Church is a gamer....

Ryan Church
will be healthy and at full capacity come spring training and that might be the missing piece this team needed last year.....


I think many of us forget just how good and what type of player Ryan Church was.....

There has been a great deal of discussion in regards to the Mets finding a gritty, hardnosed type of player who is not only a contributor on the field but brings those hard to measure intangibles to the clubhouse. For most of the year when he was healthy Church hit .300 with great range in the field and a gun for an arm. It's actually his mentality which resulted in his concussion, going all out in a spring training game and on the last out of a game they were losing by four. In fact many of Church's detractors look at Sept. as evidence that the outfielder might not be that good, but even he admits he rushed back and after two months off wasn't in mid-season shape ( which probably caused the hip flexor injury).

So if you agree with me; he's a player with the skills to be a starter, leads by example by leaving it all on the field and I think can be a clubhouse leader. In the last weekend of the season he was miffed by players showing up late with the season on the line and he wasn't afraid to voice his distaste for the behavior. That was his first year and he missed most of the second half, I think with an entire year under his belt Ryan Church will be that gritty, intangibles players most are looking for......

"You play the game hard regardless of the situation," he said two days after suffering a concussion for the second time in less than three months. He made that statement so matter-of-factly. "That's how I was taught to play. You play till there's no game left to play." source MLB.com