Benjamin Grimm

Mike Piazza skipped free agency and signed with a National League team.

Wally always has had kind of a Ken doll vibe.

I got an e-mail from someone who's working with Ed Hearn. I won't post her name here, since she didn't give me permission to do so, but here's what she's pitching: Ed is leading the charge for Nephcure in the Chase Community Giving Facebook Contest. Nephcure is among 100 non-profit organizations with budgets of 10,000,000 dollars or less, who are competing for a 1 million dollar grant. Here is the youtube link to Ed�s video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoeuz2fVHGU Other relevant links are: http://www.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving http://www.nephcure.org Thanks so much for your time!

Marty says... it's Santos!

The Mets should hang back and see what Ed Price thinks.

I've been dressing Wally Backman in my mind for years now I first read that as "undressing"

When you do that, I'd suggest you put it in a quote box. You probably don't want people thinking that someone else's words are your own.

So I went Cashen-Davey-Rube-Doc-Darryl? No wonder I'm pleased with these results. If you take out Rube Walker, who probably never had much of a chance, this selection matches my preferences.

yeah, nicely done. How does that compare with our internal results? Did we ever wrap that one up?

To tell you the truth, I stopped reading at "But I can't take this anymore." I'm so sick of the angst. I can't take it anymore!

Good riddance to Pat Floyd, whoever he or she is. When the Mets win again, whenever that is, don't expect us to welcome you back.

Well, Dessens and Takahashi each pitched in 28 games, which isn't a lot but is more than a little, and did pretty well. (Dessens had a 3.31 ERA and Takahashi's was 2.96) It was hard to balance guys like that (Nieve also fits that category) with others with pitched more but less well. (Like Redding and Pelfrey and Parnell.) I think in most cases I went with the quality over the quantity.

We've become much more enlightened about "mascot abuse."

Chad Ochoseis wrote: I get huge spaces any time I attempt to submit a table. Any of you guys who know something about tables have any hints? Yes. Get rid of the linefeeds within your "html". Your table should look like one big fat paragraph. If you do that, the blank space will disappear from your post.

An update on Piniero, and, more importantly, another mention of Ed Price! Angels, Dodgers and Mets "all in" on Pineiro Sun Jan 17,2010 11:31 AM ET By D.J. Short Jon Heyman of SI.com tweets that the Angels, Dodgers and Mets are "all in" on free agent Joel Pineiro. The Mets have been connected to the 31-year-old right-hander all winter, while the Dodgers have stepped up their pursuit in recent weeks. The Angels, meanwhile, expressed interest early on, but have money to spend after losing John Lackey and Chone Figgins. Pineiro, like many free agent pitchers, hoped to use Randy Wolf's three-year, $30 million contract with the Brewers as a framework for a new deal, but it hasn't exactly worked out that way. At this point, he's more likely to find a contract just north of the two-year, $15 million contract the Nationals gave right-hander Jason Marquis. On a related note, the Mets will be among a handful of teams in attendance to watch Ben Sheets throw at the University of Louisiana on Tuesday, according to Ed Price of AOL Fanhouse. All involved will likely wait on investing in Pineiro until they see how Sheets checks out.

Edgy DC wrote: Mets-Whatever-Whatever here, baby. Me too. I have a bit of an affinity for the Giants over the Jets, and used to follow the Knicks a bit, but the only team I'm a fan of is the Mets. I haven't watched any sports at all on TV (other than the 1986 NLCS rerun) since Nelson Figueroa threw his last pitch of the season in early October.

I'm kinda late here, but here are my rankings: [list:1aq5bfoc]Johan Santana David Wright Daniel Murphy Luis Castillo Angel Pagan Carlos Beltran Fernando Tatis Pedro Feliciano Jeff Francoeur Omir Santos Brian Stokes Francisco Rodriguez Gary Sheffield Ryan Church Sean Green Elmer Dessens Ken Takahashi Alex Cora Mike Pelfrey John Maine Nelson Figueroa Pat Misch José Reyes Cory Sullivan Carlos Delgado Fernando Nieve Josh Thole Livan Hernandez Tim Redding Bobby Parnell [/list:u:1aq5bfoc]

It's weird, and I wouldn't buy or wear one, but it's better than last year's version.

That's not too much to ask. Beltran clearly has lost faith with the Mets doctors. I once had a doctor that I lost faith with, and went to someone else. The need to have confidence and trust in your doctor is not insignificant. The Mets should understand and respect this. Apparently the Mets wanted to do more of the "wait and see" which worked out so poorly last year. Beltran lost half a season with that approach, and he didn't want to have that happen again. I'm glad he got the surgery. It's rather see him miss four weeks of the season by being proactive, against the chance of him missing twelve or more weeks by "waiting and seeing."

I hope his Hall of Fame vote count goes down by at least half next year.

I guess this pretty much proves it's the same guy: Graham-Potts broke off the affair with Siciliano, a former New York Mets minor league catcher, after he lost his temper and threw a water bottle at her, breaking her nose, Gygax said. He promised to destroy the sex tapes but never did, she said. Nice guy. Too bad the Mets never gave him a chance.

I only go half bare.

On Mets Hot Stove Report, Kevin Burkhart asked Howard Johnson how long it would take Beltran to get ready to return to the big leagues once he's ready to "begin baseball activities." I was curious about this myself, but HoJo didn't give any kind of a firm answer. It will take "a period of time." "Assuming there are no setbacks" he'll need to get "some at bats in the minors." Some sportswriters are saying that Beltran will be back in mid-May "at the earliest" but that's rather pessimistic optimism. I would think "the earliest" would have the 12 weeks ending April 5, and then about two weeks of extended spring training, including a few games at Buffalo, and he could be playing by the last week of April. I'm not saying this is the most likely thing, but I think it's more accurate to say that the best-case is April 26 instead of May 15. (Not that the 19 days difference will probably mean a whole lot in the long run.) I know that position players always think that spring training is too long, so I don't imagine that Beltran, if healthy, will need a full six weeks to get ready to join the Mets.