We've been waiting for this day for a long, long time...
* * * * *
I hate to bring up bad memories, but you can't talk about the 2008 Mets without talking about 2007.
Never had a Mets team disappointed me as resoundingly as those Mets did last year. I don't mean that even in the sense that they fell short of my expectations for them as a team (which, god knows, they did). Teams and individuals choke; it happens.
What baseball fans don't understand is when ballplayers become indifferent, when it appears that baseball's become a chore, rather than something to be cherished.
Fans cherish the game. Nine out of ten people who pack the stands at a ball game are people who would give anything to be a ballplayer. You know, make lots of money, get lots of babes, and, oh yeah, play baseball for a living!
If there's one thing that those nine out of ten people could never understand, it's ballplayers who play the game joylessly, ballplayers who seem to have forgotten the simple pleasures of baseball.
And in many ways, that was the story of the 2007 Mets. The fire that made them so dominant, and such a pleasure to watch in 2006, was gone. They played as if October was their due, as if there was nothing to be proven across 162 games. And it was only when the end came that they appeared humbled.
For many Mets fans, the end was devastating but, somehow, acceptable. Me, I washed my hands of them. They don't want it? Fine, neither do I.
I never want to feel that way again.
* * * * *
I've seen a ton of movies this past month, the better to pass the time until baseball.
Yesterday I watched Field of Dreams. Field of Dreams is about many things, but some of the more poignant moments speak to the simple joys of baseball.
Ask me what I want from this Mets team and it's simple: I want them to play with the passion and the joy of a young Moonlight Graham, with the urgency and appreciation of a banned-for-life Shoeless Joe. Really, the man said it best:
Shoeless Joe: Man, I did love this game. I'd have played for food money. It was the game... The sounds, the smells. Did you ever hold a ball or a glove to your face?
Ray Kinsella: Yeah.
Shoeless Joe: It was the crowd, rising to their feet when the ball was hit deep. Shoot, I'd play for nothing!
That's how I want these Mets to play. I want them to play like they never forgot what's so great about this game. I want them to play like they care.
They seem energized. Adding Johan Santana was the tone-changer the franchise needed.
[Baseball can't start soon enough, and to get you ready for a full season of action, Y2K wants to help you meet the 2008 Mets. We'll break down a roster position each day heading into the opener. Today it's the starting rotation, where the Mets look strong to very strong. Macho Man Randy Savage strong. Little known fact -- the Macho Man is half Jewish.]
Without El Duque getting hurt, we would have had four Latin starters -- Omar must be a racist.
I don't understand why people are down on the Mets' rotation at all. The upgrade from Tom Glavine to Santana is pretty fucking substantial, as is the difference between the Jorge Sosa/Brian Lawrence/Wesley Snipes contingent and Pedro. To think the Mets will be worse off, you have to believe Maine, Perez and the Pelfrey/Hernandez slot will collectively regress so much so that the gains from adding two of, hmm, the best pitchers in the game, is not only washed out, but is countermanded.
This seems crazy to me. First of all, it's hardly a guarantee that Maine and Perez are going to be worse than last year. Look at their respective ages; both are coming into what ought to be the primes of their careers. Both had somewhat low BABIPs last year, but nothing crazy. Neither pitched a ton of innings; both had slumps toward the end of the season, as if consistent with some fatigue.
You may or may not think either is a world-beater or has much chance of turning into a Cy Young candidate, but is it a given they were playing over their heads? I just don't see it. Where's the evidence? What's the thinking? I seriously haven't seen this explained adequately anywhere. My personal opinion is that both have a better chance of consolidating their gains from last year (in terms of approach, experience, stability ... neither are long-time veterans, after all) and posting better seasons than in 2007. That might be overly optimistic, but I think it's just as fair as assuming that both are locks to fall back.
Then there's Pedro. PECOTA, the fans, the media and common sense all call for him to come back like a banshee in '08, and they should. Petey's a competitive guy, and last season was no doubt incredibly frustrating. He knows that he doesn't have tons of time left in a sterling career, and this is one of the last opportunities to show his still-beautiful stuff.
He looked great in a handful of September appearances, has been doing fine down in the Grapefruit League, and says he's in tip-shape. All exciting stuff. Short of a multi-month injury or something similarly tragic, we're in for a treat.
Santana's bona fides have been discussed plenty. Just say "Cy."
As for the No. 5 slot, it went to Pelfrey on Sunday after it was decided that El Duque would start the year on the DL. This is fine. It's been pointed out in several other outlets, and it's kind of an obvious point, but it still has to be said -- the Mets need to find out what they have in Pelfrey, and they need to find out sooner rather than later. Either he has a breaking pitches and off-speed stuff or he doesn't. Either Rick Peterson has found a way to put some movement on the fastball, or taught him to sink the rock a bit, or he hasn't.
If none of those things are going to happen, then the team needs to know now, so they can throw Pelfrey into the bullpen and be done with it. He's got a perfectly fine arm for a power reliever, and if he turns out to have been an overhyped semi-waste of a No. 1 draft pick, then so be it. No use crying over spilt bonus.
All in all, I see the Mets having the best rotation ERAs in the division, one of the top 3 in the league, and a huge source of strength. That's my story, and until someone gets hurt, I'm sticking to it.
[Baseball can't start soon enough, and to get you ready for a full season of action, Y2K wants to help you meet the 2008 Mets. We'll break down a roster position each day heading into the opener. Today it's the appropriately named outfield. Any position where Angel Pagan has a chance to play regularly should have the word "out" in it. New rule!]
Discussion Which outfield is better, the one in Queens or the one in Southeast D.C.? I'm beating the hell out of this dead horse, and certainly not for the last time, but right now, the Mets have one of the best centerfielders in the game, a somewhat promising stiff in right, and the star of "Weekend at Bernie's" in left field. When they don't have him available, they have Endy Chavez -- not a starter -- and our new kid, "Dark" Angel Pagan, as replacements in left and right, as well as Damion Easley to throw in against lefties. Damion Easley spent most of his career as a mediocre-hitting shortstop.
No player nearly as good as Beltran is projected to be, much less as good as he could be if he stays healthy or has another 2006 season. On the other hand, it's a way more balanced group of players, features two young players with tons of upside (not even counting Wily Mo Pena as a platoon partner for Kearns, and Wily Mo eats left-handed pitchers for breakfast, lunch and dinner), and they play for peanuts. The Mets have money to spend, and as I've said before, I think a one-year, $10M deal for 300 ABs from Alou is probably worth the effort. But there's no question who's getting the better value.
Which brings me back to, once again, why the Blastings trade was so awful. Let's say, even in the best-case scenario, that Alou comes back from this latest death-defying injury and plays for the rest of the season without getting hurt. Something like 400 ABs, looks great, cracks the ball. Everyone's thrilled, we invent an "Alou Alou Alou" cheer, etc. But at the end of the year, no matter what, that's it -- he's gone, most likely retired, and the Mets don't even get a draft pick for him leaving. And now we've got a hole in left field, and no particular way to fill it in-house, unless you think that Fernando Martinez will be ready (hint: he won't be). Now, unless you know something about Angel Pagan I don't, we're left to scour the free agent market for another short-term fill, none of which is likely to be that attractive. You'll be counting on someone like Juan Rivera, or paying Pat Burrell $15 million to watch fly balls die in Citi Field's power alley.
If Church replicates his 2007 numbers, he won't be a liability in right, but there's very little chance he turns into an actual asset. And guys with his skillset -- lefties who can take a walk and hit for decent power without much speed or defensive value -- are simply not that hard to find. The Cubs' Matt Murton, currently languishing on the bench, is basically the same player. Former Met and former Cub Cliff Floyd is the left field version of the same player, albeit with more mileage and less defensive value. Guys who are useful bats but, when limited to corners, not tremendously valuable -- Philly got Geoff Jenkins for two years and $13 million; he was available.
And until Fernando-Mania takes hold in 2010 or so, the Mets now have no other young players coming through the outfield. Gomez had to go to Minnesota, this is understood, but Omar has left himself with very few outs.
The result, when Alou gets hurt again and stays out for most of the year, is way too much Endy and Pagan. And Fernando Tatis, who hasn't played well regularly in 8 years. We've given Endy his love over the past few years, and the guy's done great work at times, but if he's a featured part of the team, we're simply in big trouble. That goes quintuple for Angel Pagan, who aparently is in the best shape of any Met, ever. Won every conditioning drill. Which is fantastic -- I'll remember that when the Puerto Rican Gilad is hitting .220 and playing every day.
Beltran could go on another tear and win the MVP award, or he could also mildly disappoint, as PECOTA apparently expects him to do. I confess I don't have a good handle on what types of injuries he has, whether they're career-chronic or have any chance of healing up completely and allowing him to operate at full strength. I guess I have faith in the Mets' training staff to do the right thing by him, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just another variable in an unnecessarily uncertain situation.
[Ed's note: Anyone can feel free to make an argument for Barry Bonds in the comments. We'll discuss that later. Also, who knows what the church shown above is?]
[Baseball can't start soon enough, and to get you ready for a full season of action, Y2K wants to help you meet the 2008 Mets. We'll break down a roster position each day heading into the opener. Today it's shortstop. The shortest shortstop I know? This guy, one of the best dudes around, still getting a shot at the pros in the Minnesota organization. I love him, but only the Twins...]
Backup: Anderson Hernandez Age: 25 2007 line (AAA): .301/.339/.397 2008 PECOTA: 75 PA, .253/.299/.343, 0.4 VORP
Discussion Well, that's interesting. Give or take a dozen stolen bases on the margins, PECOTA expects Reyes to be the exact same player he was in 2007, down to the decimal point. How curious. Overall, Jose was excellent, and is one of the top shortstops in the league. Nothing wrong with that.
But.
Take a moment here to acknowledge that above-average isn't the same as great. Really good and supremely exciting is a top-notch package, and one that most every team in the game would kill for. At the same time, it doesn't make you an MVP candidate, and it doesn't make you even the second-best shortstop in your own division.
Now, a perfectly fine response here might be, "Who gives a rat's tit?" An even better reaction would be, "Cheddar, please shove it up your ass." And it's true -- there's no reason particularly to give a rat's tit. Jose Reyes is the best base-stealer in the game, plays a premium defensive position, flashes a superstar personality, serves a magnet for babes and fans and songs and everything good about the game, and can hit to boot. Moreover, he's reached those near-Olympian heights after a devastating start to his career, an utterly terrifying run of injuries that earned him the name Mr. Glass and prompted Cheddar Ben to prematurely write him off as a complete failure. His is a heart-warming story of perseverence, dedication, good medical care, and the Mets have all of that wrapped up in a reasonably priced bow. Only a complete cur would find fault with that.
But.
You can agree with all that, and still be disappointedd that Jose might not turn out to be as good as we thought he might be. Remember, at this time last year, Reyes was coming off a stunning breakout campaign when he turned the baseball world on its ear by hitting .300/.354/.487 as a 23-year-old shortstop. It was stunning. It was exhilarating. Rickey Henderson was a God among men and a savant among coaches. Willie was a motivator par excellence. But for fucking Yadier Molina, the kid would have been the toast of the World Series.
Then ... nothing really happened last year. The status quo won. Stasis. He looked like a million bucks in April, slowed down considerably thereafter, and played so poorly (and with so little effort at times) he had to be benched in September. His approach was all over the place -- he was popping the ball up every third at-bat, refusing to run out grounders, uncharacteristic crap. George Vescey called him a "swaggering, helpless juvenile" in the Times, and if he was being harsh, it wasn't by much.
To be fair, it seems as if Jose realized something was off, and acted like it in the offseason, training like a demon and sporting the attitude we all want from him. This story cast Reyes in his home, seeming grounded and ready to compete.
"I'm going to take a couple days off because of how the season ended," Reyes said, looking ahead to 2008. "If I feel a little tired, I'm going to talk to Willie about it. I learned my lesson."
Later, in what seemed to be a reference to instances in which he did not run hard out of the batter's box, he added: "I know I have to put my mind more into it. Sometimes I felt tired and I still played, but I didn't perform. I feel strong in my mind. I think this is going to be a good year for me."
This is what we want. And 15 more years of that will make Jose Reyes a Hall of Fame candidate, the best shortstops in Mets' history, a player on the all-time stolen base charts, and everything else. But I'm still antsy about Jose coming up with the mid-career push into MVP territory, the several year track when he's clearly one of the best players in the game. Guys who are Hall of Famers have that run.
Roberto Alomar, Reyes' No. 2 comparable player, had the career we want from Reyes, and he ended up posting over-.400 OBPs and slugging over .490 five times, what with the four Silver Sluggers, two top-4 MVP votes, etc. A Hall of Famer with an HOF peak. Barry Larkin, Reyes' No. 3 comp, had the career we want from Reyes, what with the 1995 MVP Award, nine Silver Sluggers, etc. A Hall of Famer with an HOF peak. For all our ragging on him, Jimmy Rollins, the No. 4 comp, just had a dynamite season. The rest of the top 10 includes guys (Tony Fernandez, Paul Molitor, Ken Boyer) with multiple MVP-type seasons, not to mention Carlos Beltran, who shows up as No. 9.
My point, as an asshole, is that this would be a good time for Reyes to start showing some movement toward that peak. If it doesn't happen this year, that doesn't mean it won't happen in the future; another repeat of 2007 doesn't close the door on anything. But each year he doesn't mature into a super hitter makes the eventual transformation that much less likely. I'm completely a beliver in Reyes' ability to make that leap, while acknowledging that he could have a super career and continue to be a Shea/Citi icon without ever doing so. This is greedy, sure. But in this life, you can only hold what your hands can grab. Reyes, and by extension, Mets fans, could have it all, and you just can't say that about too many players.
And, also, BP says Reyes' No. 1 comp is Cristian Guzman. Let's not even go there.
As for Hernandez, he got some off-season action in with the Tigres del Licey of Santo Domingo, one of the two Domincan teams to go to the Caribbean Series this past year. It was quite jarring to come across him hitting in the No. 3 slot on my SNY over the winter. I'd be flipping back and forth between college hoops games, trying to choose between a pair of unpalatable Big 10 or America East options, and stumble across a random group of marginal big-leaguers throwing down in what looked like an oversized cockfighting arena. Gotta love the winter ball, especially when Willy Aybar and the good people at Banamex are prominently involved.
Anyways, if Hernandez ever hits No. 3 for the Mets it'll be because of a plane crash or a syphillis outbreak. The less we see of this guy, the better.
[Baseball can't start soon enough, and to get you ready for a full season of action, Y2K wants to help you meet the 2008 Mets. We'll break down a roster position each day heading into the opener. Today it's third base, also known as the "hot" corner. No, kids, it's not named after Mims. Don't be stupid.]
Backup: Fernando Tatis Age: Really? 2007 line: Not sure he played 2008 PECOTA: Didn't see this one coming
Discussion
The decline in Wright's projected VORP is entirely attributed to an expected drop in batting average, which PECOTA (and all projection systems, for that matter) regress to the mean simply because it's so unpredictable. In all other regards, Wright is expected to perform just as well as he did in 2007, when he was the best player in the National League. Better than Jimmy Rollins, better than Miguel Cabrera and Hanley Ramirez, certainly better than Matt Holiday. If not for the Mets' collapse during the final week of the season, Wright stood a great chance of winning the MVP Award, and anyone interested in laying the Amazin's swoon at his feet (a lack of leadership trope or any dumb shit in that vein) should recall that Wright hit a measly .352 in September.
Moreover, Wright's final numbers were held down by a slow start to the season; he hit .244 with nary a single home run during April, which led to a lot of nonsense about his swing having been ruined by the 2006 Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game. It's a fortuitous type of "adversity" that a player with a .370 OBP has to overcome, but chicks dig the long ball, and he wasn't supplying them. Until he did, getting to the 30-30 plateau and just crushing the ball after last year's break -- .364/.465/.596, 53 walks against 42 strikeouts, everything but the payoff.
Moving forward, we can expect two things. Production-wise, he's as good a bet as any in the game to maintain his value or improve it. By every last account a hard worker, a guy with no real injury risk to speak of with an extremely balanced set of skills, good athleticism and speed ... we said it when he was coming up, and it bears repeating as often as possible -- he's the total package. The defense might not be top-drawer, but it's more than passable, and will likely improve over the next five seasons, at least until Wright hits the athletic downslope of his career. There's no one reason why Rob Neyer chose Wright as the most valuable property in baseball over the next seven years -- there are a baker's dozen of them. (And as A.F.O.M.G. sagely noted, them donuts come at a highly reasonable rate).
Aside from tools and production, it's worth noting there are few guys in the league easier to root for. A comparison to someone like Miguel Cabrera is helpful here. Cabrera probably has a higher upside than Wright -- he's more of a power hitter, and I believe he has the chance to put up some serious Lou Gehrig/Jimmie Foxx-type, .360/.460/.700 years over the next half-decade. The guy has talent to spare. On the other hand, he's a sulking, overweight primadonna already saddled with the "uncoachable" tag. There's at least a chance he spouts a Mo Vaughn gut and cheesy facial hair and Albert Belle's hips pop out from beneath his skin like an "Alien" and his career blows away like so much dope off Tony Montana's desk. Landing on a Jim Leyland-managed club reduces that risk, to be sure, and I'm not really a doubter. Yet on some level, a surly Venezuelan is a surly Venezuelan is a surly Venezuelan.
With Wright, there's seemingly no downside. You're talking about a grounded dude with a million-dollar smile and a winning sense of humor, the very definition of likeable. You're talking about a guy for whom the main risk is becoming too popular, and wearing himself out with non-baseball/baby-kissing/model-dating extracurriculars. You're talking about a guy who can have this exchange with Dontrelle Willis on the set of a commercial shoot:
Willis: Who's one of the toughest pitchers you've faced in the league, man, and why? Wright: I would say you, but I own you. [Willis and Ryan Howard crack up]
Now that's funny, even if the D-Train did predict a Phillies-Tigers World Series matchup. With Miguel Cabrera, all things are possible. But unlike that poseur Ray Romano, everyone actually loves David Wright. For good reason. Here's Bill James:
There are a multitude of things to consider in a ballplayer that make him worth his salary and an asset to a team. Who would James most want to see on his dream team? "David Wright," he answers without thinking. "Because he does everything I like and he’s very young."
Wright, 25, the New York Mets superstar third baseman, has his most productive years ahead of him and the Mets have him wrapped up under contract until 2013.
Check out James on "60 Minutes" this Sunday. Anyways, yeah. David Wright is the best.
Fernando Tatis ... Fernando Tatis ... where have I heard that name before ... oh yeah ... HIGH SCHOOL. What the shit? This is the most random comeback since rickrolling. For those of you who may not be familiar with his work, Tatis was a young third baseman phenom for the Cardinals for about 20 minutes, hitting a studly .298/.404/.553 with 34 dongs and 107 ribbies back in 1999. He hit two grand slams in one inning off Chan Ho Park in one inning, setting a record that is unlikely to be tied, much less broken. It was kind of a lucky season all around.
He got hurt in 2000 and literally never got it back, bouncing around the majors for a couple of years and bilking Omar out of some money back when Minaya was with the Expos. I guess Minaya didn't take it personal-like, though, because he signed Tatis to a minor-league deal last summer, and the dude spent the year down in New Orleans (playing with Park, natch) and stayed healthy enough to get an NRI to camp.
This spring, he's shown the ability to hit right-handed and play left field, two things that Ruben Gotay (cut yesterday) could not, and he looks like he's going to break camp with the team. Real hard luck on Gotay, in my opinion, and pretty fast and loose keeping a guy who has a whopping 56 at-bats in the majors since 2003. To be fair, he did hit .276 with 21 homers and decent patience last summer with the Zephyrs, but that's not exactly lighting the world on fire. To be continued against left-handed pitchers...
[Baseball can't start soon enough, and to get you ready for a full season of action, Y2K wants to help you meet the 2008 Mets. We'll break down a roster position each day heading into the opener. Today it's second base, the former home of Jose Valentin. R.I.P., fella.]
Projected starter: Luis Castillo
Age: 32
2007 line (combined AL and NL): .301/.362/.359, 17.7 VORP
2008 PECOTA: 561 PA, .289/.361/.341, 18.6 VORP
Backup: Ruben Gotay
Age: 25
2007 line: .295/.351/.421, 8.9 VORP
2008 PECOTA: 110 PA, .261/.329/.408
Discussion
A healthy Luis Castillo is an asset, even at his somewhat advanced age. A healthy Luis Castillo is mediocre defensively, but doesn't kill you. A healthy Luis Castillo gets on base at an above-average clip, does the bat-controlly things in the No. 2 slot managers like, and contributes on the basepaths. A healthy Luis Castillo can be, and of course has been in the past, a championship-caliber player.
The thing is, Castillo has yet to be really healthy in 2008, and his ability to ever remain so for long periods of time is seriously in doubt. The guy's a stubby little bundle of energy, but you can only be so energetic on a pair of knees that sustained untold damage from a couple years on the Metrodome turf. His right peg was 'scoped over the winter, and it's really not back all the way. The knee has been balky in the past, as has the left one, and there's every reason to believe that both will worsen with time.
And if Castillo's speed is compromised even a little bit, he quickly becomes a fairly sizable liability. His solid OBPs have always been compiled via a combination of plate discipline, dink singles, corner doubles and infield hits, and losing his legs takes two of those four options off the table. Not that the threat of him rifling the ball down into the corner and legging out a two-bagger is that menacing (18 2B in 2007), but it's still an option. Without speed, Castillo basically becomes a much-poorer hitting version of Jose Vidro, which ain't helping anyone. Even worse, thanks to the highly trouble 4-year, $25 million extension he signed last summer, he's just as expensive a proposition. True, for the moment, he can actually still play second base, but if his already limited range is further compromised by bad pegs, even that's not a guarantee.
In case of a complete of even partial breakdown, Gotay's not a bad piece to have around. His defense is just as suspect as Castillo's, and the guy who hit .350 through August 1 of last year probably won't ever show up again, but finding a second baseman possessed of both speed and pop is rare enough as it is. As a cheap, short- to medium-term fill-in, I like his ability to put up an OBP comparable to that of an injured Castillo, with potentially more power to boot. Acquiring Gotay for Jeff Keppinger was a move we praised at the time, and it's worked out nicely. Otherwise, we'd now be talking about starting second baseman Anderson Hernandez (shudder).
Still, the outlook here isn't great. Absent some luck on the health front, Castillo has the potential to become a $6 million per annum albatross, a spiritual heir to renowned overpaid Mets second basemen of the past (Kazuo, Alomar, Baerga) and an unnecessary drain on the team's productivity. Not some of Omar's best work.
(Strange but true -- the Mets got 5.9 WARP out of Jose Valentin only two years ago. That's going to go down as one of the most random one-year success stories of the Omar Era, made even better by the fact that Valentin and his excellent mustache lived in the same Long Island City apartment building as our man Avi. The good times never last...)
[Baseball can't start soon enough, and to get you ready for a full season of action, Y2K wants to help you meet the 2008 Mets. We'll break down a roster position each day heading into the opener. Today it's first base, the, um, first base in order as you run around the basepaths. Just read the thing.]
Projected starter: Carlos Delgado
Age: 36
2007 line: .258/.333/.448
2008 PECOTA: 485 PA, .265/.343/.471, 18.6 VORP
Backup: Olmedo Saenz
Age: 37
2007 line: .193/.295/.345
2008 PECOTA: 105 PA, .239/.330/.398
Discussion According to Baseball Prospectus, the most comparable player to Delgado at this point is Luke Easter. Now, I'd never heard of the fella, although he has an excellent (if a little goyish) name. "Luscious" Luke Easter, as he was known, was a 6-foot-4 dynamo of a first baseman who starred in the last-ever Negro World Series and only made it to the big leagues at age 33. Born in Missouri, he started off in the '30s playing for the St. Louis Titanium Giants, a semi-pro offshoot of the American Titanium Company that beat up on other company squads and Negro professional teams. Easter had gone to high school with Sam Jethroe, the team's star and a guy who went on to be the 1950 National League Rookie of the Year (at age 32).
After World War 2, Easter landed with the Homestead Grays. In 1948, the last real Negro League season, he hit .363, led the league in HR and RBI, and helped the Grays knock off the Birmingham Black Barons in the black fall classic. Bill Veeck, the mad genius owner of the Cleveland Indians, liked what he saw and bought his contract, and though a knee injury basically killed off his 1949, Easter got his shot in the big leagues as a 34-year-old rookie in 1950. And he absolutely killed it, hitting .280/.373/.487 with 28 HR and 107 RBI. Even better, he became the first player to hit a home run over the auxiliary scoreboard in right field in Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, some 475 feet away from home plate -- the only other guy to ever do it was Mickey Mantle in 1960. Previously, he had been the first player to his a homer to dead center in the old Polo Grounds. The guy hit bombs.
In any case, Easter had three real solid seasons before the Indians got rid of him, and the last one was his Age-36 season in 1952, when he hit .263/.337/.513 with 31 HR. There's no question the Mets would take that from Delgado in 2008, but it doesn't seem especially likely -- Delgado's power against lefties is almost completely gone, and his strike zone recognition is a shadow of what it once was. There are about a dozen ways to pitch him -- low and in, medium and in, high and outside, ad nauseum -- and the number grows on the daily.
Maybe the Mets will be in on the Mark Teixeira sweepstakes next winter, jumping in line for the right to pay the guy $20 million a year, and they will probably have to be. There are no slugging prospects in the minor league system to speak of, and you have to think the Mets can't possibly go into 2009 with Delgado as the plan. Even with a solid, turn-it-around campaign, he'll still be a year older, and a year closer to the inevitable end of the big man hitter.
Saenz was a nice pickup, though -- he'll pick up a lot of starts against LHPs, against whom always performed very well, and he's a perfectly acceptable pinch-hitter. If hs 2007 numbers look scary, well, they are -- it was an awful year. But, again, in 2006, he looked great in part-time action with the Dodgers, throwing up a .296/.360/.559 line mostly accomplished against southpaws, and I like his chance to be the player Julio Franco should have been. Damion Easley will probably snag some PT at first as a defensive sub or occasional starter, but we'll deal with him later.
Also, if you're wondering why you should be interested in Easter, just know that as Delgado's top comps go, he's a guy we want. Carlos' No. 2 match? None other than Mo Vaughn, who spent his Age-36 season on the couch playing Madden 2004 with his kids. Really just not the type of image we want out of our big, old, injury-prone sluggers. Delgado's No. 3 comp was Boog Powell, the Orioles' great '60s and '70s slugger who was, again, out of baseball at age 36. The Crime Dog, Fred McGriff, is No. 4, and he had some seasons left in the tank at that point, but the rest of the Top 10 is filled with dudes who either weren't playing (Chris Chambliss, Dale Long) or were a pale shadow of their former selves (Tony Perez, Dave Parker). At this point, we'd absolutely settle for a 2004 Tino Martinez-for-the-Rays campaign (.262/.362/.461). I mean, really.
[Baseball can't start soon enough, and to get you ready for a full season of action, Y2K wants to help you meet the 2008 Mets. We'll break down a roster position each day heading into the opener. We begin by donning the tools of ignorance in loving tribute to Steve Phillips. Just kidding. It's the catchers preview. Although Steve Phillips is really dumb.]
Projected starter: Brian Schneider
Age: 31
2007 line: .241/.335/.352, 2.4 VORP
2008 PECOTA: 351 PA, .242/.319/.344, 3.9 VORP
Backup: Ramon Castro
Age: 32
2007 line: 157 PA, .285/.331/.556, 13.1 VORP
2008 PECOTA: 287 PA, .249/.323/.463, 15.0 VORP
Discussion Here you have a situation where a team addressed a perceived weakness -- poor catcher defense and leadership, one of the many legacies of Paul LoDuca -- by overcompensating like Tom Cruise at a Maxim party. Schneider has a reputation as a very solid catch-and-throw guy, even if that reputation isn't backed up exactly by the numbers. He has a reputation of working well with pitchers, although to find any evidence for that whatsoever you'd need to give him basically all the credit for last year's surprising showing by the Nats' makeshift staff. I tend to throw a lot of love Manny Acta's way, and it's singularly tough to find any statistically significant markers of a catcher's influence, so consider me unpersuaded.
But let's say for the sake of argument that Schneider is, in fact, the fundamentally sound, respectable, workmanlike backstop of legend. So what? You have to really give a lot of weight to the fact that the Mets were the fourth-worst team in the NL last year in stolen bases allowed. LoDuca/Castro/DeFelice/Alomar weren't great, to be sure, allowing 105 steals against 29 CS (29 CS%, 10th out of 16 teams). But again, there's not tons of difference between 12th and 6th (Cincy and Arizona, tied with 88 SB allowed). If the Mets had done something crazy like San Diego and given up 185 SB, then there might be a real problem to address. But being a middle-of-the-pack team when you'd talking about something like 15 bases a year isn't so bad. As for other catcher stats, the Mets recorded the second-fewest wild pitches in the NL last year. LoDuca had two passed balls; Schneider had five.
Now, Paulie had a down year at the plate last year, but we can feel confident that Schneider will be, at best, much worse. The guy just can't hit his way out of a paper bag. He's 31, which all but guarantees that his best years are behind him. So, essentially, even if he were a great defensive catcher, he'd be a sizable drag on the lineup. Great.
Whether due to his size, his previous usage patterns, his injury tendencies or whatever, Castro is widely thought of as a guy who can't play catcher every day. Now that Schneider is on board, we'll never know, but 2008 would have been a perfectly reasonable occasion to see if he could handle the everyday gig. Good defensive backup catchers grow on trees, so Omar could have had some cover in a No. 2 for basically no cost at all. And it's worth mentioning that Johnny Estrada, who the Mets had on their roster for about 20 minutes, was an offensive asset as recently as 2006, and also would have cost nothing at all. Well, he cost Guillermo Mota, but that's like getting paid for your trouble.
All in all, a very disappointing set of moves. We should hope for Castro to stay hot and get as much PT as possible, and Schneider to have a late-career offensive surge. Not bloody likely.
[Note relating to the above photo: Ramon Castro looks exactly like the father from "Dinosaurs." I will not argue about this. It is simply a fact. If you have a problem with this, take it up with ABC, the makers of a show so awful it haunts my dreams decades later.]
You know, the economics of baseball never cease to amaze me. Let's take a look at the seasonal averages of two players, one of whom, Player A, has played 3.35 seasons, the other of whom, Player B, has played 4.44 seasons.
As you can see, these are two remarkably similar ballplayers, at least offensively. They are also essentially the same age, and as it happens, they man the same position in the field. In 2006, Player A made two more errors than Player B. In 2007, Player A made two fewer errors than Player B. Again, kind of a wash.
There is one major difference between these two players though. Player A is yours for 6 years and $55 million, while Player B is yours for 8 years and $153.3 million.
Let's peel back the curtain (in case you haven't guessed yet). Player A is David Wright; Player B is Miguel Cabrera.
A lot of people think Cabrera is, rather unambiguously, the better offensive player. I think he probably has a slight edge over Wright; certainly, the numbers would not have been so close before Wright's monster 2007.
But that said, wow. I understand why the Tigers had to pony up the dough -- the guy would have killed in free agency, and deservedly so. But it's a real credit to Omar and Co. that they inked Wright to a long-term deal, on the cheap, when they had the chance. Well done.
The good vibes from Wright's deal don't really do much for my nerves heading in to the final week of camp. Our fifth starter "competition" looks more like a race to the bottom. Our injury situation is improving, but we're hardly 100%. And do we even have a left fielder?
Any prediction about a team's prospects includes the caveat, "provided no one gets injured". Where does that leave us?
Best not to think about it I guess.
As for me, I watched I Am Legend last night, which I remmber Sip loved. It's hard not to be taken by the mere spectacle of a vacant, post-human New York City, or by the charm of Will Smith, who carries this movie rather effortlessly.
That said, the movie is hardly perfect. It starts much stronger than it finishes; the ending is really kind of unsatisfying actually.
But what are you gonna do? There's one week to Opening Day, which means one more week of my magical movie tour.
As for the Mets, well, I'm seriously ready for this thing to get going already.
If you were drawing up a blueprint for a ballplayer likely to struggle once his playing career ended, there would be several obvious elements to include. Obviously, you'd throw in the star athlete's sense of entitlement, the expectation of life on easy street. It's a cousin to the George Bush-style, "Born on Third Base, Thinks He Hit a Triple" Syndrome, more along the lines of anticipating great things because they've always come before.
You'd throw in the jock's trademark obliviousness, the mask of the locker room boor, the mark of the proudly uneducated man. You'd stir in a heaping helping of uncouth, of low and untoward manners, just because. The chaw chewin'. The spittin'. The crotch grabbin'. Not that there's anything wrong with these things in and of themselves -- they're just not something that successful people in the real world tend to appreciate.
You'd include a predilection for risk-taking, if not outright recklessness. Another quality that often pays off in the world of sports only to backfire in the real world. In business, in life ... the shot that you don't take is often the best one. Whereas we all know that, pace Miguel Tejada, you don't walk your way off the island. This is a lifestyle/constitution-level mindset. It can be difficult to adjust.
You'd choose a guy who felt like the rules didn't apply to him. Any of the rules. Is this beginning to sound like anyone in particular? It should be.
Basically, our portrait of the post-athletic-career disaster should look a lot like this guy.
That's right. Nails. Dykstra. The least likely to succeed on paper. And yet, against all sorts of odds, Lenny Dykstra has turned into a massive, overwhelming success. He has turned himself into a mogul and a tycoon and a magazine publisher, with his signature publication set to debut next month. He lives in Wayne Gretzky's old mansion, has two baseball-stud children, calls CEOs from his Maybach and dallies with economic royalty.
Yeah. WTF?
The New Yorker's Ben McGrath tells the tale in a fabulous article that came out this past week. Every reader of this site should take time to read it, if not this instant. It is a singularly revealing portrait of a man many of us feel affection towards, a man who put a smile on many a Shea face. And you'll laugh out loud at Nails' foibles again, as they're on full display in the piece. Without ruining any of the best lines from the article, I'll just say that Lenny hasn't changed much, when it comes to attitude. McGrath actually discusses this in an audio companion to the piece that's available on the New Yorker Web site, saying that he's never met someone as comfortable in his own skin as Dykstra.
We knew that from "Moneyball," though, kind of. What Dykstra didn't elicit there, or certainly before, is what derives from McGrath's article.
Respect. Admiration. Envy, even.
Seriously, there's a whole lot of stuff going on in this piece. I'm having trouble processing my emotions, to be honest, and I'm still not sure what to think. I know that the interactions in the piece are fascinating and hilarious, and I know that Dykstra's kid sounds like he's going to light the world on fire at UCLA.
The best part of the article, though, is how it confounds all the assumptions up at the top of this entry. Not to say that they don't still hold, of course. It's just that Dykstra, who embodies everything you'd want in a post-jock failure, has flipped his own personal script entirely, and screwed with a lot of notions of how one gets ahead. He's been lucky, to be sure, and he's still no role model, but as an example of how people can never fail to surprise you -- and moreover, as an example of how much we need to be surprised from time to time, if only to keep us on our toes -- you can't do better than Nails.
-----
Major, major shout-outs to the Red Sox (and Athletics) on their payment solidarity push. If MLB wants to send its teams to Japan or China or East Timor on elaborate, time-consuming money-making, er, international ventures, the least it can do is amply compensate everyone for their time. Calling out Selig on his bullshit is something that needs to happen more often, not less.
For a truly moronic counterpoint, check out Wally Matthews, friend to ownership and scourge of organized labor everywhere. So much for Newsday being a working-class rag.
I gotta admit, I’m glad this is my last guest blog for a while. The last time I wrote, it was a couple of days after we survived the first trimester of having a kid. Now, it is a couple of days after we finished up the contract on a house, and we just found out that the inspection process has gone smoothly, so I can happily state that in two months or so, we’ll be living about 30 minutes from Allen Fieldhouse, home of the soon-to-be Final Four bound Kansas Jayhawks.
So, welcome to Royals1985: Alleviate the Curse of Don Denkinger! And hopefully no more life-changing moments in the next couple months.
But first, some thoughts on the tourney brackets. My Elite Eight, after about 15 solid seconds of thinking, is UCLA-Xavier, Kansas-Wisconsin, UNC-Tennessee, and Memphis-Stanford, with UCLA, Kansas, Tennessee, and Stanford going to San Antonio. My most shocking upset may be Boise State over Louisville, which is a great upset that has zero chance of actually happening.
But this is a baseball blog, so let me talk about what has really got me excited. When we move, we’re getting a new car for the baby, and I only get one feature veto. In other words, I get to insist on just one thing, and what I’m getting is built-in satellite radio and an XM subscription. Because on the list of “Things Cousin Dan Likes More On a Relative Basis To Everyone Else”, somewhere behind cucumber salad but way ahead of the NBA, is baseball on the radio.
Growing up, I listened to WHN every night before I went to sleep, with the dulcet baritones of Bob Murphy bringing me to a restful place. (And, occasionally, keeping me up – one of my first sports memories ever was waking up in the middle of the night on July 5th, 1985, and listening to the last two innings of the infamous “Rick Camp Game” that the Mets won 16-13, leading to the latest Fireworks Night in the history of Atlanta).
I could even get WFAN down at Virginia in college, and would listen to games before sleeping on those rare nights where I went to sleep before 11 pm. (Editor's Note: Cousin Dan actually listened to a lot of games in college, because he was kind of a dork then.)
Fortunately, as a Mets fan, we’ve always had great radio voices to listen to. From Murph and his happy recaps, to Gary Thorne (who, post-Mets, pleasantly delivered us the 2001 World Series “hit in the air to center field, IT’S OVER!”), to Gary Cohen (the best radio voice in the business, bar none), to Howie Rose and "put it in the books", we’ve always had the very thing that John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman can never bring to WCBS. An enjoyable, non-obnoxious call of the game.
Well, and competence. So I guess it’s two things.
It is on that note that I happily report that I was able to listen to the first few innings of the Tigers-Mets game on Sunday afternoon – as Pedro worked through four scoreless that made us all smile – and the new guy, Wayne Hagin, was excellent without Sterling-ing up the Reyes triple or the consecutive strikeouts. Ed Coleman is a nice sidekick when he’s not inventing Coco Crisp trades, and Howie will be back puttin’ things in the books soon enough.
Admittedly, I’m bummed that I’ll not be here for the last game at Shea or the first game at the Citi. But I’ll have Howie and Wayne on my evening commutes and weekend diaper runs, and that sounds pretty darned good to me.
The unfamiliar handle was "Reyes Chokes"; the comment, "7 up with 17 to play...". With that, I knew something was afoot.
I immediately suspected a Yankees blog had picked up on Ched's tour de force from Friday when he besmirched the house of Duncan, but it turned out to be so much more. Yes sir, Cheddar popped his Deadspin cherry on Sunday. Our little Cheddar's all growns up -- mazel tov. Thanks as always to Deadpsin for throwing some love toward the little website that could.
This weekend featured Johan on Saturday and Pedro on Sunday, a combination that could be very fun to watch in the year ahead. Fun, that is, provided Johan stops getting lit up and Petey stays healthy / he continues to get away with his 86 mph "heat".
Of course I'm being a little cynical there. Johan I'm not worried about at all. The guy has been too good for too long for any of us to start worrying about a few spring training outings (right? RIGHT!?!?!?!?!?!). No seriously, I'm not worried about him in the least.
As for Pedro, it was great to see him go out there and throw four scoreless innings. He worked out of a real tight spot in the second, got tough when he needed to. With Pedro I just don't get it; I see the radar gun and I just don't understand how he continues to be effective.
But somehow he pulls it off, and I'm through questioning it for now. There's a part of me that still needs to see him have, like, two solid months before fully trusting that he can be a front of the rotation guy, but I liked what we saw from him last September and today was more of the same.
Anyway, took a little break from the movie crusade this week, but I do have a couple music recs to put out there.
The first is a disc called Up Against the Legends by The Legends. Not really sure who I'd liken them to; other people say they're similar to Jesus and Mary Chain, but I'm not really familiar with them. The highlight is "Nothing to Be Done", but other standouts are "When the Day is Done", "Call It Ours", "Breaking Time, Breaking Lines" and "No Way Out".
The other one is Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut. Yes, like every other blogger out there I'm giving them some love. Just a really solid album, excellent start to finish with the definite exception of the unaccountable "One (Blake's Got a New Face)". The standouts are "A-Punk", "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" and "Walcott", but it's just a really enjoyable listen from end to end. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoyed Paul Simon's Graceland, and really, who didn't?
In other news, Wedding Crashers is on again. It's starting to remind me of that enchanted fall of 2006, when Wedding Crashers was seemingly on every day of the week. Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams are making gooey eyes at each other.
Maybe You Can See Your Name in the Column of Obituary
"I saw it a couple times," Duncan said Thursday. "I still don't understand why they were as upset as they were."
Oh, lord, they're growing some real upright citizens these days in Yankeetown. Shelley has no idea why Aki Iwamura or Johnny Gomes or the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons might be mad about his studs-up slide into second base on Wednesday. No possible clue. Just going out there and playing the game the right way. What's everyone bothered about, anyhoo? You can't go all Geraldine Ferraro on a guy's ligaments anymore without the liberal media getting on your ass? In fact, maybe that's the problem -- they're attacking Shelley because he's white. Yeah, that's the ticket. Where's the problem here?
Ahem.
First of all, Shelley, your momma and your poppa gave you a girl's name. Sorry to drag gender roles into it, but if you're going to beat your chest like a Neanderthal over a cowardly slide into an unprotected opponent, I'm going to feel free to assert you might have some masculinity issues to work through. And it's not fair to work through them on Aki Iwamura's midsection. Your dad may be an excellent pitching coach, but if he screwed you up by naming you after a fugly actress who hasn't done anything decent since "The Shining," that's family business. Keep it that way.
Also, fella, folks not named Shelley are upset because you pulled a nasty, dirty, injury-baiting stunt. Rays manager Joe Maddon called the slide "borderline criminal," which might be a bit of an exaggeration, even in a post-Todd Bertuzzi world, but it was nevertheless an effort that Yankees scribe Steve Goldman mentioned "went out of style with Ty Cobb." Think about that. Cobb was known for a lot of bad shit, and not all of it departed the game when he did. Nasty, backbiting, spiteful comments about your teammates, those didn't go anywhere. Overt, hostile racism, that kicked around for a while. You could still even choke a dude if you wanted to.
But spiking guys with abandon, even the Negro-hating bastards considered that beyond the pale. Way to kick it old school.
Ray Bradbury wrote a great short story about a slide like yours, actually. From "The Golden Apples of the Sun," one of the best collections of short stories ever published by an American author. I'd recommend everyone get a copy and read it cover to cover, but the story in question is called "The Big Black and White Game," and it sketches a tense baseball matchup in the Jim Crow South that ends prematurely following a vindictive spiking on the black team's best player. Bleeding and injured, he limps off the field rather than, as the whites ringing the field hope, set off a race riot.
Johnny Gomes never read this story. But still.
Girardi had called the home-plate collision in the first game between the AL East rivals unnecessary. Duncan said he was trying to knock the ball out of Iwamura's glove.
"I believe both instances are definitions of players playing the game hard," Duncan said.
Well, I believe the sun revolves around the earth and that Rudy Giuliani would have made a great president, but that doesn't mean I'm not out of my fucking mind. Shelley, if you can point to one other instance of a baseball going into second base with his the ball of his foot pointing at Ursa Major and not being pummeled, I'd love to hear about it. Quite a baseball tradition they're brewing in the gender-neutral Duncan household, it would seem. And what is it with this Yankee team and knocking the ball out of players' gloves, anyway? Is this something he discussed with A-Rod during Spring Training over the past few years? If anything, the Bombers should know better than anyone that the whole ball-knocking thing doesn't win you any friends.
As for Yanks manager Joe Girardi, he's in quite a bind. You may or may not recall Girardi weeping like an overworked schoolmarm after the play that provoked the whole spiking incident. Tampa's Elliot Johnson broke the wrist of New York catcher Francisco Cervelli during a play at the plate last week, and Girardi acted like Johnson had pulled a gun, calling it "uncalled for" and saying it had no place in games that didn't count. That got him rapped by none other than Don Zimmer, who essentially told Girardi to stop acting like a bitch already, but Girardi reiterated his feelings in a follow-up, saying, "It's spring training, I just don't understand.
Well, if plays at the plate have no place in Spring Training, then certainly the Take-Out-The-Second-Baseman-With-A-Sharp-Object routine should be saved for the regular season as well, right? Forgetting for a moment that Duncan's scummy play was not, in fact, a good-faith slide -- at the very least, it has to be equally objectionable. A manager with a shred of consistency would at least have to make a reference to that.
"Shelley told me that he was taught as a player that when you're going to be out, you go after the ball, and that's what Shelley did," Girardi said. "Shelley made a hard, aggressive slide, and I need to look at a replay to determine exactly what I thought."
What. A. Fraud. "I need to look at a replay?" Little known fact -- the media and its audience is six years old. We don't know that one. When the time comes to discuss the play tomorrow, maybe he'll be washing his hair. Or doing his homework. Come on.
Say what you will about Joe Torre, but Joe Torre was not above criticizing his guys when he needed to. He played favorites, to be sure, but he would praise another team when praise was due, and his comments about another team's play were very rarely unfair. When the Yanks lost to the Orioles or Jays or Rays, Bedard or Burnett or Kazmir had pitched a nice game. Maybe a new manager doesn't have the comfort level to do that, or needs to build trust with his guys, but there's a fine line between building morale and talking out of your ass. It's tough to command respect when you're flat-out two-faced.
Also, this part really cracked me up:
"The words that come from another team don't affect me," Duncan said. "It doesn't bother me. They won't change how I play the game. I'll continue to play the game as hard as I can. What matters to me the most is the respect of my coaching staff and my teammates."
Sure, fine, fair enough. Jorge Posada, any thoughts?
"You've got to ask Shelley. I've got nothing to say."
Ooooh, that's some Jeter-quality backup from the teammates there. Nothing like being a crappy backup first baseman on an island. Posada knows that Jimmy Shields is going to be gunning for his aorta come May, and he don't want no part of it. Rightly so. This is the Pedro/"Ice" Williams corollary from the old Red Sox-Rays brawls around the turn of the century -- it's not a balanced fight if a guy making $400,000 is hurling a four-seamer at a guy banking $20 million. In other words, you shouldn't go around starting feuds with teams with little to lose.
It's actually kind of awesome to see the Yanks acting like low-class punks. Mets camp hasn't exactly been inspiring thus far; there's injuries all over the place, very few positional issues to discuss, El Duque is losing his flava ... not a ton of uplift all in all. Whereas one can always count on the boys from the Bronx to pull this type of thing and remind you just why they deserve hating after all.
It is rare that I disagree with AFOMG. In fact, in all our days watching the Mets, and all our Sundays watching the Giants at Blondies, the official bar of Y2K (obligatory cheap plug), I don't think it had ever happened before. But, when it comes to the possibility of bringing in the "Bad Guy" I am all for it. Let me explain:
I think it started with my wrestling fandom. I was never a Hulkamaniac as all people my age were. And my watershed moment as a fan was the famous (OK, famous only to people that watch "Sports Entertainment") Shawn Michaels throwing Marty Jannetty through the glass in the barber shop, cementing his status as a heal. He went from being a fun-loving, high-flying tag team chump, to lead enemy of all that is good and noble in the Federation.
Now, I am not saying I am some bad-ass kid who associates with all those tough guys, far from it. What I'm saying is, yes, a little edge and gruff might bring this team a long way. That, and the idea of the greatest slugger of all time, at a discount, because no one wants to deal with his assholeness, is quite an intriguing prospect.
Let's face it, guys like Reyes and Wright are a blessing to have on the team. They are as talented as 24 and 25 year old guys could be on the field.
But, these are still young kids who do not have the most experience dealing with the harsh New York media and pressure situations. It looked to have certainly taken its toll on young Jose during last season's epic tailspin.
Now, imagine having a slightly over-the-hill, surly Bonds, with all the negative attention he draws, having all that negative energy sent his way. Maybe, just maybe, it would give the kids a little breathing room to worry more about dealing with said situation.
That is what heals in wrestling do. They lie, cheat and steal, but they do what it takes to win the game. Having someone who could stand up and do that might have put us over the hump last year.
Truth to power? The day we move the clocks forward is one of my favorite days of the year. It wasn't always that way -- in college I remember it being a major pain in the ass. Always falling on a Sunday, the day the clocks moved forward was the day you had to haul yourself over to the liberry that much earlier.
But those halcyon days in the Berkshires are gone, and wouldn't you know, Daylight Savings day just means longer days and, in March, the hope of sunshine, warm weather, and yes, baseball.
Chances are you know what's happening in good old Port St. Lucie. It's raining Mets in the medical ward, but it's good to see Endy and the bag of balls we got for Lastings Milledge back in the lineup.
If I sound annoyed about the Lastings Milledge trade, well, talk of Barry Bonds will do that to me. Didn't we learn anything from the Guillermo Mota curse? Not counting the 2000 Yankees (salt), steroids cheats never win. It's an element I don't want these 2008 Mets to have any part of.
There's so many good vibes around this team. Johan Santana, Petey feeling healthy. I realize the one negative about this team right now is the injuries, but this is one situation where two wrongs don't make a right.
Would the Mets be better with Bonds? On some level, yes. But do we really want to deal with the circus surrounding his indictment? Do we really want to deal with his surliness and his ego? Do we really want to deal with a cheat? Sorry, no sale.
It's like our President once said: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool m... you can't get fooled again." Word up.
The good news is the Mets seem to get it. For all his talent, Bonds just isn't worth the negative karma (or perhaps more practically, the negative press).
And so I was able to face the day today not with dread but with all the reverence it deserved. It was pretty chilly, yes, but damned if it wasn't light out at 7:00pm.
And as for tonight? Well I've got a massive steak in my belly (thanks, Mom) and I'm about to pop in No Country For Old Men. Eastern Promises was really good, I was actually a bit surprised. My brother and sister-in-law's endorsement not withstanding, the subject matter, Russian gangsters, doesn't exactly have my name written all over it.
But it's a heck of a flick just the same. Viggo Mortensen was terrific, and ladies (i.e., Coop), if you ever wanted to see a little full frontal on old Viggo, Eastern Promises is your chance.
Moises Alou hits like a brick shithouse when he's in the lineup. He will never again be in a lineup.
Carlos Delgado, while not a sure thing to bounce back from the worst season of his career, is at the very least a talented and experience hitter, and still supremely dangerous against right-handed (i.e., most) pitchers. Carlos Delgado minutes a hip joint = a ticket to the movie "First Base" starring Marlon Anderson, which you don't have to see to appreciate how awful it is. Like "Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins," that sort of thing.
Luis Castillo with two knees is a high OBP, low SLG, shitty defensive second baseman. Luis Castillo with one knee is Fidel Castro.
The captain has turned on the "Obvious Statements" light, so I'm going to go head and remind everyone that when you've got an old, creaky, aging roster, you're going to wind up with more injuries than you'd like. That's the way it goes. All the griping this week about Delgado coming back for an MRI, and Moises going on the shelf, and Beltran and Castillo taking their time getting back from the injuries, and the whole "David Wright and Jose Reyes are the only starters left" meme that went out this week ... what were you expecting, a Charles Atlas infomercial?
Surprise, surprise, an old and injury-prone team winds up having a couple of injuries in the same week. I know there's a lot of airtime to fill, but even so, this was ridiculous. "Alou out 4 to 6 weeks" will be a repeat headline this year, and everyone knew that coming in. The shock is less than genuine.
It's like my momma told me -- you play in the cholera ward, you get burned. Or maybe that was Saul Bellow's mom. Anyway, the point stands.
There are far worse things than being an old and decaying team. Being a young and decaying team, for one. I have no earthly idea how Athletics fans can sit there and watch their potential Cy Young winner Rich Harden pitch somewhere around 40 innings each year, or shortstop Bobby Crosby -- who was supposed to make Derek Jeter look like Rey Sanchez once upon a time -- creak and groan around the locker room like the Wabash Cannonball. Or, since "Moneyball" has been in the news recently with Jeremy Brown's retirement, I can't imagine having to pull for Eric Chavez -- the next Barry Bonds, dontcha know -- crippled by injuries and transformed into a thinner, Latino Adrian Beltre.
Quick digression -- as much as I love the talent of a guy like Cole Hamels, the "Brittle Young Ace" character is just something I'm too nervous to easily deal with. I mean, it's New York -- fans here may not be any more dedicated or loyal here, but they're certainly more neurotic. By which I mean Jewish. No, seriously, I'll mock the Scott Kazmir trade until the day I die, but all the same, having a guy like that on your team raises blood pressure to a truly extraordinary degree. Liriano, King Felix ... as much as I'd kill to have one of them in orange and blue, I know my heart rate would spike every time I saw them reach for a sunflower seed. It's not a healthy way to live.
So, in short, let's all wait to panic about injuries until such time as the following:
1) When we're playing games that matter
This seems obvious enough.
2) Until one of the following players gets hurt: Wright, Reyes, Johan, Pedro, Brian Schneider
Again, these are clearly our most important pieces.
Sorry for the short post here -- I just can't think of anything else to say about the team until more happens.
Baseball season is so close you can taste it. 28 days from now, you, me, and the rest of the Mets-loving world will watch Johan Santana make his Mets debut down in Florida.
28 days can feel impossibly long this time of year. I'm so excited for baseball; so ready to put last season behind us and so anxious see how this season will play out.
I really don't know what I think about how the year ahead will play out. In the days after we first got Johan I was pretty sure we were the class of the National League. And for the most part I still think that, but... put it this way, that familiar Mets-fan pessimism was only magnified by end of last season.
The Phillies are gonna be good again. The Braves could contend. I don't think we'll run away with the division. More than anything I'm ready to start watching the fight unfold. But I can't, not for another 28 days.
In that time what is there to do? Well you can watch Spring Training games, but those are only so exciting. I watched Johan's debut, that was fun, and it's great to see Wright and Reyes and the rest of the team back on the field.
But one of the elements of Spring Training I really enjoy isn't really present this year. For me, one of the real treats of Spring Training games is having a chance to watch some stud prospect you've read a lot about. For the Mets, there's not a lot going around in the way of stud prospects. I mean, really, there's Fernando Martinez and who else?
So chances are I won't spend the next 28 days watching every Spring Training game. What I've been doing to fill the time consists of a lot of movie and television viewing.
(As I write this, "Wedding Crashers" is on the tube. Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams are smiling at each other.)
On the movie front I've seen "There Will Be Blood", "Into the Wild", "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford", "Gone Baby Gone" and "Just Friends" recently. (Highly recommend "Into the Wild" -- really good flick.)
If anyone's got any recommendations let me know. Tonight there's "Eastern Promises" which I'll watch after finishing this. I had wanted to rent "In the Valley of Elah" but it was out. Oh well.
As for television, whoa!, did anyone catch 60 Minutes on Sunday? The ray gun! Pretty wild stuff. Saturday Night Live was awful this weekend. To echo Cheddar on this one, Terminator is the truth, really bad ass.
It's been fun; I'm killing at dinner parties and what have you, but I'd trade it all for March 31st. The good news is it gets closer every day, doesn't it?
Mets Extra is an independent sports website that is not affiliated with any other news outlet. Mets Extra (including its predecessor, Yankees 2000: Promote the Curse) is not affiliated in any way with the New York Mets, the New York Yankees, WFAN Sports Radio 66 ("The FAN"), Major League Baseball, the National League, the American League, or any other professional sports franchise or entity.
Mets Extra is an independent sports website that is not affiliated with any other news outlet. Mets Extra (including its predecessor, Yankees 2000: Promote the Curse) is not affiliated in any way with the New York Mets, the New York Yankees, WFAN Sports Radio 66 ("The FAN"), Major League Baseball, the National League, the American League, or any other professional sports franchise or entity.
What baseball fans don't understand is when ballplayers become indifferent, when it appears that baseball's become a chore, rather than something to be cherished.
