213 Miles From Shea

Now that the Mets are interested in Eckstein, we should take a look at his stats vs two of our biggest rivals. He has played in his carear 17 games agasint the Phils and 17 agaisnt the Braves. In a regular season, we play the Phils and Braves a total of 19 times, so lets assume that out of those 19 games, Eckstein gets to play 17 each, or 34 total.

First:
Carear vs Phils: 60 AB, 6 R, 14 H, 2 2B, 1 HR, 3 RBI, 2 SB, .233 BA
Carear vs Atl: 65 AB, 9 R, 21 H, 3 2B, 1 HR, 5 RBI, 3 SB, .323 BA

Putting those two statistics together, we get:
125 AB, 15 R, 35 H, 5 2B, 2 HR, 8 RBI, 5 SB, .280 BA

To put these statistics into perspective, he is a carear .286 Hitter, the last two seasons he has 3 and 2 Homers respectivly (2 of those 5 did come against these teams). Last season he had 31 RBI's, if you extrapolate these 8 RBI over how many games he played last season (117), he would have 27 RBI's.

Lets take a look at the stats of David Wright age 22-24 vs ARod age 22-24 vs Chipper Jones 23-25.

David Wright
1761 AB, 553 H, 83 HR, 71 SB, 232 BB, .314 BA

ARod
1742 AB, 531 H, 125 HR, 82 SB, 201 BB, .305 BA

Chipper Jones
1719 AB, 500 H, 74 HR, 42 SB, 236 BB, .291 BA

Here are some intresting notes from these stats:
ARod had 46 SB when he was 22, he had a lot before that as well but from 23 on, his SB have been pretty down to Earth (23 he had 21 and 24 he had 15). David over these three years increased in hits each year. Arod didnt play a full season when he was 23, but his BA took a drop from .310 to .285. Of these three Wright is the one that shows in most cases a consistant foward progress. He also shows the most balance of speed and power, but we didnt need these stats to show that.Chipper's first season was when he was 23, he played a few games at the age of 21 but none at the age of 22.

I don't know why I have been thinking about this the past few days, but remeber “Turn Ahead the Clocks” night at many ballparks in 1999. If you don't remeber these nights, this was the idea for the night. Based off of the turn back the clock nights, turn ahead the clock nights was a gimick where Baseball predicted, and sold, what uniforms would look in the year 2027.

The execution of this idea was pretty horrible. They were all pullover Jersies with wierd sholders and for the most part, a supersized logo of the team on the chest. Other teams had really old icons large on their chests or just changed their color schemes.

The Mets had to be different, very different, and they decided that in the year 2027, they would play on Mercury thus their uniforms had a picture of the planet on it, and the Mets symbol above it. The Hats had the Mercurty symbol on them.

This is a link to a You Tube video that was on ESPN. The segment really catches the uniform diaster in the right light. It also includes Robin Ventura being asked about them in the locker room.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kr8KZwf9_VI 

This is just a quick note. As I was walking into my room, someone dragged me away to show me something really terrible.
Ok not so terrible but

The devil rays are now the rays, they changed their logo to a sunray thing and their colors are now baby blue and white, and maybe an alternated navy blue.

I actually like their old uni's, both of them (the original and the recent ones)

Go to their home page to check it out.

This is just an idea. Its not a rumor, probably has limited support, it just popped into my head earlier today, and I wanted to see what other people think.

I wanted to take a look at players that during the 2007 were above average agaisnt the Mets, thus having a potential impact on 2008.

In the case of Kelly Johnson, He destroyed the Mets in the first half of the 2007 baseball season. Before the All Star Break His numbers were monstrous agaisnt the Mets (his numbers took a nosedive after, so I didnt record them here)

Batting Avg Agaisnt the Mets: .370
Slugging Agaisnt the Mets: .815
OBP agaisnt the Mets: .485

These numbers for him when all of his games before the allstar break are considred fall out to be:

BA: .287
SLG:.467
OBP:. 386

Second half of the year, he hit a .200 vs the Mets, Bringing his season vs the Mets to a .274

We all know that the Braves are looking for a centerfielder, a big time player.
We also all know that Tori Hunter said that one of his qualifications for his new team is tha that they have to have a large African American population, and that he quoted Atlanta and Washington D.C. as possiby choices.

Recently the Braves traded Edgar Renteria. This freed up money for the Braves to make a push for a big time player. (About 9 million a year so lets say Tori gets some where around 20 a year, budget wise, its an 11 mil increase for the Braves).

According to Mlbtraderumors.com. The Nationals have been doing some work to. They have contacted Tori, and Andruw, and Rowand, and have been linked to Glavine. On the note of Tori Hunter, he likes DC because of reasons stated and Dmitri Young.

Although Glavine has said he would either pitch again with the Braves or the Mets, he has been linked to the Nationals. By the end of this offseason we could see a swap of Free Agents between teams of the East.

Personally, I would feel better with Hunter on the Nationals because that team is not a threat yet. That being said, their lineup would be noticably tougher with Zimmerman in the three spot, Dmitri in the four spot (although I expect his numbers to drop) and Hunter in the fifth spot.

There is an interesting article over at mlb.com today. Apparently Bonds is telling the Hall of Fame that he will boycott his own induction if the 756 ball is displayed with the asterisk on it. This is all I read of the article, I've had my fill of Bonds, and I am done with stories realted to him.

Mlbtraderumors.com discusses A-Rod and the giants. Basically half the team payroll will be invested in Barry Zito and A-Rod.

There is a blog over at foxsports.com that explains that the Phillies should try to get Atkins from the Rockies to fill the void they have at third base and hitting lefties.

While searching the net today for baseball news, I came across an interesting article over at mlbtraderumors.com. The article listed in order of predicted effectiveness in America, Japanese players that can come over to America this offseason. I already talked about one of them, Hiroki Kuroda, but his ranked number 3. At number 1 is Hitoki Iwase.

Mlbtraderumors.com describes him as someone that loves Okijima would love. He has a very nice slider and fastball around 93 mph. Mlb4u.com describes his slider and fastball to Otsuka. He has the most saves in a single season in Japan at 46. Over the past three years, his ERA has been 43, 40, and 46. His ERA has been 1.88, 1.30 and 2.10 (carear 1.91). He throws lefthander and is 32 years old.

Assuming that Sanchez is availble towards the begining of the season, this might not be a bad move. Sanchez the right handed setup and the Iwase the lefthanded setup. Heilman, our current setup, is also right handed. This just seems like a nice calculated risk. I normally do not like Japanese pitchers, but his ERA is so low in Japan, I really cant see him going about 3.25 in America.

With the rumors surrounding Arod and the Mets, and Wright possibly moving to second then to first, its easy to see there is a lot of possibilties of what could happen. Here are just a few ideas. For the record, I still have not made a personal decision of whether or not I am for A-Rod or not.

Option 1: Arod comes to play third, Wright moves to second. My personal problem with this the lineup that this creates, there are so many potential four spot batters, Beltran, Wright, Arod, and Delgado. We all know in this situation Delgado would not be considered, Arod would get the fourth spot, Beltran 3rd and Wright 2nd. When Wright started to bat 3rd last year and Beltran 4th, it just felt like eveything fit better.

Option 2: Do not pursue A-Rod. Next year make sure to get Mark Texaria. This idea is the one I am most comfortable with. It allows the Mets to dedicate more money to the Catcher spot and pitching holes this winter. Then next season, when we don't have Delgado, it allows us to place Texaria at 1st base and plug him 5th into the lineup (which in '08 will most likly be held by Alou). In this situation, there is no messing with the development of current and future leaders.

Option 3: Get Arod, have him play at 3rd. Have Wright play at 2nd. Shop Delgado to another tam, maybe to one in the AL so he can DH. (I do not know anything about a no-trade clause in Delgado's contract, so to be on the safe side, I am going to say that this option is not available at this moment)