213 Miles From Shea

If the season started today, the Mets OF would be a joke.

Anyway, if the season started today, I would expect the roster to look something like this:

C: John Buck
1B: Ike Davis
2B: Daniel Murphy
3B: David Wright
SS: Ruben Tejada
LF: Lucas Duda
CF: Captain Kirk
RF: (Open Competition) Mike Baxter
BN: Anthony Recker
BN: Brandon Hicks
BN: Colin Cowgill
BN: Justin Turner
BN: Jordany Valdespin

SP: Johan Santana
SP: Jon Niese
SP: Shawn Marcum
SP: Dillon Gee
SP: Matt Harvey
P: Frank Francisco
P: Bobby Parnell
P: Josh Edgin
P: Jeremy Hefner
P: Robert Carson
P: Greg Burke
P: Jeurys Familia

Let’s talk about the locks. The following players are pretty much guaranteed to be on the roster for Opening Day: Wright, Buck, Tejada, Murphy, Davis, Santana, Niese, Marcum, Gee, Harvey, Parnell, Francisco and probably Duda.

That leaves the rest of the roster open for competition. d’Arnaud and Wheeler most likely do not break camp with the team. They are both close, but could use some extra time in the minors getting used to each other (and delaying free agency by a full year). TDA will probably be with the team either in May or June and Wheeler probably in June or July.

The OF is the hardest part of this team to place. In most other scenarios, Duda shouldn’t even be guaranteed a job but things are so mysterious for this crew that he can pretty much bet on a job in April. That leaves Baxter. Cowgill, Kirk, Puello, Valdespin, den Dekker, and apparently Lutz and Turner in an open competition for the remaining spots.

If Dekker has a good spring, he could easily squeeze into center where I have Kirk listed right now. Baxter extrapolates as a bench player better so this would knock Kirk over to right, or Duda back to right. Valdespin in winter showed more patience, so if he has a good spring, he could weasel his way back into the mix. With the lack of depth the Mets have at OF, I wouldn’t mind carrying him on the bench to start to act as a spark plug like he did for a stretch of the season last year.

The bullpen is another area that is mostly question marks. Francisco is reluctantly the closer, although Parnell could edge him out. Everyone else it will be a full competition. Hefner has an inside track as the probable long man unless someone else is brought on.

Pitchers and Catchers is still over two weeks away, therefore this will probably change a bit before then, especially if the Mets can some how land Bourn.

The Chinese World Baseball Classic Team, formerly managed by Mets’s skipper Terry Collins. Their uniforms are pretty similar to the last go around, although the color panel look goes well on the road grays. Here’s the uniform set:

A lot of teams went with away colors, and all of the teams that went with away grays with color panels, look nice. So, way to go China.

Parallel cards in baseball have inflated value of cards over the last decade plus. For example, if it’s been a while since you have purchased cards, series like Topps have a gold parallel numbered to the year for every card, essentially making 2013 special sets of cards with in the set. There are other serial numbered cards as well, generally including colors like Black, Green, Blue, Orange (these colors for Bowman especially). The only difference between these cards and the normal cards is the color of the card border.

This year, Topps decided to go in a new direction with pink borders and this (from their twitter page):

That’s a camo border, numbered up to 99. So there are 99 sets of tops cards with camo borders. I’ve never seen this before and it really continues to blend this idea of the military complex and sports. They have apparently done this already with their football cards. The word is that the camo cards show support for the Armed Forces and Pink cards show support for Breast Cancer Awareness. Are they donating profits for these cards? What is the actually connection? On the whole I’m not a fan of support like this. If there is no money going to either organization, then this is shameful. If there is money, then this is like getting a certain amount of likes on facebook, retweets or followers on twitter for charity (like the Mets just did). If you are going to donate money, just do it.

Colombia has my favorite uniforms in this tournament, by far. It’s a shame they got eliminated early because the world stage for these uniforms. Here’s a picture of the front, and here’s a picture of the back. These uniforms have great, great colors. The hat is nice too:

Italy will be making their third appearance in the World Baseball Classic this year and their uniform set has stayed mostly the same:

This uniform set updated really well to the new BP template design. The White/Blue just goes really well together. However, my complaint is the same as my complaint for a lot of these uniforms. The typeface on the front seems small.

This time on our journey through World Baseball Classic uniforms, we take a look at France. France was eliminated in the qualifying rounds in the same group as South Africa, Israel and Spain (who advanced).  You can see the front of their uniforms here and the back of the uniforms here. The navy blue tops look really dark with royal blue shirt underneath and the royal blue hat. I was a big fan though of the numbering on the back. Here’s a close up of the hat:

The only current Met that is playing in the WBC this year is David Wright (although Johan Santana wants to play).  The rosters are all currently provisional, so there could be more Mets and exMets added at a later date. I tried to include players who may have been in the Mets farm system at one point in time, but that can be a bit tricky to track. If I forgot anyone please put them in the comments.  The following list rounds out former Mets players who we have a chance to root for again:

– Heath Bell (USA)
– RA Dickey (USA)
– Luis Ayala (Mexico)
– Oliver Perez (Mexico)
– Rod Barajas (Mexico)
– Adam Loewen (Canada)
– Francisco Rodriguez (Venezuela)
– Nelson Figueroa (Puerto Rico)
– Carlos Beltran (Puerto Rico)
– Jesus Feliciano (Puerto Rico)
– Angel Pagan (Puerto Rico)
– Jose Reyes (Dominican Republic)
– Carlos Gomez (Dominican Republic)
– Fernando Martinez (Spain)
– Jae Seo (South Korea)
– Kazuo Matsui (Japan)

As the weeks tick closer to the classic more players will be added to the rosters (when you look at the rosters, some teams barely have an OF set up). I expect some additional players to be put on this list and probably some players will have to be removed. Right before the classic, we’ll do an update here.

Cuba comes back to the 2013 Classic after a disappointing showing in 2009 after being the runners up in 2006. Cuba maintains mostly the same the uniform set with a similar, if not identical hat, and a similar, if not identical, “Cuba” script on the new Jersey design:

Anyway, I’ve always been a fan of Cuba’s uniforms. A nice, classic script, that is the right size (unusual in this WBC) and their red/blue combination goes well since its a unique red/blue. This is also one of the few uniforms that I like the home white more than the away colors. The red underarm on the white goes well with the blue writing. If it matched (Red/red or blue/blue) it would not have been nearly as nice.

A new comer that was going to allow Jewish Americans to play for the team, Israel took an early exit to the tournament this year after being upset in the final match of the qualifier by Spain. Israel’s uniform featured a small script on the front, common in the WBC this year, something that I have complained about a lot, but also featured a nice unique typeface that complements the style work we’re used to seeing out of Israel which was nice. There are plenty of pictures of the jersey in action here. The hat, which was also nice due to its uniqueness, is pictured below: