NL MVP vs AL Cy Young, Vote Reyes, DePodesta Recap

Couple of noteworthy things to look at today.  The first is the Mets are playing a day game today at 1:05.  The potential National League MVP, Jose Reyes, will leadoff the game against the potential American League Cy Young, Justin Verlander.  Should be a fun day.  The Mets won the first game on a blowout, the second on a slugfest, could the third be a pitcher’s duel?  Is Mike Pelfrey up for it?

Secondly today we need to get #votereyes trending on Twitter and also to vote for Reyes as many times as we can.  It would be a travesty if Reyes was not the starting shortstop for the National League.   While you’re voting, throw in some votes for Carlos Beltran too.  On the American League side Asdrubal Cabrera deserves your vote, especially as he’s currently being led by a player having a poor season that’s on the disabled list in Derek Jeter.  Mike Francesa thinks the All-Star Game should be Jeter’s personal 3000 hit celebration, which is even more fodder.  Also, Alex Avila deserves your vote for AL Catcher. 

Thirdly, last night a bunch of bloggers talked with Paul DePodesta and Michael Baron of Metsblog kindly put up a transcript.  I’m sure there are couple of other breakdowns out there too.

A Blogger Chat With Sandy Alderson

This evening a selection of bloggers had a second conference call with Mets general manager Sandy Alderson.  The first one took place in December. There were a lot of great questions asked, and I’m sure there will be a full recap around the blogosphere.  For now, the response to my question, followed by links to the other bloggers’ write-ups that I will update as I see them.



I asked Alderson how active he would be with transactions this season, in particular with regards to the second base or bullpen candidates that “just missed” making the team.

He explained that once these final decisions are made in Spring Training, a lot of that possible depth in the bullpen goes away.  Guys may have to be offered back if they’re rule 5 picks, or they may choose to opt out of their contracts or just retire.  The depth in the bullpen would most likely be Igarashi, although the Mets are pretty deep at second base.  He stressed the importance of making sure guys are given a chance to perform and not go into every game like it could be their last.  I feel like this is a big upgrade from last year; despite the ultimate results, I didn’t think it was fair for guys like John Maine and Oliver Perez to have it constantly held over their head that they were pitching for their careers to the point that Jerry Manuel actually publicly contemplated removing Maine from the rotation without ever mentioning it to him.

This is a good philosophy to have, but I wonder if it may be a little naive.  After all, it’s not usually the manager and GM that are holding the axe over a players head, it’s the fans and sports radio.  Mike Jacobs and Frank Catalanotto only got 28 and 26 plate appearances  respectively before being cast away, and it seems like the fans were calling for their heads long before that.  Obviously the first base position took a rough turn when Murphy got hit with an injury days before the Opener, but what amounts to seven or eight games is hardly a telling sample size.  Ultimately getting Ike Davis on the Mets, particularly when Murphy experienced a setback in recovery, was a good move but that doesn’t mean Jacobs or Catalanotto got a real fair shot to contribute.

Two quick things I took note of during the call.  One is that there is still a chance Nick Evans makes this team, regardless of what happens with Beltran.  The other is it seemed like Sandy’s biggest test for Jose Reyes is his on base percentage, and that if he can raise that, he’ll be resigned.  I’m confident both will happen.

Transcript Courtesy of Michael Baron

Mets Blog

On The Black

Faith and Fear in Flushing

Mets Police

Amazin’ Avenue

The Real Dirty Mets Blog

NJ.com’s Matthew Artus

Mets Today

Debunking Pessimism

I stumbled across this extremely negative post on the Mets through some Google alerts.  At first I thought it would end up being a Philly blog, but nope. So here’s his five reasons why the Mets will suck post is way off the mark.
 

Spring training games began over the weekend, reminding us all how terrible the Mets will be this year.  Fittingly, Luis Castillo booted a ball at second base yesterday. Way to set the tone for the new season, Luis.

 

Here are my top 5 reasons why the Mets will be terrible this year.

Yes, I’m sure Castillo booting a ball in practice just doomed the Mets all season. Real players never actually make mistakes in Spring Training. Nevermind that Scott Hairston hit two home runs. This is just an excuse to pick on Castillo, who might not even make the team.

5- Ownership: Between borrowing $25 million from Major League Baseball, looking for minority ownership, and facing a multi-million dollar law suit, it will be a distraction all season. If the Wilpons sell the team, maybe it will make them less terrible, but still not good.

I can’t tell you that the Madoff stuff is a positive in any way, but it’s hardly going to be a distraction that causes the Mets to fail.  Wright’s not going to be worrying about the state of the lawsuit while he’s standing out at third base or at the plate.  They won’t even have to talk about it with the press, they’ve all said what they can say and their business is not finance, it’s baseball.  The state of the finances is not going to have much of an effect on the play on the field.  The only real thing it might do is prevent Alderson from adding pieces around the trade deadline, but so far there is no word that it will.  

4- Luis Castillo and Oliver Perez: It’s March 1, and for some reason they are still on the team. Perez got bombed in his first spring training game and Castillo is abysmal. Sadly he could actually win the starting second base position. It is unbelievable the Mets do not have anyone better than Castillo. Please cut your losses. I would rather have Ike Davis play first and second at the same time.

They’re on the team because they can’t lose the Mets games in March.  Whether or not they make the team will solely be based on merit, and it’s not looking good for either of them.  The players that help the Mets win will make the team, and therefore these two players will not be why they suck.  Reyes and Davis do have pretty good range, but I don’t think it’s enough to cover second base too. Plus, the rules don’t allow for only eight players in the lineup.  

3- Carlos Beltran playing right field: How long until he complains about it? I give it a month. Just imagine if he gets off to a bad start on offense. I know what the excuse will be.

#blamebeltran.  This pretty much debunks the whole post right here doesn’t it?  Never mind that he voluntarily moved there or that he’s not a complainer or an excuse maker.  A more valid question is how much regular rest is he going to need, and how well do those knees hold up?  Still, he’s been taking batting practice, and he should be ready to go as a hitter.  This should help prevent a slow start offensively at least.  Carlos Beltran continues to be underappreciated.

2- The NL East: The Phillies are probably the best team in baseball, which is not even fair, but the Braves and Marlins are better than last year too. The Mets are closer to the Nationals.

Just stating it doesn’t make it so. Probably? What if they’re not?  What if someone gets hurt? Their offense no longer looks formidable, Utley hasn’t even played yet and it’s looking more and more likely that Wilson Valdez may be starting for them, and they don’t even know what scrub or under-prepared prospect they’re going to throw out there in right field.  What if they don’t score runs when they pitch these great games, and what if age catches up with them?   The Marlins are not very good.  They’ve got some pitching, but it’s hardly amazing and they’re fielding a AAA offense outside of a couple of guys.  The Mets are capable of being in the thick of things just with their offense and with Pelfrey, Dickey and Niese doing what they did last year.

1- The Pitching Staff:  With Johan out until God knows when, Mike Pelfrey is the ace of the staff. Enough said. The Mets are depending on RA Dickey to repeat what he did last season, which is insane. I can’t even tell you who the 4th and 5th starters are: Chris Young?, Chris Capuano?, Dilon Gee? Oliver Perez??? Who the hell knows. As for the bullpen, talk about a disaster. Hopefully K-Rod won’t get arrested again or injure himself while beating up an old man. I honestly can’t even tell you who else is in the bullpen, so I have no further comments.

Enough said?  Sure, I could agree with that.  Mike Pelfrey was basically the best pitcher in baseball last April.  He had a horrible July, and it’s important that he minimizes that this year, but to dismiss him as crap is silly.  Why is it insane to expect Dickey to be as good as last year?  Did you really watch him all last year, and listen to him talk about pitching, and deduce that it was a fluke? It wasn’t.  He’s learned and adapted, and crafted his knuckleball to be a dangerous weapon.  It’s certainly possible he’s not as good, but the dropoff won’t be that extreme.  The ignorance in the rest of this ‘reason’ is too large to argue with, but I do have faith that some combination of Young and Capuano can give us some quality innings and keep the Mets in the game.  Losing Santana is rough, but given how many of his great games they let turn into losses last year, I’m confident with a little hitting the Mets can win more games that a lesser pitcher starts than they did last year with Santana on the mound.

 

I do have something good for Mets fans to look forward to. On Tuesday night (After the Knicks game) MSG will have a 4 part series on the ’86 Mets. Bar fights, sex, drugs, alcohol and more sex, drugs and alcohol- the good old days. Should be interesting. I guarantee it will be better than anything the Mets do on the field.

I’ll grant a pass on this statement since it was written before hand, but most accounts I’ve seen of the show have been pretty negative.  You can take your ‘guarantee’ and shove it, the Mets are going to be interesting this year.  Optimism is not a sin.

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.

Blogger Conference Call with Sandy Alderson

This evening Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson took the time to have a conference call with many of our favorite Mets blogs, including this one.  Everyone asked great questions, and Alderson’s answers were very enlightening and thought out.  Michael Baron wrote up a lot of it here. The Mets tweeted some of the conversation as well.

(You can follow me on Twitter too!) Sandy is doing a live webcast on Monday, so if there is still a question you’d like to see answered, go ask it!

As a representative of the optimistic fan base, or what still exists of it, I asked a suitably optimistic question of Sandy:  “You’ve mentioned being somewhat restricted in what you can spend this offseason, but if things go well and the Mets are in contention around the All-Star Break, what type of flexibility do you have to add a player or two to improve the club and keep them there?”

His response was positive.  He didn’t laugh at the idea of the Mets being in contention or talk about focusing on the future.  He said that that is the position they want to be in, and he would have to ability to add the pieces they need. He also suggested that if the Mets were in that position he would expect the attendance to reflect that.

In essence, he’s going to do the best he can to put the best team on the field and he hopes we’ll be prompted to go out and enjoy the games.  He ended the call saying we should do this again, and the entire experience left me feeling good about the Mets, and anxious for the season.

I’ll try to update this post with links to other write-ups as I see them, although you should know where to look by now. Mets Merized Online wins the award for speed, at least of what I’ve seen.

On the Black

The Eddie Kranepool Society

Mets Police

Very good transcript at Amazin’ Avenue

Matthew Artus
Faith and Fear in Flushing

Mets Today

Opening Day 2010

Today was Opening Day at Citi Field.  A day filled with optimism. (Unless you’re one of the fans booing Oliver Perez, the Mets trainers, Luis Castillo or Jerry Manuel)  The day lived up to the hype and the Mets won as they usually do on Opening Day.  I met with a surprising amount of other bloggers and the Blue Cap Army to tour the Mets Hall of Fame and Museum which was a lot of fun.  Hopefully I’ll see a bunch more of them this season.  (My next game is Friday.)

The important stuff:

Johan pitched great.  He wasn’t exactly lights out, but he was excellent and held the Marlins to 1 run in 6 innings.  The bullpen pitched excellently.  It was just Nieve and K-Rod this time, but still good way to start.  David Wright got his first home run in his first at-bat, and it was just amazing.  Wright’s poised to have an amazing MVP caliber player, and getting that first home run out of the way so that no one can start doubting him was a great jolt to the Mets fans.  It said, “This season is going to be good.  We’re not going to fall on old clichés and you’re not going to be able to use the phrase ‘here we go again.’” Bay and Barajas both had big hits, to help break the ice so to speak.  More importantly, the Mets were aggressive.  They played an aggressive game, made the Marlins have to make plays (they didn’t), and played hard.  There was even a suicide squeeze attempt which was great to see.  So even though I think he’s still the worst manager the Mets have ever had, I do offer kudos to Jerry Manuel for calling that play.  Suicide squeezes and terror on the basepaths is a much better way to try to steal runs than sacrifice bunting.

Now some pictures of things I noticed at Citi Field today.  There are a lot of changes, and plenty of them are fairly mundane, but still changes.   I took 400 pictures and a couple of videos, and there was so much good stuff that I’ll never be able to get to it all.  The full gallery is here.  More pictures at The Real Dirty Mets Blog.

The moved Home Run Apple. Great change. Great location. Looks amazing there. Could become a meeting point, although it’s just a wee bit crowded there.

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