out of synch, the audio about two seconds ahead of the video at times. And for reasons understood only in MLB’s office, all of the commercials are blacked out, replaced by an odd baseball pseudo PacMan screen saver.

I don’t have another video baseball option, living outside of the New York metro area — and no longer able to have DirecTV because of neighboring tree growth. But if you do, you might really want to consider it. MLB.com’s high-res video package is pricey, $119 a year, for its video quality — between two and three times more expensive on a per-pixel basis than you might see with Extra Innings.

Gee, now, there’s not a big surprise: the Lords of Baseball, again, expect people to pay more for less.

Surprise!