Centerfield

The interesting part about the payroll is that there appears to be very little flexibility going into next season.

According to ESPN, the number is: 136,022,942 Maybe they are including Beltran, all the DL guys and GMJ's full salary.

According to ESPN: 1. Johan Santana 20,144,707 2. Francisco Rodriguez 12,166,666 3. Oliver Perez 12,000,000 4. Gary Matthews Jr. 11,400,000 5. David Wright 10,250,000 6. Jose Reyes 9,375,000 7. Jason Bay 8,625,000 8. Luis Castillo 6,250,000 9. Jeff Francoeur 5,000,000 10. John Maine 3,300,000 11. Pedro Feliciano 2,900,000 12. Alex Cora 1,850,000 13. Angel Pagan 1,500,000 14. Ryota Igarashi 1,250,000 15. Hisanori Takahashi 1,000,000 16. Fernando Tatis 850,000 17. Henry Blanco 750,000 18. Frank Catalanotto 650,000 19 a. Rod Barajas 500,000 19 b. Mike Pelfrey 500,000 21. Fernando Nieve 414,000 22. Jonathon Niese 402,000 23 a. Raul Valdes 400,000 23 b. Ike Davis 400,000 23 c. Jenrry Mejia 400,000 Total Team Salary: 136,022,942 Maybe my math is wrong, but those numbers don't seem to add up to the stated team salary. Even if you factor in Beltran's $19 million (and deduct GMJ's $11M), you get something in the range of $119M. I wonder where this is coming from. The link at ESPN has us at fifth in the majors in payroll: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/teams/salaries?team=nym But you wonder about the veracity of these numbers. (any admin wanting to format, please help!)

I'm all for comraderie between the teams and all, but should MFY's be handing out World Series rings in CitiField? Am I being petty here?

I remember one incident regarding Jerry and Willie. Willie used to infuriate me by not going out and arguing a call for his players. Baseball is not basketball, you can go out there and raise hell and have no effect on the game. Willie used to dance around the issue like he was trying to avoid a technical foul. In one incident, Willie kept his calm, "too cool for school" approach after a particularly bad call. Manuel, on the other hand, lost it and got booted from the dugout. I realize arguing calls doesn't amount to a whole lot except making the fans feel better about getting screwed, but it can show the team that you've got their back. Show some fire and maybe the team will understand how important this is to the manager. In any case, after the game, smug Willie said something to the effect of "[umpire] left it dangling, and I guess Jerry took the bait." No you ass, Jerry stuck up for a member of his team you insecure **********. The rags went crazy about how he was mistreated by getting fired at 3:30 in the morning. If left to me, he would have paid his own ticket back to NY.

I think both Jerry and Willie lacked the acumen to do a great job as manager. The difference is, I like Jerry, even though he's kind of dumb, because he seems like a likeable guy. I thought Willie was a dick. So I hated him.

I tuned in late and saw Kyle Lohse in LF and thought "LaRussa ran out of pitchers". Then I saw Mather on the mound and realized that he had a pitcher fielding and a fielder pitching. Brilliant!

When did Omar turn into Sid Fernandez?

...pulled us out of the recession, patched up the ozone, and led to the cancellation of Glee.

And compares Ike Davis to Strawberry. http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/columns/story?id=5114518 By my count, I've got the following: Ike Davis: Lefty slugger, just like Straw! Fernando Martinez: Beautiful swing, just like Straw! Lastings Milledge: He's black, just like Straw!

Agreed. This article is a complete garbage. Too many holes to even bother.

Certainly, but I can see where Ashie is coming from about being tired of the whole process. We've been back and forth on Beltran so many times over the past year, there would be some small relief in hearing "micro-fracture surgery, Met career likely over". But that would be very, very small. I'm rooting like hell for Carlos to get back as well. Maybe I'm a moron, but I think I've convinced myself that if Beltran gets back healthy, and Davis works out, and Francoeur keeps hitting, that maybe the Mets can contend for the Wild Card...

From the IkeGT: attgig wrote: the mets front office is smart with ike! (not so with meija) http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2010/04/ike-davis-strasburg.html Talking to MLBTR's Ben Nicholson-Smith, I learned that teams can now safely promote minor leaguers for their MLB debuts with no chance of the player amassing 172 days of service in 2010. By promoting '08 first-rounder Ike Davis today, the Mets ensured that he will be under team control through 2016 instead of 2015. In contrast, the Braves have Jason Heyward through '15. Well that's that. Mets = Smart. CF = Dumb.

Frayed Knot wrote: Ceetar wrote: the +1 year of arbritration or whatever is like tomorrow, so might as well at least wait until then at this point. There is no 'arbitration cut-off' date. There is point at which a player called up gets credit for a full season - I think that's 20 days into the season and today should be about day 15). That's something which could affect his FA status six years from now, so if we assume that Davis gets called up now he'd hit FA-gency a year earlier than if he were called up in another week or two (after the 2015 season instead of after 2016). All that, of course, assumes he's up here to stay and never gets sent down again, something which is hardly a given. Arbitration is a different story since it's based on a player's service time as compared to all other 2-3 year players. Usually you have to leave a player down on the farm until the end of May in order to delay his arb-eligible days by a year but there's no way to know for certain since there are too many variables. I'm happy to see Ike get the call too, but assuming Ike is good (like we hope he will be) wouldn't it benefit the Mets (and us) to hold him back another 5 days to push his free agency back one year? I mean, when our All-Star 1B is soliciting multi-year offers in 2015, are we going to think "Sure, we will have to pay lots of money to bring him back next season, but at least we had him for those 5 critical games back in April of 2010..."

Benjamin Grimm wrote: bmfc1 wrote: Tweets now say that Ike will be at CF for tonight's game. I first read that to mean he'd be playing center field. I thought he was coming to my place to watch the game.

Is Tejada a legitimate prospect? I assumed he was an Anderson Hernandez/Argenis Reyes type.

Who's the third? (Mejia, Davis, ?)

soupcan wrote: Yeah - I don't think I'll be visiting Citizen's Bank anytime soon either. If I can't go to a place and simply wear a Mets hat without being abused then why bother? At Citi Field last week with my 13 year-old I had to turn around and admonish 4 guys in their early 20s after they started everything they yelled with 'FUCKING....!' At least they listened and stopped (why they had to be told to with kids sitting everywhere around them is ridiculous to begin with), I can't imagine what would happen in Philly. And how did Stevie Jetes respond?

And one more thing, I think that taking calls in the booth is a dumb move. I would think that Gary and Keith hate having to do it. So Michael is right about that. It's just annoying because douchebags are annoying even when they're right. He's wrong about the giving up thing, and he's wrong about comparing SNY to YES. YES leads the league in douchebaggery.

Which should not be misconstrued as to me not liking Michael Kay. I love him. Sterling too, and Waldman. And Hank. It makes the Yankees look like a douchebag organization and is great fodder for making fun of them. These guys are the Yankee equivalents of Tony Bernazard.

Kay's a douchebag.

Sure, the Jacobs-Tatis thing is x's and o's, but Jacobs loafing is supposed to be Jerry's strength. I'm with you on the other options though. For me, it's Bobby V or bust.

A few things... Tatis for Jacobs: There is no way rational way I can see to defend this move. A manager with even the slightest bit of thinking can anticipate that the matchup there is either Tatis against the righthander or Cora against the lefthander. Over the past three years, Tatis has an OPS of .807 against righties. Cora is at .621 against lefties. This is a no-brainer. I don't know if Cora is faster than Tatis (he has more stolen bases but I don't know that this means anything), but he is at least not any worse, and certainly not enough to justify the difference at the plate. Whatever the logic, there is absolutely no way to defend making this move four pitches into the at-bat. If it was the right move, it should have been made at the beginning (or, more accurately, not at all). It was so dumb, Tracy was caught completely off-guard by it. He had to warm up his lefty quickly as if saying "Really? Did he just make that move? Am I missing something? Get me my lefty." Jacobs Jogging: In an extra-inning game, less than two outs, there is absolutely no excuse for not running hard. That ball could have caromed any number of different ways. There is no way to know out of the box that he had no chance at third. If enough was not made of the Wright incident, it needs to be made now. It's bad enough the team sucks. The least they could do is try. Nothing is worse than suck-ass lazy players. Mejia over Rodriguez: I'm not going to kill Jerry on this one, since no other manager goes against this book either, but I wish people would look at the logic behind this thinking. If you are in a pennant race, deep into the season, and you are protecting your closer from overuse, I think it makes sense not to burn your closer in a game where you may never have the lead. I can see the logic in not wanting to burn your closer on a game you can still lose, and then possibly not have him in a save situation later on. None of this applies here. Rodriguez hasn't been used, we are not in a pennant race, and using him last night would not have prevented him from pitching any future games. Let's face it, this team isn't going to get that many chances. It's interesting that Manuel probably knows he's got very little rope, likely wants to manage to win every single game, but doesn't really know how to do it.

Sterling represents some of the best evidence that Yankee fans are dumbass douchebags. When we had Fran, the consensus was that he sucked. Yankee fans LOVE Sterling.

Yes. It's even better when he goes into his whole act on flyouts.