Ceetar

yeah, would like to see more of him on a national stage. Fox and ESPN always drop the ball in that regard. Honestly, I think this is where the Mets were going with the Perez contract. Grienke conquered his issues and made the Royals look kinda smart in that regard. Perez worsened what probably would've been a nothing injury in the WBC and was out all season.

And he hasn't started in over a year. Gonna take some time to get into a groove you'd think. As far as pitching goes so far rumors are the Mets may have made an offer to Smoltz and Omar says Nieve may be 5th on the depth chart at this point. (Which is a pretty worthless statement prior to spring and while he's still looking for another pitcher.)

No, I'm practically counting down the hours. I'm even more excited because it almost feels like I haven't seen them play since 2008. To see Santana take the mound with Reyes behind him on Opening Day? That's going to be a good feeling. I also feel this team is good enough to win though. No reason to think they won't be competitive, barring injury of course.

I do Netflix. Generally just burn the movie and instantly send it back. This way I always have a cache of movies I haven't seen on hand. Now with insta-streaming through the Playstation, I have even more options to pick from. If I'm really desperate I'd probably bittorrent a movie before actually leaving the house to go to blockbuster or hollywood video. (I wonder where either of my rental cards are..hmm..)

I'd wanted to see it, as it sounded like a fun concept, but that's generally the response I've gotten from people that have seen it. It was good for a handful of jokes and the rest of the movie sucked.

My impressions of Bay is that he's basically average range (and does that translate to below average at citi? who knows..) but is solid within that range. He's used to the off the wall shot which is helpful in Citi (and is something Tatis and Sheffield were abysmal at). I think Pagan's fairly decent, he's obviously no Beltran, but who is? I'm not going to worry about 'what if' he doesn't come back with full range right now, and assume he will by May 1st. I think Reyes will be okay, range/speed wise, and I think Castillo gets a bit of a bad rap in the range regard, but having Reyes up to snuff with his range and Murphy's actually got good range, he just has to learn more what's outside his range right now. Something I haven't heard anyone really bring up in regards to the Mets infield defense last year was their placement. Is it possible that whoever is in charge of positioning them was doing a bad job of it? Could they have moved Castillo more towards first, figuring Murphy would need the help, which would cause more balls to shoot through the middle?

Bringing Tatis back is one of the few moves that could be make that would make me severely consider cutting the number of games I go to next year. that guy was a bum. I'm pretty confident that had they played with 24 guys last year (beyond when they did anyway) and Tatis was not on the roster they've have won a couple more games. at least.

Was definitely my favorite comedy of 2009. 500 Days of summer I thought pretty much sucked. That was supposed to be a comedy?

Best case is Pagan (Or Evans or Carter or whatever..I guess those guys aren't really CFers..) is lighting it up, and Matthews is hitting well too. Hopefully Beltran has resumed baseball activity by the start of the season and maybe Omar can flip GMJ for a pitcher or something. Or he's a decent pop-guy off the bench. Hey, Francoeur came here and got better, why not?

Obviously they didn't pay him above slot or something right?

Eh. I'm indifferent. I doubt he wins a job over Pagan. He has more power than Jeremy Reed, and he had a good 2006, which means Manuel will trust him first in every power situation that the Pitcher, Pagan, or Castillo get up in after the 6th inning.

I may be exaggerating Thole's upside, sure, but I was comparing it to Santos, not to Posey. The guy can hit, Santos can't. When i say career year, I was referring to professional baseball, not MLB. He doesn't really have a lot of power. 10 HR with Trenton once. My observations seemed to place him as below average defensively (in terms of fielding pop-ups and what not). And he didn't seem to run the bases well. Is Thole really going to do worse than that? Granted, it's mostly a moot point. If the Mets really do go with Santos and in May he's hitting .205 with 2 HR and Thole's playing well in AAA, it'd be silly not to expect them to switch.

I think it's unlikely Santos, a career minor leaguer, will improve off his career year last year. I think he lacked fundamentals (but then, so did everyone.), was slow on the bases, and didn't really hit that well. I really doubt Thole will do worse than Santos in 2010, and with a tremendous amount of upside. If we're not going to sign anything more than backups, Thole is the only one with starter potential, so make it so.

I guess some breaks are going the Mets way this year. I'm liking how this team is coming together so far, still waiting on who are 5th pitcher will be though. I'm also assuming they'll still sign some sort of catcher so I don't have to watch Santos anymore

I'd like Sheets, I'd definitely take that. I think Garland is my safe choice, and I'd be fine with that, but Sheets is pretty good. He just seems a little too expensive to be worth taking a shot on. Sometimes I wonder if maybe the Mets should try mixing in a 6 man rotation for a month or so at some point. Sheets, Maine, and even Santana could probably due with extra days off here and there to keep them their best for Sept-October.

No no, they wanted a third year OPTION. They just dialed the wrong number, got Boras, and told him they wanted a third option. Rather than admit they mis-dialed, they decided to call out Boras/Beltran for having this surgery without consent. And in related news, Molina had knee surgery on an apparently healthy knee. He'll miss the start of the season and that's why the deal fell through.

I don't know if I would describe that as integrity, but I do agree with the idea of how Boras worked the Mets and Beltran in this situation. I've suspected the whole time that this was a disagreement over the interpretation of the contract language which Boras used to okay surgery and the Mets are all up in arms about how he did it. This isn't about Beltran, but about Boras. You just don't take on Boras though, without making yourself look stupid. The Mets are just the latest to fall into that trap.

I was responding to RealityChuck about the Yankee parallels. I agree It'd be nice if they'd stop with the stupidness. I don't really care much though, as long as they get a pitcher and do the baseball thing. Manuel manages and releases information in a horrible, disasterous method too and people just laugh at him, so I guess it's no surprise they didn't fire him. He fits right in.