The 2011 New York Mets baseball season came to an end with one of the oldest pitcher’s in the game Miguel Batista shutting out the Cincinnati Reds 3-0. Its was an impressive 2 hit, 5 strikeout performance for the pitcher who turned back the clocks for the final game at CitiField in 2011.
The Mets finished the 2011 season 77-85 which is a rather disappointment for what will be a transition period for the Mets as Carlos Beltran is gone and Jose Reyes will likely find a new home as a free agent.
Speaking of Jose Reyes, he won the batting title for the first time in the Mets history, an amazing accomplishment edging out MVP seasons from Matt Kemp and Ryan Braun. However, no player in the history of baseball has ever received more slack for winning a batting title than Jose Reyes. Some say his classless act on the final day of the season was selfish and made his personality flaws more apparent. After leading off the game with a bunt single, the Mets manager immediately put in a pinch runner for Jose Reyes effectively taking him out of the game so that he may stay pat on his seemingly comfortable batting title lead over Ryan Braun. By going 1 for 1, Jose Reyes made it so the Brewers Ryan Braun would have to go 3 for 4 or better to overtake Reyes in the batting average percentages. Reyes said afterwards it was his idea, and he told his manager before the game to pull him out of the game if he got a hit in his first at bat.
The greatest hitter of all time, Ted Williams was the last to bat .400. On the final day the Red Sox had a double header, and Williams had a batting average a fraction of a percent under .400, a number which would be rounded up to .400. Ted Williams was given the option to sit out the double header, but he wanted to play because he is a competitive ballplayer and realized that if he was going to be a .400 hitter he was going to do so because he made it happen on the field. The beauty of this story is that he went 6 for 8, and finished the season with a .406 batting average which is something incredible and may take a very long time to match. The Jose Reyes incident happened on the anniversary day of Ted Williams .400 season.
Personally, I am happy Jose Reyes got the batting title award. He has had an up and down time with the Mets. A cornerstone of a generation of Mets teams that had a couple of good runs, but more often than not came up short of being spectacular and were often overshadowed by the Phillies and Braves in the division. Often injured, when in the game he was often the best player on the field and extremely exciting to watch play. Jose Reyes had a great smile and his playful personality made him popular to his teammates and to fans who he interacted with in a great way at home and on the road. Overall, Jose Reyes had many great memorable moments for Mets fans but injuries over the past few years really hurt the Mets chances of success.
I am giving him a ‘pass’ on this icky situation with respect to the batting title. I kinda understand why he did it, he is competitive in his own way and with the Mets out of contention he has been focused on winning the batting title for sometime. He earned the right to be in the drivers seat going into the last day by taking a couple percentage points lead the night before. He chose to sit on that lead if he could increase it by a small amount with a hit, therefore forcing Braun to have a difficult to achieve multi-hit performance. From a team perspective this was certainly a weak move by Jose Reyes, but seeing the Mets had little to play for except for the fans in attendance on the last day of the season it should not be considered to be over the top egregious. Especially considering those fans were lucky to see him at all, because during his stint with the Mets there were seemingly hundreds of games fans would not get to see him at all due to his hamstring, calf etc. Reyes did earn his spot in the record books wearing a Mets uniform, something Mets fans will appreciate overtime once the initial shock of the move wears off.
The Mets off-season should be interesting, and no doubt entertaining with issues and news about to be created throughout all levels of the organization. Best of luck in the off-season and here’s hoping the Mets 2012 opening day roster is something to get excited about all over again.
