Benjamin Grimm

Money.

He'll be doing it intentionally starting in 2019.

G-Fafif wrote: According to Marty and Joe, it was Pat's turn, but Kooz asked the manager for the slot and Torre granted his wish (to Zachry's displeasure, they added). That's how I remember it: Koosman specifically asked for the start. I was at that game. Mezzanine level, third base side.

I remember in 1984 I was pretty upset that Mike Torrez was going to be the Opening Day starter. I was 20 years old, so I'll cut myself some slack here. So if the people complaining about Colon getting the start are as young and callow as I was, then it's only fair for me to cut them the same slack. But any mature grownups who are having a conniption over this (whatever a "conniption" may actually be) need to get over it.

Adam Rubin reports that Bartolo will be the Opening Day starter.

Can this be right? Kristie Ackert in the Daily News this morning says that Bobby Parnell pitched in a minor league intrasquad game yesterday. He threw 20 pitches and gave up 11 hits. That doesn't sound so good!

Here's an idea from MLB that I actually like: MLB hoping to 'maximize' final day Friday, March 20, 2015 07:57AM Major League Baseball says it has scheduled every game of the regular season's closing day to start at the same time because it hopes to elevate the excitement of the day, with five playoff spots now up for grabs in each league. MLB chief operating officer Tony Petitti, speaking to the Los Angeles Times, said the league hopes to "maximize" the day in the event that multiple meaningful games go down to the wire. "If a game impacts another game, they're all occurring at the same time, so no team would be put into a lame-duck situation because their fate already had been decided by an earlier result," Petitti told the newspaper. First pitch for Oct. 4 games is scheduled for 3 p.m. ET. "It's a cool little wrinkle," Dodgers outfielder Andre Ethier said, according to the Times. "It will definitely make games more exciting that day." The simultaneous start also could disadvantage teams firmly in the playoff mix. Previously they could have reacted to the results of earlier games to determine which pitchers to start -- whether they needed to trot out their ace in an attempt to gain better seeding by clinching a division title, for example. "If somebody is banged up, you can't risk resting him, because you haven't already seen the score of the other game," said catcher A.J. Ellis, whose Dodgers close out the season at home against theSan Diego Padres. Said Petitti: "We're hopeful that the races will come down to the last day of the season. We want to make sure we celebrate the end of the season properly."

Was Bob Aspromonte ever an Expo?

I'd be glad to see him in July.

If I had that placemat in front of me in 1971, I would have looked at all of the NFL cities and thought about the baseball counterparts in those cities. Also... is that a Washington Redskins helmet on the top row between the Jets and the Bills? Did they really have a less racist helmet 44 years ago? Why don't they avoid at least some of the heat they've been getting by going back to that helmet?

I don't read too many baseball books anymore, but I may read this Sandy Alderson book.

And he was right!

That may be an argument you can make regarding Edgin, with the Mets now without a clear option for who will be their left-handed reliever. But Wheeler is a different story entirely. His injury has caused the Mets to go from having nine starting pitchers to having only eight. This sucks for Zack Wheeler, of course, and there certainly will be a ripple effect, but with Wheeler gone they still have Colon-Niese-deGrom-Gee-Harvey-Montero-Syndergaard-Matz. On this front, you have to give Sandy credit for building and maintaining all that depth.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Matz arrived before Syndergaard did. Either way, I think it's fairly likely that one of them, if not both, will join the Mets rotation before July 1.

And this is addressed to Zack Wheeler: Get well soon!

It doesn't really look like it in this batch of photos, but other pictures we've seen of the wall when it was that color reminded me of toothpaste. So that's what I'd call the color: Toothpaste. Shea looks so "quiet" in that photo with Cleon. In its later years, Shea was all gaudy and brassy and noisy. (That's not exactly a complaint, by the way.) We'll probably never see a big league park looking so pastoral again. No gaudy colors. No big TV-style scoreboards. Restraint on the placement of ads. I'd love to travel back in time and see just one game at Shea from that era. I remember the organ music, the baseball-cap bullpen buggies, and the smell of cigar smoke.

I seem to think I voted online once, probably out of momentary boredom. But the last time I cared about the All Star Game was before I had ever even heard of the Internet.

I wonder how many people don't even realize that Tommy John is a human being, and not just a surgical procedure. He's received a strange kind of immortality. It's been many years since I've been to Cooperstown. If there's not a display in the museum devoted to him and the TJ surgery, there really should be.

Good grief! I agree that it will probably be Gee at least into May, with Montero as the next guy in line in another starter is injured in April or early May. The Mets will want to delay starting the clock on Matz and/or Syndergaard.

The Daily News has a different spin: Kristie Ackert wrote: As for the suggestion that the limited payroll prevented him from signing Robinson Cano last winter, Alderson laughed and called the meeting with the second baseman's representatives an "entertaining diversion." Anyway, I'm glad the Mets didn't sign Cano to a ten-year $24 million contract that runs until Cano is 41 years old.

I don't know. I just don't see it.

Yeah, I sometimes wonder how a practice where all the doctors are idiots is able to retain any clients.

Danny has a photo of Shea Stadium hanging in his office.

My vote is for baby cousin Brian.

Someone appears to be rather down on Jon Niese.