213 Miles From Shea

No matter what happened in todays game, the point of today was the showdown for the fifth rotation spot. The combatants: El Duque vs the Big Pelf.
In the first corner, pitching 5 innings El Duque:
5.0 IP, 4 H, ER, BB, 2K, 6.75 ERA
In the second corner, going in 3.2 IP, Pelfrey:
3.2 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 3 BB, 2 K
So based on today, El Duque won out the fifth rotation spot. Pelfrey had such a strong start to spring training, its a real shame that over the last two weeks he has been having mini meltdowns. In this game, he went 3.2 IP without giving up a run. Then he gave up 4 straight. He cannot stop the bleeding, and until he can, he cannot pitch in the rotation.
Reyes 2-3, 2R, 2B, 2 SB (6)
Wright 1-2, RBI, 2BB
Church 0-4, SB
Anderson knocked in his 4th RBI in the last two days. Reyes numbers were the offense story of the day. Its good to see him take 2 bases in the same game, because thats what we hope to see all season long.

The Mets picked up Parnel in the 2005 Draft in the 9th round, 269 overall. He played 3 seasons for Charleston Southern University before signing with the Mets. Looking at his stats in college, he did not look like a good pitcher. His ERA went from 4.76 to 6.82 to 8.86. In that same season where he had a 8.86 ERA, he posted an amazing 1.73 ERA for the Mets in Brooklyn in 15 G over 73 innings pitched.
Overall in his Minor League Carear, he has posted a 15-22 record, 3.77 ERA, 322.1 IP, 300 K, and a 8.39 K/9.
2007: A Advanced: 12 G, 3.25 ERA, 10.08 K/9
          AA: 17 G, 4.77 ERA, 7.51 K/9
          Combined States, 4.19 ERA, 2.3 K/BB
In Baseball 2008 by Sporting News, they rank Parnel as the 9th best prospect in the system, but that was before the Santana trade, with the trade, he is ranked #6. They like his power sinker and his tight slider.
So far in two games this Spring, he has pitched 7 innings, and allowed 3 H, 2 BB and 7 K's, no runs. So besides the great ERA, he is striking out 3.5 batters for every walk.

Parnel will only be 23 this year, and his stats have him on a track to make a difference and hopefully the majors one day.

With these two games, pitchers started to get their final tuneups in before the season and Randolph started some strategy. Not wanting to have Santana face the Braves and Pedro the Marlins, he moved their games away from the MLB. I don't know if Santana did a minor league game, a sim game, or a throwing session, but I do know that Pedro did 6 shutout innings in a minor league game meaning that over 14 innings pitched in Spring Training he has let in 2 runs. Here are the notes from Tuesday's game:
Beltran 1-2, 2 R, BB, 2B
Casanova 1-3, R, RBI, HR(2)
Pagan (5), Wright (2), Beltran (1) all stole bases.
Niese 4.2 IP, 2H, 2 ER, 6 BB, K
In this game, where the Mets beat the Braves 5-4 (and it always feels good to beat the Braves), Casanova took over the lead for Mets homers this Spring by 2. (On the other side, it feels like the Mets are hitting a lot of doubles). It was good to see Beltran steal a base (good sign for health) and Pagan get his 5th, showing that he can play Randolph's running game.

Yesterday the Mets lost to the Marlins by the score of 7-5. One note that you wont see in the box highlights below, is an amazing catch by Beltran where he dove with the ball going over his shoulder basically, once again, another sign of health.
Reyes 1-3, RBI, BB, 2B
Castillo 0-2, R, 3 BB
Wright 1-4, R, 2 RBI, BB
Delgado 2-5, 2 RBI
Molina 2-3, R, .381 BA
Smith 1.0 2H, 3 ER, 6.00 ERA
Heilman 1.0, BB, 0.00 ERA
In this game, Reyes hit his 5th double of the Spring and got his 9th RBI, Wright got his 7th and 8th RBI's in this game. The story of this game was the bullpen that gave up all 7 runs to the Marlins, and in my mind Smith, who is not making this decision easy for Randolph because his spot in the bullpen is his spot to lose. At least Heilman was effective, as he has been all spring.

Since there have been five games since the last time I updated game reviews, I decided to break it down, partially because Saturday and Sunday's games were depressing. Saturday, the game ended early due to rain in Winterhaven I believe, where the Indians play.
Beltran 1-3, R, RBI, HR
Easley 2-3
Perez 5.0, 7H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 4 HR
Smith 1.0, 2H
Figueroa 1.0, BB, 3.14 ERA
Positive notes about Perez's performance is that he did strike out 6 or three batters for every one that he walked. Bad news about his day is that he gave up a lot of homers. It was a shaky day for him and he couldn't seem to get his pitching back on track. Figueroa had a nice outing though and Beltran hit a no doubt homer for his first of the Spring. Really, when it left his bat, there was no doubt, it flew out of the park.

Sunday was an ugly, ugly, ugly game for the Mets. Their pitching has been really strong in Spring, but El Duque and Pelfrey struggled.
Delgado 1-1, R, 2B
Reyes 2-3, R, RBI, 2B
El Duque 3.0, 5 ER, 2 BB, K, HR
Pelfrey 4.1, 8 ER, BB, K, HR
The final score in the game was Cards 14, Mets 4. The problem with Pelfrey seems to be beyond him getting outs after one time thru the rotation, its developing into a game control problem. As soon as the game gets a little out of hand, he cannot stop the damage, it just piles up on itself. The ninth inning of that game was a good example where 6 of his runs came in. He got only one out that inning.

Monday was the farthest thing from that game. The Mets beat the Orioles 1-0 on an amazing outing from John Maine. In total, there were 5 hits in the game, 3 coming from the Mets.
Castillo 2-3, 2B, RBI
Maine 6.0, H, BB, 7K, 1.78 ERA
Smith 1.2, BB, 2 K
Maine was lights out putting up 7 Strikeouts. I thought it was also a very good sign that Smith didn't give up any runs over 1.2 innings, Smith is not a person that I usually associate more than 1 inning from the bullpen with. I usually think of him as a specialist.

Complete Box Scores
Game 25
Game 26
Game 27

I just had a chance to watch the bottom of the ninth to the end of the game on an ESPN re-telecast this afternoon and have some further thoughts on the topic of opening day.
First, I am not sure if I saw this right, and tried to look at still photos and had some trouble, but is Oakland wearing Pepsi Logos on their arms? If they are, is the EMC on the arms of the Red Sox also an advertisement? If those are true, and someone who knows please contact me, but thats really wrong. Its like that one time when they were going to advertise one of the Spiderman movies on the edges of the bases. There is so much advertising on baseball, please MLB, leave it off of the uniforms in future opening day series. (That being said, I never want to see a:
Geico Auto Insurance World Series
Sprite Presents the World Series
(I think you get the point)

I am glad though to see the spirit in the ballpark and that it is full. The Tokyo Dome seems deceptively full.

Update:
Saw it again, has to be Pepsi
Also, when they are throwing in the underground bullpen, sounds like there are no catchers, the ball sounds like its slamming against something harder than a glove.

Part of this post I have been saving since the Padres and the Dodgers went to China to play their two game set. I watched part of both of those games, and watched part of a Red Sox game vs a Japanese team earlier this Spring. It was really something to see. The China games were entertaining really because of the announcers. On mlbtv, we got the Padres booth, but the problem is that they didn't send the Padres booth to China, so they were announcing off of a single monitor that was being control by an international production team. This production team did not have a lot of experience with baseball so they didn't know what to get in a camera shot. For example, on close plays and steals, the umpire was not in the shots so the announcers had to tell by the look on the faces of the other players in the field if the call was safe or out.
The exhibition games in Japan showed another side of baseball because of how into the game the fans over there are. If you have time, I highly suggest heading over to the part of Mlb.com with the coverage of the opening series and looking at the photos from the past few games there.

Now, as for today, the only criticism I have is opening the MLB season more than a half a week earlier in another country, because as of right now, it does not feel that that baseball has really started (I know this is fairer though for those teams involved to get back adjusted to USA time).
The game itself today seemed exciting, I couldn't tell you myself because I was not awake for it, but from the box it seemed exciting. The game went into extra innings where Boston beat Oakland. (Huston Street blew the game as for some reason Oakland had him pitch for two innings, I feel that if this game was in America, that decision might have been different because of more depth of pitchers). At least the game was tied in the ninth in thrilling fashion as Boston (Brandon Moss) hit a homer to tie it and then in the Tenth Manny put them ahead to win it on a double. The end score was 6-5 Boston.
After the next game, Boston comes back to the states for an exhibition series with the Dodgers at the old Dodger Stadium.

After searching milb.com by randomly scrolling down their list of Minor League teams, and looking at their April promotions, I have made a list of some of the promotions that are eye-catching this month.
On April 5th, the Stockton Ports will be holding Alumni Night, where they will celebrate the history of baseball in Stockton by having past players come and the team will be wearing throwback jerseys. They will also be giving out bronze statues of Ernie Broglio to the first 1000 fans that day.
On April 15th, the Frederick Keys will be holding their first guaranteed win night this season. This is a really cool promotion, if the Keys do not win, then all of the fans get a coupon for free admission to another game Monday-Thursday later in the season. I really like this promotion, hopefully I can catch one of them this year.
April 21, our own Binghamton Mets will be celebrating baldness when they hold Bald is Beautiful Night.
The next day, the Myrtle Beach Pelicans will be holding an Earth-day / Going Green day, where everything will be green. I am not sure from their description whether they mean green as in energy efficient, or green as in the color green, when I find out I will post it here, but I have a good feeling that they will be doing both types of green.
The Pelicans will also have a day when they celebrate all the different types of Motorboats when they have Motorboat Night on April 24.

Yesterday, Bud Selig announced the field and the venues for the 2009 Baseball Classic. The field wasn't a mystery. It was known a while ago that the field of 16 would not be changing this year, but next time in 2012 there could be an expanded field featuring teams like Israel for example. Anyway, there was a lot of debate about where the venues would be this year, and I feel they did a good job spreading them out, even though I would have liked to see one on the East Coast of the United States.
Pool A will be playing in Tokyo and the teams are China, Chinese Taipei, Japan and Korea.
Pool B will be playing in Mexico City and the teams are Australia, Cuba, Mexico, and South Africa
Pool C will be playing in Toronto and the teams are Canada, Italy, United States, and Venezuela
Pool D will be playing in Puerto Rico and the teams are Dominican Republic, Netherlands, Panama, and Puerto Rico
The venues for the rounds after the first are not official yet, but the speculation says that San Diego will get the second round and Dodger Stadium will get Semifinals and the Finals. The official write up can be found here.

In other Baseball News:
    Possibility of Smoltz starting on the DL.
    Miguel Cabrera could be the next 153.6 million dollar man.
    Javy Lopez retired.
    John Patterson to sign with Rangers. (Knew it would be fast)
    The Baltimore Sun said yesterday that there was a possibility of Steve Traschel being the Opening Day starter, luckily Gutherie beat         him out for the spot. (Guts really does deserve it)

Over the pass two seasons, before the Mets got Santana, they were linked to trade rumors for Haren/Blanton, actuall trade offers for Bedard, and an contract offer to Barry Zito. What if these trades or signings happened? What do their springs look like right now.

A lot has been said about Bedard, I forgot which announcer during what game said this, but he has even been compared to Koufax (a little ridiculous in my mind). Living in Baltimore, I remeber that last year he got off to a real slow start, his ERA was above 5 most of April. Even with that, Spring Training he is normally on. Last year he had a Spring Training ERA of 1.96, previous years had him looking at 4.35, 3.71, and 2.04. More importantly, from 2004 to 2007, his strikeouts were 21, 17, 19, and 24. So far this Spring, this is Bedard's line:
18.0 IP, 19 ER, 5 BB, 8 K, 9.50 ERA
In his last start, he allowed 7 runs over 9 hits and 5 innings pitched. Something is not right. I know pitchers sometimes tend to struggle in Spring, but a pitcher who was going for Cy Young before getting injured last season should not be putting up Spring numbers like this. Bedard's stat line will be interesting to watch over the course of the season.

Zito had a bad year last year and was not what San Francisco expected. So far this Spring, Zito is struggling again, in 18.1 IP, he has let in 21 ER, 13 BB followed by only 4 K's, a and posting 10.31 ERA. Things could have been different if he went to NY, if he was with the Jacket, but we will never know for sure. For what its worth, I am glad we didn't take that gamble with Zito.

Haren and Blanton have not been as bad as the two previous pitchers. Harren over 14 IP, has allowed 8 ER, 3 walks, but struck out 15 batters and posted a 5.14 ERA. The difference here is that even though his ERA is much higher than what he is used to, his K to BB ratio is very good (exactly 3 to 1). Blanton is a near clone going 17 IP, allowing 9 ER, walking 3 and striking out 15 and posting a spring ERA of 4.76.

Its not healthy to ask yourself what if we did this or what if that happens, but sometimes it can be fun, and I think this situation is one of those good times to ask yourself what if.

I was getting ready for an entry earlier today from Minor League Promotions in April, and one of the teams I came across had a promotion that will take place on May 3rd that not only did I feel the need to share, but dedicate in its own entry.
The Stockton Ports, a Minor League team (Class A Advanced) in the Athletics System, will be giving away a Mike Piazza bobble-head to commemorate his 3 day stint with them last year. The bobble-head has Mike in a jersey from this team and can be seen here. Here is a quote from the team website about the giveaway:
“The first 1,000 fans will receive a little piece of history with a Mike
Piazza Bobblehead. the future Hall of Famer will be depicted in a Ports
uniform to commemorate his 3 day stint in Stockton last year.”

I love when Minor League teams have players that reached the majors be offered later in bobblehead form from their minor league days. I have never heard of a situation like this though, where the player was with the team for a year, and played 3 games not in an effort to move up the system, but just to rehab. It is an out their promotion one that I hope somehow gets to Ebay, because as a Mike fan this is an interesting story piece.