shout out to The Ropolitans for this pic

Sorry for no posts this morning but it’s been a busy day. So busy that I forget all about the David Wright sit down with the Sports Bloviator. I caught the tail end of the sit down as I traveled back from Brooklyn and I guess you could say it was typical David Wright. All positives and nothing controversial.

It looks like it’s a foregone conclusion that Bengi Molina will be the Mets #1 catcher this coming season. Again this looks to be another move where Omar was told to sit in the corner as the way the Mets have made Molina sit and stew is very un-Mets like. Same with Carlos Delgado who I think the Mets brain trust only went to Puerto Rico to see just to get away from freezing cold weather in NYC. Think about it, if the Mets were strictly an Omar Minaya Production, Molina, Delgado and Joel Piniero would be celebrating their multi year deals by now. Looks like those days are over.

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Art Rust Jr. who was sportstalk radio in this town back in the 1980’s. Rust hosted a three hour call in show on WABC and unlike WFAN he actually talked ALL sports. In fact I had called in to his show because a young Mark Messier came on to talk hockey and agreed to take calls from fans. Rust was a great baseball historian and a huge Highlander fan but his real passion was for The Sweet Science and he had all the big time boxers on his show.  R.I.P. Arthur George.

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Sorry, I’m just standing here wondering what all the hubbub is over Mark McGwire’ admission on his steroid use last night. The best part of the evening was watching the sanctimonious Tom Verducci and Ken Rosenthal not accepting McGwire’s mea culpa. I love how Verducci, Rosenthal and Jon Heyman are now all over McGwire and the rest of the Steroid Sluggers but never confronted them or did any investigative reporting during that era but now they’ve all become holier than thou. Th eonly reporter who spoke up at that time was Steve Wilstein of AP who asked about the bottle of Andro in McGwire’s locker. Too bad MLBN didn’t have him on.  

By the way I still have a few questions for Big Mac than Bob Costas failed to hit on. “Who got you the dope”? “Did it occur to you that this was a Federal crime having illegal narcotics “? Were you willing to pay any price to succeed in the game even if it meant getting arrested and going to jail”? “Who instructed you on how to administer the PED’s”?

I love how the panel on MLB Network was up in arms by McGwire saying he didn’t think the drugs made him better, he said he took them for the sole purpose of helping recover from a string if injuries he suffered from. Sure you can call bullshit on that statement but like Rick Peterson says “In God we trust, all others bring data” in other words, It’s all opinion on how much affect the drugs had on his home run total. That’s not to say I don’t agree with those who feel the PED’s didn’t help him jack up his HR total, it’s just that I can’t prove it.

Last word on this whole situation, I have never been a fan of Tony LaRussa but I will say this for TLR, he is one loyal son of a bitch. He has had McGwire’ pock marked back all these years and still has it.

I’ll take this as good news. Seven Train to Shea quotes a Twitter feed from Ed Price of AOL Fanhouse saying that Carlos Delgado is not moving to well around first base. If the move was strictly Omar’s, Delgado would have been re-signed by the Mets already but it looks like Omar has doesn’t have final say on personnel matters anymore. This off season has not been a typical Omar Minaya off season. The Mets are much more patient, to the point of Mets fans screaming in panic (me included) I guess that’s we are used to, the Omar Way. Let’s face it, if Omar had full autonomy Bengi Moilina would be sitting with a 3yr guaranteed contract right now.

Also on Ed Price’ Twiiter feed he claims Mets are talking 2yr/$15 mil contract for Joel Piniero

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As you know I made reference to Joe Mc Donald proclaiming on PRO BASEBALL CENTRAL last Thursday that the Mets will be a 90+ win team in 2010. His reasoning was that Oliver Perez will revert to his Good Ollie personality. I did say, it was encouraging news that OP, under the urging of both Scott Boras and Carlos Beltran, has spent the off season in Arizona, training hard to lose both the stigma of bring mentality and physically inept to pitch in the big leagues.

I’ve been looking around at the team as it now is constructed and have tried to make the case for 90 wins. It all starts of course with the pitching staff:

#1 Santana 15-17 wins

#2 Pelf/Joel Piniero/Bronson Arroyo/Aaron Harang/Gil Meche 10-12 wins

#3 Pelf/OP/Maine/Doug Davis/Jon Garland 8-10 wins

#4 one of the above at #3  8-10 wins

#5 Maine/Neise/Neve/Holt/Stoner/(Gulp!) Smoltz 8-10 wins

That comes to 49-59 wins from your starting rotation

Now from the seven relievers you figure will be in the pen:

Frankie Rodz

Ryoto Igarashi

Bobby Parnell

Kelvin Escobar

Sean Green

Pedro Feliciano

Lefty to be named later

You figure you can and average of 4 wins from each. That’s an additional 28 wins, brining my projection to 77 to 87 wins.

Now say I leave the bullpen projection alone but I up the ante on the #2 pitcher to 12-14 wins and the #3 to 10-12 wins, that would put the team’ record between 81-91 wins. Of course all this is predicated on the Mets signing one of the remaining free agent pitchers, of which just Joel Piniero is desirable if he comes cheap or can trade for the one of the Arroyo/Harang/Meche troika.

So what do you think? Am I out of mind thinking there is a way the Mets could be a 90 win team and contend? Am I drinking the Omar/Jeffey Kool Aid? Has Joe Mac brainwashed me?  Or am I just tired of freezing my ass off this winter and dying for spring and summer and baseball season? Could be the cold has made me delirious.

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I’ve told my kids, if I start to get crotchety and nasty when I get old they have permission to dump me at the Port Authority and never worry about me again. I don’t think Murray Chass made that deal with his kids.

As you see on the right hand side of this site, I am a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance and I should say a proud member. I am also honored to be a member from the beginning when Daniel Shoptaw, writer of C70 At The Bat (a St Louis Cardinals blog) sent me an e-mail about his idea. I could not write back to him faster to say “thanks for asking me and yes, I’m all in”. It was one of the best moves I’ve made since I started blogging.

The BBA has grown so much between writing, podcasting and having our own SABR chapter that I guess with success comes the slings and arrows of jealousy. That’s where Murray Chass comes in.

Even though he wrote with a pro-Highlander slant, due to being the Highlander beat man for the Times until 1985 when he was bumped up to the National baseball beat. His baseball columns in the NY Times were always must reads. When labor strafe hit baseball, no one had the access and the coverage of the negogation like Chass. He is also in the Baseball Hall of Fame by way of wining the J.G.Taylor Spinks Award in 2003. Chass “retired” from the NY Times in 2008. I put quotation marks on retired because it was more a buy out that a voluntary decision on Chass’ part. Chass was in poor health for awhile and I can sincerely say I am glad he is back to full strength and healthy once again.

But I do have a problem with Chass and that is because he has a problem with me. Well, not just me, but baseball bloggers in particular. The BBA sent out a press release which had a few spelling, math an grammar errors on them. Instead of just hitting the delete button, Chass thought this would an excellent time to prove his point that bloggers are an embarrassment to the written word. He pointed out every grammatical mistake and ridiculed the spelling errors. He laughed  at the BBA because we felt that with Roberto Alomar and Bert Blyleven getting 74.468 % of our votes in the BBA Hall Of Fame, because we rouned the number off to 75 %. Chass berated us for not having basic math skills.

Now, when Daniel sent out the response he received in a e-mail from Chass that made the bloggers of the BBA seem to uneducated buffoons, my first response was to act like an uneducated buffoon. I was ready with a post filled with F-bombs, and disparaging remarks about his employer showing him the door, but one of the best reasons to be a member of the BBA is I was the only uneducated buffoon to act this way.

See, even though Chass has a strong dislike to the folks who make up the BBA because we don’t have a college degree in English or Journalism, or some of the membership write and analyze baseball via Sabermetrics, or the fact that some of us are just fans who have played, coached, or watched baseball our whole lives and have now found a new way to express our love for the game, just like Ol’ Murr. In fact, while old thinkers like Murray Chass are sent to the showers, the NEW kids on the block are getting hired for jobs at websites to show their graphs with pitch f/x, UZR, VOPR BABIP and all the other facts and figures that not only give insight to fans but to front offices all around baseball as well, to that the old fedora, cigar smokin’ writers react to like Dracula to a cross.

The other thing that set the BBA apart is they know how to respond to such slights. As I said, I was ready to go jihad on old Murray, but Daniel Shoptaw said “no” and so did a bunch of other members. What Shoptaw did was send Chass a reply e-mail, thanking him for pointing out the errors in the press release and for making him send out future releases for proof reading by other members of the BBA before the are published. Clear, rational, ADULT behavior but Daniel Shoptaw proved that he is twice the man that Murray Chass is.

Oh by the way Murry, I see you have a website now and I really shouldn’t link to it since you can’t stand me or what I do but I link to your site as a public service to my readers to show what you wrote about the BBA and to hopefully show my readership it’s best to grow old with gracefully.

I apologize for any grammatical mistakes or spelling error in this post. I’m not a writer, I just play one in cyberspace.

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Sorry for the lateness of this post but I’m still trying to get over the shock of last nights Pro Baseball Central and Joe McDonald making his case for the Mets to win at least 90 games next year and at the least make the post season the NL Wild Card team. Yes I think we will start having a Breathalyzer on hand for the next show. Check out the podcast as it was quite entertaining if I say so myself.

John Sickles has published his top 20 Mets prospect list and his #1 is Jennry Mejia. No matter what stories you read about Mejia, they all confirm that Mejia could be a special pitcher and they all worry about the Mets rushing him. Hopefully the new brain trust in the organization can stop the practice of rush prospects through the system and just allow them to work their way up the organizational ladder.

So D-Wright will sit down with the Radio Bloviator next Wednesday. Instead of the Mets holding a Fan Fest so Mets fans can mingle with there team, we get a ride in the WFAN  Hot Air Balloon.    

On February 6^th, the NYC Chapter (known as the Casey Stengel Chapter) of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) will hold their annual meeting at the New York Public Library at 455 5 AVE at W 40 St 6^th floor. The event starts at 10AM and goes to 4PM all for a registration fee of $15. Check out the NYC SABR site and download the press release for more details and for a list of featured speakers and presenters.

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I guess congratulations are in order to Andre Dawson for his election into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The Hawk was a solid baseball player and from what you read, was a very nice guy and it seems as long as you’re a very nice guy to the media, you eventually get in the Hall. That would explain why Albert Belle is no longer on the ballot. Belle was an unbelievable offensive player putting up big numbers and one of the great run producers of his time, but the guy made Ron Artest look stable. It’s not just that Belle was a nasty sumnabitch, I honestly think the reporters covering the teams he played for and the out of town media we’re scared shit of him. The only way for payback is to not just keep in out of the HOF but knock him off the ballot altogether.

The only segment of baseball fans that doesn’t have bad feeling for Robbie Alomar not getting in the HOF, are Mets fans. During the reign of the Alomar disaster in Queens, I was dining in one of my favorite spots, the RF food pavilion at Shea Stadum, when I encounter a guy wearing an ALOMAR 12 uni top. When I mentioned that he was one brave Mets fan to wear that jersey, he told me his was a cousin of Alomar’s. We spoke for while and I ask Robbie’s cuz, “what’s the problem with your cousin” he told me the whole family was stumped. He said Alomar was so happy to be in NYC as there was a lot of family there to keep him happy but the cuz then said “he feels like he can’t do it anymore”  The problem that Mets fan had with Alomar was he was coming here off a strong year in Cleveland .336/.415/.541/.956 20HR 100 RBI 30SB so when the deal was made to come to the Mets, we were farting through silk WHAT AN ACQUISTION!!! But what followed was one of the classic crash and burns of a player in baseball history. All said in done, Alomar should have gone in as a first ballot HOF’er his Mets years aside, he is one of the greatest 2^nd basemen of all time.

Supposedly 5 voters sent back blank ballots, two of which are Jay Mariotti and Lisa Olson of AOL. Mind-boggling!.  I know it’s in vogue to call Mariotti a douche bag but a few years ago, Mariotti did a radio show on the defunct One On One Radio Network (620 AM here in NYC) along with Jim Lytke of the AP. It was one of the better sports radio shows I’ve listened to. Mariotti was not the dickhead he has evolved into today. As for Olson, she has always sent in a blank ballot since becoming eligible to vote. I don’t know what to say about that but why even be a member of the BBWA?   The Hall of Fame would be better off letting bloggers pick the Hall members; at least we’d take it seriously.

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Tonight, tonight, tonight it’s PRO BASEBALL CENTRAL, our first show for the new year. Joe myself and Joe McDonald tonight at 9pmET on Blog Talk Radio as we discuss the Jason Bay signing, the Hall of Fame voting and what will be the next move made by the Mets front office. Our call in line will be open for business so call in and join in the conversation at (646) 595-4462. If you can’t join us live, you can listen to the podcast right  here at Kranepool Society, at our Pro Baseball Central site or at Blog talk Radio   

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As per Brain Costa of the Star-Ledger via Twitter:

Mark your calendars: Mets announce that pitchers and catchers will report to Port St. Lucie on Feb. 18.

thank you to Jessica Burciaga, Playboy’s Miss February 2009 for posing for that pic for this post.

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….oh yeah, where was Jerry Manuel yesterday? Not at the Bay Day ceremonies that’s for sure. How about David Wright? Carlos Beltran? Johan Santana? Alex Cora? (you know  the heart and soul of the Mets), Charlie Samuels? (good thing Samuels wasn’t there he’d have had Bay decked out in a black jersey and the shitty black cap with blue brim. Bad enough Bay wore the snow white jersey and not the pinstripe that we heard was all the rage this winter but he did have the blue hat) but seriously, the manager couldn’t fly in from Cali to greet his new LF’er? Doesn’t D-Wright keep a flop flat down in Gramercy Park? I’m sure the Skill Sets could have splurged for a room and air fare for Beltran and Santana and the wifies for a week end in NYC and appearance at the Bay presser.

If it’s a point where one or two of these guys had prior engagements, then couldn’t you have found a day when either J-Man or D-Wright could be on hand? For Christ sake, Rod Gilbert was there (I guess it was an open bar)

Pat Reily has always said the thing that keeps teams from winning is The Disease of Me and after seeing no one but Omar, Jeffey, Dave the Shyster and the ubiquitous  Jay Horowitz yesterday ad $iti Field, I’d say the Mets org has terminal Disease of Me.

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For as bad as the NY Football Giants season has been, yesterday took some of the sting out of the painful failure, as team owner John Mara, stepped up big time by calling out his coaches and players for a lack of mental and physical toughness and lack of effort. WOW, how strong are those words? Sure the cynic in me says, “John Mara needs to sell his Private Seat Licenses, so this is all a business move” but the Mara family have owned this team since it’s inception in 1925 and Giants have been one of the top teams in the NFL this decade and watching and listening to him he looked legitimately pissed off. 

The way John Mara handled the day after the season is the way an owner of a team that not only disappoints but embarrasses themselves by quitting, and make no mistake the NY Football Giants quit, should. He stood up like a man and articulated that, yes his team suffered injuries but they were not an excuse for not showing up the last half of the season. He acted swiftly by axing way over his head offensive coordinator Bill Sheridan and put every player and coach on notice that if you don’t or  you can’t give him what he wants, then he will go out and find personnel that will. As a Giants fan, I appreciate Mara’s words and action very much.

Contrast John Mara’s words and actions to the stumbling, fumbling, mumble-oid of an owner like Jeffey Skill Sets who acted mealy mouthed and clueless in his season post-mortem of the season to forget. There is a reason why the Mets brand is laughed at through out baseball and it starts at the top.

Speaking of our favorite baseball team, I brought out my pinstripe uni top for toady’s Bay Day celebration. In fact my co-workers have wished me happy Bay Day when I reported for duty. I’ve become a charity case, as even the Highlander fans have stop teasing me and feel sorry for me. I hate being a charity case or a baby face, I’d rather be a heel.

There are rumors that the Mets could trade Rogers Castillo for Mike Lowell. What would the Bosox want with Rogers Castillo when they have Dustin Pedroia and Marco Scutaro? Lowell would be a nice fit for the Mets, as he’s a respected vet with 2 World Series rings ( as you know I’m a major proponent of bringing in winners to this team)  I just wonder if he can play some 1^st base and spell David Wright sat 3^rd base.

From reading some of the stories, if Carlos Delgado can stand up straight, the Mets would love to bring him back for a 1 year incentive laden deal. That’s why it seems the Mike Lowell talk is interesting as a platoon of Lowell/ Delgado could be what the Mets are looking at for 1^st base in 2010.

The details of the Jason Bay contract are as follows:

$8.5 mil bonus and $6.5 mil salary for 2010

$16mil for the next 3 years + 4^th yr option

Full No Trade Clause.

Not a killer contract, now the question is this. I have a MILLEDGE 44 pro uni top. Do I go and have the MILLEDGE taken off and add BAY? Your thoughts please?

Waiting on the Bay presser. I’ll be commenting on Twitter during the presser.

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