smg58

I'm OK with Moises. He's the one player you can't really blame for the last three weeks. Plus the Mets have depth in the outfield.

Thanks to nymr for running things, to everybody for playing and making it fun, and to Vic for putting up one hell of a fight. I wish I felt more like celebrating, though.

We need a good #2 guy in the pen. Heilman and Feliciano are useful pitchers, but in less important roles than they had. Smith should move forward. Filling the rest of the pen with guys who can't do better than a 5 ERA killed us. That absolutely has to be avoided next year.

Glavine's performance yesterday was simply unforgivable. He can't come back. If Minaya has to eat his contract like he should eat those of Mota and Schoenweiss, then so be it. Not that he's the only player to blame, but there's failure and then there's hitting the opposing pitcher with the bases loaded.

I'm 50/50 at best on Randolph. He has to take some responsibility for this, even if Glavine shouldn't need Willie to find his way through the first inning. I'd need evidence that Rickey is leading Reyes astray before I acted on that. I think if Reyes really did stop caring, which it certainly looked like at times, that is ultimately the manager's responsibility.

Credit where credit is due, I suppose, but it took them until the last day of the season to take what we'd been trying to hand them for a while.

I could deal with the slump. Slumps happen. The fact is that it's been a while since it's looked like his head was in the game, though, and that's a legitimate concern. That being said, the guy's 24 and coming off the second best year of his career, one most of us would have been thrilled with two seasons ago. He still deserves some slack.

Yancy Street Gang wrote: I'd love to think that they just match up poorly against Washington and Philadelphia. I'd love to think that they match up perfectly well against Philly and that the laws of probability dictate that a four-game squasher in our favor is in order should we meet up again. But let's get there first.

Edgy DC wrote: Relative to the rest of the rotation, why not? Unfortunately that's the only answer I could come up with myself. Yes we're all mad at him for his gopher ball exhibition last night, but he's still a HOF pitcher and he's been our most consistent starter the second half.

The one thing I think A-Rod has proven in the seven years since the Texas signing is that he's not the difference maker he needed to be to justify that contract. And the next contract will likely be worse. Given what A-Rod ultimately signed for, I'm amazed that Phillips gets no benefit of the doubt for suggesting that Boras' demands weren't reasonable. As for Boras, his job is to get his clients the biggest contract possible, and he generally succeeds. Why does that make him the bad guy?

I see no point in speculating on this now. Call me back in two weeks, and if the Mets still have games to play, wait a little longer.

Which means what, exactly? I just hope the Twins don't do what Florida did after 05. Unless Johan comes here at a discount, of course.

SI Metman wrote: But you missed Matt Franco's major league pitching debut in that game! It was the only time in major league history that Franco relieved Franco after Johnny hurt himself and went on the DL for 3 months. I heard about that afterwards. I forget what happened that day, but I remember rushing to get to the game and being cranky before I got there. Looking at the scoreboard and seeing we were already down three before I sat down didn't help. Nor did the rest of the game, really. I'm not sure I'd have appreciated the humor of watching Matt Franco pitch in that mood.

Johnny Dickshot wrote: I left only one game early and it was the 2nd game of that cursed doubleheader against the Dbags that started the famous home losing streak of 2002. I was at that one too. I remember it being hot as hell. I got into a discussion with another fan nearby who was sticking it out through the second game. It was John Thomson's first Mets start, if memory serves me. The other guy asked me what I thought of Thomson so far and I said "so far so good, he throws strikes and doesn't fool around." Then Thomson proceeds to walk the pitcher to start the next inning... I remember going to a Mets-Braves game in 1999 where the Mets were behind 3-0 before I even got to my seat (only three batters into the game) and wound up losing 16-0. I got so disgusted that I left in like the fifth or sixth inning, and it was Fireworks Night. The game I turned off the TV on that I'll never forgive myself for was a Braves game the following year where the Mets were down 8-1 and scored ten runs in the eighth. I think I learned my lesson after that one. I'd have to wonder about somebody who'd leave a playoff game early, especially given how hard those tickets are to get.

I'm pretty sure the latter. Bannister's numbers last year weren't better than OK, and presumably in the organization's eyes Pelfrey and Humber had passed him on the depth chart. It seemed like a good move to me at the time, but 20/20 hindsight certainly suggests otherwise.

Good for him. And maybe this will get the Sox back on track so they can nail down the division (the whole "enemy of my enemy" thing, you know). Of course it would also be nice if the Mariners could get back into the wild card hunt; the Mets have actually had a great week compared to them.

Wow. As bitter as the NLCS was last year, the Cardinals battled through a shitload of adversity just to get to that point and have had it much worse this year. I'm not saying you have to like them, but they do deserve some respect.

I feel like the Mets; I've been in front most of the way, but the lead really feels tenuous. Those three teams just one point behind me in BA are making me very nervous. Then again, I'm amazed that I'm where I am given that none of the trades I made at the beginning of the year have really helped me at all. (Bedard, Youkilis and Drew for Konerko and Bush? I didn't really do that, did I?)

The Mets would have a much stronger pen this year if they had opted to give their young arms a chance instead of dealing most of them and giving multi-year deals to guys who not only were perfectly capable of imploding, but whose best case scenario would still have made them replaceable.

I wasn't under the impression that Pelfrey or Humber has ever been as highly regarded a prospect as Kazmir was, much less Mulvey. Mulvey's doing just fine for a kid his age. Bannister's a difficult comparison, because he wasn't as touted a prospect and is currently exceeding his major leage expectations.

The Brewers have swung and missed at a softball. Don't count St. Louis out just yet.

The good options at both catcher and second base are very limited. Castillo is giving the Mets reasons to keep him around, but it's a limited sample. Gotay could go a lot of different directions; he could be like Wally Backman, he could be like Marlon Anderson, or he could hit .220 next year and disappear. That complicates things. Catcher? I don't want to throw significant long-term money at an aging catcher. The only free agent catcher who's both reasonably young and reasonably accomplished is Michael Barrett, but you can't like the way his tenure with the Cubs ended. As far as trades go, the only spare catcher I can see being shopped around is Kelly Shoppach in Cleveland, but the Indians may set the price high for that reason. I might be content with bringing in somebody with a comparable resum� to Castro, and hoping that that player or Castro steps up to take the full-time job.

smg58 wrote: ="Edgy DC"]Meanwhile his more sober spiritual brother David Weathers lands in Seattle to start his 13th tenure with his 11th big-league team. For whom? It better not have been a price the Mets could have comfortably beaten. Did you mean Rick White? He'd obviously be less of a big deal at this point.

Edgy DC wrote: Meanwhile his more sober spiritual brother David Weathers lands in Seattle to start his 13th tenure with his 11th big-league team. For whom? It better not have been a price the Mets could have comfortably beaten.

I suppose it's at least encouraging that Burgos is off the DL. I think it's in the Mets' best interest to have somebody replace at least Mota before Sept. 1, and Smith and Burgos are viable options (Smith more so if he's healthy.) Does anybody know anything about Willie Collazo? He's a left with a 2.69 ERA and a 1.15 WHIP in 90 IP, mostly in relief. As for Humber, assuming the Baseball America stats have been updated, he's still got a worse ERA than Pelfrey (not that either has distinguished himself). It's certainly an encouraging sign, but it will take more than one good start to convince me he's turned the corner.