213 Miles From Shea

For the Mets News:

Pedro was cleared today to actually start throwing. Omar and the rest of the Mets front office was very clear though that they dont expect Pedro back before August

Thats obvious but its a great step to see Pedro being to be cleared to pitch.

Chan Ho Park has some Visa issues right now, i really dont want to report more than that right now, but its on mets.com

Head over to Daily Baseball, link in a post belowl, for some general baseball news regarding the other guys in the post.

OOOOOO TWO IN A ROW AGAISNT THE CARDS!

(I promise i will not get excited for other spring training wins, but this is personal)

Anyway in stunning fashion, the Mets Minor League System came back with three runs in the top of the 9th against the Cardinal Minor League System. Final score 6 to 5

Ok, in all honesty, here are some of the important highlights

I dont expect many people here to know this, because many dont follow the Orioles, but David Newhan, until he broke his leg, basically was a second basemen (when roberts was out) and a good OF (like the Mets needed anymore) being said, he continued carrying the Mets in spring by being 2 for 5, with a triple and get this, 4 RBI. This is key to the development of the Mets bench

Endy Chavez had a double against one of my favorite pitches, Looper and had an RBI. Another notable RBI would be the sac fly from Carlos Gomez, who is another prospect everyone is watching

Now the only two pitchers i really carred about today, pitched well. First would be Joe Smith who threw a scorless inning, with 2 strikeouts and one hit. The other one, Scott Schelowies (u know what i mean) was scoreless and hitless and got the win

Now I have a lot of other things I want to post. Two new 2007 guides are on the list, some stat projections, and a lot of general around baseball stuff, when this stuff is up i will say so stayed soon for some amazing stuff.

Overall, if you cant tell, i really like to look at the Bench and the Pitchers in spring training, thats where u see the development. i really hope to crunch some numbers regarding baseball stats from 06 spring training to the 06 baseball season

For those who dont know, every issue of Sports Illustrated has a little box titled: They said It. As you can probably figure out, that goes to a funny quote each week.

This week was Alous who was asked about the secret to his longevity said “I drink light beer”

I like players with a sense of humor

Anyway, for news about that Young Contract, and Dice K stuff, as well as a preview for tommorow, please head over to

http://www.dailybaseball.blogspot.com

Tommroow I will also look at some former Mets prospects from around the league

WE BEAT THE CARDNALS

WE BEAT EM!

ok…its spring training… i dont care, our first win was against the cards

The thing that i thought was the most important thing was Tom Glavine today. He faced 7 batters over two innings, with a strikeout and NO RUNS, which is good news. No brainer that he will open for us on April 1.

Sosa on the other hand had a bad day 2 runs over 2 innings. That means that both people going for rotation spots so far, Perez and Sosa, have had some rusty outings, that fine though because its March and the mechanics got to get lose.

Feliano walked a guy, allowed a hit, but had a strike out and no runs, so that was good. Even better would be Burgos who one inning had a hit, a strikeout and no runs. So the Bull Pen  is not showing any rust and all eyes are on the 22 year old flame thrower anyway, Im curious to say the least.

Beltran, Reyes, Delgado and HERNANDEZ all had RBI. I am glad that Hernandez did because if he wants to make this team he needs to be on FIRE in spring due to the lack of bench spots due to the bull pen due to the rotation mess. Also the Mets hit their first home run of spring with JOSE REYES, that guy is a beast. AND GUESS WHO HAD A TRIPLE TODAY? If you said reyes, cause normally that would be right, your rong and the correct answer was Beltran who was showing off that speed that he was talking about eariler this “spring”. Other notables would David Wright going 2 for 3.

There are a few other things i want to talk about that happened today, but I gotta take care of some stuff first.

Some things to expect tho are some more young star looks from today and a report from Sportin News about the Gyroball, if it esixts

Mets (1,1)

Young Prospects In Baseball

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Looking back at the 2007 offseason, I think one thing can safely be said, besides the ridiculous amounts of money being spent, most teams are making a movement to protect their young prospects.

The only notable move I can really recall that involved a group of prospects for a vet was the young pitchers of <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Detroit (including Humberto Sanchez) for Sheffield.

Now lets take a look at the Mets, they have four prospects at the Outfield position, if you include Johnson and Milledge as prospects. The only prospect, or young guy, they got rid of was Bannister and Lindstrom (with someone else) and in both situations, they got prospects back.

The reason I feel that this is going on is the expense of veterans and the shallow pool of good free agents. Teams want to hold on prospects that could potentially become amazing

Now some might argue that this always happen. I have to disagree. Look back at the Mets last year. Two of their top 5 prospects, Petit and Jacobs were traded away, now the Mets did get some serious, serious talent for that trade, but still they gave them up. Actually on the topic of the Marlins, other teams, like the Red Sox, gave up a lot of top ranked prospects for guys like Mike Lowell and players that are around All Star Level or right below, not All Star and above.

Overall, I like this movement. I for one like young kids. Just about all Mets fans would rank either Wright or Reyes in probably their top 2. In a way, baseball made its own “salary cap” Instead of placing a restriction how much a team is willing to pay to get a player in order shift talent everywhere, teams now just put a lot of faith in their farm system. What this means is a lot more eyes looking at the minors, which is always a good thing.

Simul-Posted on Daily Baseball

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First off, general baseball post now can be found at:

http://dailybaseball.blogspot.com

Todays post is a continatuont of my earlier post. Not the same at all, has more facts and info, so check it.

Ok on to todays game:

Hitting Doubles today was Delgado and new comer, Ben Johnson, an outfield prospect we received from the Padres, and its nice to see him hitting, however he is an OF as well, which means that OF in Triple A is gonna be really crowded

Johnson actually got 2 hits, Milledge, Franco, and Easily all got hits today as well. Newhan with 2 sac flys, Franco 2 run hit

Overall, with the offense, today was good news for the Mets Bench. The 07 bench had 4 RBI, and a few hits, so good job again Omar.

O and surprise, Reyes stole a base.

Wagner allowed two hits, and a run. One inning

Perez, 2 innings, 4 runs, 5 hits, a walk, a strikeout…so a lot of work to go there.

Everyone else didnt allow a run. I was most happy to see that Soler not allowing any runs because i still feel that he can be a dark horse fro that last position. ANother similar opinion about this can be found at the Brogna Blog as well.

My overall opinion is that Im just happy for baseball!,

Tommorow, my other team, the Orioles plays the Marlins at the Marlins, so that should be an opportunity to look at some division rivalry

And the Mets play a nice, friendly team we all love, the Cardinals, BEAT THEM GO METS

Not much time to talk about it right now, but here are the basics:

Tigers 5, Mets 4

Franco 2 RBI

Newhan 2 RBI

Big story of the day, Perez pitches 2 innings, gives up 4 runs, besides those 4 runs, all the other pitchers were perfect.

More on this game later

Sorry about practically no information yesterday, was out of state for the day. Anyway…while on my trip, I picked up a copy of Daily News From a rest stop yesterday and got some interesting news regarding baseball and the world.

Baseball is going to the holy land.

Starting on June 24th, 6 teams around Tel Aviv will be playing a 45 game scheduel. The players will mostly be from the United States and the Dominican. The league should be the equivelent of a Single A league.

Now instead of seven inning stretches, nine inning games, and extra innings, its going to have a fifth inning stretch, a seven inning length, and after those 7 innings, if the game is still tied, then it goes to a homerun derby.

A former Ambassador to Israel is the league commissioner. Ron Bloomberg (Yankee) and Ken Holtzman (Cub) are two managers. Another manager is MIRICLE MET ART SHAMSKY (a household name cause my father is a big fan).

Well i like this idea just because i like the idea of baseball all over the world, i think its important. More info regarding my opinion and other facts about Israel and Baseball soon.

Matthews Jr. the 50 million dollar man (one of the worst moves this offseason) is linked to a steriods investigation

and thats all i will say regarding that matter

Manny Ramierez says he wants to stay in Boston now for the rest of his carear.

As much as i want to believe this, i have a feeling he will stay in Boston but we will always have at least a few times a year, Manny trade rumors. it just happens in baseball.

Joe Smith

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As of now, his story has been sort of a mystery, being very hard to find.

What we know from his high school days is that he had shoulder surgery in his senior year. In fact, he didn’t even play freshman year ball. He was a sophomore at <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Wright State University when he took the field.

He really didn’t even have a spot either, he walked in for tryouts,

More impressive is his velocity. When he started, he was ¾ armslot that had mid to high 80’s guy. His coach lowered his arm slot to the side and now he is a high 80’s to low 90’s fastballer.

His ERA in college was a .75 which would led division 1 (he didn’t have enough inning in order to qualify)

After the Draft, last year he played for Brooklyn and Binghamton. In Brooklyn his ERA was sub 1 and in Binghamton sub 6.

With no Chad Bradford, he looks to be a crucial spot for the Mets pen this year if he makes the team. One thing he has on his side is his age. At the young age of 22, the Mets hope to train and perfect him into a bullpen machine.

When you look at the long run, a 22 year old Burgos and Smith look to make the Mets formable and deep in years to come.

From Baseball America and milb.com

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A while ago i determined that since Billy Wagners K/9 was 11.70 he had a KAVG of .433 that meant he had the probabilyt of 83% of getting at least one strikeout per game based upon binomial probabilty.

Now i will demonstrate why that means nothing.

Lets say that Billy Wagner pitched the ninth inning every game. And every game he recorded one strikeout. that would make his K/9  = 9.00

Now a 9.00 would lead to a KAVG of .333

when put into the calculation

1-binomcdf(3,.33,0) to find out the probabilyt of at least one strikeout per three outs, the anser is 70%

So 70% of the time he would have at least one strikeout. However in this scenario, we said that he had one strikeout per inning anyway.

What this proves is actually the point of statistics. As my statistics teacher said, if we were assure that all the answers we got were 100% def. true, then there would be no statistics. Statistics is the look into the chance that things will happen and this test shows that flaw in the hypothesis theorem that even though the stats suggest that billy should be getting 1 or more strikeouts in 70% of the games, by his stats he easily could just get 1 per game meaning 100% of the time

Thus is the magic of baseball, that we can sit here and destroy graphs of stats and liklyhoods of this and that happening, but still anything can happen that is 100% justified by math.

pretty deep