Metsblog has a link from Neil Best of Newsday stating that former Texas Rangers and current San Diego Chargers radio play by play man Josh Lewin, is the favorite to replace Wayne Hagin in Mets radio booth.

Hagin just never clicked with Mets fans, myself amongst them, as he had that generic radio announcers voice and always seemed to be a second or two behind the action on the field. The Hagin/ Howie Rose partnership just never seemed like it meshed with Howie being “one of us” and Hagin not having a Mets or NYC connection.

Lewin is a curious choice as it seems he left the Rangers due to his other commitments of doing baseball on FOX Saturday Baseball and his gig with the Chargers. Lewin enjoys tossing out a lot pop culture quotes during broadcasts to the point it becomes forced and a distraction. Being that Lewin was born in Rochester NY and grew up in the Boston area, he has knowledge of what the East Coast/NY fan is looking for in a sports broadcast so this could be a very interesting hire by the Mets.

With Lewin having Sports talk radio show experience as well maybe he could add working Mets Extra and taking phone calls or who knows him and Howie could take phone calls during games.

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Dress the way you please and put your mind at ease
It’s a city known for its freedom
Cycles shining bright break the silence of the night
Inhibitions, no, you don’t need them, no,no,no

After watching last night’s Giants victory over the Packers, I sat in stunned silence to the point my son was looking for a mirror to shove under my nose. I cannot believe this amazing run that Big Blue is on because at the beginning of December all of us Giants fans were ready to clean house from the head coach to the defensive coordinator to the entire defensive secondary, we all felt it was time to move in a new direction, so what happened? First came the Green Bay Packers into Giants Stadium with a pristine 11-0 record and left with a win and with the Giants in their head, the 2 wins over the Cowboys, both must wins to win NFC East and the win against the blowhard Jets that wasn’t business but personal.

Along with the front four of the defense getting healthy and coming together and making life miserable for opposing QB’s which in turn took pressure of the DB’s add in Eli Manning and his potent offense and the circle the wagons mantra of Coach Coughlin, who has done a marvelous job of keeping this team together and focused, you get a team that none of the other 3 teams left standing want to play.

Some observations on yesterday’s game:

As usual the officiating in this game was beyond suck and blows to embarrassing and corrupt. The best thing is I can call the Bill Leavy and his crew all the nasty names I want and Roger Goodell can’t fine me. HA! HA! Fuck you Commissioner

The roughing the passer call on Osi Umenyiora was of course ridiculous but what was worse were the three or four times Eli Manning was hit after throwing a pass and never got a late hit call.

Its games like yesterdays that makes it easier for me to not attend an NFL game in person.  It’s bad enough that after every possession there are three minutes of commercials and again when a player goes down with injury but the worst of all is the length of time it take the NFL to conduct a replay of a challenge call.  If it takes you more than a minute to decide if the call on the field was correct or not then just go with the official call on the field. Replay was wrong on the Greg Jennings fumble and was ignored when spotting a run by Ahmad Bradshaw that could have given the Giants a first down and can we stop with reviewing EVERY touchdown call already? The NFL should take a page from the NHL and have replay officials in a room with monitors and have them make the calls swiftly and correctly.

There are two Eli Manning’s. One is the Huck Finn “aw shucks” guy in interviews and the other is hardcore assassin on the football field. Eli Manning is everything I wished David Wright would be.

Brandon Jacobs better have the game of his life next week because other than the TD he scored when the Packers gave up, he did jack shit in this game.

On the other hand Ahmad Bradshaw proved again to be one of the unsung heroes as he dashed across the field to get out of bounds before the half, setting up the Eli to Hakeem Hicks Hail Mary TD. I bet that bone in his foot is still broken as well.

All the praise the defensive front four has gotten is well deserved but how about sending some praise Michael Boley’s way as well for his calling the D schemes and getting the D in synch.

John Mara is loyal as his old man was (which at times cost the Giants back in the Allie Sherman days) so win or lose, Tom Coughlin’s job security was not an issue and now with this run, it’s safe to say TC will coach the G-Men as long as he wants. My prediction is TC will stay on 2 more seasons then Sean Payton will be Giants HC.

CAN’T WAIT UNTIL SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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I hope you all have been following R.A. Dickey’s climb up Mt Kilimanjaro via his blog post on the NY Times. Dickey and his group which contain Mets bullpen catcher Dave Racaniello and pitcher Kevin Slowey, were successful in reaching the summit of the mountain which is chronicled wonderfully by Dickey in his latest post.

Dickey has a book coming out in March and I must say after meeting Dickey and reading his dispatches from Mt. Kilimanjaro, this book will not only be a best seller but I bet it will be one of those must have in your library kind of book as well.

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David Wright held his Vegas Night charity event in Virginia Beach last night and gave some quotes to the media about the upcoming season.  I don’t know if this means much of anything but Wright it seems, has spent a lot of time back home in Virginia that I can remember in an off season. He was at Citi Field for the unveiling of the new uni’s but since then there hasn’t been much site of Wright around town.

Wright seems already agitated about hearing about trade rumors and being quizzed on a daily basis about his next baseball destination. He’s quoted as seeing Jose Reyes getting grilled about relocation last season and he doesn’t want to go through that. I wonder what that says about Wright? Maybe I’m being too critical of Wright but maybe it’s time he grew up and realized he’s not going to be a Met 4 Life.

Doesn’t Wright see the handwriting on the wall? First, he plays for a team whose owner is like a co-worker who lives pay check to pay check and for a GM who has no emotional ties to him. Just like the GM had none to Jose Reyes. He will make $15 mil this season and has a $16mil team option for 2013 with a club buyout of $1mil. You know how many bargain basement pitchers you can buy for $16 mil?

Wright should take a page from Reyes and Carlos Beltran, especially Beltran who knew his Mets days were numbered and used it as motivation to bounce back and get sent to a contender. Wright needs to get in the same mind set, stop worrying about being traded (for Christ sake Babe Ruth, was dealt away) and not worry about the Mets and just worry about himself.

Between the Wilpon’s money woes and Sandy Alderson’s distain for long term contracts, it’s easy to see that these are the final days of David Wright as a member of the NY Mets. Is it sad? Sure it is. We all wanted to see Wright play his full career as a Met with a couple of championships and Hall of Fame credentials on his resume but neither is going to happen. Maybe the fan base needs to grow up a bit as well.

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Well, Freddy Skill Sets came pretty close to being truthful with the fan base when he was interviewed by Brain Costa of the WSJ. Fred was in Arizona (wow Bolt goes to Phoenix?) for the quarterly owners meeting.  When asked about his financial struggle and the toll it is taking on him, the Mets organization and its fan base, Freddy Sez:

“How could anybody deny that it’s been a challenging time?” Wilpon said. “But I came from nothing. I meet the challenges. So does Saul and Jeff and our whole family. We’re meeting the challenges and I think we’ll be fine.”

“I think we’ll be fine”? Really?  How so Freddy ? What’ch ya keepin’ on the down low from us? The new minority shares are a band aid on a gaping wound but you know what, maybe the Skill Sets luck is changing as his Guardian Angel, Bud Selig is staying on for 2 more years as baseball czar and Wilpon enabler and as always has Freddy’s back:

“He’s been a great owner,” Selig said. “Loves his team. He’s everything you’d want in a local owner. He’s had some economic problems, not caused by himself, and I have a lot of faith in him that he’s working his way through them.”

And he’s oh, so good,

And he’s oh, so fine,

And he’s oh, so healthy,

In his body and his mind.

He’s a well respected man about town,

Doing the best things so conservatively.

Then Freddy was asked about Jose Reyes and his thoughts on Reyes:

“Reyes was 17 years old when I met him,” Wilpon said. “He spoke pretty good English at that time, too. He said to me, ‘Can you give me some advice?’ I said, ‘Yeah, never wipe that smile off your face.’”

Humm, “never wipe that smile off your face” looks like Freddy eats at Wo Hop like I do. Thankfully for Reyes’ sake Freddy didn’t hit him up with “Kid, I know a guy who can make you rich beyond belief”

Here is a nice picture on a rainy, windy, cold New York afternoon

Years before we would get to the 50^th Anniversary of the NY Mets, Dana Brand was all pumped up about putting together a symposium at Hofstra University where he taught, on the history of the Mets. As you all know Dana passed away last year but his dream of having a conference at Hofstra will become a reality on April 26-28. Please check out all the details here and hopefully we can all meet up at Hofstra that weekend and celebrate not just the legacy of the NY Mets but of Dana Brand as well.

Steve Popper, the Mets beat writer for the Bergen Record is leaving the Mets beat and will become the Records man at MSG following the NY Knickerbockers. Not only is this a big loss for Mets fans but a huge loss for Mets bloggers like myself and other bloggers who have had the privilege of meeting Steve at various team functions. Many of the beat writers and media folk won’t even give us a response to a hello but Popper (as well as Adam Rubin and Kevin Kernan ) has always been friendly to us and has been gracious in sharing his thoughts with us about the Mets. Good luck Steve and thanks.

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I had a thought this morning while I was reading two interesting sports stories the fish wraps , which organization was in worse shape, the NY Mets or the NY Jets? In my estimation, it’s the Jets.

I put the question out there in Twitter-land and no one in my time line agreed with me, in fact I got a lot of “The Islanders are worst of all” which may be true (see DiPietro, Rick franchise wrecking contract) but with the stories today that the Jets players feel that QB Mark Sanchez is a lazy piece of shit and has a sense of entitlement and the Wilpon’s look to be getting a cash infusion of $100mil with the sale of minority shares in the club, it made we wonder which team is worse shape?

The responses I received all dealt with money, Woody Johnson’s got it and Fred Wilpon doesn’t, I can’t argue with that.  While the Jets are definitely the more monetarily rich team the Mets are wealthier organizationally.

As much as Mets fans focus (obsess?) over the financial failures of the Skill Sets, the situation would be much worse if the Mets had a Mike Tannenbaum/Rex Ryan first line of management than the stronger Sandy Alderson/Terry Collins front line.

How Mike Tannenbaum escapes the Jets fans wrath is beyond me. Tannenbaum’ highlight in his resume is that he is a capologist , which means he’s an expert on the NFL salary cap as a GM in charge of putting a team together he’s not a good mixoligist, and please spare me the two AFC Championship games the Jets have gone to, let’s look at the big picture, after this season as a Jets fan can you truly feel your team is headed in the right direction? I didn’t think so.

We Mets fans know this sale of minority shares is just a blip on the Skill Set financial failure radar. If anything, it buys them some time to pay off some loans that are due or past due such as the loan from MLB with a little leftover capital to bring in a pitcher or two. If you are going to have a payroll that keeps dropping like the temperature on a February night, you would want to have a guy running your team that not only has the experience with this kind of situation but has been successful at it like Sandy Alderson.

See the Jets were the team with the high expectations and the head coach who spends more time bloviating than getting a handle on the pulse of his locker room. Terry Collins learned from his past failures as a field boss and last season did as good a job with a team that was hit by injury and without strong reinforcement from the minor league system than anyone could have hoped for. Ryan could take a lesson from Collins on how to reign in a clubhouse.  Ryan has always been looked at as the ultimate players coach but what he truly is, is a coach who doesn’t know how to instill discipline or to be the adult in the room.

Woody Johnson seems to be suffering from the same malaise that the Skill Sets suffered from during the Madoff halcyon days when the cash flowed like water; he and his Jets brain trust have no clue on how to spend it. Just as the Mets were awful at building their organization the right way, through player development, the Jets operate the same way, when you bring in guys like Santonio Holmes for big money that you can’t get rid of and Plaxico Burress another bad attitude and team wrecker as we Giants fans saw  when he refused to work with Eli Manning during the off season at OTA’s and is not a franchise receiver, you find yourself in a deep hole just like the Mets used be in when they would reward players with big money for long terms for performances they achieved with other teams.

That’s why the Skill Sets not having money to spend may turn out to be a blessing for the Mets organization as the philosophy of the team has gone back to what had made the Mets good in the 60’s and 80’s, player development. I know many Mets fans don’t have the patience for a rebuilding program but quite frankly it’s been overdue.

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Boy I am going miss Rangers-Flyers 24/7 now that the Winter Classic is over and the last of the four episodes has aired.  What I’ll miss the most is the John Tortorella between period’s motivational speeches (My co-workers are worn out with me screaming “Fucking screw it on straight will ya” but I have fallen in love with that phrase) and the way Coach Torts uses the video to show mistakes and make the necessary correction in a group setting. In this past episode, Torts brought the whole Rangers team to a conference room at the hotel they were staying at in Sunrise, Florida for their game against the Panthers. He went over missed assignments and sloppy postioning during their win against the Washington Caps. The funny part was when the projector went out and video coordinator Jerry Dineen found himself in the crosshairs of the Wrath of Torts but what I thought about as I was watching this scene was “do baseball teams use their video capabilities like that”? And if they don’t what wouldn’t they?

The Mets were one of the worst defensive teams in baseball last season and also very much deficient in knowing the proper fundamentals of playing the game. Wouldn’t you think, before a game or even before a series, a film study like what Coach Torts does or what coaches in football and basketball do as well, work in baseball? Especially in spring training?

One of the biggest fudi faux pas that the Mets suffered last year was the inability by anyone on the roster to lay down a bunt. As much as hands on practice of bunting should be a stable of this coming spring training in St. Lonesome, a video of those offending who be bunters from last year would also be a great learning tool to point out the flaws in the technique of the batter/bunter.  Same with base running to show the proper way to get a lead of a base and to show the proper way to get a secondary lead. On defense how many times have we seen cut off men overthrown to or missed completely? A picture tells a thousand words.

Let’s face it, this 2012 Mets team is going to need to find an edge somewhere when trying to compete in the NL East, maybe better usage of their video system by Terry Collins and his coaching staff is the first step

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When it comes to the Skill Sets financial situation it seems we Mets fans are better off ignoring what they say and instead focus on what they do. From the outstanding reporting of Eno Sarris of Amazin’ Avenue,  we discovered that the Skill Sets have hired  CRG Partners , a firm that works with businesses swimming in red ink and tries to either help them turnaround their business or it they are too far gone, file for bankruptcy. From reading the story, it looks like the Skill Sets are ready to be made comfortable for the inevitable, their loss of the Mets.

Sure, as Mets fans we should be rejoicing that the end of the Wilpon/Katz reign of ownership is closer to a conclusion than ownership as led on, and that has been the primary problem with the Skill Sets, their inability to be truthful with their fan base. If there is one thing indisputable about the Mets fans base, it is loyal and forgiving but it you take their kindness for weakness, you will feel their wrath. I truly believe if Fred Wilpon came to Mets fans with honesty over  the  grave financial situation that has alter severely the way the Mets have done business, instead of the “keep moving nothing to see here, we’re doing great ” deny, deny, deny spin, he would have had the backing of the fan base in trying to keep the team in his and his families stewardship, instead the constant false reports of selling minority shares, or tickets selling like “hot cakes” , or reports of a payroll north of $100 mil with money left for taking on a big contract for a pennant run which in realty is a payroll struggling to reach $90m and the only players signing are non-descript bush leaguers grateful for employment. No one ever learns, the cover up is always worse than the crime.

So due to the disrespect of the Mets fans intelligence, we have a mob with pitch forks and torches at the ready to run the Skill Sets out of Queens. One silver lining in all this though is the emergence of the of writers like Sarris and Howard Megdal, who dig and do the dirty work to bring Mets fans the truth behind the shell game being run at Citi Field. 

I wonder if the news that Bank of America has put notice on small businesses they lend money to that they are calling in the loans on those businesses they feel is a bad risk.  Mets have just taken out a $40 mil note from BOA, what would happen if that loan was recalled?

As much as we all want the Skill Sets out of the way and a new owner with deep pockets to take over our beloved Mets, how can we as a fan base be happy with all this financial bullshit that has had a negative effect on our beloved baseball team? My wanting the Wilpon’s out of the owner’s box at Citi Field is not due to personal malice, it’s due to the destruction of the core of my favorite baseball team. I don’t want to care about the Wilpon’s financial straights but I have to as it has an adverse effect on something I love, The New York Mets. That pisses me off to no end.

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When the Mets off season got under way one of the position I wanted to see an upgraded was center field. I had seen enough of Angel Pagan and it seems Sandy Alderson felt the same way. I was intrigued by Coco Crisp thinking he would be a nice cheap alternative to man the less spacious tundra of the center of the Citi Field outfield.  Alderson felt the better man for the job was Andres Torres, a great glove less than potent bat outfielder who came with RHP Ramon Ramirez to the Mets from the Giants for Angel Pagan.

After reading that Crisp re-signed with the A’s for 2yrs/$14 mil, a year and cash figure that quite frankly stunned me, I went over to Fan Graphs to look at a comparison of both players. 

There isn’t that much of a difference offensively between the two players that would make one about $5 mil better than the other. Crisp will make $7mil a year while Torres made $2.2 mil last year and is under team control for two more seasons.  So even with a raise to say, $3mil for Torres, having him over Crisp in the Mets outfield is major plus for the Mets.

Crisp, 32 years old, has a lifetime .264/.314/.379 with an ISO of .115 in 583 plate appearances.  Torres, 34 years old has a lifetime .221/.312/.330 with an ISO of .109 in 398 plate appearances. We are not talking offensive juggernauts here. Crisp is more the base stealer than Torres swiping 49 bags in his big league career to 19 for Torres. Both players walks rates are close Crisp take a base on balls 7.0% of his plate appearances to Torres’ 10.6 % rate. Torres K’s too much at 23.9 % while Crisp is more disciplined at 11.1 %. 

Back in 2010, Torres had a fine season putting up a line of .268/.343/.479 with 16 HR 43 2B and 63 RBI for the World Champion San Francisco Giants. The last real good offensive season that Crisp has had was back in 2005. So the odds are much better of Torres giving the Mets a bounce back season than Crisp putting up big numbers.

Crsip’ defense has been in decline the last couple of years whereas Torres has continued to play a stellar centerfielder.

So for a difference of say $5mil, who made the better deal, Billy Beane by signing Crisp or Sandy Alderson dealing for Torres? It looks like advantage Alderson to me especially is Ramirez is a decent reliever then this deal could be a huge positive for the Mets.

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Tomorrow at Citi Field,  the New York Mets will conducted a winter blood drive. Between the hours of 10AM to 5PM at the Caesar’s Club. Those you do step up and give blood will receive a voucher for pair of tickets to a select  April Mets game at Citi Field and a 15 % discount on merchandise at the Mets Team Store.

Fans can enter the ballpark via Hodges VIP with complimentary parking available in Lot G on 126^th Street off Roosevelt.

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