Jerry's Juice: Home Cookin' Edition

In case you didn’t hear, the Mets just wrapped up an 11 game road trip that didn’t go so well.  But in times of despair we can always count on a little Jerry’s Juice to ease the pain and envision greener pastures.  Jerry Manuel had this to say before finally escaping the unforgiving west coast: 

“By the time we cross over the Mississippi, hopefully we'll leave all these bats here. Everything that we brought with us, we'll leave it right here, get home and get our stuff together."

"I feel that our ballpark -- despite what people say -- we feel that it's a hitting park.”

Don’t turn the lights out on the season just yet, Mets fans.  The Mets may have been smoked out west, but according to Jerry there is still reason to be optimistic about the season.  

First of all, as Jerry declared, the team will be leaving everything in LA.  Hopefully he was not just speaking metaphorically and will actually leave behind anything associated with hitting.  That includes bats, batting gloves, and maybe even some of the batters themselves

More importantly the Mets are now returning home to Citi Field, where they have played brilliantly all year.  You may think that Jerry is crazy for calling Citi Field a hitters park After all it is ranked 28th in ESPN.com’s Park Factors Run index (I don’t know what that means but it sounds bad) and the Mets have actually scored more runs away than home this year. 

But that is beside the point because Citi Field is indeed the perfect place for this Mets lineup to wake up from their offensive slumber.   The Mets are 30-16 at home, in large part because the hitters have adjusted so well to their home park.  As a team they are hitting .270 with a .757 OPS, compared to just .239 and .663 on the road.  We all know that as Jose Reyes goes so goes the offense, and Jose is hitting .325 at home (compared to .237 away).  Throw in Pagan’s .325, Wright’s .318, and Ike’s .298 and it’s easy to envision the Mets beginning to rake again this week.  Heck, even Jason Bay has put up respectable numbers in Flushing.  And now Carlos Beltran will get his first taste of home cooking this year.  

So while the last two weeks were dreadful, the Mets are heading home at the perfect time.  If the offense can get hot this week and stay hot heading into Atlanta and Philly, we will have an August and September to remember. 

Jerry believes, and so should you.