The Mets will likely carry five outfielders on their Opening Day roster and four of them are set in Bay, Beltran, Pagan and Hairston. The Mets signed Willie Harris to a minor league deal and at the time it seemed as much to keep him off other teams, as Harris has a history of making [...]
"I love the competition," Jason Isringhausen said. "There's a lot of the stuff that goes along with the game I don't enjoy, all the politics, the business part of it. But I enjoy the 1-on-1 competition with a hitter, and it's hard for me to find that anywhere else. I'm just trying to compete with [...]
There are many who seem to be enamored by the arrival of Jason Isringhausen to the New York Mets spring training facilities. Others have no real opinion. To me, it seems like a page right out of the Omar Minaya handbook. Before you judge, hear me out. One of the very many things people complained [...]
On Wednesday, Doug Parker wrote about an Ed Kranepool card that I had not seen before. This card, issued in 2005, was modeled on the classic 1971 Topps set. But it was not the pose used for Kranepool’s ’71 card. As Parker pointed out, it was a much-younger Kranepool, but it showed the Krane in [...]
2005 TOPPS ALL-TIME FAN FAVORITES ED KRANEPOOL This card is like one of those off-kilter dreams where you're falling in love with your spouse, but it's not really your spouse. Maybe your dream spouse is shorter than she is in waking life. Or maybe he has more charm and humor. Invariably, you wake up feeling [...]
As a Yankee fan, I do not generally follow the day-to-day minutiae involving their cross-town rivals. However, as a subject matter expert on money laundering and financial investigations, I have been following the Bernie Madoff scandal with great interest. Irving Picard, the court appointed attorney charged with recovering assets for Madoff’s fraud victims, recently filed [...]
I am glad that baseball does not have a salary cap and what’s to follow should in no way, shape or form be construed as any type of argument in favor of any type of salary restriction. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, Mets fan John Coppinger posted on his Facebook account: [...]
Fans tend to be either overly optimistic or pessimistic. That is why it is important to look at unbiased, systematic approaches to projections. One of the best sets available are the ZiPS projections from ESPN Insider and Baseball Think Factory Editor-in-Chief Dan Szymborski. Recently Szymborski, an Orioles fan, agreed to a Q&A about his projections [...]
When the Mets signed Jason Bay, he was going to be the slugger in the middle of the lineup who essentially replaced Carlos Delgado in the lineup. Then he didn’t hit for power and had his season cut short due to a concussion. Now fans are looking for any reason to feel confident about a [...]
"Collins, who is listed generously at 5-foot-9, conducted his press conference standing up after he was told the microphone stand was blocking his face for the TV camera. Collins joked that pitchers Chris Young, who is 6-foot-10, and 6-foot-7 Mike Pelfrey better not hold the ball above their heads and make the manager jump for [...]
Some cringe at the thought, while others seem content moving in a different direction, but the universal thought of Jose Reyes not being the Mets everyday shortstop beyond this year would be anything but weird. We’re not talking about Derek Jeter leaving the Yankees weird, but Jose Reyes and the Mets together have been synonymous [...]
The Mets have not really had a manager who had a presence since Bobby Valentine. Art Howe had the presence of a man ready to be put out to pasture. Willie Randolph was all about rules and regulations. Jerry Manuel played puppet to those above him. With the addition of Terry Collins, this seems to [...]