Xady Watch - Week of May 8

nady diaz
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

This week's photo features Xavier "Who" Nady with his spring training competition Victor Diaz. Poor Diaz has been on the cusp of being a regular Met for three seasons. Someone just keeps out-performing him. Then that someone gets hurt, V-Di is perfectly competent as a replacement, only to get bumped from the lineup again when everyone's healthy. Poor V-Di.

But our focus is, of course, Xady, whose batting average dropped to .288 this week. He's third among everday Mets players, behind both David Wright and Carlos Delgado again. He did, however, have one big game, and it was uncoincidentally a game I attended last Thursday. He walked in a run and hit a monster three-run shot against the Pirates to put the game out of reach. That's 7 home runs on the season for Who.

On a personal note, remember how Who began his season? He was batting 1.000 after one game. Well, I can claim the same feat. I played my first game with the McNeill's Brewers in the Connecticut River Valley Baseball League (CRVBL, or curveball) in Vermont. And I'm batting 1.000.

I had to leave the game early, though, and only batted once.

But look out, pitchers! Those 43-foot dribblers down the third base line look the same in the box score as a line drive up the middle, when the batter's got the bald hustle of effectiveness in his being!