It’s always sunny in Philadelphia

If only Ken Burns had more “Baseball” episodes. MLB Network had been showing the classic series on Thursday nights over the last few weeks. But tonight, they aired Yankees-Phillies. CC Sabathia against Roy Halladay.

Met fans can look forward to a better year in Queens just on the basis of fewer injuries (we hope). But the misery at the end of the year is not going away. The Yankees and Phillies are still the defending pennant winners, and are favored to repeat.

I could not bring myself to watch much of the game, so I do not know if anyone explained that it was a day game being shown on tape delay. Or maybe they let viewers think that the sun is always shining on the Yankees and Phillies.

So what if Halladay was making his Phillies debut. The Mets also had a starter making his debut with the team – R.A. Dickey. Halladay and Dickey were both were first-round picks in the middle of the round in the mid-1990s. Halladay went 17th overall in 1995 and Dickey went 18th in 1996.

And there the similarities end. Even though it is only the first week of exhibition games, something tells me that the pitchers’ performances offer a hint of how they will perform when the games count:

Halladay: 2 IP, 0 ER, 0 hits
Dickey: 2 2/3 IP, 5 ER, 7 hits

Dickey does have one thing going for him, however. He will never have to undergo Tommy John surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching elbow – because he does not have one. As the Star-Ledger’s Brian Costa notes, what better pitcher for the 2010 “Prevention & Recovery” Mets?

Now the Mets just have to find a backup shortstop who is missing a hamstring tendon.