nymr83

the price for the 2nd year might be a little excessive but heck we're no small market team. the yankees have made worse deals and simply forgotten the guy existed ifhe stopped pitching well. i like this move alot, now we can hope to make the rotation BETTER than this past year instead of just hoping to keep it at the same level. Zito please.

"here in Baltimore we have a long history of rewarding players with incentives for At-Bats, All-Star appearences, placing in the top 5 in the MVP race, winning a silver-slugger, and other such things. not that we are offering any of that to you at the moment."

Yancy Street Gang wrote: Are both sides prohibited from discussing money? Maybe Soriano can say, "I'm looking for $119 million and a tent" to which the Orioles can't say anything more than, "Baltimore has a nice Aquarium and we're famous for our crabs." "Baltimore has a nice aquarium without any tents, and it could take you up to 7 years to see it all. our crabs are great, you can get crab legs from the guy on the street for as cheap as $1.02"

did we ever put together a consensus order?

given his alleged history i'd think he'd want to stay away from underaged cheerleaders, not shake hands with them.

lets lock Bradford and Mota back up before they see the market, the bullpen is going to be key again next year on a staff unlikely to take many games deep.

I guess I think a guy near the top of the lineup who extends innings with hits and productive outs creating more run scoring opportunities for the leadoff, #3 and cleanup hitters is as valuable as a power hitter who is as likely to strikeout or hit into a DP as he is to drive in those created run scoring opportunites. do you have evidence that he (a) does these things and/or ( that these things help clubs win more than the things delgado does? he "extends innings with hits"? does that mean he's tougher with 2 outs than with none out? is this a positive? if so how? a power hitter who is "as likely" to hit into a DP as drive in a run would be pretty valueless indeed, but delgado has more RBI hits than doubleplays by a longshot sorry top nitpick but i'm trying to figure out what exactly loduca does to make him better than delgado Again, it's apples and bananas. Without either, you are missing part of a winning fruit salad. winning isn't a salad that tastes better with multiple fruits. a lineup of 9 delgados would vastly outscore a lineup of 9 loducas

i don't like getting rid of the WC (not that they'd EVER agree to get rid of the extra round of playoff revenues.) i'd love to add a 2nd wildcard for a 1 game playoff (or a 3-game set, but then we're facing even more calendar issues) because it would keep the wildcard while giving meaning to winning the division. as part of this you MUST eliminate the rule that the best record can't play a wild card from their own division, because the best record deserves to play the wild card team that just had to (potentialy) burn its best pitcher and/or bullpen in the 1-game playoff.

does it really matter if you have to watch annoying FOX commercials or annoying commercials from that advertisers?

thats true, but you have to differentiate between guys who are nice to have around incase of said accident and guys whose very presense getsw them a rotation spot whether they deserve it or not... i'm wary of el duque because he could have a 5 ERA and not get benched, any of these other guys (maine, perez, bannister, pelfrey, humber, etc) would find hteir way to AAA if they pitched poorly enough.

]Let the team with the best record have home field in the World Series. The All-Star game thing is dumb and should be put to bed with interleague play, whose novelty died years ago and whose only purpose now is to kill the intrigue and mystique that would be there in the World Series if the two leagues didn't play during the regular year. the all-star game is the worst thing to base it on imo. i'd rather see best record, the old alternating years system, or the league that won the overall interleague play.

] We LOVED Bannister til the injury..why not now? i never loved Bannister, even when he was winning he was loading the bases seemingly every other inning. with all the baserunners he allowed it would have all come crashing down on him if he hadn't gotten hurt.

Edgy DC wrote: I think the Mets might rather take a good look at Wood. I think they showed something this year --- a organization that can back up their pitchers with redundancy can better afford high-risk-high-reward guys like Pedro, Zambrano, and Oliver Perez. Zambrano is high-risk-no-reward. i wouldn't mind acquiring Wood for the same reasons as Edgy though. this team doesn't need more #3-4 starters, i'll take the guy with the potential to be a #1-2 and the downside of getting hurt alot over the "gauranteed" #3-4.

Wright had a better regular season than Delgado i think, if only barely... does Delgado's higher spot on your (Seawolf) list indicate a bump for the postseason or would you have had this same order on October 1st?

the '87 Twins might be close, i'm not sure who else won it all that was this bad, at least in the last 30 years.

because he wont be cheap for much longer and themorons who run that team have adopted the "lowest possible payroll" business model rather than the "wins fill the seats" model.

Lidle was no Clemente, heck he wasn't even Daryl Kyle... his autograph will never have near the value that it does this month again imo.

batting average is less important than OBP, where Delgado holds a slight edge, but the real difference is 120 points of slugging percentage, you just can't make up for that.

for Willis, if a long-term deal can be negotiated, i'd sell a good part of the farm. If Milledge and Humber gets it done i'm game.

]"This one deep to right and it is way back, going, going, it is gone, no off of the top of the wall." i'll defend him on this one, we've all been confused. the rest... oye

metsmarathon wrote: i always forget when discussing player grades... are we talking about grades versus expectations, or are they measured against the same standard? i did a bit of both, that is i "factored in" expectations but the grades werent solely based on them. thats why reyes outscored wright despite wright's better obp/slg/ws/rc, reyes jumped his obp 50 points to become a true leadoff hitter while wright treaded water...of course if reyes had had a .250 obp last year and jumped it to .300 he wouldnt have gotten a good grade out of me anyway, so numbers matter too.

yeah i didnt see it there either, i'd tack it to the top here for a few days (until it stops getting tons of responces) then move it there for safekeeping.

well i wanted to try and grade everyone's individual season first

I'll do the pitchers later if there is any interest in this. I had a hard time assigning low grades because of how well the Mets hit this year in general. Jose Reyes 647AB//.300/.354/.487 64SB, 17CS, a suprising 19 homers, he improved remarkably over 2005. Grade: A David Wright 582AB//.311/.381/.531 An ugly August marred this otherwise good season. Nonetheless he was great when the Mets needed him early in the season, hitting 20 homers before the break and making hte All-star team. Grade: A- Carlos Delgado 524//.265/.361/.548 Quietly hit 38 homers in his first season as a Met, though he was likely the 4th best Met hitter this year he really turned it on in October. Grade: A- Paul LoDuca 512//.318/.355/.428 Far exceeded expectations, how good does Omar look now for thumbing his nose at the two big FA catchers last fall? Grade: B+ Carlos Beltran 510//.275/.388/.594 M-V-P? probably not with other Mets garnering votes, he bounced back from a disappointing 2005, killed the Cardinals in the LCS. Grade: A Jose Valentin 384//.271/.330/.490 he should be the comeback player of the year. after failing as a pinch hitter early in the year, he stepped up and won the fulltime 2B job. Grade: B+ Endy Chavez 353//.306/.348/.431 Starting the year as a 4th outfielder he saw 353 ABs, did well at the plate, and looked like a gold glover in the field. Chavez Robbing Rolen might be the most memorable moment of 2006. Grade: B+ Cliff Floyd 332//.244/.324/.407 an(other) injury plagued year in which he never really got going. Grade: C- Xavier Nady [265]//[.264]/[.326]/[.487] His Met stats are in [brackets.] Was having a career year when the Mets dealt him, but they wont regret this trade. Grade: B+ Chris Woodward 222//.216/.289/.311 proved that you never give a utility guy a big contract based on the previous year's numbers, Woodward was a flop off the bench and spot-starting, he did get a hit in his only postseason AB Grade: D+ Lastings Milledge 166//.241/.310/.380 big talent, big attitude, no results. he's still got a load of talent, but he showed that he needs some adjustments and was pretty disappointing in his brief time in New York Grade: C Julio Franco 165//.273/.330/.370 The Ancient One is still going strong, his pinch-hitting, and maybe his clubhouse leadership, are still valuable. Grade: B- Shawn Green [113AB]//[.257]/[.325]/[.442] His Met stats are in [brackets.] Wasn't quite as good as advertised, looked somewhat lost in the field at times, had a pretty good postseason. Grade: B- Also getting: D's- J.Castro, E.Marrero, M.Tucker F's- R.Ledee, A.Hernandez, M.DiFelice, K.Stinett, V.Diaz, K.Matsui

Elster88 wrote: Hitters/Fielders: Beltran Wright Matsui Reyes Delgado etc. Castro this was done solely for my benefit wasn't it? i agree mostly with Frayed Knot's hitter rankings above. i'd like to question putting LoDuca ahead of Delgado (someone did that) Delgado was clearly the better hitter and even if the "defensive spectrum" put LoDuca ahead i'd argue that Delgado's postseason should have swung things back. whoever it was that mentioned a choice between Tucker and other scrubs for the bottom of the list i'd go with Tucker by a longshot, check out that OBP in limited playing time, he wasn't hurting the Mets when he was in there.