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Ceetar’s Origins, Mostly Mets Podcast, and The Mazzilli’s

Lately the origins of my e-identity has come up a couple of times.  Most recently Metspolice.com awarded me a Mazzilli award for “Most Optimistic” (I think the fix is in there), and Google Images suggested he use a picture of a Cheetah.

 
Last week’s Mostly Mets Podcast, perhaps the final one of the year, answered one of my Twitter questions involving Kirk Nieuwenhuis’s potential promotion.  I asked when he’d be up here to take Andres Torres’ job.  Toby Hyde said July first, Ted Berg said sometime in June, and Patrick Flood twisted it a bit and suggested he’d take Jason Bay’s job instead.  When Patrick read my question he mispronounced Ceetar as “Key-tar” instead of “Cee-tar”.  Ted, the one of the trio I’ve met, corrected him but forgot the origin of the name.

 
So here it is:  I was looking to name a character in an online MUD, which is basically a text-based pre-World of Warcraft style game played over telnet. (This was like 1997)  I came up with Ceetar.  My character ultimately became a demon-worshipping evil priest type character wielding dark magic and a spear to kill monsters and good guys.  It became my online identity and as I began signing up for accounts and emails and websites, I started using it as my user name.  So that’s the pretty nerdy origins of the name.

 
As time as gone on, the idea of creating a more ‘professional’ handle has come up, but I ultimately pass on it.  I’m not trying to hide or be anonymous, and I don’t think using Ceetar does that either.  Almost everything I’ve done on the Internet about the Mets has been done as Ceetar.  To use my real name would actually obscure some of that, and the name is hardly hidden.

 
Back on the topic of the Mostly Mets Podcast, which deserves it’s own review post one of these days, I think I’m setting a New Years Resolution to meet either Toby or Patrick (but not both) so that I can say I’ve Met Most of the Mostly Mets Members. Try saying that five times fast.

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Time To Put Lucas Duda in Right Field

Just last week I suggested the Mets bring up Fernando Martinez to get some playing time at the major league level.  This week he’s returned to the DL.   Maybe the guy will eventually stay healthy, but right now he’s not an option. 

Terry Collins mentioned getting Lucas Duda some playing time in right field, and now seems like the time.   One of the Mets other almost ready prospects,  Kirk Nieuwenhuis, is also on the Dl rendering another RF option unavailable.  These are two of the probable candidates for Duda to compete with in Spring Training for a job in 2012 ,and right now it looks like he’s got the leg up having been successful at the major league level, and having stayed healthy. 

I don’t really care to see a ton of Scott Hairston, Jason Pridie or Mike Baxter.  Nick Evans is another guy that seems like he’d like to compete for that 2012 RF job but probably won’t be a real candidate.  Evans can play first at least, and I’d rather Evans get those AB than the other bench guys, but the Mets might as well give Duda an extra month or reps in the outfield with an eye on 2012.   He’s definitely starting to look like a solid hitter that will need a position for the future.

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Spring Training Voyage

 

I’m back from Spring Training, and it’s all too soon. I was having a lot of fun poking around Port St. Lucie and Digital Domain Park.  I took 500 pictures over three days, and captured images of many of our favorite, and less favorite, Mets players.  I watched road, home, and minor league games and saw players from the low minors to the cream of the crop doing all different kinds of baseball drills.  I met Amber Coyle, and Matthew Rose of NL East Chatter and The Real Dirty Mets Blog.

First, check out these two posts I put up last week involving Mets eating dinner and pictures from the St. Patrick’s Day game against the Red Sox and then click below to view more pictures.
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Mets Players, and Owners, Eat at Duffy’s

After returning from Fort Myers to Port St. Lucie on Thursday, we went to Duffy’s for dinner.   One of the waiters there noticed our Mets stuff and mentioned that all the Wilpons were in earlier eating dinner.  He said they didn’t tip as well as in years past, but it was still a lot of money.

 

Halfway through our meal my wife noticed five athletic looking guys walk past us to a table in the back.  I recognized Kirk Nieuwenhuis, and I suspect the others were also just returned from the Red Sox game and were getting a late dinner.   I think Lucas Duda and Russ Adams were there.

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What To Watch For In Mets Spring Training Camp

All teams have a variety of different roster spots open for the taking in Spring Training.  So what should we be watching in Port St. Lucie with the Mets?  (And if you’re watching on SNY, the games will be in HD this year!)

Tiki Hut at Digital Domain Park

Health
Keeping players healthy is definitely number one. This includes building up arm strength and recovering from an injury that ended last season, or simply not getting hurt.  Jason Bay, Francisco Rodriguez and Daniel Murphy ended up the season on the disabled list. The primary goal from them is to get to Opening Day without experiencing any pain or lingering effects of what ailed them last year.  Bay and Rodriguez have both been reported healthy and pain free, but it’ll be good to show that in real spring training games.  Daniel Murphy has had some knee issues, and the best shot he has at winning a job this season is to not be hampered by lingering pain that prevents him from putting in the work both at second base, and at the plate, that he needs.

Some guys have been injured frequently, to various degrees, and may be at risk again.  Chris Young, Chris Capuano, Carlos Beltran are three of the most recent cases.  Beltran has mainly been dealing with one issue, a lack of cartilage in his knee, and may have that under control via an understanding of what ails him, and a knee brace that keeps his knee bones from bruising further.  Beltran’s goal this spring is to prove the brace hasn’t reduced his range significantly in center field, and to get the reps at the plate he needs to keep up to speed without needlessly stressing his knee in exhibition games.

Young and Capuano have more to prove if they want to earn a spot on this team and continue contributing for the entire season.  Consistent starts this spring with no reports of pain or soreness would go a long way to giving us confidence that can give us some quality innings.

Jose Reyes often gets mentioned in the injury discussion, but really he was healthy for most of 2011.  He had a medical condition that had him almost literally rolling out of bed and into the field in April, and had a slight oblique strain mid-season that was so poorly managed by the Mets and their manager that it probably cost him twice as many games as it needed to.  Players get nicked u, and an oblique strain isn’t something to worry about.  Given these parameters, it seems like 2010 is the absolute floor of what we can expect out of Reyes for any given season, and given a full spring worth of preparation it’s not unfair to expect him to be much better again.

The Stars
The results may not matter, but it’s still fun to watch some of the best in the game play.  The Mets have a nice core of excellent players.  David Wright and Jason Bay can launch home runs and bash the ball all over the place.  Jose Reyes can run wild and be his energetic, fun to watch self.  Carlos Beltran may go back to making difficult defensive plays look easy while blasting home runs.

While maybe not on the same level, yet, many other players that have jobs secured are fun to watch.  Ike Davis has some great power and is maturing as a hitter.  R.A. Dickey is an amazing guy and watching him taunt hitters with the knuckleball is always fun.  Jon Niese progressing with his devastating curveball or Bobby Parnell blowing guys away with his occasionally triple digit fastball will make highlights reels all spring long.

Rounding Out the Roster
Which guys will make the team seemingly out of nowhere?  Who will have a monster spring and launch themselves into the conversation for 5th starter, or long reliever, or first pinch hitter off the bench?  A lot of the bullpen is open for guys looking to have a strong showing.  Beyond second base that has a couple of favorites, but is an open competition, there are a couple of different ways the Mets could fill out the extra bench spots.  Could it be Nick Evans? Or Scott Hairston?  What about Jason Pridie or Justin Turner?

The Future
What’s more exciting than seeing what may be on tap for the years to come? Jenrry Mejia make a lot of noise last spring, enough that he mistakenly got a roster spot in the bullpen.  He’ll be exciting to watch this year to see how’s he progressed and if he’s someone we can look forward to in the future.  You’ve got some possible outfielders that look exciting, like Lucas Duda or Kirk Nieuwenhuis.

The Broadcast
Besides the games finally being in high definition, Gary, Keith, Ron, and Kevin are a joy to listen to do a game.  Just like Spring Training is a little more lax than the regular season, so are the broadcasts.  Obviously most of us don’t have the opportunity to listen to them live, because most games are on at 1pm, but if you do get a chance it’s well worth it.

To follow Ceetar on Twitter, click here.

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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?