Edgy MD

The bar is set for David Wright's potential value as his buddy and rival and close comp Ryan Zimmerman inks a six-year, $100-million extension going through 2019. The contract includes a full no-trade clause and a $24 million option for 2020 (2020!).

I like that Sandy is so restrained in the trade market, looking fore the right deal in it's own context, and not building up the proverbial blockbuster to put them over the top.

Vic Sage wrote: how did my daughter get control of Edgy's CPF account? Some mouth on that little girl.

The sniffleface makes more sense in that context.

None about his fielding? None about his potential improvement over last year's version of Angel Pagan? None about his ability to fight the good fight against the demons of ADD? None about his ability to at least provide more value to the team than Pagan when combined with Ramirez? Or merely none about his ability to hold down the leadoff spot? I certainly have my doubts. But I'm OK with him being the first guy to get a chance to fail.

I thought maybe, but the angle is a little different. There's an aisle in the stands in one, that is revealed between his hands and body. In the other, the aisle disappears behind his body. The same whiteshirt guy seems to be on the concourse, though. A lot of them look like they were taken moments apart (Gooden #s 1 and 4, for instance). I half wonder if all the Strawberrys were from the same day, same at-bat, and they just had an artist come in and change the color of his wristbands to suggest they weren't.

The second and third Kranepool cards have to be two shots from the same reel, no?

He's definitely got to get that Horwitz removed from his shoulder, though. Just my opinion.

I'd like a "not guilty" ruling to be based not so much on "The samples were mishandled and therefore could theoretically trigger a false positive" as "The samples were mishandled and therefore could must've triggered a false positive, as demonstrated by my 30 negative tests in the next seven days." He did submit 30 more tests, right?

Tracksuit wrote: Attitude about Braun in Mets clubhouse can be best described as deep skepticism. Tracksuit wrote: �Ryan Braun is out there saying this shows he is innocent,� one Met said. �Does that mean O.J. Simpson is innocent, too?" Zero to OJ in ten seconds. Ouch.

I came up with Fielder, Schmidt, Murphy, McGwire, Canseco, Evans, Jackson, Rice, Oglivie. Rice and Fielder were wrong, so that gave me a weak-o six correct --- for a decade I know better than any and one lacking in power outbursts. Missing Kevin Mitchell? What a dope I am. I tried to summon Barfield and Bell but couldn't for some reason. Sometimes the 1980s Brewers and Blue Jays merge in mind, for some reason.

The three-man panel included Major League Baseball Players Association executive director Michael Weiner, MLB vice president for labor relations Rob Manfred and independent arbitrator Shyam Das. Kinda makes the whole three-man-panel idea seem pointless when two of them have obviously compromised loyalties. I don't think this really relates to Jose Reyes decision.

Blew a save or two after #300 also, I think. And then was shut down after the first week of September. He really had nothing for about three or four weeks before that and was pitching on guile and charm.

Kinda pissed that he was given more than a token chance to close, considering his not-long-for-this-worldiness, while some others weren't given a serious chance.

And walk rates tend to stabilize more than batting averages.

Yeah, but I think they're going to give him a chance to prove he's the most likely guy to make an out. There's a long-term concern at work here. As Murphy and Tejada have alternative ways they need to establish themselves, Torres is the most disposable and the least risky to expose to failure in the role. Five/six weeks into the season, if he's not getting it done, they can try other characters in the position without the burden of having been the guy who broke it.

Jason Bay, when asked about changes to his approach: �I�m hitting lefthanded now. I realized the other day that I was actually on wrong side of the plate."

Come on, surely he has appeared in other places.

Messed up our offseason plans by helping to explode the notion that, really, anybody can close.

Edgy DC wrote: Adam Rubin wrote: Ike Davis is back and his bubbly self.

The contest inspired by Willets Point. I'll open.

Well, I'm still coming up empty on the gravesite of Tom Meany. It goes to show you that ballplayers get remembered longer than writers. Sorry, Dickens. The next administrator to leave his earthly form behind was one Wid Matthews who, unlike Meany, was a player --- a long time ago. Wid, an outfielder, garnered about a years worth of plate appearances over three seasons in the mid-twenties, playing with two American League franchises that would be as doomed as he by the time the Mets would come into existence: The Philadephia Athletics and the Washington Senators (or Griffs or Nats or whatever they were calling themselves then). A rare good time to be a Senator, though, and hopefully he got a piece of the post-season money. In his post-playing days, Wid (actual name: Wid) spent seven seasons as de facto GM of the Cubs, having learned the trade under Branch Rickey with the Cards and Dodgers. He broke the color line for the Cubbies, signing and promoting Ernie Banks. He also gave Buck O'Neil his first MLB job, but he wasn't as aggressive with black and Latino talent as his National League rivals and the team failed to prosper. He moved on to Milwaukee where he was second in command, before becoming one of the first front office employees the Mets signed in 1961. Cub history does not look kindly on him (or any of their GMs, to be frank). He made a few good trades, a few disastrous ones. He made a deal with his top minor league team that he wouldn't pluck any of the prospects mid-season without permission from them. I guess he was just too much of a gentleman. Once, when asked how he rated prospects, he said� "When I shake hands with a boy and he has a good grip, that's one of the essentials. Then I pat him on the shoulder to see how muscular he is." That may not have been meant to be taken seriously, but that's never stopped a Cubs fan. By 1956, they were hanging him in effigy at Wrigley. Seriously. (No photos available without payment, unfortunately, and I ain't paying.) The UMDB lists him as "Administrative Assistant," which could mean typist, but along with Johnny Murphy, he was a top aide to GM George Weiss, serving as irector of player personnel, and may have considered himself the heir apparent before resigning during the 1964 season. Maybe he was as frustrated with Weiss's dinosaur act as everybody else was. Moving on to the California Angels, he died following the 1965 organizational meetings, passing away in a West Hollywood hotel room, which is sad enough for a country song. The Angels would pay us back decades later by sending us Gary Matthews, who didn't die on the job but kinda did. Wid's the shizz. A thousand guys like him in baseball history, but none quite like him, you know? And maybe if he didn't bring O'Neill and Banks into the bigs, somebody else likely would've. But he did. So cool. Nonetheless, I can't find the man's remains. I've got bloodhounds on the case.

As long as our forum --- and I'm more guilty than most --- doesn't just become a vehicle for re-tweets.

Tim Hudson, coming off back surgery, looks to be out until early May, and the Mets --- for right now at least --- look to have a stronger rotation in 2012 than at least one division rival.