duan

I think he's been pretty good with the pitching staff as a whole and the bullpen in particular, but how much of that goes down as credit to Peterson I don't know.

how's about keepin' up with the sweeps!!!

the best thing is though that they really are capable of stomping all over teams. Alou's made a big difference here. I mean Shawn Green's started as well as we could have hoped and a lot of the time we've been batting him 7th. I just hope willie rests Moises enough.

italics added for emphasis ="iramets"]So maybe it was (as I say above) good for the Mets that Omar did not get tempting offers for Milledge this winter. But I continue to believe that if they had been offered anything like a decent starting pitcher, Omar would have been eager to toss him overboard in exchange, which probably would have been a mistake as it turned out. For example, if some GM had come to Omar with the same exact deal for a starting pitcher that Omar had deemed WAY insufficient in the previous winter, Omar would have jumped at it this this time around. But no one did, so no deal got made, and now Milledge's value is back up, probably to almost where it was 16 months ago. FTR, I've never been in favor of trading Milledge, for any package, low or high, that I've heard mentioned. Let me get this straight. To the baseball industry/Omar Minaya He was worth John Lackey at the start of last season, he was worth Ramon Ortiz at the end of last season and now after a decent spring training & one hot night in New Orleans he's worth John Lackey again?

also, Lastings has shaken the rust off last night he went 4 for 4 including a dinger and stole two bases

iramets by descending into meaningless hyperbole based around your conjecture and little actual evidence you render your argument both incoherent and nonsensical therefore it's impossible to take a discussion forward. FWIW, I think your basic point - that Lastings still has a lot to prove and that a continued work rate and positively motivated attitude is going to be important going forward is true. However, I don't reckon that he's not worth much in a trade, at the right time with the right club he could be worth plenty.

where did we get the "lastings is slacking off" idea in fairness to milledge he got 3 abs in a couple of weeks, understandable that it'll take a few games to get the swing going.

having said that, next season we've only ONE starting outfielder under contract. A Milledge-Beltran-Gomez starting 3 could be very, very, good.

As Lastings gets his head round the fact that he ain't at the show yet and tries to shake the rust off his bat (3 singles, one walk in 19 pa's to go with 7 k's!!) he's got both Fernando Martinez .346 obp .522 slg .261 avg and Carlos Gomez .451 obp .617 slg .404avg coming up from behind to threaten his "first outfielder up" status.

what i've liked about how the mets have played so far is that they've 1. Stomped all over teams 2. Fought out a couple of hard wins 3. In games that they've lost they've got themselves in at least a position to get the runs back. They haven't been outplayed significantly in ANY game. Any one they've lost has been nip & tuck.

metirish wrote: Burgos pitched to Utley,a good left handed hitter,so I suppose I might ask why Willie didn't bring in Feliciano right there to face him,I'll take solace in the fact that Burgos got to a 2-2 count on Howard and that Howard hit a good pitch over the fence.I'm with that except for the good pitch. It was a terrible pitch; in a terrible location.

i'm with JD & Yancy on this. I was thinking that he was mad to stay with Burgos, but then Burgos got going well against him and looked like he could put him away. If Burgos had got the out that he could of when Howard was battling we'd have praised Willie for having 'big balls". I thought it was interesting to hear Darling call for a fastball pitch high and inside when they went with the splitter that got deposited over the seats. Who do you reckon is calling those pitches - Wilie? LoDuca? Burgos or Peterson. You could see what Darling was saying, the guys struggling, just don't give him a breaking pitch that's in the zone.

me and olerud owned. double postin'.

meanwhile, Carl Pavano's been yanked in the 5th after giving up 4 runs in total 3 in the 5th. Wiggy K's to the reliever, but Delmon Young knocks in the runner. Making it 5 runs that Pavano gave up. HAH

nice job getting him off the 40. I know $1 million is a lot to be paying a guy to pitch in the minors, but Sosa's just a year from being a very good pitcher. If he could re-establish his control etc in New Orleans then we've got a realistic option to be this years *ahem* Jeremi Gonzalez

you do have to hope for a guy like Soler that he gets an Major League whirl somewhere. You'd think 2.4 million'd be enough to set you up for life, but it only buys you a nice house in Dublin and it ain't like there's a great market for has been Cuban pitchers in the standard labour market. Don't get me wrong, he's had the privilege of getting paid very well to be a sportsman and that's something that i'll never have, but when you're expected to support your family fundamentally on your body of work from 25-40 it's a scary game, scary, scary scary game.

I know people have probably talked about this before, but WHAT is it with Bostick's head.

seriously, is there anything about Ryan Howard that doesn't make him a big huggable kid? about 5 important dingers against the mets I suppose.

Edgy DC wrote: Well, last year he was $15 million rubbish. This year he'll only be $3 million dollars worth. He cut his walk rate way down last year, which is encouraging, but he bagan leaking from the other end, as his homer rate went way up.... at Petco. The NatWest must be funny, with three parks that resist homers and two that invite them. Anyhow, my main concern with him is that it puts one more hurdle in Humfrey's way. I still espect that if they perform, they'll pitch, but this may delay their 2007 debuts whether they perform or not. I was half expecting something like this. The Mets have had at least one Japanese player since Takashi Kashiwada in 1997. Ten years. If that streak dies, I guess a Korean willl keep the Oriental streak alive. funnily enough his new pecota card says dis WARP MORP Mean VORP Upside 1.7 $3,050,000 5.1 8.8

Edgy DC wrote: I think the Bravos also like the minor league shortstop they got. 23/24 and high A ball, mean that he's got a way to go yet.

"Rubin also did little to disguise the fact that he thinks Milledge can be a real ass at times. Often crude, and with an ability to rub folks the wrong way both in the minors & during his time with the big club, he's a tough guy to like. Not sure how team mgmt feels about it all or whether that affects the odds of him being dealt" Y'know I'd give anyone a degree of a pass on this at age 21. I'm not saying that he's got the chance to develop into an upstanding individual; but i know a lot of guys who are pretty immature @ 21 that do grow up (a fair share who don't as well) to be a lot better, more rounded people at 24/25 then they were then. I do think there's room for Willie & Carlos Delgado to sit down with him and say "this is what you can be", "this is how we expect you to behave" , "we've seen a lot of flashy prospects, with more talent then you, blow it" and "this is the line, don't cross it". Now, maybe they already have, but the "know your place Rook" thing would indicate to me that the treatment has been more along the lines of frat boy hazings.

"That said it'd sure be nice to have a guy around considering injuries and the the threat of suck from Green. " My biggest issue with this whole team is NOT the lack of a no 1. starter but the clear probability that our right-fielder's going to be distinctly below average. I think it'd only be prudent to anticipate SOME kinda back slide from Beltran & Reyes and while Delgado's probably a lock for another decent thumping season you'd love to have got an actual rightfielder rather then a right fielder of 4 seasons ago.

in fairness, the best thing about the screen shot is all the phillies fans with looking aghast with their hands held to their heads. that i like. the philles (unlike Philadelphia which i loved) and their fans suck.

them is clunky clauses i got in there.

park factors are not equal. While I don't have the figures here; I seem to remember someone in BP proposing that the *nature* of them varies wildly. ie: some parks are just gravy for LH power while being death to the average pull righty. Similarly there are ones that surpress batting average (actually large foul territory may be a good example of one that does that, in that there's more outs on balls that aren't actually in play then in others). Now I don't know if Zito's uniquely suited to Shea over the Colliseum, but I've seen it written by guys who are smart and in depth enough to be aware these things to think that he may be. Finally, league wide era doesn't tell you the full picture; in that, a league wide era measures the subset of hitters vs pitchers in each league, rather then measuring them together (which by it's nature would be impossible) if, as has been argued over the last couple of years, the AL is a league with better hitting & better pitching the ERA's could be the exact same as the NL with inferior hitting & inferior pitching, as the ERA depends on the interaction between hitting & pitching rather then being a direct co-relation of the quality of one of them. The only way you actually compare is by looking at the success of transitional players. The ones that jump out at you this season are Soriano & Arroyo, but who's to say it isn't just a good season rather then moving to an easier league.