213 Miles From Shea

The West has been changing this past week, and it may only continue to change.

Last week it became official that in 2013 that the Houston Astros would change divisions and join the AL West, making each league have 15 teams, and each division have 5 teams. When this happens, it will cause another major change to the MLB with an interleague game almost every day (So we can probably assume that those Interleague weekends are gone, unless they want to manufacture a weekend when everyone plays interleague, which could still happen).

The second major change that came out of the MLB this week is the playoff system, which may change in 2012, but definitely by 2013, where each league has 2 Wild Card and those two teams will play in a one game play off before the start of the Division Series. As Metsblog pointed out this week, if that rule was around in 2007 and 2008, the Mets would have made the playoff's.

The third change that the MLB made was CBA rules, which we'll look more at later.

Finally, the last change is going back to the AL West. Oakland is really trying to relocate to San Jose. I don't follow the AL West, so this is news to me. I knew that the A's were trying to get a new stadium in Fremont, I guess that fell through and they could get one in San Jose. The advantage of moving South would be they would split the market, the disadvantage is that it is hard to to think about Oakland without the A's and the Raiders, or moreover, it is difficult to think of A fans being ok with rooting for San Francisco.

There you go, your ever changing MLB, in short note form.

According to MLB Trade Rumors and Drayton McLane today, the Astros will be moving to the AL West in 2013. This obviously means that the Astros will be out of the National League and probably means that the MLB will be moving, like many sources have been loudly whispering all summer, to a new playoff system next summer.

Even if a new playoff system does not happen in 2013, and it probably will, this does mean that league play will have to change in 2013. The two leagues will be balanced, with 15 teams in each league, meaning in order for there to be a full slate of games on the weekend, at least one team in each league will need to play interleague, so Baseball will be joining the ranks of every other major sport (although the other sports have the numbers that they don't need to do this).

I really don't have a comment about this, but just wanted to share it in case you were unaware. With all of the player rumors over the last few days, I didn't want this story to get lost in the shuffle.

The Marlins want Jose Reyes.

In order to get him though, the will need Hanley to move positions. While Ramirez is a better than average shortstop, that adjective there is really carried by his bat. On his bat alone he is a tremendous player but Jose would be a much better fielding short stop. So if both were on the same team, Ramirez would have to move somewhere. Most people say 3B, mainly because that is the more natural move, and there have been some whispers of CF, which I'll be honest sounded odd to me.

However MLB Trade Rumors (and I'm sorry I don't have time to put the link code in right now, maybe later today) is reporting that Ramirez does not want to change positions, and that could be a big problem. The source goes on to say that the two players, Hanley Ramirez and Jose Reyes, may not have as good as a relationship as the media puts on.

If this is true, this could be a major problem in the Marlins plans.

Also, the Mets leaked their 2012 uniforms yesterday, which you can see on Metsblog. I'll have more that later today.

According to SiriusXM radio, Jose Reyes is a Miami Marlin. The Florida, now Miami Marlins have been going strong for this past week for Jose.

It is worth this note though. Only this twitter from SiriusXM and Metsblog, via that same link, are saying that Jose has signed with the Marlins. All other sources, as of 4:32 on November 13th remain silent on the subject.

Update 4:48

No one else has come out in support of this.

I remain skeptical, not just because I am a Mets fan but Dino Costa of XM was the same person who reported that the Mets signed Matt Holliday.

Update 5:23

Hold Up:

Joe Capozzi Tweets that Jose has NOT signed with the Marlins. He is a Marlins beat writer.

Update 5:31

Link

The Marlins have reportedly offered contracts to Jose Reyes, Albert Pujols, and Mark Buehrle and they have expressed interest in Ryan Madison.

Are they the 2005 Mets?

Going into 2005, the Mets brought in a new manager to bring a new sense of energy into the franchise (and a new GM to spur this, which is probably the largest reason for why the Marlins are not the Mets) in Willie Randolph. These Marlins have brought in Ozzie Guillien. The Mets made offers to, signed, or pursued Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado and Pedro Martinez. In 2006 the Mets then acquired Delgado and then signed Wagner. For the Mets the off season before 2005 and 2006 were the two offseasons that completely changed public perceptions of how the Mets operated because they looked so similar to the Yankees.

Now we have the same thing happening to the Marlins. While they haven't signed anyone yet, they have pursued 3 of the top, and by top I mean actually the top, free agents for this winter and are already discussing more contracts. They have a new stadium, a new look and they are trying to get a new team to fill in the stands. I'm curious to see how this plays out because it is as if the team is essentially buying the market, and there is nothing wrong with that.

(The Non-Mets fan version of me, or the version of me as an outside of Baseball) would like to see what happens to this team 3, 4 years down the road if they sign all of these players, specifically if they do this quick fix system for a few years. If they do it right, they could be a dynasty but they could end up exactly like the 05, 06, 07 and 08 Mets just as easily. So far the only team of late that has been able to balance spending a lot of money, and trading and farm system development is the Phillies, and I'm not convinced yet that this Marlin model looks like that.

It should be an interesting few weeks….

It took me an extremely long time to get this level of frustration with the Wilpons.

I was raised in Baltimore, and although I was raised a Mets fan, I was generally only around Orioles news growing up. The Orioles hay-day ended as I went to Middle school, as their current slump started. From that time I have been surrounded by a fanbase with a truly awful ownership.

The time in my life when I was able to cognitively handle the politics and business of baseball was when I was in High School. At that point I could start to see how Peter Angelos was strangling a proud franchise. In the middle of my high school career was when the Wilpons made their “win now” movement signing players like Pedro, and Beltran. When I was freshman in college, the Wilpons wrapped up this period of time with the Santana contract.

Since that point of time the Wilpons have really moved away from this mentality.

While I'm fine with not spending a lot of money, I there is something when saving money comes in the way of winning. We shouldn't be giving out big contracts to sign players that flash in pan, but we need to make several key investments.

That is why the Reyes situation is beyond comprehension to me. Not paying Reyes because the team isn't ready yet just seems like a lame excuse. He, Wright, Davis are a strong enough core to help this team out. Plus with the walls moving in, Bay will probably have a much better year.

At this point, if it is the money, and not a baseball reason, why we let Reyes go, then it is time for Wilpons to go as well.

If you look at the Mets roster right now:

1B – Davis

2B – Tejada / Turner / Murphy

SS – Reyes

3B – Wright

LF – Bay

CF – Pagan

RF – Murphy / F-Mart / Duda

C – Thole

SP – Santana, Capuano, Dickey, Gee, Mejia, Niese

Set Up – Izzy

Closer – Parnell

The Mets will look different in a lot of ways next year, even new, depending on how you define the word. First off, there a few players I would group in the category of “key” for the Mets: Reyes, Wright, Santana and Davis. Last season, the Mets tried to play without two of those key players in Santana and Davis. Just having those two players back makes this team look very different, even if the Mets do not do anything else.

The hinge of the entire off season is Reyes. If the Mets resign Reyes, awesome. If the Mets don't resign Reyes, I honestly do not think they will go look for someone else, especially another big ticket item. It looks like Tejada will take over for Reyes, which wouldn't be terrible, but you never want to lose a spark plug / batting champion.

Then there is the conversation about the outfield. Pagan may be changed, so may Duda. There is the possibility that the Mets may explore Sizmore or look at Upton. This is the area why I say the Mets have a new look, outside of the pen. If changes come to the outfield, then they will almost have to come via trade, which will change other areas of the team in unpredictable ways.

Finally there is the bullpen. There really is no point in analyzing this in October, because it almost always changes.

It may be time for some changes to the team. I fully welcome some new position players and new bullpen players to shake up this team a little bit and to work in with the youth injection that is inevitable in the pitching staff.

I wanted to first address the lack of posts recently, and the lack of quality writing in September. I started my career as a teacher this year in Newark, NJ, so in the last few months I moved from Baltimore to Newark (now sorta in Mets territory!), and started a very difficult but rewarding job. If any of you know first year teachers, you know that the first year is a crazy amount of work, which stops me from writing about the Mets.

Anyway let's catch up with some very interesting news with the Mets, the Mets finally made it official that they are changing the dimensions of Citi Field. They are dropping the wall height from 16 to 8 feet, bringing some walls in and getting rid of the ridiculous Mo's Zone. This will definitely change the play of the field, especially for Wright who seems to bounce balls off the wall often, but it will also make a lot of other changes for the team.

At home, Bay seems to hit the ball to Left more than Right. Maybe this move takes off some stress for Bay who always seems just on the edge of breaking out. If anything, I would wait to try to trade Bay for another team's bust player until mid season because I think the combination of physical changes at Citi and mental changes will allow Bay to perform as well as the players around Bay to perform (in other words, this move will help Wright. If teams start to pitch around Wright, maybe they will have to give Bay more pitches to hit).

These wall changes will also change the pitching situation at Citi Field, which will still be a pitchers park. I would be very wary of the Mets making a big pitcher sign this offseason. For the most part these contracts for pitchers are too long and really are too risky. This is supported with the amount of young arms that are coming up through the system.

I'm ready for 2012, and 2011 still isn't over yet.