The bored at work, haven't posted for a while Mets suck post

Some thoughts on a shitty Monday morning:

-Have you ever heard that old line about "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain"? You know, having two really good pitchers and hoping to muddle through the rest. I guess you could do one easily for the Mets, like: "Johan and Maine and pray for rain," except that I'm pretty sure John Maine sucks. It should have been "Santana and Lowe and pray for snow," except that Omar Minaya misjudged the market for Derek Lowe and then pretended he wanted Oliver Perez all along, saving a couple mil a year to have a ridiculously inferior pitcher kill our bullpen every fifth day (And now he may kill our bullpen from the inside, all part of Oliver Perez' latest plan: Operation Destroy the 2009 Mets). So now it's just "Santana and pray he goes 9 innings or pray that JJ Putz will revert to 2006-7 form after a year in which he was injured and that none of the other relievers blow this one and that Daniel Murphy catches flyballs hit at him and that the Mets not strand 15 runners and actually give Johan some run support and that it then rains for four consecutive days." And that's just not very catchy. It doesn't even rhyme.

-And speaking of rainouts, how have there not been more rainouts when I can only remember like 4 days out of the last 40 where it didn't rain in this godforsaken shithole of a city where the Metro closes at midnight on weekdays making it pointless for me to even think about going out on a Thursday night since I'm gonna waste an extra ten bucks taking a cab home?

-Sign the petition to paint CitiField's walls blue. Let's see, you cut down the seating from 55,000 to 42,000 to help create a false demand for tickets, allowed a corporate sponsor to name your stadium with money from the American taxpayers, completely ignored 47 years of Mets history and devoted all stylistic elements and historical flourishes of the new stadium to Jackie Robinson, a stadium that is now two huge apartment buildings and a team that left Brooklyn so long ago that all of their local fans are in Greenwood or those huge cemeteries out in Queens, painted the seats green and the walls black, and sold my dad a 15-game pack in a spot where he can't see a large portion of left field (which might be a good thing considering Sheffield's/Murphy's defensive play). You must be the Wilpons and you must truly have your finger on the pulse of the average Mets fan! At the very least paint the damn walls blue and give the place an identity that is somewhat Mets, rather than its current identity of "a place with very good food for a ballpark."

-Hey St. Francis Prep, I hope you all get swine flu. That's what you get for naming your sports teams the Terriers. Pussies!

-Mark Sanchez is gonna be fucking awesome! Except he's probably going to suck, because the Jets and Mets will continue to be disappointing for the next 50 years!

Adjudicating the Mets' Offseason

The boss is out of the office today and there's not much going on around the internet to entertain me, so I might as well write a blog post. As you may know, I work for a huge government-run entity in the personnel security office and a large part of my job consists of fingerprinting employees, volunteers, contractors, etc. who work for this organization. Well when we receive the results of those fingerprint checks most people have no records and we simply close their case and let the coordinators know that they're ok to bring on board--these people are CLOSED FAVORABLY. Sometimes the fingerprint checks reveal a criminal/arrest record that forces us to review their files (some of the more interesting marks on people's records this week: forcible sodomy and uttering)--when we can't in good conscience let these people work for our organization they are deemed UNACCEPTABLE. Sometimes we fingerprint old and/or sweaty people and their prints do not come out clearly, meaning that a check is done based on their name, SSN, date/place of birth, etc. These "name checks" are not always accurate and thus we may have to re-print somebody whose prints were garbage--they were considered UNCLASSIFIABLE.



We can ignore 3B, SS, CF, 1B and Johan for the time being (they were simply ID renewals that had a previously acceptable investigation). Here were the 2008 Mets' problem areas, as determined by me: Bullpen, 2nd Base, Left Field, Rotation (behind Johan), Catcher. And remember, we can adjudicate Mr. Minaya's moves in three ways: closed favorably, unacceptable, or unclassifiable.



BULLPEN

Where we stood: The 2008 Mets bullpen was retardedly atrocious. Wagner got hurt in August, leaving a cast of LOOGs and ROOGs trying to preserve precious leads. They all failed pretty miserably. Heilman was all-around shitty, Dirty Duaner got tired as the year wore on, Schoeneweis and Feliciano couldn't retire righties to save their lives, ditto Joe Smith but with lefties,Luis Ayala was a National castoff who was thoroughly mediocre...you get the idea.

What we did: Clearly the bullpen was the Mets' biggest flaw in 2008 and Omar got right down to business fixing it. He signed K-Rod for 3 yrs./ $37 mil, which ain't half bad considering he dit it before the FA market bottomed out and early prediction had K-Rod looking for 5/70 or thereabouts. Omar also unloaded Heilman and Joe Smith, along with Mike carp and some lower-level prospects (and, alas, the lovable Endy Chavez) in exchange for JJ Putz and Sean Green (and Jeremy Reed, who ain't no damn Endy, lemmetellya). The Mets also threw out some minor league deals to no-names and picked up a guy named Rocky Cherry in the Rule 5 draft.

Adjudication: We picked up the best free agent closer and traded for an arguably better closer to set him up. Green is essentially a Joe Smith replacement and should be adequate. I expect a healthier and better year out of Dirty Duaner. If Wagner comes back in August the Mets could have the best bullpen in recent memory, and even without Billy that's still a hell of a one-two punch. CLOSED FAVORABLY.



SECOND BASE

Where we stood: 2nd base was a miasma of suck for the Mets last year. Castillo could barely hit his weight and couldn't move more than a few steps in either direction to field(great signing Omar!), Damion "GIDP" Easley actually tangibly looked like replacement level personified, and Argenis Reyes was an all-field no-hit bleach blonde dumbfuck.

What we did: Easley's gone, and in his place is...Alex Cora! Hooray, a 33-year old life-long bench player with a .245/.313/.348 in 2800 at bats. Alex Cora, come on down and collect your 2 million dollars.

Adjudication: Looks like Omar's crossing his fingers and hoping for Castillo to justify that contract. And $2 million isn't a ton, but I really think Omar could have allocated that money elsewhere. It's not like I wanted to go throw a bunch of money at Orlando Hudson (who might wind up being really cheap considering he's still unsigned as of this writing), but as long as Luis Castillo is hobbling around with an orange NY on his hat there is only one adjudication possible. UNACCEPTABLE.



LEFT FIELD

Where we stood: Left field was a revolving door of players of whom nothing was expected, because what the Mets and Mr. Minaya expected was for Moises Alou to play more than a couple of games. Fernando Tatis and the Superman music shocked the shit out of every one by playing quite well for several months before separating his shoulder in mid-September. Daniel Murphy burst on the scene in a big way, hitting very well in 131 at-bats during August and September. Nick Evans looked rather benchy, but hit lefties well in his limited playing time. Angel Pagan (definitely a member of the Brooklyn Cyclones Hall of Fame) had a hot start before falling over a railing at Dodger Stadium in May and ending his season. The Mets actually got OK production out of LF last year despite Omar's efforts, but none of these guys really seems like a big league leftfielder.

What we did: Closed our eyes and pretended Manny Ramirez, Adam Dunn, and Pat Burrell didn't exist. Signed a bunch of filler (Cory Sullivan, Rob Mackowiak, Bobby Kielty, etc.) to compete with Jeremy Reed for a 5th outfielder spot and round out the Buffalo roster.

Adjudication: It seems Omar is content with a Tatis-Murphy platoon in left. It seems pretty risky to expect Tatis to replicate last year's magic or Murphy to live up to his great start, and it's disappointing that that's what we have to hope for when Dunn, Burrell, and even Bobby Abreu (not a LF, but still) were had for very little money. I guess the budget is set and we can thank Bernie Madoff for that. Here's hopin that Murphy is the next John Olerud. UNCLASSIFIABLE.



ROTATION

Where we stood: Johan is a beast. Big Mike Pelfrey was great from some time in June onwards, but he threw a lot more innings than ever before and still can't strike people out. Let's hope he picks up those strikeout rates and doesn't fall victim to serious fatigue or arm issues after last year's workload. John Maine was pretty lousy and then hurt, but he still can be a solid 3 when healthy. Ollie was up and down as usual, with a stretch at the beginning of the year where he was brutal, a stretch in the middle where he convinced us all he'd finnally turned it around, and a stretch at the end where he was pretty blah; and he walked 1700 men. Pedro, as much as I love the guy, was brutally, indescribably awful.

What we did: We watched the Braves over pay for solid consistency in the form of Derek Lowe. After a long and arduously boring negotiation we re-signed Ollie for 3 yrs./$36 mil, which seems ok until you read smart people explain how much he's actually worth. We signed Tim Redding to a major-league $2.25 mil contract, which seemed fine at the time, but then the market went downhill and I realized we could have had 7 Tim Reddings or maybe even someone better for that. We signed Freddy Garcia to a minor league deal with a bunch of incentives. And for some goddamn reason we just signed Livan Hernandez and invited him to St. Lucie.

Adjudication: I can't help but feel that Omar paid a bunch of money to tread water. I love Ollie and I hate that Derek Lowe contract, but he's a proven commodity and a better bet to be good despite his age. I do like the fact that the Mets actually have some rotational depth this year, with Jon Niese, Redding, and Garcia all in the running for that 5th spot. I expect Garcia to make the rotation and Redding to serve as the long man/injury insurance to start the year. All in all, meh. UNCLASSIFIABLE.



CATCHER

Where we stood: With the trading away of Schoeneweis and my soon to come assassination of Luis Castillo, Brian Schneider is my least favorite Met. Whether it's sour grapes from the Milledge trade, the fact that he hit's like a little bitch, or the fact that he CAN"T BLOCK A BALL IN THE FUCKING DIRT, I can't stand the guy. He clearly is not a good catcher. Ramon Castro can hit some bombs, but he's hurt all the damn time and was again last year. Robinson Cancel looks like a retired-and-now-gotten-fat Ninja Turtle, but that doesn't mean he should be on an MLB roster.

What we did: Not a damn thing, although there weren't really any options. If they could have gotten Varitek for cheap and then fed him to sharks on live TV that would've been OK.

Adjudication: Well there weren't really any great options out there. We didn't really have the prospects to get one of the Rangers' catchers or Montero from Arizona. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that Omar didn't sign PudgeRod. Lest we forget though, Omar traded Lastings Milledge for Schneider and also let Washington scoop up Jesus Flores in the Rule 5 draft two years ago. Thank God we were able to hold on to Julio Franco for half of 2007, where would we have been without him. UNACCEPTABLE.

What have we learned: Nothing really. If Ryan Church and Delgado play like their good halves of 2008 this coming year we got a shot. Otherwise, we're looking at last year's team with a bullpen. At least I'm not LCT, though, because the Tigers are gonna suck.

Aww shucks

Well that sucked. The Mets once again blew their chance at the playoffs by losing to the Florida Marlins on the last day of the season. My congratulations to Peanut, who can't even name half the Brewers roster because he is a Packers fan...sorry about that. The Brewers haven't been in the playoffs since 1982, so I wish them the best, i.e. I hope they destroy the Phillies and then fail miserably against the Cubs and get to watch their hired gun leave for millions of dollars from the Yankees for whom Sabathia will be horrible for several months while recovering from the lingering pain that Ned Yost, Dale Sveum and the rest of the Brewers inflicted by making him throw 300 innings in a three-month span.




Anyhoo, the Mets. This is the 2008 Mets:

Jerry Manuel walking to the mound to take the ball from a shitty reliever just about sums this team up, doncha think? Billy Wagner was having a pretty lousy year by his standards, but when he went down so did any hope for the Mets to salvage this season. Luis Ayala, a man who the Nationals wanted to get rid of, was our closer for the final month of the season. Every single pitcher out of the bullpen was horrible with ridiculous lefty-righty splits (except for reverse splitter Duaner Sanchez). A lot of people over on metsblog and metsgeek seem to be bitching about David Wright and this team's lack of clutch hitting. Yes, that was certainly the case during the final weekend, but c'mon. This team tied with the Phillies for 2nd in the league in runs scored despite Brian Schneider, Luis Castillo, a revolving door outfield, etc. etc. There is nobody to blame here except for a bullpen that had 837 blown saves (statistic not official).

Sunday was a horrible ending to a disappointing season, but to pretend that I'm nearly as mad as last year would be wrong. The only reason I'm mad is because of last year. If the Mets had made the playoffs last year we'd be talking about the 2008 mets as a team that nearly overcame a bunch of injuries and a horrible bullpen to make the playoffs. Instead, they are labelled as chokers for the 2nd straight year. Yes, they choked in a very minor way over the past week---5 runs against Volstad, Nolasco, Olsen is horrible. They also lost that game against the cubs that they clearly should have won. FERNANDO TATIS, was a regular outfielder for half the year, and they almost made it (speaking of which, Fernando Tatis is the man!). Pedro Martinez was hurt half the time and Trachselesque the other half, and they almost made it. Luis Ayala was our closer down the stretch, and they almost made it. Scott Schoeneweis was on the roster, and they almost made it. Luis Castillo will be on the team for the next seven years, and they almost made it. Willie Randolph was allowed to flounder around until June, and they almost made it. OMAR MINAYA IS OUR GM, and they almost made it.

Which reminds me, fuck Omar Minaya and fuck the Wilpons for giving him a four-year extension. Giving Omar Minaya four years is almost as stupid as giving Luis Castillo four years, leading me to believe that the only other person (besides the Wilpons) dumb enough to extend Omar Minaya would be...Omar Minaya. Check out these team payrolls. Omar Minaya was given over $138 million dollars and converted that into 89 wins (LCT, you may not want to click on that link). Well, in 2007 he took $118 million and gave us 88 wins. Therefore, since 2006, that's $256 million for a slightly above average team. He took an extra 20 mil (most of which is Johan) and created 1 more win. Omar Minaya is not good at his job. He is constantly uncreative in putting together a bullpen and a bench. He prefers old and friendly players to young and/or talented ones. Marlon Anderson had a couple good months pinch-hitting? 2 years, 2.2 million. Luis Castillo is able to hobble his way to a decent OBP and was once a good player? 4 years, $25 million. Julio Franco is old and provides leadership? Protect him, not JESUS FLORES on the 40-man roster. Somebody was once on the Minaya-led Expos? Sign him up---Endy Chavez, Brian Schneider, Ryan Church, Fernando Tatis, Luis Ayala, Tony Armas, Claudio Vargas, get 'em all.

Here are the 3 good things Minaya has done with the Mets:
1)traded Kris Benson for Jorge Julio and John Maine, then traded Julio for El Duque
2)traded Xavier Nady for Roberto Hernandez and Oliver Perez
3)extended Jose Reyes and David Wright for multi-year below-market contracts
Those are good things.

Here are some good things that have happened under Minaya's watch:
1)signed Carlos Beltran
2)signed Pedro Martinez (only if you buy into the whole "he changed the culture" around here thing, which I do somewhat. At the very least I think he made the Mets a more viable free agency destination)
3)traded Carlos Gomez et al. for Johan Santana
Those are good things that ANYBODY WITH HALF A BRAIN AND A BAZILLION DOLLARS TO WORK WITH could have done.

Here are some bad things that Omar Minaya has done:
1)Heath Bell (and Royce Ring) for Ben Johnson and Jon Adkins
2)Brian Bannister for Ambiorix Burgos
3)Henry Owens and Matt Lindstrom for Jason Vargas and Adam Bostick
4)Luis Castillo, Marlon Anderson, Julio Franco (over Jesus Flores)
5)LASTINGS MILLEDGE for Ryan Church and Brian Schneider (Church was solid, then hurt, then terrible. Schneider is a bad hitter, a decent thrower, and TERRIBLE AT ACTUALLY CATCHING PITCHES)
6)The whole Willie Randolph saga: Let me just say that I believe the only reason Willie Randolph was not fired after the debacle of 2007 is because Omar was using him as his fall guy. And guess what? it worked. When the Mets were playing like shit for the first two months, Willie got the blame and Omar eventually fired him after a long, drawn-out and embarassing saga. Jerry Manuel took over, the Mets played better, and Omar got an extension. Is Willie wholly responsible for the Mets being lousy? No. Is Jerry whole responsible for the Mets being pretty good? No. Is someon responsible for the Mets being lousy and then pretty good and thereby little better than mediocre? Yes, his name is Omar Minaya.

OK, enough for now. This season sucked, this weekend sucked, this team sucked. It's still not as bad as last year, but it's getting harder and harder to be a Mets fan, especially when the ownership doesn't recognize that the man they put in charge is shit at his job.

I'll have some more this week on my memories of Shea and who to root for in the playoffs (Hint: the freakin' Tampa Bay Rays).

I'm back! And the Mets still suck

I have decided to make my return to redstripe and chonic due to the incessant clamoring of my reader(s). First off, I clearly have to talk about the Mets and this post is going to naturally be negative as they are fucking losing 10-0 to the motherfucking horrible Seattle Mariners. Let's actually clarify that a little more. Ollie gave up 5 er in 5 innings and 8 baserunners, and he's on my fantasy team and really can't suck now because Marcum and Zambrano (the one that I don't want to repeatedly punch in the throat) both went on the dl last week. Also, Gary Cohen just reminded me of something I read on metsgeek, which is that we are getting shut out by R.A. Dickey, a man who was born without his medialcollateralolioislal ligament. That's the ligament they fix/replace when they do Tommy John surgery and he doesn't even fucking have one. And the mets can't hit him of course...a team could come out with Dickey, Jim Abbot, Johnny Cancerboy Lester, the exhumed corpse of Mordecai "3-finger" Brown, and that kid Terry with one leg who almost made the Xavier freshman team and see how many times a cripple can strike out Delgado.

Anyway, let's get on to the now old news: the Mets fired Willie Randolph. As is the Mets wont, the Wilpons and the front office handled this with a complete lack of class, tact, or basic common sense. The Wilpons put the whole thing on Minaya, then repeatedly leaked things to the press hinting at Randolph's imminent demise in order to force Omar's hand. Then they made the man fly 3000 miles and fired him in the middle of the night after a win. Not that the win mattered, but really? You couldn't just fire him on Sunday and have started the road trip with Jerry Manuel? My problem is not that Willie got fired. He was not a good manager. But he was fired 9 months too fucking late, and at that point it just felt like a total distraction from the real problems of the team. The Mets have 5 good players that I can count: Reyes, Wright, Beltran, Santana, and Maine. Ollie is hit or miss, and Billy Wagner can suck a dick. Ok, so we'll call it 6 1/2 good players. Pelfrey may be added to the list at a later date. Willie Randolph did not sign those people. But Willie Randolph also did not refuse to find a solid backup plan for Alou or Delgado or Pedro. Willie Randolph did not pretend that the Milledge thing was a good idea just because Church played way over his head for two months. The fact that Ryan Church being hurt is such an enormous blow to the Mets lineup is retarded...and not Willie's fault. Willie Randolph did not ensure that Luis "Gimp" Castillo will be a Met in 2011.

Read my last sentence again. Look at the picture above. Now tell me who should be fired? Our biggest fucking hits this year have come from Fernando Tatis, Robinson Cancel, and Damion Easley. That is not a product of shrewd management and picking up overlooked guys. That is 3 lucky fucking hits from some of the washed-up schmucks with whom Omar Minaya has littered this Mets roster. Are you old (and preferrably Latino, though that's neither here nor there)? Were you once good like in the late 90s or somehow connected to the Expos organization? Are you out of work due to the fact that 29 teams have recognized your significantly diminished skills? Well come to the Mets! We have room for all of you! All of this means that the Wilpons fired the wrong guy. Or at least they fired one guy too few.

When LCT happily told me "thank god Pudge will not be the Tigers' catcher next year," I jokingly told him that he would be the Mets catcher... Except I don't know if I was joking.

Johan is a Met...

...fuck...yes!

Well, the terms of the deal are still foggy at this point. It looks like a 6 year extension at about $22 mil per year, on top of this year (with a 7 mil boost this year). All told that's seven years of Johan, and that's alright by me.

The more I think about this trade, the more I like it. For most of the offseason I was kind of against a trade for him, because it would essentially be gutting our farm system for the right to pay Santana $150 million. Now that it's done, and the Mets held on to F-Mart and Pelfrey, it really looks awesome. This 08 mets team has a great rotation, should have enough arms to put together a solid bullpen, and if MLB will let us use a three-man lineup (i.e. bat Reyes, Wright, and Beltran over and over again) we should be able to score enough runs.

"If I play my cards right, I can get siete platanos and a pot of sancocho for that young man"

Hey, Omar! Fuck your...er...eh, I'll let him off for a little while. I don't think Omar Minaya is a very good general manager, but his ability to make this Santana deal at least proves to me that he is not completely and utterly useless. He still made one really, really bad trade and signed Luis "the Gimp" Castillo to a 4-year deal. This team has some flaws at 2nd (although Gimp's decent OBP should save him this year), Catcher (fucking plumber), RF (Jew-hater) especially when lefties are pitching, and LF (b/c Old-Man Alou is guaranteed to break a hip at some point). Delgado better return to 06 form, and Jose can't shit the bed at the end of the season again. All that said, I like the Mets chances this year.

At least Omar got rid of most of the young guys in the organization, so Professor Willie won't get too confused.

Where's Mota?

Joe Buck: "Mets, Diamondbacks. Santana, Haren. Martinez, Webb. It's the NLCS, next on Fox."