There is that old saying, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. In the case of baseball, perhaps it should be ‘if you don’t have anything to complain about, there is really nothing to say’.
Last week, the Mets were far too successful to complain about, winning games left, right and centre. And with Marlon gone I couldn’t even document his daily battle with the Mendoza line. ‘Experts’ even stopped suggesting the Mets should trade Wright as he started to hit and hit and hit. So thank god the Mets have started losing again (NB joke). Now we can ‘discuss’ whether the Mets should trade Reyes (No), whether Beltran really provides enough grit for his $17M salary (who needs grit when you are awesome at hitting and fielding) and which crappy washed up veteran the Mets should trade their prospects for to fill in while Delgado is broken (none – keep the kidz).
Although the Mets need a replacement 1B, the last thing the Mets need is to strip the farm system. If Omar was better at building a whole team, this wouldn’t be a problem. But he isn’t, so Murphy had better learn how to play 1B pretty damn quick. Unless the Padres have gone mad and really want to trade Adrian Gonzalez, in which case they can have as much farm system as they want (The idea the Padres would trade Gonzalez makes me doubt Mike Francesa is a baseball expert).
Jerry Manuel has made some strange decisions. In his favour, he isn’t Willie Randolph, but that is starting to wear thin. Similarly, Gary Sheffield isn’t Marlon Anderson, a huge plus. Unfortunately his crappy defense is cancelling out his so-so offense. Seeing as he is being paid the cost of a ‘replacement player’ maybe this doesn’t matter. But the Mets can’t rely on him as a big bat in the line up.
Livan Hernandez sucks and takes too long between pitches making the game long and boring. I’d rather see someone young with upside rather than fat and old fill out the rotation – Niese did not deserve to be sent down after one bad start. And this is the lowest quality Quality Start I’ve ever had the misfortune to witness – it’s luck Livan only had to face the Pirates, not someone good.
It’s the little things that make Omar so infuriating. Omar DFA’d Darren O’Day so Figueroa (rather than Stokes or Parnell) could make a (losing) start then get DFA’d for Casey Fossum who sucked and was DFA’d for 40 year old rookie Ken Takahashi – given his recent perfomances, it looks like the videos of his pitching have finally arrived from Japan. Meanwhile Darren O’Day, claimed by the AL West-leading Rangers has already been worth 0.3 WAR, with 9K/9 and 6K/BB (in 12 IP). Plus he is a side-armer and Rule 5 draft pick, both of which are awesome.
My first baseball blog 