F-Mart!

After making a mortal enemy in myself, Keith Law is trying to kiss an make up. He goes over his top 25 prospects and talks about a few Mets favorably.

6. Fernando Martinez, CF, Mets

Martinez doesn't look or carry himself like a teenager, and he had no trouble against Double-A and Triple-A pitchers in the Arizona Fall League. A plus glove in center, as well.

Six? That's tasty. Really tasty. As great as that is, Law does not stop there.

9. Andrew McCutchen, CF, Pirates

Jumped two levels to Double-A at age 19 and didn't miss a beat. Legit center fielder who can fly, already hitting for plus power and controlling the strike zone, too. He and Martinez are the two early leaders for the No. 1 spot next winter.

I'm not sure Martinez can overtake McCutchen, but it will be interesting to see if he can. If Martinez is healthy, he certainly will make a push to, but McCutchen will be doing it a higher level. Of course if you want to factor in that Martinez is two years younger, you could certainly make a case for Martinez being the better prospect, but Andrew is as good as they come. The Pirates fans should be very excited for a future outfield of Bay, Nady, and McCutchen. Not that Nady is anything tremendous, but given the star power of the other two, he will compliment them just fine. Also, if some of the Pirates young arms start panning out (which in itself is a big problem as there seems to be a major breakdown somewhere in their coaching of young pitchers because they have looked clueless with all of those solid arms) and with the addition of LaRoche, there might actually be light at the end of Pittsburgh's tunnel. Back to the Mets...

Phil Humber, RHP, and Mike Pelfrey, RHP, Mets

Pelfrey misses the cut until he has a breaking ball he can really use, while Humber's continued arm troubles (he was shut down again in the AFL, supposedly as a precautionary measure) keep him off the list.

Sweetness. As we have all heard, the rumor is that Pelfrey's slider is much better than his curveball so hopefully that is taken care of and can we stop with the Humber and his continued arm trouble nonsense? I mean, the guy had a clean bill of health coming out of college and that was partially the reason why the Mets drafted him. Prior to his Tommy John surgery, he was fine and since coming back he has been effective. If a guy has not pitched in a year, it is understandable that he would have arm soreness and frankly it was surprising that the Mets would even let him pitch in the Arizona Fall League given what he just went through.

Given the fact that Lastings Milledge is ineligible to be a true prospect anymore, he is not on the list. However, he’s still a rookie in my heart and gives the Mets four top 50 talents that are just about ready to go. When it comes to compliments about players within my favorite organization, I'll take them no matter who they are from.

* * *

The way coffee was meant to be served.

“We had a much better atmosphere, good coffee. Unfortunately, they ran around half-naked and we didn’t,” said Cambroto, who finally threw in the towel last spring and sold his business to his rival, the operator of six Cowgirls Espresso stands in the Seattle suburbs.

While not quite a hostile takeover (nothing involving boobs could be considered hostile), I sure hope John Cambroto learned a valuable lesson about business and keeps up with the market trends in his next business venture. I can only hope that this trend makes its way East.

From Benny...

The new Dice-K? Yu Darvish looks like he has solid stuff, but he is looooong way from joining the bigs as he has only played two years professionaly and is 20 years old. Japan probably does not like being a farm system for the bigs too much, but there does not seem to be anyway to stem the exodus of their biggest and brightest. Bobby V's idea of a Japanese division of the big leagues would certainly help, but that has bigger benefits for Japan than the US. Besides, that idea has way too many issues with the largest issue being logistics.

Some food for thought though, I truly wonder what a Japanese team compromised solely of Japanese players with Johima, Ichrio, the real Matsui, Iguchi, D-Mat, and other top flight players could do. Ultimately, I do think their pitching and lack of power would be their downfall, but they should be very competitive.

This was one surprising tidbit to say the least.

J.P. Ricciardi says he was playing around on his laptop computer the other day. Saw Victor Zambrano's name. Saw he was available.

"I didn't know what his status was, to be honest," the Toronto Blue Jays general manager said Wednesday, after signing Zambrano to a minor league contract that will pay the 31-year-old righthander a base salary of $500,000 (all figures U.S.), with various incentives built both around starts and relief appearances.

Isn't that supposed to be his job? Or at least someone's job in the organization to let him know the availability of a guy who had success in the AL East before?

Here is some more fuel to throw on my anti-McGwire for the Hall of Fame campaign.

500 Home Run guys: There is a chance that five players will join the 500-Home Run Club this year, which would be a first. Frank Thomas is 13 away. Jim Thome is 28 away. Manny Ramirez is 30 away. Alex Rodriguez is 36 away. Gary Sheffield needs 45. This used to be an exclusive little club. Now it's up to 20. Soon, the 20 will become 25. In another 15 years, there are going to be 35. Get used to the growth.

Frankly, McGwire's power numbers are not awe inspiring when you take into account the time they came in. Hitting 500+ homers means little anymore when talking about getting into the Hall of Fame. If you plan to retire and have 500 and something homers while not factoring in on defense, you better have been a Manny Ramirez-type hitter who did it all and was an all around masher and McGwire just does not fit that bill. That's not to say he wasn't a fearsome hitter and one of the better big leaguers of his day, but he just is not a Hall of Famer. You cannot do anything about the guys that got into the Hall of Fame and do not really deserve to be there, but you can certainly rectify this going forward and not letting Mark McGwire in would be a step in the right direction.

Check out the video on this one. This kid is enormous and double the size of a normal baby. Scary stuff...

I've been a busy boy lately and have not had time to post and I'm off to Denver until next Thursday. This is probably it for a week, but thankfully nothing is going on so I'm not really missing anything. The biggest news item going around here is that Paul LoDuca wants a contract extension. LoDuca had his best season in years and is unlikely to replicate it in ‘07. The only problem that I see is the number of available catchers over the next few years is rather thin and the Mets do not have much in their organization outside of Francisco Pena. Losing Jesus Flores was a big loss for the Mets since he was relatively close and that basically means the Mets will likely have to bring LoDuca back for two more years. I do not think that it is a big deal as he'll probably be on the 120 games-a-year plan and he should be fine since the Mets will not be relying on him for Piazza-like production. He really isn't nearly as bad as Piazza defensively despite the fact everyone tries to steal on him and will not be much of strain if he is batting at the bottom of the order.