213 Miles From Shea

Last year, during the first week of the season, ESPN, ran a segment on Sports Center called “New Places Same Faces” about players on their new team. So lets look at Steve Trachsel of the Baltimore Orioles.

Opening up the Baltimore Sun today, the headline blared “Unlike in NLCS, He handles Cardinals allowing 1 run and 3 hits in 3 innings”

Ouch…thats a way to start the morning.

So Steve had a good outing. His first outing of the Spring (i believe agaisnt the Marlins) he pitched one inning, allowed four hits and 3 runs…so two very different starts for Steve.

He was asked to compare this start yesterday to game 3 of the NLCS, to that he said:

“Completely different, Completetly different, Here I am working on things, There I was just trying to get through innings'

Also, when reading notes about the game, Steve had a lot of help in the first innng due to a diving catch form Mora and a leaping snare from Huff to take hits away from Pujlos and Spiezeo

Josh Johnson is out for two months.

Vazquez signed an extension

Nomar moving to third?

All these topics expanded (by a good deal) over on

http://www.dailybaseball.blogspot.com

Check it out

On the quest to 500, the Mets won today (now 3-4)

Pitching Highlights from today

Tom Glavine, 4 hits, a walk and two strikeouts over 3 innings. This is great news for Glavine and for the Mets.

One of the ways i look at Glavine is that he pitches at the level he needs to win. If the game is close, like 2-1, he is on fire with his performance. If the game is a blowout, then he still gets the win and gets a little sloppy, but once again he still gets the win.

On the Billy HeartAttack Wagner watch, he had no-hit inning and a walk. Heilman also had a shutout inning.

The Mets one 7-2, however those 2 runs came off of an error… so in terms of ERA, it was a shut out for the Amazin's.

On the offense side, C. Gomez hit a homerun!. And first base prospect Carp had a huge day at the plate with 5 RBI off 2 doubles.

In other news, ALOU FINALLY GOT A HIT…AND AN RBI

For a more indepth look, check out the box at mlb.com

Head over to http://www.dailybaseball.blogspot.com

for a more complete look at, “the mink”, Doug Mienkavitz

Here are the Mets notes about the MINK on the yanks. Well we all know that he was part of the mets in 2005 and he was the spot light of different types of focus. There was the spotlight on the 2004 world series ball in the begining of the season, his lack of production in the middle of the season and the amazing short stint that Mike Jacobs did in his place towards the end of the season. So the question then becomes why is this mediocre player, who was signed after the Mets missed Delgado before the 2005 series have such an impact on our minds and souls?…Well I dont know the answer, I do know that the nickname, The MINK is actually well known and is focused in books like “Believeniks” which was a book about the 2005 Mets season.

And last year when he was on the Royals, that was just funny

The news about the Phillies is about a week old, I just forgot to post it. I heard on ESPN, that they decided to bring a nutritionist to camp to help the players with their eating

Good thing the MINK isnt there, he has to have a cheeseburger before the game, its his superstition.

Soon I am launching the third blog in the serious of blogs, the one about prospects, that has already been announced by Link page on the side of Daily Baseball (link above), if you go to the site, The Prospect Watch, there is a nice introduction there…I am half way done the first detailed entry for that page, which will be about Andrew Miller.

Start of with today's loss…atypical for the Mets, as they lost due to hitting (2-1).

Which means there are plenty of pitching highlights

Oliver Perez today went three innings, allowed one run and had THREE Strikouts. That is fantastic after his last start where he self-destructed. You can speak volumes on how important every spring start he will make is.

Alay Soler, who was not talked about at all before the Spring, had another amazing outing also going three innings, one run. Both he and Perez had no strike outs

Although his chances (soler) of making this club is weak, he is starting to make a case for himself, especially as a call up if one of our AARP pitchers goes down for a period of time. If anything his postive development mans a lot for the future of Mets rotation….or as trade bait.

My main man Joe Smith threw two innings of no-hit ball. Very similar case to Soler, except Smith's chances of making the club are about a hair better…still being 22 and doing this, with 22 year old burgos, can make any optimist happy.

And Schonies showed why it is good to have him around throwing and inning of no hit ball.

The only offense note i really want to make is that Reyes with 2-4, stole a base, and practically solved the nations deficiet problem…cause he can do anything

So as much as an antagonist to Mets Nation that Steve Phillips is, he had some good stories today during the Tigers/ Yanks game.

The back up catcher for the Tigers is Vance Wilson. When Vance was a rookie with the mets in 2001, he had some strong comments on September 11th. He spoke to the team about how everyone was complianing about taking a bus back to NY when thousands of people had just loss love ones.

He said that, spoke up to, VETERANS as a rookie. He basically shamed them. It is huge the amount of character that this kid has. I also liked him when he was with the Mets. This just makes me like him more…I believe speaking your mind is always a hard thing to do, and his speech deserves a lot of credit.

Later tonight, some news about THE MINK, and other stuff

I knew today was not gonna be great cause the Mets lost to the Orioles. Now, people here dont go crazy when the Orioles win a spring training game. However, if they are friends with me, they go crazy when the Orioles beat the METS. So, all i got all day was comments at how “bad” the Mets are…

Haha… we will beat them O's later this spring, knock on wood.

Some news about Pavano and the Diamondbacks can be found at

http://www.dailybaseball.blogspot.com

So the Mets went below the .500 mark today with a 6-3 loss. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights:

One of the biggest highlights of the day in my book was John Maine. He pitched a solid 2 innings of 1-hit ball. This is really great news because as we all know, Maine will be a crucial part in the rotation this year, and many years to come.

On the topic of many years to come, Humber did not have a good day today giving up 5 runs over an inning…everyone has rough starts, this was his first spring start, hes going to be fine and im not worried at all.

Schmoll allowed the other run over two innings, overall though he really didnt have too bad of an outing, but i dont see him fitting in anywhere this year…maybe trade bait?

The other really BIG highlight of the day came from Bugos who threw two innings of one hit ball like Maine. This is great news for the pen and more great news for my fantasy team.

Offense wise, DH Sierra had all the RBI today. Newhand continued getting hits, by having one, Chavez also with a hit.

Offensivlly, people will look at Milledge today who went 2-4 with a triple. Castro also had a hit.

On to Topps. Probably most people have heard now of the prank on the Derek Jeter card. It actually made the FRONT cover of the Daily News on Tuesday. Basically a guy photoshopped Mantle and Bush on to the card, which cause quite a stir.

What i really wanted to talk about is how impressed i am about the other photoshopping. Go on EBAY and look for any cards of players that have new teams this year, like Alou. The photoshop job they did on these cards amazing as they got the jersies on these guys, that are real game jersies and no way could be actual photographs. You have actually look really hard to see the editing on it, it is truly amazing and really changes baseball cads and makes them more up to date than ever before.

So in the last week i picked up copies of the USA Today 07 Spring Training Preview, Season Previews by Streets and Smith, and also by Lindy, and also ESPN fanatasy rankings

Needless to say, i have a lot to say

I also have some math i want to post soon that mathematically proves that Spring Training Means nothing

That being said here is what USA Today 07 Spring Training Said:

In the 2007 Power Rankings, they list the Mets 4th

They were also ranked 1 overall in the National League and in the Division

Under the Prediction Corner, Paul White says that he feels John Maine and Pelfry will both make big impact in the second half of the season. He also believes that Reyes will have more power and win the NL MVP.

And the questions they will “determine the season” are the same as always, Will their rotation hold up, can they lean on the pen, what about batting agaisnt left handers…same old same old

Additional Power Rankings can be found at

http://www.dailybaseball.blogspot.com

With todays loss, the Mets even up their Spring Training Record to 2-2

Who cares here is the important stuff

Today was Mike Pelfry's first spring action against another team and he was great. Allowed 1 hit over two innings, no strikeouts but no walks.

This was in the first two innings as well, so he played against maybe a starter or two and a bench player, so all in all these two innings are important…but not too important

Wagner allowed 0 runs, 0 hits and 0 walks, with 1 strikeout

Last time up he allowed a run, good to see him starting to get back into form

Heilman being Heilman allowed one run, followed by Vargas who blew the game with 4 runs in the ninth

The fact that he gave up 4 runs in an inning will indeed hurt his already falling stock

Hitting wise, Newhan continued his streak by getting his 6th RBI in spring training off a sac fly. Beltran got a double and JOSE REYES HIT ANOTHER HOMERUN

Who would have thought that this point in Spring Training, that Beltran has more triples than Jose Reyes and Jose Reyes has more homeruns then anyone on the team…It makes me excited, and also upset that in my fantasy draft, i had the 6th pick so had no shot at Reyes (but got Beltran)

In other news from the game DWright had a hit and Chavez collected 2

if you are interested to see how my fantasy draft turned out, head to

http://dailybaseball.blogspot.com

I dont get the Record a lot, when i do, its only because someoen in my family made a trip up to NJ, and decided to bring down a copy. So on days like today when I get a copy, im pretty stoked, yes stoked

Anyway theres a few things I want to talk about but one thing that really caught my eye was a blurb about the bobblehead promotions at shea this year. There is one official announcement and one to be expected to be announced. The official one is Paul Lo Duca as a bobblehead.

The that will be announced is amazing tho, its a bobble head of Endy Chavez's catch

That is totally amazing

I went to shea in 2003 and got a Hebrew T-Shirt as a promo. for someone who goes to Baltimore games all the time, the amount and quality of the Mets promos is truley amazing. The Orioles really dont do that much thus reflected in their poor attendence. The ones they do have are pretty crappy. I remeber reading about Toyota giving away little sheas or alarm clocks at mets games just having pure envy that the Orioles ownership cant produce anything really nice for the fans…Cause everyone down here hates the owners