Oh God

Because nothing is less relevant to “the greater good” than batting .500:

But Manuel also said he was confident Reyes wouldn’t resist a change because “it would be best for the team.” And a significant portion of what Manuel intends to preach to his players this spring involves putting the team before the individual. He said, “The game takes precedent over individuals stats,” and variations on that theme several times.

The manager even went so far as to suggest a player who goes hitless in four at-bats but does the “little things” to help the team in one game might be rewarded the following day and have a better chance to play than a teammates who had two hits in four at-bats but did nothing to enhance the greater good. Manuel called it “kind of a ticklish situation” and noted, “We have to applaud and celebrate the little things.”

He made a point to say he didn’t believe his players behaved selfishly on the field last season “to a point that it stood out.” But now, with the Rays’ “9=8” mantra resonating throughout the game and evidence that the approach has worked well for Mike Scioscia’s Angels teams, Manuel indicated ways to enhance his players’ selflessness do exist. He said he intends to emphasize that.

“There’ll be a lot of conversations,” he said.

Full article here.

-sadfatman

Shoes

Is it just me, or do the guards take two seconds too long to get between the attacker and the heads of state?  (Well, if the gray-suited “journalist” who’s seated right next to him is really just a journalist.)  Not so worried about Bush, but this is the time when they should be practicing for protecting Obama.

Mets 2009

GM Omar Minaya, signed through 2012, club options for 2013, 2014

FM Jerry Manuel, signed through 2010, club option for 2011

under Mets control and on the 40

Long-Term Deals

SP Johan Santana, signed through 2013 at $22M/year, club option for 2014

3B David Wright, signed through 2012 at $12M/year, club option for 2013

CF Carlos Beltran, signed through 2011 at $18.5M/year

CL Francisco Rodriguez, signed through 2011 at $12M/year

2B Luis Castillo, signed through 2011 at $6M/year

SS Jose Reyes, signed through 2010 at $7M/year, club option for 2011

Can Be FA After 2009

1B Carlos Delgado, signed for 2009 at $16M

RP Billy Wagner, signed for 2009 at $11M, club option for 2010

C Brian Schneider, signed for 2009 at $5M

RP Scott Schoeneweis, signed for 2009 $4M

OF Endy Chavez, signed for 2009 at $2M

OF Fernando Tatis, signed for 2009 at $2M

C Ramon Castro, signed for 2009 at $2M

UT Marlon Anderson, signed for 2009 at $1M

RP Duaner Sanchez arb-eligible

Long-Term Control

RP Pedro Feliciano 4 (arb) through 2010

P Aaron Heilman 4 (arb) through 2010

OF Ryan Church 3 (arb) through 2011

SP John Maine 3 (arb) through 2011

P Ambiorix Burgos 2 through 2012

C Robinson Cancel 1 through 2013

OF Angel Pagan 1 through 2013

SP Mike Pelfrey 1 through 2013

P Joe Smith 1 through 2013

P Jason Vargas 1 through 2013

1B Mike Carp <1 through 2014

OF Nick Evans <1 through 2014

P Brandon Knight <1 through 2014

P Eddie Kunz <1 through 2014

P Carlos Muniz <1 through 2014

UT Daniel Murphy <1 through 2014

P Jonathon Niese <1 through 2014

P Bobby Parnell <1 through 2014

IF Argenis Reyes <1 through 2014

P Brian Stokes <1 through 2014

as-is roster

Lineup

SS Reyes S

CF Beltran S

3B Wright R

1B Delgado L

RF Church L

LF Murphy L

2B Castillo S

C Schneider L

Bench

C Castro R

UT Anderson L

IF Reyes S

OF Chavez L

OF Evans R

OF Tatis R

Rotation

SP Santana L

SP Maine R

SP Pelfrey R

SP Niese L

SP Stokes R

Bullpen

RP Sanchez R

RP Feliciano L

RP Heilman R

RP Smith R

RP Schoeneweis L

CL Rodriguez R

Not in Majors

RP Wagner L

P Knight R

P Burgos R

P Kunz R

P Parnell R

P Muniz R

P Vargas L

C Cancel R

OF Pagan S

1B Carp L

NRI Invites

P Bostick L

P Figueroa R

IF Green

C Rivera

Analysis:

The Mets now have a core of five really excellent players locked up through 2011, some averageness, and some ass.  The biggest need at present is obviously SP, so I’m hoping they make a play for Lowe.  They’ll have to sign at least one FA SP no matter what, I would think.  Important decisions:

1) How good an SP can they sign?

2) Do they make an effort to bring in an additional mid-rotation SP via FA or trade, or are they comfortable letting Niese and whoever fight it out for the 5th slot?

3) Do they try to upgrade an outfield corner?  Church, Murphy, Tatis, etc. look a lot better as 3rd outfielders than 2nd.  They seem unlikely to go after a big name, but I keep hearing this Raul Ibanez talk.

4) Do they try to upgrade second base?  Perhaps by signing Orlando Hudson and eating Castillo’s contract?

5) Do they try to upgrade catcher?  Perhaps by signing Jason Varitek and trading either Schneider or Castro?

6) Do they need another bullpen acquisition, or are they banking on bounceback years from at least a couple of guys who used to be useful pitchers?

I’d prefer to allocate resources to get Lowe, another RP, and Hudson.  The corner OF could be a problem, but it’s also where the young players (including Fernando Martinez) have the greatest chance of working out, so they should probably cross their fingers and hope that happens while addressing other needs.  It’s too difficult to get reliable C production; might as well stick it out with the platoon.  The bullpen is overcrowded; Heilman is probably the one to get traded, but there are a lot of guys who could be useful if the acquisition of a good setup man lets them work more in specialist roles.  My biggest worry about this plan of action is still the rotation, since there’s no guarantee Pelfrey and Maine won’t decide to suck, but it’s unlikely that they’d be able to bring in Lowe and someone else good.  Eh.

Nosey Parker

I’m pretty sure CNN’s Campbell Brown has the narrowest nose in the world.  It’s one of the many reasons I’ve been rewatching this.

-sadfatman

Mets’ O

Surprising (to me) fact:  the Mets are second in the league in runs.  It’s not a fluke, either; BP has them with the 5th-highest EQA in the majors.  It’s also surprising that they’re the only MLB team with only four hitters who have >350 plate appearances: Wright, Reyes, Beltran, and Delgado have all played a full season (>550 PA), but next on the list is Brian Schneider at 328.  The big four all have EQAs between .291 and .313; when half your lineup is playing every day and hitting that well, I guess you can rely on a ragtag rabble of role-players to fill in the gaps, which is what the Mets have done.  Schneider and Castillo have been surprisingly unterrible, Church and Tatis have had a couple of good months, and there you go.  Picking up Delgado’s 2009 option ($16M vs. a $4M buyout) is starting to look like a no-brainer; who’d have thunk that a couple of months ago?

I should harshly judge some stuff to make this post relevant to the blough, so I’ll look through the bottom of the EQA stats to find some ass: KC SS Tony Pena has the worst RARP in baseball, for those of you who were wondering, although he did pitch an inning and a third this year, making him a little bit cool.  Washington SP Jay Bergmann has 40 PAs and has made 40 outs, which I would think would be pretty hard.  They suck.  Damn it, I just looked Bergmann up on ESPN only to find that Jim Baker has already done a whole thing on him.

Sarah Palin’s entry at Chickipedia is boring, but Chickipedia has the cool feature (sort of like Baseball Reference) where you can click on a girl’s measurements to see “similar chicks.”  Bristol’s page isn’t up yet, unfortunately.

-sadfatman

please consider side-hugs only

Lazy post; I was going to go ahead and write a whole mock screed against hugging — especially given all those Speedo-riffic Michael Phelps celebrations — but I’m just going to post links and give you the highlights.

This is a good introduction to the topic of girls hugging guys, giving a range of opinions from VGrace’s “I do not hug guys. I personally feel uncomfortable when I do it. I think I did it once in 6th grade and I have never done it since. Its weird” to ChasingmyDreams’s “oh my word. I see nothing wrong with it. Sometimes, i hug my guy friends, and they literally pick me up off the ground, hahaha. I need hugs and i love huge hugs!!”

Here is Susie Shellenberger’s take on the issue.  Seriously, spend some time in the Dear Susie archives.  You won’t be disappointed.

We don’t, of course, want acceptance of hugging to lead to extremes like this.

-sadfatman

Hithlympics

So right before a swimming final, NBC flash up some names of record-holders or previous winners or something, and they just did it for one of the women’s races, and one of the names was Misty Hyman.  Misty Hyman!  Oh man, that takes you back, eh?  Eh?  Her Wikipedia entry tells a good story about her screaming OH, MY GOD! over and over when she won her gold medal in 2000.  Sexy!  I like that the entry has those words in bold, too.  Misty is a hot name.  Plus, her name is an anagram for “Misty May, N. H.,” and Misty May went to, or claims she went to, Newport Harbor high school.  Coincidence?

How skanky is it that May has a tramp-stamp of Jason Kidd’s uniform number?  I bet that makes Matt Treanor give it to her all the harder.  That career .237/.324/.319 line must leave him with a lot of pent-up rage.

-sadfatman

Eddie Kudzu

Here, until it’s fixed at any rate, you can see Howie Rumberg’s humorous (no doubt spell-check-aided) new name for Mets reliever Eddie Kunz.   Let’s hope that this doesn’t lead to control problems, eh?  I’d hate to see the ox people try to digest that one.

-sadfatman

Polling numbers

If you go here, you can see Baseball Tonight’s polls on “franchise players” — who the greatest Cardinal, or Red, or whatever of all time is.  Stan Musial and Pete Rose take the honors so far.  I don’t get ESPN, but I was killing another few minutes by voting in a few of the polls, and found it amusing that, although the results “will be revealed” on television over the next few weeks, the thanks-for-voting page conveniently reorganizes the contenders in order of how well they’re doing in the poll.  Want to know who the best Rockie is?  Don’t wait for the show:  it’s going to be Todd fucking Helton.  This is just sloppy.

And that’s why listening to my grumbling friend below would be dangerous.  Because sooner or later, everyone has a crucial moment, just like the ESPN intern did who screwed this up after a late night at Jillian’s.  You never know when it’s going to happen, but it just might be important that you did a good job and not a lazy one.  It just might be important that you stood there and got plunked over and over in that batter’s box.  It just might be important that you busted it out of the box on that grounder to second base.  It just might be important that you took the extra few minutes to check the bolt on that cherry-picker.  And that’s why you do it every time.  And if you do, that makes you — I won’t say a hero, because what’s a hero — but maybe it gives you the right to be player of the game once in your life.

-sadfatman

Fat paisan can wallop

OK, there’s this one guy I work with in the shop who won’t leave me alone about this, ’cause he knows I got a blog, so here goes:  The Mets should bring up Val Pascucci from AAA.  You can see some Japanese fans chanting his name if you look on YouTube, but I don’t have a lot of bandwidth, if you know what I mean.  Anyway, this guy is huge, can play 1B or corner OF, and hits almost as well as Roberto Petagine, his fellow never-made-it fat-ass.  I remember when I was scoping out the college ladies, there was one who was good-looking and everything, but she never made it into the rotation, and that’s what Roberto Petagine was, you know?  Anyway, our boy Pascucci bats RH and has done so to the tune of .286/.411/.566 for your New Orleans Zephyrs, with the carnage even greater against lefties, which is when the Mets would use him.  He does strike out once a game, and maybe those are the kind of AAAA guys who get owned by MLB pitching, but whatever.  I love Delgado with the charity work and all that, but even with his resurgence he’s rocking a .679 OPS against the southpaws, so his eyes are pretty much gone, and as for our current “corner” “outfielders,” fuhgeddaboudit.  Let’s get Val a few at-bats and see what happens.  Also, they should sign Bonds.

-sadfatman