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They Played Baseball!

Men, some of them even with METS written on their chests, played baseball this weekend!  I know some don’t get excited for exhibition baseball, but it’s a beautiful day in New York and the familiar sounds of baseballs are in the air and on the screen.  Opening Day doesn’t seem far away.

It’s not even about the results.  The results this early in the Grapefruit League season are practically worthless.  That players are getting reps and throwing pitches and swinging bats and catching and throwing the baseball is enough.   Not that that will stop  fans and even beat writers from proclaiming who will make the team and who will get cut.  I’m not ready for that yet; Those are late spring decisions.

I’ll be headed to Florida for three Mets games in mid-March.  I’ll have some fun tweeting pictures and observations and just basking in the excitement of being at a baseball game.  Until then, read my posts from week about what to watch, and what not to, in Spring Training.

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How Do Outsiders View Mets Fans?

A lot of what we feel and think about the Mets is colored by being a fan.  Even when you step back and try to be analytical about it, chances are the amount you care tends to affect your judgement.  This goes the other way too.  The amount Phillies fans dislike the Mets plays into their partisan appraisal, and the amount beat reporters just flat out don’t care about the team has them analyzing it a different way.  Perspective colors all aspects of the game.  Chicago Cubs fans may not feel we have much to complain about.  Islanders and Nets fans may laugh when we talk about playing second fiddle to the Yankees. Football fans may be jealous that we get to watch our team more than 16 times, and NHL fans may wish they could set outside in the sun and watch their team.

How do non sports fans view us? (Yes, such a person does exist) To help illustrate I’ll share a picture from my wedding and a line delivered by the best man.  I think this image illustrates the tough-luck Mets fan, the supporting spouse, and how they’re viewed from outside the fandom.  (And yes, that’s Mr. Met (and likely a knock-off based on the number) on my wedding table)

This picture was taken just after the best man delivered this line: “And finally, Debbie, I want to give you my personal assurance – unlike the Mets, Mike will never break your heart.”

Unlike the Mets, Ceetar will never break your heart.

And thanks to Tracey Elizabeth Photography for capturing this great moment.

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Carlos Beltran in 2012

My ideal situation with Carlos Beltran is that he has a good year, and the Mets negotiate a new, reasonable priced contract with him and he moves to right field in 2012. I know this might not be the perfect baseball move, that from a pure numbers standpoint it may not make sense to retain Carlos, even if he has a good year without injury.  Baseball is more than a fantasy draft of the best statistical robots that put up a certain line of stats; it’s also very emotional, and I happen to like Carlos Beltran.  I’d be very happy for him to finish successfully, and one day add his number to the wall of retired Mets out in left field.  Beltran has been a great teammate and a great part of the New York community since he’s arrived, and I think continuing that into perpetuity would be great for both him and the Mets.

So while other fans seem to be counting the days until Beltran is no longer a Met, or thinking about possible trade targets for him now or by the trading deadline, I’m hoping he somehow remains a successful Met for the rest of his career and thinking about ways that that can happen without sacrificing team success.

The biggest issue with Beltran is that he has bone bruises on his knees that don’t heal easily, and he may never fully recover from them.  The brace he wears is meant to minimize the damage to his knees and those bruises, but he’s only been wearing the thing for two months worth of games so it’s hard to get a sense of how much it affects him.  His bruises were better at the end of the season than they were when he started rehabbing to return, which is a good sign.  The perfect, if unlikely, situation would be that his knees heal completely and that the brace becomes second nature to him and doesn’t inhibit his swing or ability to run in any way.

So if Beltran were to prove himself healthy and productive in 2011, what would be a reasonable contract for him to satisfy my emotional desire for him to remain here, and yet not inhibit the Mets from being great, and continuing to be great?  His contract currently pays him 18.5 million dollars, which is definitely too much.  Technically he’s only making 13 million, as 5.5 of it is deferred.  Even if the compromise was the same amount in his paycheck, that’s probably also a bit high for anything but a one year deal for a player turning 35 at the start of the 2012 season.  Something more along the lines of three years at 27 million seems to be what he might be worth going forward.  The Mets could lace it with all sorts of incentives for games played and awards received.  If three seems too much, maybe two plus a vesting option based on games played, and therefore health, for the third year.

I have no idea if that’s something Carlos Beltran, or his agent Scott Boras, would accept.  I have no idea what, if anything, Carlos could do to make the Mets consider keeping him.   Based on his work in the community, and his comments about staying a New York Met, I do believe Carlos wants to be here, but often money talks.  This is all predicated on Beltran having a good 2011 season and looking like he can continue to produce for multiple years anyway, but based on how he was doing in September last year I believe that he can definitely contribute if he can manage the situation with his knees.

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MLB At Bat 2011

Initial impressions of the 2011 MLB At Bat app that was released today. ($15 from your applicable App Market) This is only the initial reaction, since more features will be released for Opening Day.

I had the iPod version last year, this year I’ve got the Android version.  First thing I did was set my favorite team to the Mets.

First thought was that I like the rosters being included on each team.  Sortable by name, or by position, which is great for depth charts and when you’re sitting in the stands trying to figure out which Cardinal pitcher in the bullpen wears 54 (Jaime Garcia).  It’s also great for setting up a scorecard if you like to keep score at the game.

There’s a link to tickets and promotions on each game and team page, and I suspect this is for the ability to purchase tickets on the phone, and use it as a barcode to get into a stadium.  Neat.

All the normal features from last year and the basics like scoreboard, standings, video highlights, and game preview screens are included. The #1 reason most people buy the app is obviously included as well: The on-the-go access to gameday audio of all the teams, and the ability to track, pitch by pitch, the progress of any game. 

Something else to keep an eye on is ordering food in the ballpark via this app.  The Phillies and Aramark debuted something late last year to allow you to do this.   The app allows you to check into a ballpark, and it verifies your location, allowing access to features such as this one.  Currently the check-in and ordering food parts of the app do not seem to be there, so I suspect this is one of those things maybe destined for the Opening Day update.

Also not featured yet that will be added, is Twitter integration.  The app will likely contain a twitter feed for each of the 30 teams’ hashtags, allowing you to follow along with the buzz of the team beyond your normal timeline.

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Hu’s Telling the Jokes Around Here?

I can practically guarantee that this conversation will happen during a Spring Training broadcast.
Gary Cohen: “It‘s the bottom of the third inning here at Digital Domain Park.  The Marlins just made a pitching change, bringing in their ace Josh Johnson to get his work in.  David Wright at the plate with the bases loaded.

Ron Darling: “The Mets are down a run, this is the perfect opportunity for them to tie the game even with an out.”

Keith Hernandez: “They’ve got some speed on the bases.  With..who’s on first?”

Gary: “Hu’s on second.”

Keith: “No, on first. Who’s there?”

Gary: “Yes.”

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You Can ALWAYS Put a Negative Spin on Mets News

Some sports writers and bloggers can’t help but recycle the same stories over and over again, merely inserting different information to reach the same conclusion.  A free agent someone deems worthy is passed over, therefore the Mets will not spend money.  Someone on the team tweaks a muscle, and the medical staff is inept.  The players have a bad game and suddenly they’re unfocused and uncaring.  So it should come as no surprise when someone out there twists the Jason Isringhausen signing to meet a common plot point: The Mets are desperate to cut payroll for 2012 and will do anything to get out of K-Rod’s contract.  It’s possible that by the time I publish this it’ll already have been written. It’ll probably be something like this:

“Yesterday the Mets signed former closer Jason Isringhausen.  Like most of Sandy Alderson’s moves this offseason, Isringhausen came cheap and no one else wanted him.  The Mets are hoping to catch a little lightening in a bottle with the former generation K pitcher.  With financial ruin looming, the Mets need to cut payroll for 2012 and Francisco Rodriguez’s 17.5 million dollar vesting option is looking expensive.  It’s in the Wilpon’s interests to find ways to keep K-Rod from closing 55 games in 2011, and the players association may have a problem if they were to just bench him, or share closer duties with the unproven Bobby Parnell.  With the Isringhausen signing, the Mets have another legitimate closer to try to take away some saves from Rodriguez.”

This is most certainly not how the Isringhausen signing went.  He had a relationship with J. P. Ricciardi from their Oakland days, and Isringhausen requested a try out to try and make the team.  He got a minor league deal with an invitation to major league camp, which is hardly a guarantee of anything more than a couple of innings of work at best.

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Is It Time For a New Generation of Mets?

As I sit here wondering if the Mets will extend Reyes’ contract, and how I hope David Wright and Jose Reyes spend their long successful careers only with the Mets, I started thinking the bridge between different Mets generations.  In my eye, generations are roughly defined by the ‘core’ or the handful of top players on a team that stay together for a couple of years.  You had Mike Piazza, Edgardo Alfonzo and John Franco leading us into David Wright,Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran.  There was an overlap, or bridge, between these two generations as some of them played together.  One midseason story line was even when Wright would, or should, move ahead of Piazza in the batting order.  What if the bridge between generations was not so obvious?
We are Mets fans because we love the Mets.  We love the Mets because we are Mets fans.  It’s emotional, fanatical, and probably illogical, but it’s what we do.   We have an emotional connection to the team, and to the players.  We all know that you “root for the laundry” and that it doesn’t matter who is wearing the uniform because if it says “Mets” on it, we want them to succeed.

There is talk out there about breaki

ng up the Mets core: If the Mets haven’t won with Wright and Reyes, maybe they are part of the problem and not the solution.  How would the fanbase, the one that includes the millions of fans not on Twitter or in the blogosphere, react to the Mets rebuilding?  Would fans actually be excited for a team that had Tejada at shortstop, Zach Lutz at third, an outfield of Lucas Duda, Fernando Martinez and Kirk Nieuwenhuis with a rotation led by Niese, Gee and Meija? Especially if it took that group 2-3 years to really start to show any talent, if they do at all.  Perhaps Mets fans are too used to a group of players getting only one or two shots at the postseason and now mentally preparing for the next groups opportunity.  

Fans may enjoy a prospect or two, especially one that’s doing well, but watching a group of players lose consistently while going through the growing pains of trying to be a great major league baseball player is not what sells or excites fans.  Half of those guys probably won’t stick around long term in the big leagues, certainly not with the Mets, and they’ll make mistakes and boneheaded plays and go through slumps that will not enamor them to fans.  We love the team, but rooting for lovable losers is not what being a Mets fan is about.  For every fan that loved Ty Wigginton while he

was a Met there are a hundred or more that love Benny Agbayani because he was a part of a run of success.  Rustyjr of The Real Dirty Mets Blog asked for reader submissions of their top 50 Mets of all time, and has been counting down the tabulated results.  If you’re paying attention you’ll notice that the list hardly follows any statistical reasoning.  Ray Knight comes in at #37 for example despite his numbers across a mere 254 games with the Mets not being anything amazing.  Perhaps his baseball-reference sponsor has some insight:

“What a worthy ’86 Series MVP! He embodied those championship Mets. Who can forget his fire, his jubilation scoring the winning run on Buckner’s error?”

We cling the players that come through for us in big moments.  Endy Chavez made an unbelievable catch in a key moment of the biggest Mets game of the last decade.  For his Mets career he was at best a serviceable 4th outfielder and an amazing defensive replacement, which aren’t usually the guys that go down in history and get remembered.  Endy’s catch is immortalized in the left field gate at Citi Field and in the fan walk outside, and it’s one of the few parts of the building that has never been criticized by fans.  We form bonds and connections with these guys, and while winning makes them all look nicer, sometimes it’s just the emotion and effort of one player or series that makes us love them.  Endy’s catch was in a losing effort and Robin Ventura’s memorable Grand Slam Single was the last win the Mets would get in that series.


Would fans really pay to see a team of prospects?  My guess is no.  If the Mets fail to put a winning team on the field again in 2011, it won’t draw any more fans in August and September if they trade off every piece they can at the trading deadline.  While the removal of players that we have a negative association with may sound like a good idea, It doesn’t actually create more interest in watching that players replacement.  Sure there might be a boost in attendance if a fire-balling starter is doing well, or some rookie outfielder is smashing home runs all over the place, but those things will be passing novelties as most Mets fans find entertainment elsewhere that season.  Some cit the early 90s as some of the worse Mets seasons in history.  The ‘86ers retired, moved on, got into trouble and were no longer Mets. There were a couple of flashy prospects here and there that didn’t really pan out.  There was some brief excitement with Generation K, which shows us that a philosophy of “We might be pretty good in a couple of years!” is not a selling point.  There was no clear bridge to the next eneration and a lot of Mets fans in the 90s noticed that there _was_ still winning baseball in New York.  I wonder what the younger Mets fans that are in love with Wright and Reyes would do if they were no longer Mets in the next year or two?

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Could The Madoff Situation Actually Help Alderson?

This post is it.  I’ll comment once with my thoughts about this Sterling Equities news, and then I’m going back to desperately counting the seconds until pitchers and catchers report. (1,173,300 seconds until it’s 2/15, as of this post)

Did the recent Sterling Equities news regarding the Wilpons looking to possibly sell part of the team actually help Sandy Alderson do his job?  The news may help Alderson lowball other teams on money-related transactions more so than he might otherwise be able to do.  While he’s not going to get players for free that other teams don’t really want to move, if a team is looking to make a deal with the Mets, they might subconsciously be expecting less in return.

Reporters have gone wild with speculation about what this means, that the Wilpons will sell, and that they won’t be able to spend any money.  Some predict Reyes traded by the trading deadline as a result, although some predicted this anyway.  Buster Olney, who’s actual post is behind a paywall, suggests some rival executives are all but positive Reyes gets traded because they can’t afford to keep him.  This suggests two things to me: 1. I’ve never been a fan of Olney anyway, but in the age of blogs and Twitter if what you’re writing is behind a paywall there is a pretty good chance it’s not worth reading.  2. The Mets are best off extending Reyes in Spring Training because even if they wanted to trade him in some crazy scenario, the rumors that they have to hurts their negotiating position.

I don’t expect this news to amount to anything more than another name on the media guide list of owners, but it’s certainly possible this is the start of a slippery slope to a scenario that includes the Wilpons having to sell off the entire team.  The initial info seems to suggest that the news is more of a guardrail against that slippery slope than the first tumble, but many of the details are still hidden and most are above my head in terms of financial understanding.  What will be, will be.  The roster is mostly set.  The Mets will play baseball in 2011, and I’ll be able to go there and root for them and cheer for them.  That’s pretty much 99.6% of my concern as it relates to who actually owns the Mets.

Still, perception is meaningful.  The team may very well be projected to not even afford the letters on their uniform backs at this rate. (One might suggest they stick to only two different uniforms in that case and remove the names altogether)  Sandy Alderson may be able to use the perception of constraint when dealing with free agents, and with other teams when the trade involves money or paying contracts, to his advantage.  Maybe Alderson finds a suiter for Oliver Perez, and instead of paying 11 million of his contract, he uses the Madoff situation to suggest the Mets only pay 10.5.  Maybe Jose Reyes really does want to stay here, and Alderson milks his loyalty by getting him to sign for less under the guise of needing that money to buy competitive players around him.

This is probably still a stretch.  The 2011 roster and budget are nearly financially complete, and the Mets won’t likely be looking to spend a lot of money before the All-Star break.  At that point, the potential financial windfall of being successful in September and making the playoffs almost always offsets the initial cost of bringing the last two months of an expensive players contract.  Sandy Alderson told me that he’d have no constraints at that point, and I hope that remains true.  It’ll be interesting to see how Alderson conducts business going further; if crying poor helps him negotiate, or if he dispels rumors by actually spending money on Reyes, or on mid-season acquisitions.

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Meet the Mets Bloggers

Saturday night I met up with fellow bloggers from Metspolice.com, ontheblack.com and readtheapple.com for friendly Mets conversation, and beer.  I’ve officially come in as the laziest despite technically being the longest running blog of the four, as they’ve all put up recap posts already and I’m just messing around on Twitter.  So go read their recaps, which include what I believe is my video blog premier. (Which made it up much faster than my SNY/Beer Money premier, which was filmed eight months ago and hasn’t aired yet.)  Guest starring in the recaps is the infamous and hilarious Eli From Brooklyn.

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1989 Baseball Cards and Spring Training Tickets

1989 Pack of Topps Baseball Cards

I saw some old baseball cards in a vending machine today and figured I’d buy a pack.  They were only 75 cents after all and I could win a trip to 1990 Spring Training! I was a little unnerved by the 22 year old bubble gum though.

Obviously I hoped to get a Mets player.  Or at least someone else cool.  Closest I got was probably Frank Viola as a Twin.  I got four Oakland Athletics: David Parker, Storm Davis, Terry Steinback and Dave Otto.  Terry Mulholland of the Giants was there, as was Orioles #1 draft pick out of Auburn, Gregg Olson.

Speaking of Spring Training…Although if I did make it to 1990 Spring Training I might try to warn the Mets off of Generation K or tell them to outbid the Yankees, who signed Mariano Rivera as an amateur free agent that Spring…My tickets to the Mets Spring Training games came in the mail today.  I’ll be there both Friday March 18th and Saturday March  19th.  Can’t wait for it, it’s going to be a lot of fun.  Anyone else going down this year?