The National League East Final Weekend

The MLB regular season comes to a grinding halt this Sunday after 162 grueling games and some will say that in the NL East everything has gone according to plan.

The Phillies have clinched their third straight division crown. The Nats have put together two back to back 100 game season losses. The Marlins and the Braves fought for a wild card position into the last week of the season and the Mets lost over 90 games, the first time they did that since 2004.

They did what?

Yes the Mets, the preseason co favorite with the Phillies in the NL East, had what many dire Mets fans are saying was the most disappointing season in the history of the franchise.

Personally I wouldn't go that far. 1987 was the stinker of all time. Remember the 86 club won 108 games and bullied their way through the National league. Then they played what some people still feel was the greatest division series of all times against the Houston Astros. Then the miracle ending to game 6 against the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. The rest was history.

1987 was set up as the continuance to the Mets dynasty. What happened that year was that injuries took out the entire Mets starting rotation for a good part of the year ending any thoughts of a repeat performance.

2009 for the Mets also got bit by the injury bug. no, let me ref raze that. The Mets got swallowed by the injury monster in 2009. Every member of the so-called Mets core missed a good portion of the 2009 Mets season.

Carlos Delgado coming off a brilliant second half of the 2008 season started off the year like he never had a winter break. By May he was gone for the year. Jose Reyes, who I had to remind another Mets reporter this morning, who said they should cut ties with him, that in his history with this club when Reyes gets on base, the Mets winning percentage is close to .700. By June, he was gone for the year. Carlos Beltran was only having the best year of his stellar career in 2009 went down with a leg injury in June and finished the year appearing in only half the games played this year.

Even at the all star break, this team still had positioned themselves within striking distance of the Phil's because at that time the Phillies just couldn't seem to win at home and their starting pitching was in disarray.

However the Mets problems continued to grow. Their starting rotation consisted of an unsteady Johan Santana, later we would learn why, and four to ten other guys who couldn't find home plate with a infra ray night scope. By the way, the Mets pitching this year lead the entire MLB in walks by about a trillion.

So the "B" Mets stumbled the rest of the year at a less than .400 pace. Johan Santana went down with chips or something like that floating in his elbow and the final blow to the Mets core happened when David Wright's head came into direct contact with a Matt Cain 93 mph fastball.

One concussion later, a 15 day trip to the DL and a .220 average upon his return certainly was the topping to this not so brilliant season for the Metropolitans.

In future articles about the NL East, we will follow the Phillies quest to repeat as World Series Champions, something a National League team has not done since the Big Red Machine of the 70's. I actually like their chances but more about that Sunday when we review the first round Division Series that starts next week.

After the season we will look back at all the teams in the NL East. We will evaluate their year and look into my famous crystal ball and see what moves if any are going to have to be made by each team to make a run at the Phillies once again in 2010.

Being a life long Mets fan I can really be very objective about this division simply because with the Mets, I love the team but despise the organization. This way no one may accuse me as being a homer.

My congratulations to the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies. They have fought through a lot of problems and obstacles this year, the least of which has been the complete meltdown of Brad Lidge, more on him this Sunday as well, but they have prevailed and deserve all the accolades they are getting.

With that said, however, I don't think they are getting as much respect as I hear that the Cardinals will be the solid favorites in the NL to go to the World Series.

Slow down folks, not so fast, they don't call them the Fightin' Phil's for nothing.