I remember the night well. I was 17 and it was my first weekend night with a drivers' license. and to make it the best night ever on top of that, the Mets agreed to terms with Johan on the extension that completed the trade. never an optimist, I was convinced that by any reasonable measure, NYM were favorites to win the NL East. and then life happened

the fact(s) that Hamilton is white and that's it's currently alcohol and not something illegal will help him from a PR point of view.

I'm not so sure Lincecum is 'confident' he'll get a more lucrative deal, I think he's just... a bit aloof to it all. he says he has a distaste for long-term deals. I'd take him at face value. he must make his agent insane.

AA starting to look smart for the Taylor-Wallace-Gose merry-go-round?

must mean no Prince Fielder. not that the smarter people were expecting it to begin with.

I read that as "(Pomeranz) made his big league debut in the midst of undergoing an appendectomy". gave me a good laugh

you guys have to update the Blue Jays logo

*too

Beane is just loading up on the prayer of a San Jose migration later in the decade. by that time Bailey would be either a free agent or way to expensive for the A's to want. so he'll pile up the longshots and hope to strike gold. now that all the secrets are out they cannot compete in Oakland.

no Sammy Sosa to the DL for sneezing?

I have long dreamed up the following the scenario. consider: Phillies 6, Mets 0. top 5th, Phillies coming to bat. in the forecast, bearing down on Flushing Meadows is a tremendous storm that is almost certain to suspend play for good. why not continually issue intentional walks, then constantly make pickoff throws, etc. to stall? this of course requires the literal perfect storm of events.

was just about to ask the same. it's not like he is young at all.

does Jason Marquis have a chance of coming back this year?

I'm more interested in how it might impact a Lincecum price tag.

is Wilmer Flores still a prospect?

another NYM-MIL here. a friend of mine makes three.

are you shocked on Beede? I remember the podcast was certain that he would sign for way over slot when the Jays drafted him despite the (in)famous, Shermanesque letter.

do you know why Mazzoni is working out of the bullpen? workload concerns?

Jason's Transaction Analysis debut?

of course he is better, but the Phillies are a <99% shot of making the playoffs this year.. what's Pence's value? a few theoretical October at-bats against Madison Bumgarner or Jon Lester or CC Sabathia? weigh that against a significant hit to a farm already devoid of near-term impact guys (though perhaps give them a pass on this due Worley and Brown). I think it's a bit of a reach.

sort of a silly comp. Heilman was a college kid and never was thought to have a ceiling higher than a third starter. the Mets drafted him because they wanted a quick riser after decimating the farm under Phillips. and in fairness, Heilman was seriously valuable from 2005-2007, who knows what would have become of him had he been allowed to start over fools like Kaz Ishii and Steve Trachsel and Brian Lawrence in his prime.

or maybe it's for the ad revenue.

how does Berry Weiss compare to Blue Moon's summer honey wheat edition?

correct, but there's a "poor man's" loophole written into the statute. Rick Reed did much of the lobbying in the 90s to get the amendment passed.

two good memories from Yoshii. first was a game against the Pirates in early 1998: 7IP, 0 R, 7K in his debut on a 47 degree day at old Shea. second was Game 1 of the 1999 NLDS, when he went toe-to-toe with Randy Johnson, keeping it close until Bobby Chouinard entered and allowed Edgardo Alfonzo to do the honors. 1999 Mets will forever be my favorite baseball team, I have a team photo-poster on the door entrance to my room.

of course he isn't, unless you want to consider him an NPB top prospect. non-prospects still get mentions here if they play at an inhuman level: see Wily Mo and Burroughs.

Nick Evans deserves some love from the blog. .489/.566/.733 over last 18 games.

man how weird it would be to see Wang and Oliver Perez both crack the Nats rotation.

the only way to play it is to weigh the offer you get vs. the value of two draft picks you'd get as compensation. this way you end up on top any way you slice it, even in the incredibly unlikely scenario you sign Reyes back as a FA after trading him away.

we're winning the war. even the most optimistic among us would have 5 years ago had problems believing that WAR would go semi-mainstream and ESPN would poach Christina Kahrl. there will for much longer be reactionaries that cling to the old comfortable order but they are not worth the time of day, no matter how reviling they may be.

Wilmer Flores devoid of a mention: how the sky has fallen.

Christmas comes in June this year.

KG: any word on 2009 Mets top pick Steven Matz? he doesn't appear to be on any of the short season rosters.

if a Reyes deal could pry away Banuelos or Betances, why not? nothing would be more painful to a Yankee fan than watching one of them develop into a frontline starter across town.

this is a painful read for a Mets fan

so much for "continuing to contribute" :-/

would Jeff Loria of all people be willing to commit perhaps eight figures to somebody like Bobby Valentine?? seems hard to imagine.

KG: how much has Jeurys Familia's stock risen this year? double-digit whiffs on Sunday at AA.

has Brackman's stock fallen far enough to be a potential Carlos Beltran haul?

also I see Harper has played 13G at CF this year... any prayer of him pulling that off down the road?

KG: is there any practical chance Carp can handle the outfield over any serious period of time? or is this another Lucas Duda?

Jack Zduriencik was on WFAN New York over the weekend and stated that Ackley will likely be promoted "in June or July"

small nit-picky fact-check: the '04 Tigers contract was four guaranteed seasons plus a $13 million club option for 2008, which was exercised.

devoid of context the answer is obviously very clear. in Game 6 of the ALCS there is no question. over the course of a 162-game regular season certain variables can pop up that at least make the question competitive.

best blog on the site: to be expected from the last remaining Old Bolshevik.

wow, Sean Burroughs. blast from the past. one of the few to have the rare honor of being a BA top ten prospect three times.

how is Ackley defensively? does he project to have any problems sticking at 2B in the majors?

this is the better example: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN200006300.shtml

it shows WPA in the play-by-play. Met win probability bottomed out at a rounded 2%.

he reminds me a bit of a poor man's Lidge. I doubt he ever touches Lidge04-05 levels of dominance because the slider just doesn't have the vertical break, but so long as he is cost-controlled he provides for a sick weapon out of the bullpen. it's hard not to wish he could have panned out as a started, but not to be.

should be noted that the Sox in 05 had a ton of picks in the 1R + Compensatory 1R. netting Jed Lowrie, Clay Buchholz, and Jacoby Ellsbury.

love the writing. second the comments on the format. us baseball addicts can recognize a team's logo before we know we've seen it -- makes for easy browsing if they're included.

3/2 is 40% yes... 2/1 is 33.33%. so the O's stuff is backwards as the Boston stuff once was

lots of innings from the SPs

I presume his presence can be inferred by the 'missing' 48% of PT for Hernandez/Murphy (?)

also where is Brad Emaus? he's being treated as the odds-on favorite to win the 2b job by the NY media.

sort of disappointing to see even the 90th percentile slugging percentages for Wright and Reyes not even touch their 2006-2007 heydays. perhaps Citi Field-influenced to a degree, but, still. how much this has all fallen apart.

Vazquez way too kind. HUGE velocity drop for him. once it goes in the mid 30s it usually is gone forever.

what other team has a top 5 (6) SP without red crossbones?

I think the cpu spit out Rivera as a high injury risk last year too and the disclaimer offered went something like, the cpu will always think a 40+ yr old power relief pitcher to be one hell of an injury risk.

Zito still - as of last reliable indication, 2010 = has serious value at the back of a rotation. it must be hard for the specter of the contract not to hinder objectivity in such a situation, but, please, this isn't Mike Hampton ca. 2005.

any chance of a Ryan Anderson reference? ranked in BA's top ten in three consecutive years.

such an effect would be imperceptible.

after looking at the spreadsheet and Pagan's, Davis', etc. batting lines I thought PECOTA hated the Mets. roughly .500 is a pleasant surprise.

would Hernandez still have won were his record 12-13?

Takahashi want(ed) $5 million per year not total.

Davis was between a 2.5 and 3.3 win 1B in 2010 depending on who you believe. his offensive numbers are more like Adam LaRoche than we'd like to get excited about, but, still: 12% walk rate, .176 ISO, I think there is plenty there for intrigue and to write off his star potential at this point when, remember, it was assumed he'd be spending much of the year in AAA, I can't agree with.

Hot Rod Kanehl! awesome

probably the most unique skill set of the BP staff.. likely irreplaceable

if we extend the DS to 7 games 4th starters have to pitch and revenues go up. a positive for both purists and profit-maximizers

why not trade Bautista? outside of potential fan base indignation.

I'd love to see Bobby Valentine too. but I'm hardly convinced it is the best thing to do; he'd require big bucks, $6-8MM a year, I'd imagine. I'd rather see that money put into the actual player payroll... with competent management the Mets should be in good enough position by 2012, when we can expect certain degree of attrition in Philadelphia with Halladay, Utley, Howard, Werth likely defecting this offseason, and so forth. the Mets will clear Beltran (18.5M) Castillo (6M) Perez (12M) and possibly K-Rod (13+M) if his option doesn't vest from the books and the surprisingly impressive crop of talent we've seen with Niese Pelfey Thole Davis Dude Nieuwenheis F. Martinez, Matt Harvey and Reese Havens further down the line, etc. will be approaching theoretical prime seasons or at least low-cost big-league usefulness. being saddled with the Bay contract sucks but it is an indicator of what the next GM needs to avoid - squandering the team's resource advantage with multiyear contracts to players on the tail end of their theoretical prime. if that can be avoided even decent intuition by the front office should put the Mets in decent position to contend in 2012 and 2013. the real question that can largely invalidate all I just said is, whether the Mets GM position holds any degree of meaningful autonomy. it is possible that Minaya has managed to linger this long by happily serving as figurehead and fall-guy for Jeff Wilpon's inane personnel decisions. now he must go because, as this article says, the fan base is in state of revolt and ticket sales will crash and burn very very hard in 2011 without some facade of serious changes in organizational philosophy and leadership. the only reason I think Bobby V has a chance is because he would instill the highest degree of interest in a fan base that feels repeatedly stepped over.

re Hamilton: are the more addictive analgesics such as opiates ever used on baseball players on a daily-dose, prescription type basis? is it possible or safe to be a functional baseball player when on codeine or tramadol or etc?

it's been reported all over the place that Johan Santana's surgery was non-arthroscopic and he could hence miss the entire 2011 season. do you have any word?

reducing the FA threshold to 4 yrs would increase the supply of labor significantly thereby decreasing premiums paid to free agents. likely why it was rejected; also why Miller agreed to the rules he did back in the 70s when everybody was slated to become an FA with the expiration of the reserve clause.

a friend once told me THC is chemically similar to estrogen and thus makes it harder to build muscle. is this potentially of concern for Lincecum?

gutsy move shutting down Leake in the middle of a pennant race.

any chance we can get KG's word on the 3 pitchers traded to Chicago?

if Young comes back for SD how do they handle the rotation? a Padre fan at the physical rehab place I go to claims it'd be LeBlanc, as he could serve as the second lefty out of the bullpen, but logic would seem to push for Correia to be bumped. I'm far removed from the Padre beat so I can't say what the thinking might be

the Ordonez injury is a blessing in disguise. now his '11 option won't vest providing payroll flexibility for a team in dire need of it.

Dunn was historically bad in the OF the last few seasons. dragging him far closer to replacement level than anybody with his bat should be. his value is as a 1B/DH

because we can usually, but not quite always, count on the Mets to do the wrong thing.

I wish the Mets would try Maine in short relief; he may be terrible, but the entire righthanded side of the bullpen save K-Rod is waiver wire trash, so it's worth a shot, especially given Maine's past success first time through the order, high pitches/PA earlier in the year, and lack of endurance.

you mean Edgardo Alfonzo didn't peak at age 24-25??

obligatory: anything on Beltran? seems to have been no news since his warning track jog two weeks ago.

Rays really should dig into that notoriously deep farm and look for a bat this summer.

the Mets have a 24 year old pitcher in AAA named Dillon Gee who has nice numbers this year: 7.7 K/9, 2.7 BB/9 in 47 innings. he posted similar figures of 7.8 and 3.0 in 48 innings last year at AAA. I certainly think he could outperform Perez at the major league level and maybe even generate a few tenths of a win above replacement.

could we approach WPA like we approach the PECOTA-adjusted playoff odds? every night the season is simmed a million times and weighted back to what should have been expected at the beginning of the year, according to the system.. so if we were to sim an individual game a million times, or a thousand, or whatever, we could say that the Reds have .55 chance of beating the Mets tonight, and start the graph there. and then weight each individual outcome over the course of the game back to what should be expected. this does penalize good players, as if the Yankees start a game with a .7 win probability there is more (-) that their players can achieve than positive, but I'm not certain that WPA can be adapted into a meaningful individual player stat.

the more I think about it the more I see the Bay contract as another mild disaster for this organization

one important difference between Beltran and Dawson is walk rate. Beltran's walk rate has been encouraging the past few seasons, above 15% in 2006 and 13%+ two of the last three years. players with diversified offensive skills (ISO and Walk%, namely) tend to age better. so I think Beltran can remain somewhere between productive and elite at the plate from now through the end of 2011, when I can potentially stop caring. but could watching him play CF on one leg be horrendous? he posted a negative UZR last year for the first time in a while and I direly hope he doesn't follow the GriffeyJr path - because of his stature as a star, he stays in CF far too long and is such a liability that it cancels out what he can give you at the plate. in Griffey's case the effect was more than countervailing, he drifted towards replacement level because of defense. with Bay in LF indefinitely the Mets' hands are tied; I doubt Francoeur can really play CF. perhaps Fernando Martinez will be the CF sometime between now and 2011, with 1B being an (inherently undesirable but perhaps necessary) destination for Bay or Beltran should Ike Davis flunk, and Francoeur could be non-tendered or traded in the offseason.

I check this every day, 2x a day, in the desperate hope Jenrry Mejia's name is not listed.

Latos dominated at every minor league level

Billingsley is the key player

if Kennedy indeed puts up those innings and Jackson is 80% as good as Scherzer it will be slightly more difficult to demonize the deal.

best $40 I ever spent, dear God.

Russ Branyan will be a cool little piece for this club.

how does the Chicago media allow Kenny Williams to survive?

frustrating thing about the '10 Mets is with competent management and a few helpful additions this team could contend... nothing shabby about Reyes/Wright/Santana/Beltran. unfortunately the Wilpon definition of 'helpful' is 'sells tickets & jerseys'... which is why the Mets reportedly do not operate on a budget, but instead analyze each acquisition independently (ie, weigh the money they're paying Bay against how many 44 t-shirts they sell and how much of the season ticket base will hold as a result)

with that offensive projection Bay may only be a two-win player in 2010. replacement level by, say, 2012? dear God.