213 Miles From Shea

As reported on mlbtraderumors.com and other places, there has been a lot of recent A-Rod news

The Good news is that none of it involves the Mets

The first piece deals with the Yankees. The Yanks announced that they would not renegotiate another contract at the end of this season. In other words, if Arod steps out, he's out.

Now there are two teams that apparently have intersest in Arod that are known so far. The first would be the Angels. The second would be the Giants.

Arod said a while ago that there were five to six teams that were involved.

For the Giants, having Arod would mean that they would have 2 possible home run champs.

In all seriousness though, it would be an interesting situation to have Arod in SanFran

Well….today was interesting. The Mets lost 11-3

Mike Pelfry had 4 ER over 5 innings

This was his first really bad start of the spring, Its not going to affect his roster position and he will be the number 5 guy mid to end April.

Sosa was just bad today, .2, not even a full inning, and he allowed 6 runs

For good pitching news, look at Heilman and Wagner who in a 8-9 formation each pitched one hit innings.

Hitting wise, Jose Valetine has continued to get into rythem today by having a 2 RBI game

He is still going to be important this year, lets just hope in October he gets on a hot streak

Chad Bradford threw a scoreless inning for the Orioles today, reducing his ERA by a point of two so now it is below 11.

In enemy news, Utley hit two homers today

This kid is scary, and unlike Howard, pitchers will not be able to get around him because he can slap the ball to all areas of the field.

So both games were losses today, but both were losses by one run.

Lets look at the Florida Game first:

John Maine showed he was human today going 5.2 innings and giving up 4 ER. However, that puts his Spring ERA at 3.07, showing that he is still having a very good spring

The question now is, can this good spring translate into a good season

Speed wise, well it was there. Milledge stole 2, Johnson and Hernandez each stole one

Thats how you win ball games

Milledge also had a pretty good day hitting wise, going 2-4, with a double and RBI. Back up catcher Castro also had an RBI

For the rest, check the box score.

Now for the Mets and Orioles, which was a 2-1 loss.

Hitting wise, besides Pedro Feliciano getting a hit, not much to report.

So by now you know that Park had a good day, but was moved to the bullpenn. Other notables were Billy Wagner who pitched a 1 hit inning. Schoweis who pitched 1 hit ball, Burgos who pitched a perfect inning, and Smith who had a 1 hit inning with 2 strikeouts

Smith is gonna be nasty this year, and I cant wait.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that Wright has 5 errors this spring…I dont think anything of it, but still, that seems a little over the top.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how our old friend Cliff Floyd is doing this Spring. So far, in 22 AB, he is hitting .318 with a homer and 5 RBI's

Pretty good cliff, pretty good

I was playing MVP Baseball 2005 today, and I was the Norfolk Tides. I was batting with Craig Brazell and a thought went through my head…where is he?

So I went to google, because all of the world's answers are on that site. It turns out that he is on the roster of the Jacksonville Suns, which is a Double A affilite of the Dodgers

Havnt heard his name in a long time

In a close game, 2-1, the Mets Bench (with a few starters) beat the Cards Bench (also with a few starters).

Both RBI's for the Mets came from Newhand and Easily aka the 2007 Mets Pinch Hitting Crew, which is a good thing i suppose.

In further hope of a hitting second baseman, Gotay had a double. Alomar had a base hit as long with Beltran. Alomar also stole a base

Now the real story of the day is the pitching. The Mets pitching today had 0 ER, the one run comming off of an error from Newhan. El Duque actually went 6 scoreless innings, with 3 hits, 3 walks, and 5 strikeouts.

Walks are a bit of a problem, but when you pitch like he does, and ur bitches touch around 40 mph, you just have to look at the ERA and the score…cause walks will happen.

Adkins continues to make the bullpen situation interesting as he, Feliciano, and Heilman all had 1 one scoreless inning.

Now for a former Met. Remeber Roger Cedeno?…Yes, I am sorry to bring that back up. Well, if you didnt know, he was trying to get a spot in the outfield for the Orioles this year. He was released today.

Just thought you might want to know.

So this game was not so desirable for the Mets.

There is one thing, besides Billy Wagner, that I did not like about this game. When you look at the box score, the Mets had nine hits in this game. They had one run. That is a problem.

Most teams always go through the problem of clutch hitting and hitting with runners on the basepaths, especially when they are in scoring position. For the Mets, its beyond a problem, it can be disasterous in the season because the team is so dependent on its offense. Amazingly, the Mets did not hit into any double plays.

Yes Billy Wagner was also a mess today, you can look at his box if you want. I didnt see the game, nor did I hear the game, so I dont know if he was pitching in a game situation or just working on a pitch, I honestly cant make a judgement.

Joe Smith had anothet great inning, no hits and two strikeouts.

You can put him on the 25-man roster now

Yesterday, on ESPN, Joe Sheehan of Baseball Prospectus was being interviewed.

He talked about the braves for a bit, and had some interesting insight about the Mets, relating them to the 2002 Angels.

Please go to

http://www.dailybaseball.blogspot.com to read the overview of what he was talking about.

This game was the second in a row of good, well-rounded, well-played baseball. The Mets won last night 6-2.

For this game, we are going to start with the bad in this game. My only complaint is this game was the performance of Burgos. I mean, in all honesty, a relief pitcher giving up 1 run in an inning, everyone once in a while, is ok. However, Burgos allowing one run with last night, is not good because he is not shutting down batters and its going to ultimatly leave him off the 25 roster.

Now for the good, and there is a LOT of good from this game.

Oliver Perez, im going to write about him in a later post because you already know by now his pitching last night (which was good).

In other pitching news, Sosa had a strong 1-hit, no run inning.

Hitting wise. Jose Reyes was more than a spark for the offense, he was a forrest fire. He was 3-3, more importatnly, he had 3 stolen bases. More important than that, 2 of them were successive, and then he scored on a wild pitch, he practically maunfactured a run (a la jackie robinson).

Overall, there were 11 hits in this game. One of the important hits was from Castro. Not just because it was a homerun, but it shows that the depth in the catching postition is more than defense, but also can put some pop in the line up.

In other positive news, Delgado had an rbi and Beltran also had 2 rbi.

Now on to Oliver Perez. I truely believe the person u can compare Perez too is Orosco. He is the starting pitcher form of Orosco. The reason I say that is because Orosco had two sides. He was either absolutly amazing, and unstoppable, or he was just throwin beachballs. Perez is either a phenom or a disaster.

When Chad Bradfor left, well i had mixed feelings right away. I was very upset that he left the Mets. I was happy that at least he went to the Orioles, and not to a team like the Braves.

However i thoguht he would always be only good with a person like Feliciano, who compliments his speciality (the Orioles really dont have somebody like that)

I  did feel better when I heard about Smith. Anyway, I am getting offtrack the real point of this article is too talk about Chad Bradford and his Spring. Its been bad. No kidding. He started off good, but latly, he has just been off the mark.

6.1 innings so far, 8 earn runs….Not good.

I dont feel thats a trend though. He just has not found his grove yet this spring and I hope and know he will find it before the season starts.

Im hoping to see him at Oriole Fanfest before the season starts

So you might wonder why it says game 1. Well i feel thats what today really is, game 1. After that day off in spring, its time to finalize that roster and get into season mode. Like Willie said, its time to tighten up. Its time to start playing for real, in game settings and have starts make long starts. Its time for the bullpen to act like one. And its time to get hits when it matters, not just scattered throughtout the game

That being said, the Mets, get this, ACTUALLY DID THAT TONIGHT. Seriously, the played for real and it was great. They beat the Orioles (good day tommorow coming) 6-1.

Lets start tonight's game review with pitching. Pelfry, who with a win could lock up a rotation spot, had some good points and some bad points tongiht. The good points is that he went 5 innings, which is huge, allowed one run, and a walk. The bad news is he allowed 7 hits, but he was able to get his way out of those hits without damage, which is good. His spring ERA is now 1.29

In a strange way, Im happy to see him have all those hits. Generally when u allow 7 hits, u have more than one walk and way more than one run allowed. This shows that he can work under pressure, which is good. I say this puts him in the rotation.

After that, Adkins, Felicino, Smith, and Schowneis, went 4 innings with no hits. Feliciono stuck out the side. As Smith had a strkout like Schownwies. There were also no walks in these four innings.

This is huge cause all of these guys, besides adkins, will be in the Mets bullpen come April 1st. Smith is the most important cause now he is racing agianst Burgos and probably moving past him.

So now for the bats:

The Duke had a big night tonight going 2-3 with 2 doubles, thank god, and he scored a run…so now he is back

Reyes had a triple…no surprise. Jose Valetine had a triple….JOSE VALETINE! thats just nuts.

And that centerfielder, well he had his 3 rd homerun of the spring.

Green, Valtine, Beltran, and Hernandez all had RBI, whichi is good.

In my opinion, more importat was when the Mets were winnig by a score of 4-1, they were outhit 6-7, this showed they were getting clutch hits. 3 of their 6 runs were scored with 2 outs. This is important because thats how the mets won games last year

The story of Jorge Julio has been one that I have been following before the Mets, because before he was on the Mets, he was on the Orioles. When he was with the Orioles, he was bad…really bad.

So we know the story. The trade was Jorge Julio for Kris Benson. The Mets wanted a little more, so John Maine was the throw-away mid prospect in the trade.

And then the story evolved. Jorge Julio blew the second game of the season for the Mets. The rotation went south. They brought up Maine, and he ended up pitching in the postseason.

However, well before teh trade deadline, the Mets decided they needed more pitching for the rotation, so Jorge Julio went to Arizona for El Duque.

Well there are a few teams that are looking at Julio now. The Cardinals, the Giants, and the Marlins. The cardinals are actually having talks with the Dbacks about them.

Now what about the second met. Well once upon a time there was a highly held pitching prospect Y. Petit. In fact he was on the cover of the first issue of Gotham Baseball as the future of the Mets rotation.

I remeber being excited about this guy.

The Mets then sent him and Mike Jacobs to the Marlins for a hitter called Carlos Delgado. So, Petit has been on the Marlins now since that trade.

Why these two stories? Because there is a traderumor from mlbtraderumors.com that the Marlins are offering Petit for Julio. For the cards, no player named yet for Julio.

and yes I am back, i have an extra 100 MB of memory for the month, but im going to have to upgrade soon.

and please participate in the community projection in my previous post

thanks to all