213 Miles From Shea

Tim Kurkjian over at ESPN has posted his all decade team for the 2000's and one current Met and one former Met was named to the team.

For the current Met, the honors went to Carlos Beltran for his amazing play in Center Field. As Mets fans, many of us take his play for granted as his silent play carries great offensive stats and great fielding. Tim adds in:

“He played the most games in center field of any player in the decade.
He hit 251 home runs, stole 256 bases, drove in 920 runs and won three
Gold Gloves. His performance in the 2004 postseason for the Astros —
eight home runs, tying the record for the most homers in one postseason
— was one of the best in baseball history.”

That postseason performance was basically how he ended up with the Mets, and we all remember that terrible year he had in 2005, where he was booed, but he shock it off and since 2006 he has been a key part of this team. A healthy Beltran is part of the reason why I have so much hope for 2010.

As for the former Met named to the all-Decade team, those honors went to Jeff Kent at second base. He never played for the Mets in this decade, so we can end the conversation about Kent now.

Bill Madden for the NY Daily News wrote a very interesting piece regarding Jason Bay today that brings up a few good points that are worth discussing/sharing. The first main point he brings up is that Bay's original demands probably got him out of a position to play for the Red Sox, and now with Mike Cameron signing a contract, Bay's services are no longer needed.

The Market now has shrunk to just Bay and the Mets and while money is usually what seals a deal, Bay has some concerns about going to the Mets. The first is the dimensions of Citi-Field, which honestly I am sick of hearing. The Mets hit a very low amount of homeruns last season. They were injured and had no power in their lineup, so that was one of the main reasons for the Mets not hitting long ball. Second, there are statistics that show this! The Mets hit more homeruns at home than they did on the road (although that difference is small).

The more concerning aspect of Bay being hesitant to sign the contract is a general feeling that the Mets are projected to finish 3rd in the division. Now of course I am biased, but I think the Mets, if healthy by next season and with another starting pitcher, could very well be projected to at least finsih second in the division next season if they have Bay. It is so difficult to draw conclusions from last season and project them into next season because of the uncanny amount of injuries. The Mets lineup, with Bay, will be one of the best in National League if they are healthy. One more starter (or two more) can make the Mets into a contender.

While Bay to the Mets seems inevitable, I want Bay to be happy being with the Mets, not to feel obligated because they are team with the money. In other words, he needs to have Queen's in his heart.

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.