A Tale of Two at Citi: It was the Worst of Rods, it was the Best of Rods!!

 
 One these guys makes too little money.

By the heavens, Blow Rod is an unimpressive closer. Omar Minaya made a major blunder signing Frankie Rodriguez to that money and those years.  That seems to be the message sent from above and reinforced with his every appearance, with every violent delivery, every lead he endangers, with every free pass he issues. To be more positive, there were lots of heroes in this game: Luis Castillo ranged into left field to stop the Giants from going ahead.  Ike put on a clinic at the plate, in the yard, and over the dugout railing. And it was nice to see Pelf help himself to a rebound outing.  But, as Fat Benjie watched from the opposing dugout, hero-number-one Good Rod Barajas came through to clean up his battery mate, Bad Rod's mess. It was nice to see the Mets walk off instead of get walked over for once.

Stick to your Guns Mets fans



 Yikes!









The Wall Street Journal , for reasons hard to fathom, has spent some money in an effort to differentiate NY area Yankees and Mets fans.  The easy reaction is, since there is no metric for front-running douche-bags, the WSJ fails to capture this dynamic in a meaningful way.  According to the survey, we pay more attention to the Mets than our fair weather brethren.   And, male Mets fans (supposedly we'll hear more about female Mets fans in a subsequent installment) drink more and are more heavily armed than Yankers fans.  The survey and commentary was a little unfair.  So people on the terrorist watch list can buy guns but fans on perpetual suicide watch can't own them? Also, just how are we supposed to defend ourselves from Yankees fans? The survey needs to broaden its scope, since the Mets are quickly becoming America's team.

Meanwhile, the third rail of Mets fandom, the contributions of Carlos Beltran, is used as the centerpiece of Scott Forman's latest attempt in the New York Times to mainstream "advanced" baseball metrics. Fans underwhelmed by long-injured Beltran who once hit like 8 homers in the playoffs for the Astros vs. internet WAR-riors, communities devoted to the wonder of Beltran and dedicated to dismissing the unwashed masses' complaints as overreactions to a few high profile failures (swing, Carlos, swing, slide, Carlos, slide!).  One wonders if this debate may be moot soon, since Beltran realistically may never take the field again in blue and orange. It doesn't really sound like he'd be a shadow of his former self in the outfield with his knees.  Depending who you believe, Beltran is headed for micro-fracture surgery or a heroic return to lead the team to wild card glory while more importantly banishing Gary "Dishonorable Discharge" Matthews Jr. to DFA land. It's cold comfort, but as Forman concludes,

even if Beltran never sees the field again, he still would have been paid $4.5 million for each win, which is not a bargain, but also not a gross overpay.