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Leave a jug of milk out of the refrigerator for too long and it spoils. Forget to seal off air from getting into your bag of potato chips and a similar thing happens. Spoiled food is no fun. A rotten baseball season is even worse. The New York Mets have championship aspirations and a playoff-caliber ball club. What could possibly get in the way?
Eliminating injuries from the equation because the loss of any player can be devastating, these three other scenarios can play a part in spoiling the Mets’ campaign.
1) Clay Holmes sucks as a starting pitcher
Will Clay Holmes being a bust as a starting pitcher cost the Mets a pennant? Not in the least. However, if he’s as lame as a starting pitcher as many believe he’ll be, the Mets are in deep trouble. They’re not counting on Holmes to be added depth. He’s going to be a guy who’ll be front and center as a part of the starting rotation.
If he sucks as a starting pitcher, they have ways to work around it. Holmes could be a more than serviceable setup man in front of Edwin Diaz out of the bullpen. This isn’t the biggest problem with Holmes failing as a starter. A quick and obvious misfire would leave the Mets in a spot where they’ll have to move forward with a weakened rotation.
What’ll make this more troubling is the team will already be without Frankie Montas for at least a good chunk of the start of the season. They’ll already need to dip into their depth, possibly lengthening the leash on Holmes.
Holmes has already raised our expectations with an excellent spring training. A bad regular season will hurt even more. Is he the real deal or have we been fooled into believing practice games are a cue of what's to come?