The Niese Knows

I was all geared up for the Mets to come into Pittsburgh to face our old friend Jon Niese on Monday night, but the rain intervened, so instead there's a Doubleheader tomorrow. And I don't mean the fake "Doubleheader" that involves a separate admission, a real, actual single-admission Doubleheader.

So we'll have to wait until tomorrow to see Niese, and I suppose on some level I wanted to wax poetic on his time with the Mets, but who cares. We know what happened. There was a lot of potential, and perhaps some of it was unfairly placed on him simply because he was a young pitcher with a modicum of talent on a really crummy team. But he never really took The Leap we expected him to take and in retrospect I wonder if he ever really had it in him.

Really, the takeaway we all had from Niese was that he was an enormous headcase who had the tendency to go to pieces whenever something bad happened, and given some of the Mets teams he played on, that was fairly often. Yes, he also had moments where he looked really, really good too. But those were all too infrequent. And, of course, he ultimately became the odd man out in a crowded rotation and was subsequently dealt to Pittsburgh for Neil Walker, who returns to his hometown and I'm sure some Pittsburgh Blogger is writing a similarly-worded post about Walker and his time with Ye Pirates.

I'd like to think that we'll see The Niese Inning at some point tomorrow. I have this sinking feeling that that might not happen, though. Not because Niese has revenge on his mind, but because the Mets right now can't do a damn thing offensively and there's no sign of reinforcements.