Random Stuff 4-10-08

Things must be bad for the Giants when Tim Marchman feels the need to equate them to the Knicks.

Isiah Thomas may not be the most reflective or self-aware of men; he may in fact be the least. Still, at some point soon he will, presumably, have a great deal of spare time to think about how he's spent the last several years, and it may occur to him that given unlimited resources and full control of the most renowned and best loved team in basketball, he managed to do nothing other than destroy both it and his own reputation. This may bother him; it may not. If it does, he should head west, and enjoy an evening at San Francisco's beautiful AT&T Park. A Giants game will make him feel good about himself again.

The Giants are ugly man. They are ugly. 

Agents devoid of scruples? I don't buy it. I don't buy it one bit.

"It was a further part of the conspiracy that, on occasion, sports representation agents for professional baseball players referred their client-players to defendants Scruggs, Danto and MacPherson for the purpose of obtaining anabolic steroids and other drugs which those individuals knew to be banned by Major League Baseball and therefore unavailable to the players through lawful medical channels absent the illegal prescriptions provided by Scruggs," the indictment said.

Agents are not always bad people, but most of the time, it seems they are.

Sugar breaks it down.

And before the game, David Wright said of team-wide killer instinct: "It is kind of like a muscle. You have to work it out to be able to truly flex it. We had it in 2006 (when they led the NL East for all but one day). In '06 we got a team down and we piled on and piled on. We have to reacquire that ability to bury teams."

Ok. I think I am starting to buy into this complacency thing. Steve Popper has a brief comment on the topic.

So how do the Mets get out of this malaise? Fire the manager? Okay, okay, don't get ahead of yourself. It is just six games into the season.

Now, I am not panicking at all, but I can see how people could be concerned being last season they operated in mostly the same non-urgent manner.

Steve Popper may have only had a little to say, but Jon Heyman has a lot to say on the topic.

Also from Jon's above link:

One scout says the Mets are making a mistake by not turning Aaron Heilman into a starter. "He's a sinkerball pitcher. Rather than trying to throw 97, he should be throwing 89-92 and starting,'' that scout says. The Mets don't believe Heilman has enough pitches to start (he is a fastball-change up guy). Yet oddly enough, Mike Pelfrey, who has one reliable pitch, is a starter for them.

Interesting. However, who pitches the 8th? I think he is needed more in the bullpen at this point.

Willie was not a fan of Perez on Tuesday. However, I am impressed when pitchers can be a little off and still shut down the opponent. You are not going to be on point every game of the season, but it is encouraging and the sign of a tremendous pitcher to work through your problems and put your team in a position to win.

You cannot deny that Perez might not have been the sharpest, but I think you could handle it different in regards to speaking to the media.

The Duque? Done.

"They'll put him in a boot for a couple of weeks and see where he is after that," manager Willie Randolph said before last night's win over the Phillies at Shea.

Hernandez had experimented with virtually no leg kick in his delivery during spring training in order to take pressure off the foot, then decided to go back to a modified version of his old high kick.

"My hope is that once the two weeks are over, he's got to find a niche there somewhere that's going to be able to work for him," general manager Omar Minaya said.

I hope Omar is referring to the bullpen. Actually, scary thing is the Mets might not have a choice but try him out in the rotation.

Citi Field? Good stuff. I just hope we can get in there to see some games.

Is there one person out there that thinks Castillo will make it through four years? I cannot envision a scenario in which he is playing second base in 2011 for the Mets.

Sign Vargas already. Not only is he a warm body, but he is one that can give the Mets a chance to win.

In related news, Robinson Tejada passed through waivers. I just think that the Mets should be exploring all options and claiming him off of waivers seemed to be a low risk move that could work out for a short Sosa-eque run.

As mediocre as the Mets look, so do many, many, many other good teams. With the exception of the D-Backs, no one is sporting a gaudy record that people expect to be in the hunt at the end of the season. The Mets will rise to the top simply because they are too good not to. However, my doubts that they can win it all with Willie at the helm get stronger every single day.

A must read.