213 Miles From Shea

Since writing that article yesterday, the trade went through where Milton Bradley was sent over to the Mariners for Carlos Silvia, which means two things. First, the Cubs were able to get rid of their bad contract and got a bad contract that fits them better, which does leave some feelings of jealously of why we cannot do that. We have two perfectly bad contracts, (Castillo and Perez) and we have a lot of gaps that we can fill with other teams bad contracts instead, but that has nothing to do with the title of this article.

Anyway what that trade really means is at this point in time, the Mets real competition for Bay is themselves. The only other two teams that I could see as competition at this point would be the Angels, but they need to focus on starting pitching and the Orioles, who seem to creep into the conversation, and then leave.

In this regard, you can almost think of the Orioles as that guy at the party who you might be having a conversation with a few people and this person comes up, stays on the fringes, says something, but its awkward and out of place, and then a few minutes later leaves. That is what the Orioles are at this point. So at this point in time, its the Mets, Bay and the mystery team which is the Mets. Lets not bid against ourselves, like in the article last night, patience is the way to play this out right now.

I'm sitting here in Washington, DC, waiting for the storm that is supposed to “sock us in” and all I can think about is Bay Watch. I'm not thinking about the TV show on the beach though, I'm thinking of Jason Bay and his (hopefully) probable destination in Queens. For the Mets, being patient is actually working (rather when we used to just rush out and throw a ton of money at a free agent to land him quickly). Somehow we have waited out the major competition and we seem to be the team left with money to actually land a corner outfield (whether it be Bay or Holliday) and that is because now we control the market.

So after much waiting, and thankfully so far no overreacting to Boston and Philly making moves earlier this week, the Mets seem to be in a comfortable position where it looks like they will land either Bay or (less likely) Holliday. This is the power the Mets seem to need in their lineup and could be an energizing piece for next season.

Now we just continue to wait to see when we will sign one of these players.

And to see how much we will have to pay.

And to see how long we will have to pay them.

I'm pretty excited.

(I have several updates at Fan Huddle on the Mets page, just google Fan Huddle New York Mets, I'll link those posts here later)

The Winter Meetings are almost upon us and there is a lot of noise in the air. In the past several days only one of the “larger” names have fell as Chrone Figgins has signed with the M's. There is a lot that will probably happen over the next few days as some of the bigger free agents will be causing a lot of noise (mainly Lackey and Holliday). Also there is Roy, who might be dealt.

Anyway there have some rumors on the interwebs that the two big announcements of the meetings will not be a free agent signing or a trade but will come from something else. Complete rumors are thinking that the announcement may have something with the Division Series being increased to 7 games, a change in locations for a team, replays or something along those lines.

We will have to wait for tomorrow to find out.

For a Mets Preview, check out my article here (Fan Huddle).

The Mets will be wearing a cream/egg shell uniform at home this season as announced in an email to fans. The basic change between this uniform and the pinstripe uniform from 2009 is that this uniform is cream colored. Not White.

So while the change does look nice, it really does not accomplish its goals because it still has the names on the back, it isn't white (like the old pinstripes) (so the cream is basically a hey look we are wearing aged uniforms) and the black backdrop behind Mets still appears to be there.

The other flaw in the new uniform is the same flaw that many teams with cool base uniforms have. The under armpit area is all white because of the different material, so it detracts from the pinstripe look.

Besides these criticisms, the uniforms do look nice and it will be nice to see something different out there on the field.

Over at Fan Huddle, I just wrote an article about the Mets front office actually making a good move. Now while these moves by our front office are few and far between (recently) the signing this week of Wally Backman was a great move. Check out my analysis over there.

Word on the street is that the Mets will have a new home uniform alternate next season. It seems like they are going to get rid of the classic pinstripes next season and replace them with a new set of classic pinstripes. The new ones are going to have a cream back drop, thin blue pinstripes (no black backdrop). What is nice about this possible uniform set is that they will be a shout out back to the Mets original uniforms except for two things:

1) The Mets uniforms were not cream color, believe it or not they were not cream, they were white.

2) Retro uniforms are great, I love them (because I love classic uniforms) but you have to go all the way to make them look right. That means if these are classic uniforms, they should not have the names on the back. Rumors suggest that they will have the names on the back of the jerseys.

In conclusion, I am really happy the Mets will focus on their classic pinstripe uniforms, becaue they are the best, if they are really going to do this right, they should be white and they should not have the names on their backs.

Over at Fan Huddle I have reviewed all of the Mets moves so far this off season.

Check it out.

It has barely been a week so far this off season and so far there have been four major trades. The first was Iwamura who was traded to Pirates. The trade wasn't so much as a surprise as Iwamura really didn't fit into the next step of plans for the Rays as they have some talent coming up and Iwamura wasn't working out. Iwamura though still has some promise in the majors so a trade made sense. The suprise though was that he went to the Pirates, who needed to assume a large chunk of his contract. While this omve is good for them, its questionable in terms of why would they take on this contract (especially with their history of not liking to spend money).

The next big move was Teahen (3B or OF) to the White Sox. The White Sox needed someone to play third base and all of the positions that Teahen plays are overcrowded in Kansas City. Onother OF type player was traded as the Marlins sent Hermida to the Red Sox this week. You can read my analysis of the trade over at Fan Huddle.

Finally, Hardy was traded to the Twins for Gomez. In terms for the Twins, this move will be great if Hardy can play like how he used to. Personally, for the Twins, I do not like this trade becuase I like Gomez as a player a lot more than Hardy. Gomez is still developing his bat skills but he is starting to show that he can be a good fast player. His play is starting to remind me a lot of Castillo in the sense that he can slap the ball all over the place and has the speed to make things happen on the base paths. His speed is also an asset in the OF. So I am a bit puzzled by this trade, but thats also because I am biased since I'm a Gomez fan.

Over at Fan Huddle, I wrote about my reactions to the Hermida trade from the Marlins to the Red Sox and why it impacts the Mets.

Over at Fan Huddle, I just posted an article about who the Mets should get if they had to pick either one of John Lackey or Matt Holliday.

To save you the suspense, I picked John Lackey. Why? Read the article.