It's Mets For Me: Off-Beat, Tangentially Relevant Mets Ruminations
Off Base Since 2005!
Mets commentary from the counter-intuitive to the unintuitive and all the intuitives in between.
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"Through the use of humor and gross inaccuracy...a certain truth can be gained." Rob Perri
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(pester me at:itsmetsforme@gmail.com or follow me @itsmetsforme on twitter)
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Happy Omar Minaya Free Agent Wooing Day!
Hope you get some pie this Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving, gang!
Omar, get your ass to the Dominican Republic and have dinner with someone already! No turkeys, please.
(I know, I know, everyone did their Razor Shines bits a few months ago, and this isn't even the best Razor related top ten list out there. But history demands that I recognize this historic moment.)
*perhaps his resemblence to ex-Met great, Bobby Bonnilla?
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Aaron Heilman to Mets: "Start me or trade me." Mets and fans to Aaron Heilman: "Bite me."
Heilman plays his last card.
At least, that's how the exchange should go. However, the diabolical Heilman seems to have a new strategy to somehow not go away. Not only will he not go away, he is still demanding stuff, though now he wants stuff a bit more consequential than a better place to park his Subaru in Florida. I once smashed my way out of a dishwashing job into a (supposedly) better job waiting tables, so I fully recognize Heilman's strategy: be so awful at your job that a promotion is the only available recourse for your employer.
How do we feel about this? Perhaps not as disappointed as the young fan pictured above who won a contest only to have Aaron Heilman park his sorry ass in the kid's living room (sheesh, what did the loser get?), but still. We are not happy. The main, not the only, but the main expected symbol of progress this off-season was to be the expulsion of the Poopeyface Parkingplace from our beloved bullpen. To never see his hang dog look in orange and blue again, that was to be our reward for suffering through last season's malaise of mediocrity.
I want him gone, as in gone goodbye.
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The media mumbo jumbo surrounding this year's hot stove has some commentators chasing their tails. And this year, even the players are getting into the act, just making shit up for the reporters to publish, apparently just for kicks. I would have expected a few relief arms to be in the stable by now, but I am zen, the kind of zen that can only be achieved after three miserable gut-busting, head-exploding, failures in a row. It's not that I don't care, its just that I care less. I have finally got it through my thick skull that signing or otherwise acquiring the best player available every off-season isn't much help when your management has no organizational plan or vision. But it sure will be fun to watch Fernando Tatis regress next year, won't it?
With the avalanche of reports suggesting that the Spankers are buying every starting pitcher on the market, starting with CC Sabathia and extending to the Mets own target, D. Lowe, it's beginning to look a lot like (most years') Christmas.
Players the Yanks target would "be crazy to turn down the opportunity to play on what is, by default, the greatest team in baseball." And, although it will drive up the price of mediocre starters and add needless years onto their bloated contracts, this is a good thing. Mets fans need the cartoonish Yankers to fill that hated enemy #1 or 2 role that the Spankers relinquished when they enabled the Mets, by passing on first Beltran and then Santana, and then of course when they started playing themselves into the 3rd place AL East also-ran role they currently fill. Having the Phillies as an enemy is just lame. From the Spankers perspective, trusting CC's legs to support that body for much longer is a fool's game. Just for fun, I'd like to see the Mets make an offer for CC slightly higher than the Yanks to get the ball rolling. Then crazy Art Moreno of the Angels might get interested.
So sometimes we have to welcome the Evil Empire back with open arms, just to right the balance of hate. Of course, before we run to the barricades, we should remember that sometimes the Empire brings us a Jar-Jar Binks.
*** As the market mellows on Francisco Rodriguez, I guess if we think we got a bargain, most Mets fans could handle a K-Rod signing and the angst it would bring (is he a statistical invention? does he have too many miles on him? etc). If Omar's plan is to drive down KRod's price by convincing KRod the Mets don't really need him by getting in touch with the fact that the Mets don't really need him, then it seems to be working. But this guy at some point will = Billy Wagner, there's no getting around it.
It's hard to get too worked up about any of the free-agent choices. I like Lowe, and ex-Cubbies Wood or Prior interest me under the right conditions. A.J. Burnett is the classic free-agent injury gamble that is sure to blow up in someone's face, so I sure hope the Br*ves (or Yankmes) end up with him, and not Peavy. Frank Wren is no John Shitholtz. There seem to be at least three decent choices for the bullpen out there, and I think the Mets need at least 3 new decent arms. So I hope Omar choses to go with his all-of-the-above arm stockpile strategy, only this time, not all-of-the-above-scrubs.
I think I'd be happier if the Mets signed both Kerry Wood and Brian Fuentes instead of KRod. Tell them both they'll be the closer and figure it out in the Spring.
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The Florida Marlins management is at it again. Met-traitor Mike Jacobs, headcase Scott Olsen, the most mediocre player ever nicknamed "The Hammer," and closer Kevin Gregg have already been dispatched. It seems like the Marlins strategy is not to wait for a cheap core to mature since they ship out young guys faster than Kody Ross gets aroused around livestock. So I don't know what their strategy is. As the Fish trade their chips, I also wonder how this impacts the reserves of white hot hatred-jealosy that allow the Fish to get up for their last series with the Mets every year, but does not allow them to sustain competitive play throughout a season.
"I've always been a huge fan of high-character players, not only players that [have talent]," Wright said. "I love a player that puts winning before everything else. I take a guy that maybe has a little bit less talent but a guy that has a desire to win over maybe a guy that's a little more top-notch but doesn't."
Be interesting to see if Golden Boy gets any backlash from the sabermetrics crowd.
*** Sometimes the world just gives you exactly what you want. I'm not talking about the recent Presidential election, I'm talking about the opportunity provided by the new, increadibly homoerotic Guitar Hero advertisement to mock three of the biggest tools in pro athletics. Acting like the sissies they are, ARod and Jetes lay on the couch and kick their legs in the air like we probably all imagined they do when they don't get their way. Rapist-whiner-Laker-loser Kobe Bryant rounds out the crew. I can only imagine the shoptalk (advice on how to cheat on your wife and/or spread STDs to unsuspecting groupies) traded on the set, with the impressionable Michael Phelps taking it all it. Phelps? Well, no one is impressed by the company he's keeping, but he is a damn swimmer so he has to get $$ where he can.
*** Wouldn't it be cool to be able to keep track of all the beat reporters and insiders' hot stove "reports" in order to track just how ridiculous many of them are? I would also like data on how many contradictory reports appear to be in response to another reporters previous claims. Noble, Lennon, Rosenthal, Heyman, etc should be tracked. We have the technology.
*** Finally, a great big f*ck the heck? and "RIP" to Fire Joe Morgan, the bloggers that suddenly decided to make better use of their time this week and cease all bloggy operations. They did something every satirically-minded blogger does every day, but they did it better.
Phoey on Philly Lip-Phlapping: You Stay Classy, Philadelphia
Lucky for Rollins, he knows he can talk smack about the gutless cowards in Flushing and nothing will ever happen to him.
Not much to say about the World Series. At least no one watched it. The big news today is the way the Philmes are taking every opportunity to demonstrate their inferiority complex concerning the Mets. Perhaps it was just an attempt to draw some attention their way, but I'm still taken aback at how pathetic the Phillies are:
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jimmy Rollins made the most of another opportunity to take a dig at the New York Mets.
Speaking at Friday's celebration for the Phillies' World Series victory, the shortstop mentioned Mets left-hander Johan Santana and the crowd booed. But Rollins was loudly cheered after saying New York forgot one thing. As he put it: "It takes more than one player to bring home a championship."
I kind of feel sorry for them.
The Mets are so deep into the Philmes' pea heads, the Philmes even obsess about the Mets during their own championship celebration!! You'd think it'd be the other way around, but the Mets players probably aren't even thinking about it anymore, their time filled with playing golf and counting their money. They're not devastated--choking comes easier every year. Hell, Minaya already started bringing back the old pieces from last year's flop, re-signing Fernando (flash in the pan) Tatis and Carlos (now his career is probably over) Delgado. Omar wouldn't understand the old adage "quit while you're ahead" if he tripped over it and it bit him (topic for another day). But then there's Jimmy Rollins, unable to contain his own bitterness, besmirching his own championship by taking irrelevant potshots at the vanquished competition.
Is Omar just a dope?
And no, I'm not too impressed by Omar's grasp of the failings of his team so far. To take that other old adage, the one about generals "fighting the last war" and mistakenly sticking to the lessons of the last battle when they don't necessarily help them win the next war. Wel I don't know exactly how it relates to Omar, but i do know HE LOST THE LAST THREE WARS muthafunka! In response to having an old and rickety team in 2006, Omar responded by signing or keeping the same exact old rickety guys (Stash, Old Man Moises Alou, Old Duque, etc), and even depending on them. Rinse and repeat for 2008, just add bullpen.
Now, in response to having to much dead wood on the team, it seems Omar has commenced retaining exactly the players that can be safely predicted to show an incredible decline from this year's performance!! [Editor's note: Bold means I want you to pay attention, italics mean I am hopping fucking mad.] Make no mistake, Fernando "It is better to look good than to be good" Tatis, at times lolked mahvalous. But remember back to watching the way this fella injured himself for the remainder of the season by diving incompetently at a catchable flyball and then try to imagine him taking up room on your world champion 2009 Mets. Can you do it? And yes, Carlos Delgado is a "bargain" when you factor in the ill-conceived buyout, but every week I get a circular full of bargains I could go buy at the supermarket: toothbrushes made from marshmellow, snacks stained with carcinoginic orange stuff, plastic disguised as edible fruit snacks. If they are things I don't eat, I don't go buy them. I have little self-control, but somehow I resist. And none of those items cost between $1.7 and $12 million. It's buy low, sell high, Omar. Don't forget the sell part.
“Carlos is a key part of our plans for 2009 and we wanted to let him know as quickly as allowed that we wanted him back.”
Why and why.
Are we fans the only ones who know how this is going to end? I'm running out of theories as to why Omar sees a way to improve the team (e.g., stop signing these old, declining guys) and runs the opposite way. It might be that Omar is just stupid.
This blog is meant completely and entirely in jest, unless you count the angst, and is not meant to offend anyone, unless you are a Br*ves fan. It's not affiliated with Sterling, the Mets, common sense, good taste, or anything really.
