One times while managing a retail store I had a sales representative for our company come in and brag about how great he had been a few years previously in the same role. He went on and on about how he beat all of these sales records.

And then he failed to deliver. He turned out to be mediocre at best. Maybe he had broken all of those records in past years, but he certainly wasn’t at the top of his game anymore. More than anything, I realized how he had set our expectations at a level that would be very hard to achieve.

The same goes for Johan Santana. I have no doubt that compared with other paychecks in the League, he’s well deserving of his $137.5 million contract. But what that does is set an extremely high standard. It tells everyone in the franchise and everyone who’s buying Mets tickets that he’s going to be amazing in every game. Talk about pressure.

Speaking of the these expectations, Shaun Powell of Newsday.com says:

“Yes, they want shutouts, strikeouts, maybe a no-hitter if you please, and plenty of good stuff, all the luxuries you’d expect from a two-time Cy Young winner who has the impossible task of making that $137.5 million seem like a bargain. And they want it now, like today, in his second start . . . ”

When all was said and done, Santana asked for it by driving for the contract. I hope he earns it.

Tags: Johan Santana, Mets, mets tickets

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 10:00 am and is filed under mets tickets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.