Random Notes 8-20-08

Huh? Was this REALLY necessary? And if Randolph did not see it coming, he needs to sharpen up his self awareness. A lot.

Oh Joe Blanton... There were people who actually wanted you for Lastings Milledge. His ERA+ of 80 can stay where it is while the Mets have found Figuerora who posted an 79 ERA+, Mike Pelfrey who posted an 88 ERA+, and Claudio Vargas who posted an 105 ERA+.

The lesson to learn here is you do not trade for mediocritity. Yes, he can give you innings, but I would rather keep my depth or use the depth for something better than in a trade for league average players.

I still like Ricky P. Also, he seems to get it.

"We haven't pitched up to our capabilities and we didn't play well defensively and when that happens you lose games," Peterson said. "In 2006, we turned so many great double plays and everyone said our pitching was so great. Our pitching was good, it was OK. It was solid in 2006, it wasn't great.

"We were in the top of the league in pitching, but our defense was at the top of the league and that's why we had great pitching that year. So, in this case, a lot of things went wrong with the team, and pitching certainly was one of them."

If Willie was the pitching coach, his take would have been, "look at our ERA! I am awesome!" Peterson is a realist.

Gossage just keep his mouth closed.

"There's not enough mustard in the city to cover Reyes," said Gossage, who was at the Stadium to give a pitching clinic to Bronx Little Leaguers and raise money to support inner-city youth baseball leagues in six cities. "He needs to act like a professional.

"I don't want this sport to turn into football where they dance after every play. I can't stand that - the dancing, the laughing - there's no place for that in the game. He's not the first great player to play - I wouldn't even say great because he hasn't won anything yet."

Riiiiight. Baseball is turning into football in regards to the celebrating. THERE IS NO CELEBRATING!! It is kind of sad that there is none because it looks like no one gives a shit. The entire 'been there done that' attitude is old and god forbid someone shows some enthusiam while playing the game.

It is good that Reyes showed no signs of sulking, but I never believed that crap about him before.

Lennon has the five keys to success.

Beware of all of this Bernazard talk.

Every time the Mets played the Nationals, Bernazard conversed extensively with Washington manager Manny Acta, the Mets' former third-base coach, creating the perception that Bernazard wished that Acta was managing the Mets. To clear up any murkiness, Bernazard, who mostly avoids the limelight, conducted an interview with The Washington Post last September in which he effusively praised Acta's managing skills.

And early Tuesday morning, when the hatchet fell on Randolph and the two coaches, Bernazard could be seen in the team hotel, giddy as a schoolgirl with a new dress.

Why is praising Acta bad? That seems honest. And I was giddy about Randolph's firing as well. Maybe...just maybe...he is smarter than the people who sought to keep him.

Tim Marchman likes Jose. And again, shame on all of you who ripped Reyes earlier. Did we all not learn our lesson when we all thought Wright's star had diminished a bit?

I like Jerry so far. Also, let us not get caught up with one win or one loss. This is a process and judge the 'new' Mets on a month or so.

Random Stuff 4-17-08

Johnny Baseball has not been horrible, but I think everyone has really, really high expectations for him in 2008. Since people have such high expectations, he has been a slight disappointment.

"It was the walks," Maine said of his unhappiness.

Indeed, the free passes continue to be a problem for Maine this year. He's walked 12 in 16 2/3 innings. No other Met has more than seven.

Maine (1-1) said he's not comfortable with his fastball.

"It doesn't feel 100 percent right now," he said. "Hopefully warmer weather will help it."

The bar has been set high for him this year and a mid-rotation starter would be a huge disappointment at this point for John Maine.

Also from the above link, Church likes #2.

In his second straight game in the two-hole, Ryan Church had two hits, including a solo homer. He had a hit and a walk in that spot on Tuesday, too.

"I love it," Church said. "I've been getting some pitches that I've been able to do something with."

Yesterday someone said in the comments (sorry, too lazy to look!) that Willie could be prepping for Alou and batting Church 7th is just nuts when you have Castillo in front of him. So, Willie could be doing some pre-Alou tinkering. If so...

Reyes
Church
Wright
Beltran
Delgado
Alou

Wow. That has some punch straight down to six and could do some insane damage.

As for Church, I was a believer. Now, it seems other people are coming around.

Joe Smith has looked amazing this season.

"I made a few changes in my delivery, subtle. I'm trying to stay crouched through the whole thing, trying to get to the lowest release point," said Smith, who opened with 151/3 scoreless frames last year before struggling and being demoted - an experience the 24-year-old learned from.

"I went through a little bit of everything. I started hot, went through the middle of the year struggling, got sent down, had to come back. Last year was a good year for me; I learned a lot from it," said Smith, who had a 6.43 spring ERA. "I was working on stuff, had a tough spring, but they showed faith in me. Now I'm going to do what I can to help the team win."

Smith is good.

Carlos Beltran, team leader? Believe it.

"As a teammate, I know, I see when somebody's not happy and I didn't think he was happy," Beltran said last night. "I tell him 'I want you to be the Reyes that you always have been.; "

First Los making bold claims and now this? Very good.

"I have to enjoy my game and be the way I am," Reyes said. "I can't worry about the other team getting mad because other teams they do that, what we do they do it, too. I don't care about that. I just care about this team."

Hmmmm...Methinks the Metsies are waking up. Maybe I'm looking into this too much, but I like what I am seeing.

"We don't care if these other teams get offended," Beltran said. "We're going to play the game like that."

Last night seeing Reyes at the top of the steps in the dugout going nuts felt right. I makes me smile like a five year old girl in a Barbie factory....or like a 43 year old pedophile in a Barbie factory with five year old girls... whichever you prefer.

Tim Marchman talks Forbes. Read it and like it.

It seems the guy might have been playing around.

So far, Beltran only has one homerun. However, he has 13 walks (good for 2nd in the league) and he has a 7 doubles (good for third). The patience is there and the pop is there, so the homeruns will be coming.

Jon Heyman goes over some baaaad deals.

Pavano's agent Tom O'Connell -- the fourth agent the right-hander has gone through in his career -- believes that Pavano would still be a desired commodity on the free-agent market this winter, even with his injury history. "Carl's a 1-2 starter," O'Connell said. "Those guys don't grow on trees. Those guys are very rare, 200-inning guys are very rare in this game, and they're the ones that make the money. And he did it two years in a row, before he got hurt, and I'm sure he's going to do it again."

Are you sure you are sure? I hate agents and their stupid spin. It generally seems as though they assume everyone is stupid. I get the fact that they have to say positive things about their player, but this makes both himself and his player that he is representing look stupid. How about just admitting Pavano had a rough time of it and is chomping at the bit to get back into the flow of things and is coming along great?

Is Tom O'Connell trying to be Scott Boras' evil twin? The sheer lunacy of such a statement wreaks of Boras.

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.

Jim Caple Day

Hmmmm.....

Is it all that shocking that steroids were around the league for a while now? When baseball players went from looking like Ozzie Smith and beer league softball players to Mr. Universe look-a-likes, did no one question what was going on? We all know from the report that people did in fact know what was going when you read the various sections about players like Dykstra, Gagne, and LoDuca. What is also so interesting is how haphazard the players were about it and how they basically did not care who knew.

You would have to be dumb to not get what was going on when guys like Anderson came into camp looking a lot different than last year while blasting fifty homers after never hitting more than sixteen in a season. Only Roger Maris, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Hack Wilson, Ralk Kiner, Mickey Mantle, George Foster, Willie Mays, Cecil Fielder, Johnny Mize, and Albert Belle managed to hit fifty homers prior to 1996 and Brady managed to do that at age 32 while on the downside of his career. In fact, the only other players prior to 1996 to hit fifty or more homers for the first time during the year they turned 30 or older was Johnnie Mize and Hack Wilson.

Mize at least hit 40 earlier in his career, but Wilson's season was more of an anomaly because he showed good power, but not great until that one prodigious year. After 1996, McGwire, Bonds, Luis Gonzalez, Anderson, David Ortiz, Jim Thome, and Greg Vaughn all topped fifty homers for the first time after turning 30. Of course some of those guys had legit power and other factors were at play and probably did not do steroids, but it should be noted regardless since a good number of those guys did juice. From 1920 to 1995, nineteen guys hit fifty or more homers. From 1996 to 2005, eighteen players hit fifty or more homers. In '06 and '07, two guys hit fifty or more in each season.

I just wanted to credit Jim Caple for that above link because I do not want anyone to get the wrong idea about what I go searching for on the internet.

Also from Jim Caple's link:

Jose Rijo: This is actually his second time on the ballot; he was also on the ballot in 2001 after missing the previous five seasons to injury. He received one vote, then returned to win five more games before retiring for good after the 2002 season. This is something Pete Rose might want to consider to get the clock ticking again on his eligibility. (By the way, Rijo is Juan Marichal's son-in-law, giving the two of them 359 combined victories at family gatherings.)

One fucking vote? Seriously. Who was the guy who voted for Rijo and why is he allowed to vote? Joke vote or not, that is just ridiculous.

Also, Caple brings up a great point when talking about runs scored.

I don't understand why the run total is so undervalued. It is the only statistic that matters in the outcome of a game yet all the glory goes to the batter who drove the runner the final 90 feet home rather than the man who got himself in scoring position in the first place. Given that a batter can only score one run per plate appearance but drive in as many as four, run totals should be more highly valued than RBIs. Please explain then why it is considered more of a feat to drive in a run than to score one.

You could make the argument that a guy like Jeter benefited from exceptional offenses, but I guess he deserves some recognition for getting on base consistently in the first place. That is not to say runs should be the only metric considered when some certain player's time comes, but Raines had a pretty substantial body of work to support his candidacy.

Caple also lays it down about Bonds:

When Barry Bonds was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice there was a fair amount of speculation on how the indictments will affect his Hall of Fame chances. Bonds pleaded not guilty last Friday but the final verdict won't influence my vote either way. I'll vote for him.

For one thing, most of us already suspected that Bonds lied to the grand jury about never knowingly taking steroids, so I don't see why the indictments should change our opinion. A player who many considered a liar is now formally charged as such. This is like the government charging Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria with being cheap. Making it official shouldn't really change your opinion. Either you already felt that Bonds deserved to be in the Hall or not.

Booo-yah!!! I love what he wrote and I wholeheartedly agree. Some will not agree with his next statement, but I again agree with the brilliant Jim Caple.

You'll read and hear about how the Hall of Fame ballot instructs voters to consider a player's "character and integrity" but that's just a convenient dodge. Integrity? Gaylord Perry bragged about cheating much of his career -- he "wrote" a biography titled "Me and the Spitter" in between winning his two Cy Youngs -- and writers still voted him into the Hall. Character? We happily vote in players who we know cheated on their wives. The Veterans Committee voted in Orlando Cepeda who did time for trying to smuggle marijuana with the intent to distribute. Racists such as Ty Cobb and Cap Anson are in there, along with owners Tom Yawkey and Charles Comiskey who worked to keep out blacks as long as possible.

Integrity and character are good traits but if they were truly considered by voters, the Hall would have a lot fewer members.

Of course we all understand guys cannot be taken out of the HoF, but a lot of people certainly do not believe that having 'bad' people in the HoF already should be the reason for future transgressions to be ignored and you can certainly find value in that statement. But the fact remains people knowingly voted for players that cheated in the past and players will continue to cheat in 2008 and beyond in some way, shape, or form. It sounds like a copout to say cheating will always be in the game, but sadly enough it will. There will be some borderline guys who maybe got that extra bump they needed to get into the HOF by cheating and there will be guys that were sure fire HoFers that cheated as well. I guess that is up to the voters to make that judgment call and this scandal will certainly affect some players bid for the Hall while not hindering other players bids.

Finally, he also dabbles into the BBWAA and how slowly they move and how slowly they have been to embrace internet writers. The funniest part is how their website is very indicative of how they have been a bit behind in regards to this newfangled internet fad. I think it is safe to say they could have gone to this site and been up and running with something that was not vicious on the eyes for under $30 I presume.

* * *

Pot meet kettle. Kettle meet pot.

"I heard a few names on the list and wow,'' said Strahan at Thursday's Giants practice. "Guys have been sitting at home sweating for a long time when they knew this was coming out and now for it to come out it just kind of tears up the sport."

Giants teammate Osi Umenyiora had a similar reaction.

"It is sad; to be honest with you, to see how many people were involved with it and that type of thing," he said. "Everybody is looking for that edge and I guess they went about it using steroids, but it is very, very difficult to sit back and see that so many people cheated in the baseball world.

"I don't understand how they weren't caught before now, but maybe they were. I just don't understand it to be honest with you."

There are no performance enhancing drugs in football at all. I hope someone goes after football so they can post that on the side of Giants Stadium. And for those of you who think that this report would have stopped trades from happening, players getting signed, etc., think again.

"Our goal is to field the best team possible based on information we have in hand," general manager Doug Melvin said in a statement. "While we were disappointed to see information from 2004 related to Eric in the report, we still firmly believe that his addition to the club makes us a much stronger team as we head into the 2008 campaign."

These GMs are not the morality police and are trying to win ballgames above all. It should not be shocking to see this report have no effect on how most teams go after players. It might drop someone's value a bit, but not much will happen in regards to these guys finding work if they are still capable and looking for it.

Also from the above link, it appears as if some players might have gotten advanced warnings of steroid testing.

Ian O'Conner thinks December 13th, 2007 was the second best day baseball has ever had.

You knew Jose would speak out and he has.

"It's a slap on the hand," he told Fox Business Network. "The report proved nothing. It just proved what we already knew."

Not inflammatory enough for you? Got you covered.

Prodded further about players not included, Canseco said this of Alex Rodriguez: "All I can say is the Mitchell Report is incomplete. I could not believe that his name was not in the report."

It seems like a lot of the guys that got caught were not all that smart about it being they left impressive paper trails of canceled checks and shipping labels. However, I am sure there were a lot of guys that were much more discreet and intelligent about their usage.

David Justice was on the Michael Kay show. Basically he said MacNamee gave him HGH and he did not take it. He gave it back. 'Mac' approached him and said he could help his groin injury with HGH and that doctors prescribe it. He had no idea what it was and said OK. When he found out it had to be injected, he gave it back. He did however say if it was a pill, he probably would have taken it because he felt it came from a trusted source that knew what they were talking about, but Dave don't do needles.

As for Radomski, he kept calling him 'Dombroski' or something and said he could not pick him out in a crowd. He said if someone says something untrue about him, he would not hesitate to stand up and defend himself and said he would have talked to Mitchell had they contact him. After the initial contact with them, he changed phones twice and his house burned down. He said if they followed the proper channels, he would have spoken to them happily to try and clear up his name.

What do I think? Nothing! No one cares if David Justice did it for a few shitty years at the end of his career.

Haren to the D-Backs? Impressive. A trio of Webb, Haren, and Randy is not bad at all to head into battle with and Beane got a nice package in return.

Randon Tidbits 9-7-7

So I was watching the Cyclones game last night and I got to watch Dillion Gee on the mound who was the Mets 21st round draft pick. He was drafted out of U Texas Arlington and has had a nice first exposure to pro ball. He has a solid low 90s to mid 90s fastball with excellent control.

He has a 6.22 k/bb ratio and has struck out 8.13 batters per nine innings. He supplants his fastball with a tight breaking ball. He did not do all that well in college, but he certainly looked decent in yesterday's game and has put up nice numbers so far for Brooklyn.

Delgado is down and no one is really sure for how long. The contingency plan is a Green/Conine platoon. If you take their righty/lefty splits and then extrapolate that into 501 at-bats, which is how many Delgado has, you get the following:

 R  2b   hr  rbi   bb   so    avg   slg
64  38   14   65   53   61   .291  .457
67  29   22   80   50  110   .255  .455

The top line being Green/Conine and the bottom line being Delgado. I am not concerned about Delgado's injury for two reasons. For one, I do think he will be back by the playoffs. Secondly, even if he is not, the Mets can put together a reasonable facsimile of his production this year.

As much as Green makes me wretch, him and Conine will do fine and get dropped down towards the bottom of the order and hopefully in the 7th or 8th spot. Alou slides back up to the fifth and everything is swell.

The x-factor between the two scenarios is that Delgado has the ability to carry the team when he is hot and the other two do not in any capacity. Delgado was hot and showed some encouraging signs, but there were no guarantees that was going to be the Delgado we got for the rest of the season.

As long as Wright, Beltran, Reyes, and Alou are happy and healthy, that is the most important thing for this Met offense. All the others are pretty much superfluous.

The big talk of the off-day is David Wright. He is on the verge of a 30/30 season which we are all extremely aware of.

With four more longballs over the Mets' final 23 games, Wright (born Dec.20, 1982) would become the fourth-youngest member of the 30-30 club.

Only Alex Rodriguez (22 years, 3 days in 1998), Bobby Bonds (23 years, 182 days in '69) and Jose Canseco (24 years, 35 days in '88) would be younger than Wright when they reached 30-30. Hanley Ramirez, Florida's 23-year-old shortstop, is six homers away.

He would also log the fifth season a Met has done it joining HoJo who did it three times and Darryl who did it once. The other big news item for Wright is the fact that he is quickly becoming the prime MVP candidate in the National League and is trying to become the first Met to ever win the award. That is truly big on so many levels for this Met franchise as they have had some pretty good players come through here and no one has ever won an MVP award.

Reyes is excited about his rest.

Jose Reyes said he welcomed yesterday's day off, just the second time he had been out of the lineup this season. "Basically it's going to be two days for me, so it's going to be nice," Reyes said, alluding to today's off-day before the Mets welcome the Astros to Shea tomorrow. "Sometimes you're going to feel tired."

I guess Willie is just one of a long line of people that have lowered their arm slot as a Met.

Lefty reliever Willie Collazo, taught a three-quarters delivery by pitching coach Rick Peterson before the season, made his major-league debut with 1-2/3 scoreless innings in relief of John Maine. Collazo, 27, allowed two hits and a walk. He arrived from New Orleans with a 33-inning scoreless streak.

It seems to be a working formula.

Orlando is almost back.

Orlando Hernandez threw his first bullpen session since receiving a cortisone shot in his right foot. El Duque expected to throw another bullpen session tomorrow or Saturday, which could set him up to pitch as soon as Monday against the Braves at Shea.

When he gets back, the Mets should seriously think about giving Maine and Perez a break with Pelfrey or Humber getting the call for them.

So Rick Ankiel received a 12 month supply of HGH back in 2004. While that does not mean that he is taking it now, it certainly just about confirms a lot of people's suspicions that it is circulating around the league. If you cannot test for it and many were OK with taking steroids, why not?

It seems Mike Lowell would be too pricey for the Red Sox? I thought he would have been a bargain. Go figure... It looks like this off season is going to be another doozy and prospects might even become more valuable than they already are further throwing the trade market out of whack.

Randon Tidbits 5-26-07

Virtual verbal exchange of the year?

Louis (Brooklyn, NY): Jose Reyes is overrated, one great year, the previous year he made the 4th most outs in the histroy of baseball and he's still injury prone, your thoughts?

SportsNation Keith Law: (1:03 PM ET ) My thoughts? You're insane.

Oh so misguided Yankee fan. Too bad he's not in the minority. Jeter is the best player in the universe!

It was oh so appropriate that this question came a few later.

Markward (Aarhus, Denmark): Hi Keith. You always seem to have great knowledge about european cities... been traveling a lot there? Did you notice Jeter blowing a bubble while rounding 1st base when he hit a triple agains the Red Sox.. very impressive.

SportsNation Keith Law: (1:15 PM ET ) Haven't been to Europe in several years, but I do love traveling there. Never been to Denmark, though - maybe we'll go to the original Legoland when my daughter's old enough. Jeter's bubble-blowing was yet another example of how clutch he is.

I love it. It should also be noted there is no way Jose Reyes could do that.

While on the topic of Jose Reyes, he is fantastic and has been for long period of time now. However, his 0.98 G/F ratio is very concerning. In his previous two seasons, Jose maintained a G/F or 1.36 or higher. At the end of the game Thursday night he popped out with two outs in the ninth and the tying run on third. It seems he is getting away from his game a bit and hitting more and more pop-ups. The other strange thing is that although he is walking more, he is still seeing less (though marginally less) pitches than he saw in 2004 and 2005.

While Reyes still figures to be very good this year, there are some indicators to suggest that Reyes could be in for a slight regression this year. He has pop, but not enough to be flyball hitter. He really needs to concentrate more on being the batter he was in 2006 with the eye he has in 2007. Unless he makes some adjustment, I expect him to continue to struggle.

Back to Thursday. One out...tying runs in scoring position....let's bring in Franco! I have no issue with the bunt laid down by Gotay. Willie says he took the bunt sign off to Eddie Coleman on WFAN, but that's not the issue. The issue is by bringing in Franco you are relegating yourself to hoping for a single to right field from a guy that couldn't hit a watermelon right now. Me? I'd prefer to go with the pop in that situation. On top of that, as much as I am for dropping Delgado in the order until he starts hitting, I'm not so sure he should be batting behind Paul LoDuca.

Weird stuff going on in Willie's head. Weird stuff.

Pedro is long tossing 250 feet and says he will be able to throw 95 mph when he comes back. Fuck me baby.

"Those were the days I felt like this - like I could just pick up a ball and shoot it without any hesitation, anything to think about," Martinez said. "That's how good I've been feeling."

For a guy who said he would retire if he didn't feel good, this is very, very, very encouraging. And for good measure, he went after the Rocket.

Martinez also whistled a verbal fastball under the chin of Roger Clemens, saying he watched Clemens pitch Wednesday and "I can do that and probably even better at this point."

I love this guy and we need his edge back on this team.

The Duque? Solid. The Mets are back to a 2.5 game lead over the Bravos.

Ha ha!

George Steinbrenner hung a bull's-eye on the back of general manager Brian Cashman by saying that he alone will shoulder the blame if the Yankees don't turn their season around.

More drama. Remind me why it's good to be a Yankee again?

Jose Valentin is Willie's man when he returns.

"He's my everyday second baseman," Randolph said of Valentin.

I actually like Valentin in the super utility role getting work in the outfield as well as in the infield with Easley. Especially with Green going down and Moises' penchant for getting hurt, I wouldn't be so quick to make any assertions. That would also allow the Mets to perhaps clear up a roster spot by getting rid of super-utility man David Newhan. Also, this is weird because Willie is Mr. Non-committal who continually makes guys earn things. Even Jose Reyes has to earn his spot every spring so why he would commit to Valentin of all people is beyond me.