As first reported by Mike Silva of NY Baseball Digest, the NY Mets have signed LHP Tim Byrdak to a minor league deal. Byrdak and Taylor Tankersley will compete for the LOOGY role for the Mets left vacant by the loss of Perpetual Pedro Feliciano.

For his career, Byrdak has been quite effective against left handed hitters with a line of .202/.296/.380. Before last season he was a predominantly ground ball pitcher but since 2008 his GB/FB ratio has gone from 1.10 to 0.93 to .054 last season. Becoming a fly ball pitcher should help Byrdak working at Citi Field but as long as he pitches against left handed hitters only.  Right handed hitters seem to find a base open frequently with Byrdak proven by a .400 OBA fuel mostly by walks.

If the Highlanders had signed Byrdak, I bet one of their more studious bloggers would make a case for his Hall of Fame candidacy. By the way, and keep this on the downlow PLEASE!!!!! I have been in constant contact with Bronx Bastards President Branch Randy Rickey Levine about trading for Ollie Perez to fill the Highlander rotation.  I took Cliff Lee’s Baseball-Reference page and put Ollie’s name and info on it and Levine was quite impressed. Please, please keep this between you, me and the lamppost, don’t let this info out, we are very close to an announcement.

The Mets have really stepped up their community involvement this winter, on Wednesday the held Citi Field Kids and on Thursday they announced the opening of the Mets Starlight Site Care Room at New York Hospital in Flushing which will help children with chronic and life threating diseases with their treatments. While Terry Collins, Josh Thole and Jose Reyes were at NY Hospital, R.A. Dickey, Dillon Gee, Bobby Parnell and Mike Pelfrey went to the FDNY Training Center on Randalls Island. The players traded in their double knits for bunker wear and went through some fire fighting drills. Parnell and Gee should have had an advantage here as both their dads are fire fighters. MediaGoon has some great pics and video of these events posted on Mets Police. I want to make a t-shirt with that pic of Jeffey Skill Sets in his bunker gear.

When Chris Young signed his deal with the Mets, before it could be official he had to go through the ritual of drinking the sacred Sandy Alderson Kool-Aid from the Tug McGraw chalice (the one Mets artifact that Charlie Samuels didn’t pilfer and sell on eBay) “Do you believe in the NY Mets”? asked Alderson, I DO IDO responded Young. “Do you renounce Philadelphia, Atlanta, Florida and Washington as teams that are superior to the Mets”? Alderson questioned, YES!!!!!!! Your excellency YES!!!!! Cried out Young, and with that Alderson raised the chalice to the sky and said “In the name of Seaver, Hodges and the Holy Joan Payson, received thy gifts as You Gotta Believe” and with that Young took a sip of the Kool-Aid and felt a rush throughout his body and suddenly his right hand, like it had been possessed, started striking the front of his thigh violently.

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I know it’s all the rage to kill David Wright for his lack of clutchness lately but after checking out Baseball Reference, it looks like that anger is misplaced. Wright has a line of .290/.385/.581 with RISP. The other three big hitters for the Mets haven’t come close to the numbers Wright has put up.

Jason Bay with his .250/.370/.389 w/RISP has not been the run producer the club felt he would be. The real busts in the clutch have been Jeff Francouer and Jose Reyes-.200/.237/.286 w/RISP- but in Reyes’ defense he has been misplaced as a #3 hitter. It was an experiment by Jerry Manuel and I think we can say it’s a failed one and it’s time to put Reyes back in the 1hole. Frenchy has been a total disaster when it comes to getting a hit in the clutch as his .200/.295/.257 line shows. That bubbly personality of Frenchy’s will get him by for so long.

Wright it seems is a victim again of non-support in the lineup for the second season in a row, with Wright down in the 5 spot, most times Reyes and Bay, hitting in front of Wright, they have not been getting the job done putting all the pressure on Wright. It’s time to abandon the Reyes in the 3 hole and move Wright back to that spot.

Jerry Manuel’ patients has turned to stubbornness and needs to shake the lineup up. Oh by the way, Carlos Beltran will lace up a pair of running shoes today but its anyone’s guess if he will actually run in them though.   

Now that Chris Carter has been recalled from Buffalo, as Frank Catalanotto gets his release (how in good conscious does Manuel put GMJ up to bat, it’s like J-Man is shoving the shityness of Mathews in Omar’s face, “You won’t cut him so I’ll keep playin’ him.”) This guy is very happy The Animal is up.

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  21 days until pitchers and catchers

It looks like Fernando Tatis is retuning for a third season with the Mets. Please hold your applause until the end, thank you. If you look at the offensive numbers on Tatis’ Baseball-Reference page you might be inclined to say this is a good deal for the Mets.  I’ll go as far as say I’m happier with Tatis coming back just for the fact that it means that Carlos Delgado’ career as a Met is done.  Last night on Twitter I was angry about the Tatis return but by this morning I’m more, “eh, whatever”. I’m tired of ranting about the off season and the mish-mosh ways of the organization, that has both the fan base and media baffled, I guess it’s time we just let it play out, we’ll have all summer to scream and yell.   

Look at this from John Smoltz point of view, what was good for Pedro Martinez could be good for him as well. Why sign with a team this early when you can workout on your own, play golf, even do some TV if you like and then wait to see the pitching landscape during the season and make the best deal you can.

As much as I can’t stand the way ownership and the front office fuck up and the on field personnel play like amateurs, there is no way I could ever, ever root against the Mets. I don’t care if a loss meant that the Jeffey, Omar, and J-Man all get the boot, I would never and have never rooted against the Mets. If I didn’t root for the Cincinnati Reds when Tom Seaver was traded and pitched against the Mets, I’m sure as hell not going to root against them now. Root against the Mets? Never in a million fucking years !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t understand J-Man saying that Fernando Nieve is the front runner for the 5^th spot in the pitching rotation? Not to get to worked up over the 5^th spot (when spots 2-4 are not exactly the Rocks of Gibraltar) but where does Jon Niese or Nelly Figs fit with this team? How about Bradley Holt or Dillon Gee? Why is J-Man so against competition? Why am I full of questions?

No matter what happens this season, I’m rooting hard for my boy Daniel Murphy to put up big time numbers. No one on this team works as hard as Murphy and I just hope his hard work pays off and he just hangs in there until Wally Backman gets the job with the big club. Am I a Daniel Murphy fanboy? Yes. He is everything we Mets fans want in a player. Shows up for mini-camp when he’s not required to (Jose? Jose Reyes? Are you here? Come out, come out ,wherever you are!) will be the first guy at St Lonesome waiting for the gates to open for spring training (it will be neck and neck with him and D-Wright) and is working hard to improve at the fourth positions the Mets have assigned him to. How can you as a Mets fan not root for this kid?    

No Pro Baseball Central tonight but I will be on the with Kenrick Thomas and his Real Sports Talk Radio Show on Blog Talk Radio tonight at 10PM ET.

There is a group NYRNation that is planning a FIRE GLEN SATHER rally outside of Madison Square Garden on Sunday March 7^th  at 5PM before the Rangers-Sabres game. It is getting very ugly at MSG as the Rangers find themselves in the middle of 10 teams look at the 7 and 8 spot in the NHL playoffs. In fact the Rangers are a mirror of the Mets. Underachivers, Bad Management, Clueless Owner!

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Lift a Rheingold today Mets fans it’s our brithday:

The new National League entry is New York is officially named the “Mets.” Not Metropolitans, just Mets. At a ceremony at the Savoy Hilton, owner Joan Payson swings a bottle of champagne and after three unsuccessful whacks turns the job over to a waiter who uses a bottle opener. The “Mets” was the choice among the 10 finalists: Continentals, Burros, Mets, Skyliners, Skyscrapers, Bees, Rebels, NYBs, Avengers, and Jets. The original list was 644 names from 9,613 suggestions. The Metropolitans nickname had been used by the New York American Association team in the 1880s.

via baseball-reference.com/bullpen

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I use Baseball-Reference so much that I felt an obligation to sponsor a page on the site as there is no better site for baseball stats so I found two former Mets that had no page sponsor so I grabbed them:

Ken Boswell

 

 

 

Duffy Dyer

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