Fertilizer

I really wanted to write a wrap-up of last night's game. Something scathing.

But, the Mets lost to a pitcher named Dickey (perhaps my relative), and started a team (with the highest payroll in the National League) that included Trot Nixon, Endy Chavez, Fernando Tatis and noted stiff in '08 Oliver Perez. This is the baseball equivalent of an NFL Europa team.

And to be fair, I don't much care for that Castillo fellow. He really plays poor baseball. Maybe it's the injuries, but it seems like he's just surly, has the ego of a great player, and doesn't really play like one.

Good thing he's gone at the end of the year – oh, wait, 2009 – no, sorry, 2010 – scratch that, he'll be off our hands come 2011.

But I guess what possesses me today are the fires stoked by The Worst Beat Reporter in Town, Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post, and his fixation on Jerry Manuel's fertilizer comment.

As a fan of metaphor, my instinct was to applaud Manuel. His point was that booing can be good for growth – makes sense – and, unfortunately, like fertilizer, it stinks. Fertilizer is not a pleasant thing - but it's ultimately essential in growth.

That was his point.

Hubbuch, though, takes a strange series of potshots on his blog today, and calls out Daily News counterpart Adam Rubin as well as bloggers.

Normally, I enjoy the curmudgeonly Post-folk. The hockey fan in me finds all of Larry Brooks' stuff, despite his incredibly dour demeanor, must-read, while the same goes for Peter Vecsey's basketball work and Phil Mushnick's writing on sports media. All these guys do is bitch and moan – just look at their pictures, for the sake of a snap judgment –







but their content is pretty good.

Hubbuch, however, seems to have taken the Post's sports journalism, which, unlike its news content, had been palatable (bordering on informative!), to a new low. Perhaps the press would be right in cracking jokes about Manuel's fertilizer comment, reminding him of it every so often, making a few feces punch lines in the press.

Instead, Hubbuch, perhaps full of sulfites, dumped a boatload of nitrates on his readership. Or, for those of you without doctorates in chemistry, a truckload of shit.

So, I'll say this again, in the wake of last night's amusing ejection, I love Jerry Manuel. I'm not sure if this AAA team will be able to play well under him – my guess is they can, and probably will – but he's said more interesting things in his week here than Willie did in his entire tenure – though his comment about Shingo Takatsu bringing the funk to Miguel Cabrera (to the tune of Parliament's "A Three-Run Double) will always warm my heart.

Hubbuch, on the other hand, should know his place – can we get him in touch with Jared Paul Stern and Ian Spiegelman? I imagine they could write some mean sports gossip together.

Some other notes:

I'm sure you all heard, but Claudio Vargas was demoted for Carlos Muniz after last night's game. That's funny – I was going to call him the Mets' worst long man since Aaron Sele.

John Maine goes tonight against Miguel Batista, 7:10 p.m. your start, as usual. If we're taking odds on this one, Maine will throw 145 pitches in 5 innings, and Batista will throw 45 in a complete game shutout.

Renaissance

It's been a while since I've written down my thoughts about this team. It's been a while, really, since I took the time to sit down and think about this team, for whatever reason. In between laughing about how Moises can't stay healthy for six innings straight and then laughing some more about how six innings is, oh, infinity times better than what El Duque has pitched this year, it's hard to really reflect on what has been plaguing the Mets.

And in sitting and reflecting, wouldn't I be vindicating their effort this year (I know it's baseball, where intangibles and hustle are made-up terms to make David Eckstein an All-Star and Derek Jeter the best player ever, but come on) by proffering more time to their failures than they have?

But that was until the renaissance. Maybe it's too early to dub the Jerry Manuel era the renaissance – after all, one could have called the Victor Zambrano era a great success by the second game of his Mets career (he went seven innings, didn't allow an earned run, and was buoyed by an offense that featured Ice Williams leading off, Joe McEwing in the two hole, and Todd Zeile batting third – laugh with me), but I'm going to do it anyway.

Already, in two days, Manuel has endeared himself to me much more than Willie did in his two plus years here, what with his references to "cutting" Jose Reyes on the field, and his shouting match with home plate umpire Doug Eddings tonight. Willie was a product of the Yankee system (mostly Torre's tutelage), and was stoic, afraid to ruffle any feathers and often bordering on dour in his news conferences.

Jerry Manuel, on the other hand, brings the renaissance. Sure, there was Tuesday night's game (I might call it Wednesday morning's, but Omar Minaya would, in broken phrase, tell me that that was just a matter of perception), which was an abomination of the highest degree, but the team was tired – probably spent the entire night partying because Willie was gone – and just didn't have it.

Tonight, however, they were anything but exhausted. Reyes looked like the kid we remembered in 2006 – sprinting his way around the bases, scoring three of the Mets' five runs (and he simply couldn't have scored the others, because they were solo homers). Delgado woke up and crushed a ball for his tenth homer of the year – after the news broke that a veteran player, wonder who it could be, told Willie earlier this year that he would outlast the manager – maybe Manuel is capable of waking him up.

And most importantly, they came back. Oliver Perez, as per usual, was bitten by a bad inning, but unlike the usual, pitched well enough to survive, and keep the Mets in the game. Before I finish – a tangent, if you would indulge me. Why is it that people, including our SNY broadcasters, consistently praise this Angels style of baseball? Sure, taking an extra base once in a while is all well and good, but they scored four runs in the inning before this doozy of a double play: 5-2-4-6-5. The play was relatively simple: there was one out, with men on the corners, and Robb Quinlan hit a bouncing ball to third. Making a play at second would have been difficult for Wright (with the moderately speedy Torii Hunter at first) and throwing to first, across the diamond and across his body, would have been similarly difficult.

Instead, the now slow-footed Vladimir Guerrero breaks home, and Wright throws him out, and then Hunter, hoping to catch Castro napping (I know he's on the West Coast and has trouble with his time zones, but he won't often be napping during a night game) breaks for third, where he is forced out after a string of throws.

So instead of possibly having the bases loaded with one out, which, according to the Run Expectancy matrix, ought to generate about 1.5 runs, there were three out, and no one scored. Wouldn't 1.5 runs been a nice cushion for K-Rod, before he blew it in the ninth?

I understand the importance of hustle, and following Jose Reyes since his promotion has convinced me of the importance of speed in baseball, but how on Earth can one say that grabbing an extra base once in a while is a reasonable trade-off for horrendous gaffes like these?

And more importantly, while I'm attacking the logic of our SNY crew, how could they present that graphic showing the Angels as a hacking team (fewest P/PA in MLB since 2002) and then showing their successful record and saying that since they see few pitches, and they win, their strategy must be working?

Including 2002, the Angels' pitching has ranked in RA/G: first, fifth, second, second, fourth, fifth, and this year fifth as well. In terms of runs scored per game, they have ranked, including 2002: fourth, eleventh, seventh, seventh, eleventh, fourth, and this year eleventh.

So, count it, there was exactly one year, 2007, where the offense outperformed the pitching, relative to competition. Just one year. So my kudos to Mike Scoscia on winning and all – but I beg of SNY to acknowledge the viewers' collective intelligence and talk about the killer Anaheim (or Los Angeles of Anaheim) pitching over that timespan, and not about how this great "let's hustle, take the extra base, and not look at any pitches ever" approach works for scoring runs.

==END OF TANGENT==

So, Perez's effort to control the damage would have also gone to waste, if not for the stellar bullpen work: four innings of one-hit ball after he left the game. Joe Smith pitched well, Schoeneweis pitched well, and Sanchez and Wagner, dare I say it, reminded me of 2006 with their lockdown work in the ninth and tenth.

While the game ball tonight will go to Jose Reyes, an awful lot of praise must be heaped upon David Wright and Damion Easley. Easley, reprising his role as hero (and resident righty power bat) from the 2007 campaign derailed by injury, hammered a Justin Speier slider over the left-field fence to put the Mets ahead to stay.

And Wright, who, it appears, has not hit a ball solidly since Willie Randolph had some semblance job security, managed to beat K-Rod (once upon a time, my favorite non-Met) on a nasty slider to tie the game in the ninth. Reyes chugged home, and didn't even throw his helmet.

All in all, a happy day in Metland. Just you wait – I hear Minaya's on the hot seat, and Fred and Jeff^TM are considering replacing him with either Tony Bernazard, Paul DePodesta or Petrarch. Then the real renaissance begins.

Other thoughts:

-The Mets will have a much-needed off-day tomorrow before facing the Rockies at Coors on Thursday, where the disappointing John Maine will face off against ten-game winner Aaron Cook.

Just thought I'd share that with you. Not really a point to it: but, fun fact, Cook is second only to Brandon Webb in the NL in wins, and Edinson Volquez leads in strikeouts and ERA. If you'd have told me that that would be true midway through June, I would have laughed and said, "oh, yeah, right, and Robinson Cancel will have a game-winning hit for the Mets. And Raul Casanova will have had more at-bats than Ramon Castro by that point! And Angel Pagan, who's been out for more than a month with an injury, will have had more playing time in left field than any other Met! And next you'll tell me, that at this point in the season, Nelson Figueroa's ERA will be lower than Pedro's. And sure, Jorge Sosa, despite having been released, will have more wins than Pelfrey! And Moises Alou will have had some bullshit injury, take two months to heal, come back and reinjure himself after six innings! Ha!"

-Can we now anoint Omar Minaya the new worst press conduit in the Mets' history? Sure, Mike Piazza held a press conference to announce that he wasn't gay (by the way, Alomar was the gay one, if you haven't figured it out already), and Bobby Valentine did an impression of a hitter batting while stoned after the Mets' core players (Mark Corey and Tony Tarasco, dontcha know?) were accused of smuggling weed into the clubhouse in peanut butter jars, but Minaya just did them all one worse.

That's all I've got for you today, but I wholeheartedly assure you: the Renaissance means I'm back.

Some Picks on Opening Day

Hi there.

While substantiation is being constantly thought up, I wanted to get my season picks on record, right here, right now.

NL East: Mets
NL Central: Reds
NL West: Diamondbacks

Wild Card: Phillies

AL East: Red Sox
AL Central: Indians
AL West: Mariners

Wild Card: Tigers

WORLD SERIES: Indians over Mets

AL MVP: Manny Ramirez
NL MVP: David Wright

AL Cy Young: Erik Bedard
NL Cy Young: Johan Santana

It's Back

I doubt anyone reads this thing anymore. Why would they? I haven't written since the Mitchell Report came out – and in that time, we watched, as expected, the vindication of Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds, all of whom have now been fully exonerated of any wrongdoing and have graced us extensively with their presence on the baseball diamond during Spring Training.

For the record, Andy Pettitte's made three starts. That's it. Last we've heard of Clemens and Bonds was on Capitol Hill and the ongoing BALCO trial, respectively. But I'm not here to talk about the past – all the things I've missed, like the Mets' trade for Johan Santana or the rise of Angel Pagan (previously dubbed, in this space, Oxymoron-in-Chief).

No, I don't want to talk about Brian Register and Steve Stokes, Jon Parnell and Bobby Niese, or Ivan Figueroa and Nelson Maldonaldo. Or is it the other way around?

Yes, it's Spring, where those numbers we're used to seeing affixed to the backs of mediocre Jets make their way onto the baseball diamond, now on the backs of kids who live the glamorous lives of minor league pro athletes – taking buses from Binghamton to other cities in the Northeast and staying in motels there. Cities like Akron, Altoona, Harrisburg, New Britain, somebody stop me before I drop my computer and head for the most exciting road trip of my life.

Even though we're not here to talk about the past, the past has somehow made an appearance on the Mets, as Omar Minaya's attempt to assemble a 1998 All-Star Team has broken down, thanks to your usual sports injuries, like hernias and bunions. Just kidding about the All-Star Team – 1998 was El Duque's rookie season, weirdly his best in the major leagues, though perhaps not weirdly, since he celebrated his 39th birthday on the raft to the Bronx. But hey, think about the Mets that were All-Stars during that season. Pedro Martinez, Moises Alou, Damion Easley. And had the Mets not so rudely cast them off after last season, Tom Glavine and Aaron Sele would be on that list!

This team is pretty old. But not the good old, where you talk about all of the rings and whatnot they've amassed, where the elderly provide sagelike wisdom and key advice on the way to championships – all hail Luis Sojo – but rather these are the cranky veterans, who do things like pee on their hands, arbitrarily refuse to join the bullpen and bring years of a winning tradition to Flushing – think about Blue Jays stalwart Carlos Delgado, Tiger legend Easley, and career Expo/Nat Brian Schneider.

Sure, maybe the Mets are on the hunt for talent blackballed because of the age of the body in which it resides, but when we hear that Moises Alou is out with a strained prostate come the pennant race, one would hope that strategy is reconsidered for future years.

But there is something charmingly old and decrepit about this Mets club. They're playing the final season ever in Shea Stadium. This is especially significant for El Duque, whose son was one of the lead architects on the project during its construction in 1963.

This is Shea's last chance, in a way. Two World Series have been won on its grounds, but it has seen far more playoff hearts broken by the likes of Yadier Molina, and, well, yes, Luis Sojo than it has great triumphs. This isn't just the last go-round for Shea, it's the last chance for folks like Moises, El Duque, Easley, Jose Valentin and maybe even Pedro Martinez and Carlos Delgado, both battle-worn and signed to contracts expiring after this year. Oliver Perez is a free agent after this year, and is represented by Scott Boras – thanks for your service, bud. It might be the last chance for Willie Randolph, who has quickly appeared something of a failure at motivating his club, if he can't win this year.

Yes, it's Spring, the time of rebirth, but this entire Mets season will have to be about rebirth for this team to win. The dead bats of the elderly must be reborn, the dead arms of John Maine, Oliver Perez and Billy Wagner must be reborn for the full season, and we need to see the rebirth of Jose Reyes' interest in playing good baseball. The rebirth of Luis Castillo's hamstrings wouldn't hurt, but I'm not holding my breath.

But I hate to sound pessimistic about this season. They've got Santana, Wright, Beltran and the rest of the gang. So what if Ryan Church, Brian Schneider and the punchless Castillo are in the everyday lineup? This team will be reborn; they've got no choice.

And that's my major concern this season, not the fifth starter or the 25th man. So it's easy for me not to worry right now, when Nelson Figueroa and Joe Smith, both of whom are still in the running to make this team, combined to allow six runs in two innings against the Marlins. I can't worry about that. Both allowed homers. Yeesh. Still can't worry.

As a corollary to not worrying about the last pitcher in the pen or in the rotation, I won't reflect on the fact that Brady Clark and Fernando Tatis are feasible options to join the Mets opening week in Florida – and not in Port St. Lucie. Although, chuckling, I ought to remind you of Tatis' 1999 season in St. Louis where he posted a .298/.404/.553 line with 31 doubles, 34 homers, 107 RBI, and 21 steals. And he wasn't even named in the Mitchell Report!

But I'm not here to talk about the past; I'm here to talk about the future. And, I bet, so is Fernando Tatis. It's March 26. The Mets are losing to the Marlins. Do I care? No.

Give me five more days.

Which is "The Steroids Era" in a nutshell?

OR

your call.

THIS IS FUNNY

What's this I hear?

The Mets acquired a living, breathing human being for Guillermo Mota?

That Guillermo Mota?

And even better?

The living, breathing thing is Johnny Estrada: a former All-Star catcher at age 31.

He may have only walked 12 times last year – but his 2.3 WARP3 easily bests Mota's .9.

More later.

A Return

It's been 48 days since I last spoke to you. Since that fateful day, there have been many tears shed, many culprits named, many pitchers who weren't devastated.

But there have been no Mets wins.

Sure, we saw some life out of favorite whipping boy Kaz Matsui – who has been offered a three-year deal by the Chicago Cubs – during the playoffs, en route to a surprising show from the Colorado Rockies.

But it was all about the Red Sox: forget the Phillies, the Yankees, all the teams about whom, as Mets fans, we once cared.

The season is long since over, and the offseason is kicking into gear. Sure, we won't have hours and hours to agonize about the fate of Alex Rodriguez – and whether David Wright will move to second base, first base or left field, and we most likely won't spend our time thinking about what will happen should the Mets sign A-Rod and send Jose Reyes to Minnesota for Johan Santana.

We won't be thinking about obtaining hot trade commodities like Jake Peavy, who unanimously won a Cy Young Award earlier this week, Santana, or Miguel Cabrera, who, along with his apathy and exponentially growing waistline, is allegedly up for grabs.

Jorge Posada is gone, having returned to the Yanks for top dollar, and the fate of Tom Glavine as a New York Met – who was referenced, not by name, but by a wretched image, in my last post – seems to be resolved. The Mets don't really have any tremendous needs.

Right field is open, perhaps for Carlos Gomez, or Lastings Milledge, and for second base the Mets seem to be torn between David Eckstein and incumbent Luis Castillo – a combined 19 big-league seasons and 54 home runs.

Hope springs eternal in Flushing, and there are some things to be excited about: David Wright won a Gold Glove, Pedro Martinez was sterling after coming back, and even Mike Pelfrey started to emerge anew as a potential member of the starting rotation. John Maine threw a near no-no to keep the season alive. What great news!

We've heard the bad – save for that Brian Bannister, acquired for Ambiorix Burgos, who makes Armando Benitez look like is Armando Benitez, came in third in the voting for AL Rookie of the Year as the ace of the KC Royals. Good thing we had such a surplus of young and capable starting pitching, like Brian Lawrence.

And we were perplexed this week to learn of the strange saga of Yorvit Torrealba.

You may ask "Why?" or "Who?" or "Are there any peanuts in it?"

We heard three years, $14 million. Then it was gone. His shoulder they suggest, but we can't tell for sure.

Is Ramon Castro the future? Not unless the future includes half of its days lost to injury, solely for being out of shape.

Now would be a nice time to have Jesus Flores, who will backstop Manny Acta's Washington Nationals to glory in the near future, while the Mets twiddle their thumbs trying to avoid calling Jason Phillips' agent.

They can't. The catching situation is bad: maybe the Mets will go after Jason Kendall, whose 63 OPS+ would really buoy the team, or maybe they should sign Michael Barrett in hopes of nabbing a true clubhouse leader.

Did you know Kris Benson is a free agent? Sign me up. When Carlos Silva (CARLOS SILVA?!) is slated to earn nearly $40 million in a contract, doesn't the prospect of Kris playing for damn near free sound appealing to you? That's a return – unlike mine – that we can all feel happy about.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

fin

to quote radiohead,

You do it to yourself, you do
And that's what really hurts
Is that you do it to yourself
Just you and no-one else
You do it to yourself.

the stench of death is in the air

Scarred and Scared

Please ignore my last post.

The cruel joke appears to be over, but another win might help.

I'll be back writing regularly when I stop sweating.