It’s been going on for over a year now, but the multitude of man-crushes heaped upon Mets first baseman Daniel Murphy still perplexes me. There is, of course, the website ohmurph.com, which has apparently decided to take it up a notch and literally sniff the inside of Murphy’s cleats.

But it’s not just these guys. Matt Cerrone of MetsBlog.com, which is probably the best place to go to gauge the opinions of the average Mets fan, will not give up on Murphy. Yesterday, Cerrone wrote (italics and lack of caps his):

i think, with protection in the lineup, and a more stable season, using what he’s learned and lived through this year, murphy can hit above .280 with at least 30 doubles…

I have several issues with this mindset. For one, Murphy is on pace to hit 34 doubles already this year, so he’s already hit one of those qualifiers and we’re still not happy with his performance. He’s also on pace to have 510 ABs, which means that for him to bat over .280, he would have had to have roughly 145 hits. So assuming that he won’t magically become speedier and start racking up triples, in Cerrone’s estimation (he also thinks Murphy can hit 15HRs), Mets fans can hope for 232 total bases (92 from singles, 68 from doubles, 12 from triples, and  60 from HRs). Over 510 ABs, that’s a .454 slugging percentage… which would be “good” enough for 20th among the 24 qualified first basemen in 2009.

What about OBP in this instance? If he maintains his current walk rate of 7.5% as well as his HBP and sac fly numbers, that would still only give him a .334 OBP, which is 22nd among the 24 qualified first basemen. And what if I were to assume that his walk rate will improve to say 8.5%? That’s a .346 OBP (21st out of 24).

So really, even in this possible-but-optimistic scenario, Daniel Murphy would still be among the worst regular first basemen in baseball. And it’s not like his minor league numbers were good enough to project him as an average first baseman so his current performance is really what you’d expect against superior pitching. He can potentially give you numbers that would be quite good if he were a middle infielder. Problem is, he’s not. He wasn’t able to handle third base in the minors so they moved him to left. He couldn’t cut it there either so they moved him to first and now he has nowhere else to go.

Despite their troubles, perhaps the best thing that the Mets have going for themselves is the abundance of talent at premium positions. With third base (Wright), shortstop (Reyes) and centerfield (Beltran) all manned by potential All-Stars, the Mets have a distinct advantage over many teams that would kill to have that nucleus. But by running guys like Murphy, Jeff Francoeur, and Angel Pagan out there to play positions typically fielded by the best hitters that MLB has, they give that advantage right back. I’m not saying that the Mets need Albert Pujols. But if they’re serious about winning in 2010, they should have someone better than Daniel Murphy at first.

A few days ago, I received my copy of the most recent ESPN The Magazine in the mail and read the article written by Tim Keown describing the current mindset in Arlington in regards to pushing their pitchers physically beyond the comfort levels of the average Major League franchise.

The article is worth reading in its entirety, but in a nutshell Keown surmises that by not coddling their arms with restrictive pitch counts and pushing stronger cardio and long-toss work in the hot Texas sun, the Rangers, led by team President Nolan Ryan’s imposed regimen, have turned around a staff who have for years been considered among the worst in baseball.

But this post is not about the Rangers, and I am only mentioning them because of what the Yankees are currently doing with Joba Chamberlain. By now, I’m sure most of you are aware of the phrase “Joba Rules”, referring to the annual innings limits that the club imposes upon their potential future ace. It is thought that if you allow a young pitcher to increase his workload dramatically from year to year, the risk of future injuries escalates. And in today’s baseball world where the enormous value of quality talent making the league minimum is well understood (yes, even by the Yankees), no one wants to be the guy who ruined a promising career – or, more accurately, several seasons of cheap yet dominant performances.

In 2008, the Yanks limited Chamberlain to 100 innings, and this year, it was already up to 130 prior to his start on Sunday. So what did the Yankees do? Oh, just your average “pull your starter after 35 pitches” routine. That’s right. The Yankees had Joba on a 35-pitch limit, which was enough for three innings (surprisingly). Me thinks they overreact.

It’s certainly understandable that teams want to protect their assets to the best of their abilities. And with the Yankees as mortal locks for the playoffs, they can experiment with this without real repercussions in the standings. However, is this really the best solution?

The most drastic scenario that I hope wasn’t even considered for more than two seconds is to have shut down Joba for the rest of the regular season. The Yankees could obviously use Chamberlain in the rotation come playoff time, and simply shelving him for the next month could very well leave him unprepared for that. Another potential route was the one we initially thought the club would take, which was to give Joba a longer period of rest in between starts than normal. But they scrapped that idea as well and simply decided to start him on normal rest albeit with the stipulation of the 35-pitch count. I suppose that with the rosters expanding in September, that finding relievers to come in after Joba maxes out isn’t much of an issue at the moment (the Yankees now have 15 pitchers in the bigs). But why are they reinventing the wheel?

The most traditionally sensible thing to do was of course simply put him into the bullpen until the playoffs. There really aren’t many truly “high-leverage” situations that the Yanks should be facing with such a cushy lead, but at least the guy could get his work in when he was needed.

So why was this option nixed? This is pure speculation on my part, but I wonder if no one in that front office wanted to deal with the worst (okay, maybe not) case scenario – what if he was great in that role? The “should Joba be a starter or reliever” debate should never have even happened (200 innings vs. 70 innings. Which workload do you prefer your best pitchers handling?) but ridiculously, it still is happening in the papers and on talk radio. Perhaps the Yankees simply didn’t want to add fuel to those ridiculous flames. Or, less conspiratorially,  it was simply a case of being able to guarantee Joba routine work. But that’s no fun, is it?

In the end, there really is no easy answer. But I do know this – a month ago, I thought that capping annual innings for young pitchers wasn’t a bad idea. But actually seeing it in practice in such a severe form as this is making me seriously consider the alternatives. Maybe there is something to what Nolan Ryan is preaching. Maybe clubs are coddling their young arms too much which in turn makes them less capable of handling the workload necessary to be the best players possible. At the very least, it is safe to say that there is no such thing as a fail-proof plan. Each pitcher is different and some can handle the workload while others can’t.

So the true question is, how do you know which is which? For the Rangers, you push them to see who doesn’t break. For the Yankees, you impose a gradual process that may never test their limits. I suggest that we all keep a close eye on what’s going on in Texas. If their young pitchers are still effective and healthy in a few years, we may see this approach take hold around the league.

Or maybe expecting every pitcher to emulate the work habits of a legendary fireballer who, despite pitching over 5300 innings over his 27 year career, was still able to throw a 95-mph fastball in his mid-forties, is just bat-shit insane.

As you can imagine from the name, the Hank Aaron Award is given out annually to the best offensive player in each league. And every year, a team is allowed to submit three names for consideration.

And I really, really, hate beating this horse into a tartare, but the Mets, as a result of all their injuries, submitted these three names: David Wright, Luis Castillo, and Angel Pagan. Really.

I imagine that this is akin to Seth Green being the name submitted for Oscar consideration by the producers of Without a Paddle.

While reporting on the story that three members of the Nippon Ham Fighters baseball team has been diagnosed with swine flu (including former MLBer Terrmel Sledge), ESPN makes a mistake that’s all too common.

For the last time, they are not the Ham Fighters. They are simply the Fighters. Nippon Ham is the company that owns them. You’re a sports news organization, ESPN. Please, at the very least, get this right.

This year marks the 40th Anniversary of the Miracle Mets championship of 1969. To commemorate the franchise’s first World Series win, the Mets are giving away 25,000 t-shirts at the August 22nd game versus the Philadelphia Phillies. Which sounds great.

But these t-shirts look like this.

I swear to Jehovah, this is not a joke. I got this photo directly from the team website. Men, women, and children will receive t-shirts numbered 69. Not only that, there will no doubt be thousands of Phillies fans in attendance who will also be getting this t-shirt, which they will be bringing back to Philadelphia. Imagine the fun they’re gonna have at the expense of Mets fans for the rest of their lives.

So to the Mets’ Marketing Department – what the hell?

As of this writing, Baseball Prospectus projects that the New York Mets have a 1.4% chance of making the playoffs this season. Although 6.5 games back in the Wild Card doesn’t sound utterly insurmountable, it’s more the fact that seven teams would have to fade away down the stretch that makes it improbable.

So this is the current situation for the Mets, as well as for Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado, Billy Wagner, J.J. Putz, John Maine, and Carlos Beltran as they work their way back from their respective injuries that sunk any chances the Mets had at competing in 2009. With the season all but lost, how soon they return seems like a moot point these days.

Which is why I was a bit worried when I read Will Carroll’s “Under the Knife” article in BP, which says this about Beltran, who has been out since June 22nd with a bone bruise in his knee that just won’t heal:

Beltran has decided to accelerate the pace of his rehab, hoping to come back towards mid-August… Beltran made the informed decision based on the near certainty that he will need microfracture surgery and could miss much, if not all, of the 2010 season.

Yowza. Now, you have to respect a guy who refuses to give up, especially considering that some of my fellow Mets fans (well, those of us who are 64% brain-dead) insist on labeling the best centerfielder in baseball as ’soft’. But this sounds like a fool’s errand. I understand the “until the fat lady sings” mindset, but here’s the problem – the ‘end’ in this situation is not the conclusion of the 2009 season. Both the Mets and Beltran have a future in 2010, 2011, and so on that must take precendence at this point in time. If given the choice between 40 games of Carlos Beltran at 80% strength in 2009 and him at 100% (or close to it) for 100+ games in 2010, I will take the second option every time.

The Mets don’t need Beltran right now. But they would be far better off if they had him next year as early as possible.

If the departure of Nate McLouth warranted a candlelight vigil in the Pirates clubhouse, you have to wonder how many suicide notes are being written over there in Pittsburgh now that Adam LaRoche, Jack Wilson, Ian Snell, and Freddy Sanchez have all been traded over the past week (not to mention Nyjer Morgan this past month).

Those five players – including McLouth – had been the most recognizable faces of the franchise for a few years now and following their departure, I’d bet that 90% of baseball fans can no longer name you more than three guys on their big league roster. On the surface, this sounds like a terrible setback for a team that has not had a winning season since 1992. But there’s a big difference between getting worse and rebuilding, and GM Neal Huntington appears to have made the decisions necessary to achieve the latter of the two.

Let’s discuss these deals individually:

July 23 – Adam LaRoche traded to Red Sox for Argenis Diaz and Hunter Strickland

The elder LaRoche came to Pittsburgh prior to the start of the 2007 season and immediately became one of the team’s most reliable offensive players. But once you took a step back and compared him to the rest of the regular first basemen around the league, you could see that his overall skillset was below average at the position.

Among the 24 first basemen who have made at least 1000 plate appearances since the beginning of the 2007 season, LaRoche’s adjusted OPS of 113 is 14th, his SLG of .470 is 16th, and his OBP of .339 is 21st. These are numbers that a team could live with if the defense was superb, but this was not the case either. In his time in Pittsburgh (as well as in his entire career), his Ultimate Zone Rating has been in the negatives, meaning that his glove was more likely to hurt you than help you win ballgames.

LaRoche is a free agent at the end of the year and offering a player of his skillset and age (turning 30 in November) a contract extension would have been foolish. And as of this writing, there is no guarantee that a player with his numbers would have garnered the Bucs with any compensatory draft picks. Not only that, there was the fear that he would have accepted arbitration had the franchise gone that route. Once they made the decision that Adam LaRoche was not the player they wanted to play first base in 2010, management did the most sensible thing and traded him away in a salary dump, saving the franchise $3 million in salary. And Pirates fans would be better off considering this trade as just that – a salary dump – because the two minor leaguers they received aren’t exactly “prospects”.

Argenis Diaz is a 22 year-old  shortstop who has never hit at the professional level. His power is nonexistent, doesn’t make much contact and doesn’t walk nearly enough to be an offensive asset. He is, reportedly, quite a good defensive player, but you usually have to have some ability to hit to make it to the bigs even as a defensive replacement. Hunter Strickland’s prospect status isn’t much better. His fastball is average at best and relies solely on control and location to get guys out. And combined with his numbers, his ceiling looks to be as a middle reliever.

Out of the three trades over the past week, this one is my least favorite from the Pirates’ perspective, but I at least still understand why they pulled the trigger. If the choice was between nothing and saving $3 million, I would have taken the $3 million too.

July 29th – Jack Wilson and Ian Snell traded to Mariners for package of prospects including Jeff Clement plus Ronny Cedeno

In retrospect, the writing was on the wall for both shortstop Wilson and double-play partner Freddy Sanchez when both players were offered contract extensions that seemed designed to be rejected. And once they predictably were, the Pirates moved ahead by trading them both in separate deals.

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So yesterday morning as I was in my local bagel shop waiting on my bacon egg and cheese on an onion bagel, I glanced down at the newspapers and I saw this photo of A-Rod and Kate Hudson on the cover of the NY Daily News:

Then I noticed the headline of the story beside this photo. And thought, “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right”: