The underrated Jonathon Niese

Last week, Dave Cameron of FanGraphs set out to find potential comparisons for Japanese pitcher Masahiro Tanaka. The profile for Tanaka is pretty interesting. The scouting reports are that he throws strikes, gets ground balls, and has a good fastball-splitter combo that gets some strikeouts. When Cameron ran his list to find guys who fit [...]

Hall Of Fame: ’90s Braves Best ‘90s Mets…Again

You can still hear the clattering. The Hall Of Fame vote – made public almost a full day ago – has elicited much moaning and shouting about how flawed the process is. The words floated about are “broken,” “unworkable” and “antiquated.” You won’t hear any argument here; your intrepid columnist is about to join the [...]

What about Wilmer Flores?

There’s Lucas Duda, Ike Davis, Josh Satin, Daniel Murphy, Eric Young Jr. and Ruben Tejada. Three positions need to be decided between the six of those players. And then there is Wilmer Flores, a man without a home. His natural position is third, but David Wright has that locked down for the foreseeable future. He [...]

Hall of Fame: Maddux, Glavine, Thomas in; Piazza, Biggio out.

The Baseball Hall of Fame voting was revealed at 2 p.m. today, and Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas all earned the requisite 75% of votes to be enshrined.  All three were in their first year on the ballot.  Maddux earned 97.2% of votes, Glavine 91.9% and Thomas 83.7%. Glavine will go into the [...]

Field of Dreams: Mets edition – First basemen

Now that it is January, it is time to add the all-time greatest first basemen to the Mets’ Field of Dreams Roster.  So far, there are five starting pitchers, six relief pitchers, and two catchers on the roster, leaving just 12 vacant spots on the Mets’ roster.  Today, two more will be added to the [...]

Just how important is Travis d’Arnaud to the New York Mets in 2014?

While the New York Mets were making some splashes this offseason with the additions of Curtis Granderson, Bartolo Colon—and to some degree Chris Young—it’s going to be some of the holdovers from the 2013 squad that may hold the key to success in 2014. One such player that could hold the key as to whether [...]

The Mets’ lineup if Omar Minaya’s plan worked out

Pretty much every Mets fan will agree that Omar Minaya failed as the Mets’ GM in trying to make the squad into a perennial winning team. Some of the problems weren’t his fault; regardless, he failed as General Manager. Minaya had many plans internally with prospects which were supposed to work out but most of [...]

Passing The Time: A Conversation On The Mets’ Offseason

Welcome to the doldrums. It’s early January, which means a number of things for the baseball/sports fan. The General Managers’ and Winter Meetings have come and gone. The Holidays are now officially over, the College football championship has been decided – how ‘bout ‘dem ‘Noles?!? -- and the Super Bowl is still four weeks away. [...]

Is Andrew Brown a viable right fielder?

The question above is pretty straight forward, but there are other factors which will either hinder or help Andrew Brown’s case to become a part of the Mets’ right field solution. For starters, the Mets signed Chris Young this off-season with the expressed commitment that he will have substantial playing time. What exactly that playing [...]

Wish upon a star: Ike Davis, Stephen Drew and Masahiro Tanaka

Spring training is only a few months away and the odds favor the Mets starting 2014 with Ike Davis at first base, Ruben Tejada at shortstop and no further large acquisitions (via trade or signing).  It’s okay.  The 2014 Mets are already a better product, on paper, than the 2013 Mets and progress is a [...]

Will Curtis Granderson’s and Chris Young’s strikeouts matter?

Chris Young and Curtis Granderson strike out a lot. Some worry about the number of strikeouts that they bring to the lineup. This worry is natural – for years strikeouts have been had the reputation of being the worst way to make an out. Bill James observed some time ago that the currency of the [...]