It is a given that the New York Mets will go in 2016 as far as its young gifted starting staff will take them. If we somehow knew that the combination of Matt Harvey, Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Stephen Matz, Zack Wheeler (hoping for a June or July return), and Bartolo Colon (not so young [...]
If you are any kind of baseball fan at all you know that the newest inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown New York will be Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza. Some people are heavily invested in the question of who should be in the hall and who should not be there. [...]
Major league baseball teams all have backup catchers. They are the vice-presidents, lieutenant governors, and second chair clarinetists of their profession. Some teams use their backup catchers more than others, sometimes even in a platoon arrangement. Teams that really need their backup backstops to be there for them are those who have fragile first string [...]
New York State and Illinois politics are infamous for the corruption there has been among their legislators and highest elected officials. On rare occasions the voters can rid themselves of the worst of the worst by voting them out or indicting them so they can have some alone time in prison. Major League Baseball has [...]
Over the last few months many, including myself, have tried to predict what kind of contract Daniel Murphy would land once he became a free agent. During the regular season my predictions were for something like three years, $36 million. Then Murph became Babe Ruth (Barry Bonds?) for two playoff rounds. At that point three [...]
It is a positive sign of the sophistication of the modern baseball fan that players are being evaluated these days on their total contributions rather than just their triple slash lines (batting average/home runs/RBIs). Jason Heyward just received a huge contract with the Cubs because rather than being an offensive giant he has a complete [...]
There are those that seriously thought that the Mets might sign Yoenis Cespedes this off season. Silly silly people. Cespedes is looking for six years and perhaps $150 million. There never was a shot in h-e-double hockey sticks that the Wilpons would go for that. Realists set their sights on Gerardo Parra, Will Venable, or [...]
One of the outfielders the Mets have had their eye on is Denard Span a good fielding left handed hitter with fine lead off skills. When healthy he can be an above average igniter. The problem is that he has an injury history and 2015, a year in which he just managed 246 at bats, [...]
In this age of free agency major league baseball teams do not return the same group of 25 players from year to year. There is always some turnover. In many cases there is a major upheaval and influx of new players. In some cases there are not as many new faces but new roles thrust [...]
Wednesday at the Winter Meetings was quite eventful for the New York Mets. They responded from Tuesday’s disappointment of not signing Ben Zobrist to completely revamp the middle infield. First came the Jon Niese to Pittsburgh for Neil Walker trade. Then later they reached an agreement with free agent Asdrubal Cabrera on a two year [...]
With the Winter Meetings going at full tilt this week it means that for all I know while writing this the Mets on Tuesday night signed Ben Zobrist, Geraldo Parra, and a kick-butt reliever to be named later while simultaneously being deep in trade talks for a legitimate shortstop. So if it looks like this [...]
Whether it is how well your sports team did last year or your son’s weekly bowling scores it is human nature to always want to see improvement from year to year (or week to week). One of my favorite sports quotes came from the undistinguished 1950s starting pitcher Billy Loes. He said, “Never win 20 [...]
