A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.
- Agent K

I admit it completely. I am not a guy that the average baseball fan would enjoy bringing to a ball game:

1. I will not do the wave. In fact, I was at the Mets-Braves game on Saturday and seriously questioned the logic of the guys in the right field Mezzanine seats at Shea trying to start the wave. In the ninth inning. Of a one run game. Do you guys have any interest in the outcome of the inning at all???
2. I won’t get drunk at a game. Beers are too expensive, and when my choices are Bud, Bud Light, and Bud Select, I will most likely choose “none of the above”. Besides, there’s a game going on. Focus, people.
3. I do not jump up and down at the sight of the Pepsi Party Patrol shooting t-shirts out of a cannon. Nor do I understand people who are sitting all the way in the back of the sections who do so. I mean, do you understand at all that there’s no way in hell that a t-shirt is coming your way? It’s not a matter of being vocal. It’s just physically impossible. Plus the t-shirts are crap.
4. I refuse to boo. It’s a worthless exercise.

I can go on and on regarding why I’m no fun at a baseball game. But it’s that fourth reason that I want to address right now.

A lot of Mets fans spent all winter fuming. We basically had six months to stew over “the collapse”. When April rolled around, the general fanbase was out for blood. The team had let us down in September. The manager and coaches had let us down. The front office executives let us down. And the fans wanted to let them know it. So what have Met fans done consistently in April?

They booed. A lot. They even booed Johan Santana, who had the audacity to allow five runs in one game. I’m serious. These people are nuts.

But the guy who has taken the brunt of it has been Carlos Delgado. Prior to last night’s game, the Mets first baseman had the line of .186/.276/.256. That’s not a typo. Carlos Delgado was slugging .256. And the fans booed him after every out he made at the plate.

This changed yesterday afternoon, when Delgado cranked two homeruns against the Braves in the Mets 6-3 win. Following his second round-tripper, the fans stood up and cheered loudly, begging Delgado to give them a curtain call.

But Delgado would not come out. He celebrated in the dugout, taking high-fives from teammates with a grin on his face. But he ignored the fans’ request (and then, they predictably booed him). And I didn’t blame him one bit.

I’m not sure when it came to pass that the fans started feeling entitled to things. We’re entitled to a team that contends each and every year. We’re entitled to an owner who’s willing to spend every dollar to make that happen. We’re entitled to a team that not only excels on the field, but also shows fire. When we don’t get these things (at least here in NY), the fans become upset. And I don’t know why. Maybe it comes down to ticket prices. We’re paying more and more each year and as a result of paying that price, maybe we expect too much.

But the fact remains that booing a player is not going to get him “untracked“. It only creates resentment. It only makes New York less appealing. The players are not our monkeys. They’re not going to, nor should they, oblige to our every whim. So why should Delgado care as to what we think? When we didn’t show any signs of support when he was down, why should he appreciate any level of goodwill that we may show? It’s incredibly condescending to expect otherwise.

The part that really bothers me is the mob mentality. If these fans met Delgado one-on-one, I’d bet that each person would gushing at the chance to meet a real Met. But because the baseball writers and bloggers have nothing else to write about, all the fans hear is how underachieving and lackluster this team is. Hence, the booing. Individually, we’re genuine human beings. Together, we turn into jackasses.

So what does Carlos Delgado owe us Mets fans? Nothing he doesn’t owe himself. We treated him like crap and we’re surprised when he doesn’t beg for our approval? Please. You reap what you sow.

NOTE: The one thing I can’t help doing at a game is air drumming to “Enter Sandman” when Billy Wagner comes out. It’s early Metallica. The apex of rockitude. I will not sit idly by. Thank you.

Thanks to ESPN.com’s new “roster analysis” page, which automatically updates as teams’ rosters change, we can keep track of various averages for each major league roster all season long.

Baseball’s fattest team? The Chicago White Sox (and it’s not even that close) , weighing in at an average of 221 pounds. The biggest culprits include the mountainous Bobby Jenks, generously listed at 275 pounds, the bulbous Jim Thome (255), and the voluminous Toby Hall (also listed at 255).

The thinnest team is the San Francisco Giants, weighing in at a scant 195 pounds on average, proving that not only are the Giants the lightweights of the Major Leagues when it comes to hitting, but that they are also the lightweights when it comes to actual weight. (Although now with 180-pound Dave Roberts heading to the DL, their rank may change).

As for the average height of baseball teams, we see that it does not vary much, with 29 out of the 30 teams having an average height of either 6-1 or 6-2. In dead last at 6-0 is the puny Houston Astros.

Baseball’s youngest team is, unsurprisingly, the Florida Marlins, with an average age of 27.2 years, while baseballs oldest team is a tie between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets, at 30.6 years of average age.

In retrospect, this should’ve been a liveblog. Oh well.

From: Paul
To: UmpBump Staff
2:21 pm (Eastern Daylight Time)
So I’m following the game on MLB Gamecast here at work today. I just wanted to report that all of Jamie Moyer’s fastballs are showing up as “changeup” on the pitch type. Yes, he’s that slow.

From: Coley
2:25 pm
I just blogged that there’s talk that there could be a fight at the game today. But then I realized, there is 50 percent less of a chance than usual, because you can’t get mad when Jamie Moyer hits you with a pitch.

From: Sarah
2:38 pm
I just ducked out of work to listen to the first inning of the Sox-Tigers game in my car radio. With Kenny Rogers on the mound, I couldn’t figure out why the announcers weren’t talking about the game. “What’s happening?? Why aren’t they calling the pitches?!?!” I needn’t have fretted. Turns out, Rogers is just working thaaaaaat…..slooooow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Could A-Rod play shortstop while Jeter is on the shelf? Girardi won’t rule it out.

The Phils-Mets series is underway. Jayson Stark reported this winter that the Phils were talking about starting a fight with their NL East rivals. Will there be a brawl? The Mets say maybe.

The Orioles are in first place and Aubrey Huff — who went on a shock-jock radio show over the offseason and trashed Baltimore –  is jackin’ it. Any way you slice it, this is a feel-good story.

Joe Posnanski is scaling back while he goes into book mode. Don’t be a stranger, Joe.

Two blogosphere favorites face-off today: Phil Hughes vs. Brian Bannister.

About a year ago, I wrote a post here on UmpBump to express my utter dismay at how my Mets had begun playing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” during the 8th inning at Shea. For one, I never, ever want to copy the Boston Red Sox (aside from that whole “winning championships” thing. That would be kind of cool). Secondly, it’s an incredibly annoying song that’s exacerbated by the choreographed movements (it ain’t dancing, people) of the audience.

On the other hand, I love the practice of Rickrolling. For those who are still unfamiliar with this wonderful phenomenon, it’s essentially a prank involving cultural icon Rick Astley’s song “Never Gonna Give You Up”, a tune that just gets sexier by the day. In fact, I currently have it as the #3 sexiest song of all time, preceded only by Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night” and Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car”.

So you can imagine how elated I was when I learned a few days ago that the people over at Fark.com were going to Rickroll the New York Mets, who was conducting an online poll as to what song the fans wanted to hear this year during the 8th inning.

Replace Neil Diamond with Rick Astley? It’s too good to be true!!!It’s like Black Sabbath replacing Tony Martin with Ronny James Dio!

Well, the votes were tabulated and the results were announced yesterday. And it was too good to be true, like Tony Martin coming back to replace Ronny James Dio (I’ll stop this horrible analogy now).  Despite “Never Gonna Give You Up” winning the online voting with over 5 million votes, the Mets have changed the rules of the game. Instead of giving me a song that will make me giggle uncontrollably every time I’m at Shea this year, they’ve decided to have a run-off. Why? Because the majority of the votes didn’t come from Mets fans, but rather, from people with an actual sense of humor. As MetsBlog.com explains:

Instead of declaring Astley the winner, the team will hold a live, run-off vote.

Tomorrow, during the eighth inning, they’ll play Never Gonna Give You Up, followed by Living on a Prayer on Wednesday, I’m a Believer on Thursday, Movin’ Out on Friday, Sweet Caroline on Saturday and Build Me Up Buttercup on Sunday.

What? Those are my choices? If I don’t get Rick, I’m left with 1) a Bon Jovi song that’s overplayed and abused at karaoke bars across the world, 2) a song that was written by Neil Diamond and performed by a fake television band that initially didn’t even sing or play their own music, 3) a Billy Joel song that’s actually about how pathetically pretentious it is for people to try and pass their lifestyles off as being better than it actually is, 4) the song that I wanted to be replaced from the get-go, and 5) a song that was forever ruined by Ben Stiller.

And you want to know what the kicker is? I’m going to be at Shea this Saturday where I will have to listen to, you guessed it, “Sweet Caroline”.

I think Neil Diamond’s ghost is haunting me. What? He’s not dead? Huh. Fooled me.

5:09 - Sorry gang, but it’s looking like my laptop is none too happy. Will try and take care of it and come back.

5:05 - Nothing much is happening in the game. But the New York Megamillion Jackpot is not over $135 million. Thought you’d like to know.

4:48 - I’m embarrassed. The Mets are down in Florida right now and the Mets fans have already begun a “Yankees Suck” chant. Way to shed that inferiority complex, fellas.

4:43 - It’s ludicrous how many Mets fans are there down in Florida. Santana gets through the Marlins lineup 1-2-3 and the crowd in Dolphin Stadium goes wild. What the hell?

4:41 - So here we go with Johan Santana throwing his first official pitches in a Met uniform. That changeup is just killer. Has a nice sink and tails away from the right handed hitter. Hanley matches up with Reyes toe-to-toe and strikes out as well.

4:37 - For all the crap we all give him about his defense, Hanley Ramirez just got a great jump and snagged a flyball that looked like it would drop in shallow left. Well played, sir. Well played.

4:36 - Beltran hit a weak bloop to center - Cody Ross dove for it, had it, then dropped it. So instead of the third out, now it’s second and third with two outs (Castillo walked earlier).

4:28 - Some weird people once said that the first at-bat of the season determines both teams’ fates for the entire year. Reyes just struck out on three pitches. Awesome.

4:20 - We’re twenty minutes into the broadcast. And I’ve already lost count of how many times the word “collapse” was used. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2008 New York Mets!

4:15 - OK, so it looks like we were able to fix the problem we were having with the site. Anyhow, here’s the starting lineup for both teams:

NY Mets:
1. Jose Reyes - SS
2. Luis Castillo - 2B
3. David Wright - 3B
4. Carlos Beltran - CF
5. Carlos Delgado - 1B
6. Angel Pagan - LF
7. Ryan Church - RF
8. Brian Schneider - C
9: Johan Santana - P

Florida Marlins:
1. Hanley Ramirez - SS
2. Dan Uggla - 2B
3. Mike Jacobs - 1B
4. Josh Willingham - LF
5. Cody Ross - RF
6. Jorge Cantu - 3B
7. Luis Gonzalez - RF
8. Matt “Mr. Misty May” Treanor - C
9. Mark Hendrickson - P

It pains me to write “Angel Pagan” in the #6 slot…

It’s incredible how much of a drop-off Jorge Cantu is when compared to Miguel Cabrera.

12:15pm: Today starting at 4pm EST, I’ll try and give this crazy “live blogging” thing a whirl and cover Johan Satana’s regular season debut as a New York Met when he takes on the rapscallion Florida Marlins.

So if you’re depressed that you’re at work or in class or whatever the devil it is that you do on a Monday and wish that you were, like me, at home wrapped in a blanket eating chocolate chip cookies with a cup of coffee, come on by to UmpBump at 4 pm EST.

PS: Did you ever think you’d see the day when Mark Hendrickson will have “Opening Day Starter” on his resum

It happens every spring. A scrappy young player walks into big league camp as a relative unknown to the general masses. While the veterans greet each other with big smiles, the newcomer has to introduce himself to pretty much everyone. Initially, the sportswriters ignore him and concentrate on the more established players made available by the team’s PR department. But when the preseason games begin, and when the new kid steps into the batter’s box, the attention is his. And he capitalizes.

The next day, he finds his name in the sports sections of numerous newspapers. Do this a few more times and the fan base begins to get excited. He continues to succeed throughout the month of March to the point where he improbably cracks the big league roster. By now, the fans know who he is. He’s the new guy who batted over .400 or had an ERA below 2 throughout the exhibition games. And the first time he comes out of that home dugout for his first appearance of the regular season, he gets an ovation from the crowd that’s usually reserved for the star players.

For the 2008 New York Mets, that guy is Angel Pagan, the 26-year old outfielder who the Mets drafted back in 1999 but had to reacquire in a trade with the Chicago Cubs during the offseason. While not completely anonymous on the big stage thanks to the 318 ABs he’s had as a Cub in ‘06 and ‘07, the average fan probably knew very little about him except that he has perhaps the most oxymoronic name in Major League history.

But in the last three weeks, Pagan has accumulated 45 ABs during which he’s gotten on-base at a .426 clip and slugged .578 with a .400 batting average and a couple stolen bags to boot. This has prompted the beat writers to collectively call for his inclusion on the big league roster. His stock became so high that some people actually bought the fake rumor that the Red Sox were going to trade Coco Crisp to the Mets in exchange for Pagan. Really? Isn’t that taking things a bit too far?

Due to the not-so-shocking injury to Moises Alou, the starting left-field spot on Opening Day is yet to be determined. Just two or three weeks ago it would have been considered foolish to even suggest that Pagan deserved the gig. And I don’t completely understand why we should be thinking any differently now.

It appears on the surface that most people get it. It’s spring training. Hitters are facing AA pitchers and vice versa. Established pitchers are trying out that new cut fastball that they can’t quite command just yet and the veteran hitters are trying to get their timing back. There’s no evidence that spring training success bodes well for the regular season. None. Zilch. Nada. I think the majority of the baseball world is in agreement on this one.

Then why doesn’t this logic hold true for Pagan? Why should we be impressed by a .426 OBP and a .578 SLG when it’s blatantly obvious that both stats are being held up by an impossibly high .400 AVG? Why should we ignore the fact that so far in his career the man’s line is an unimpressive .255/.306/.415? Because he’s young and has room to grow? Because he wasn’t wearing a NY Mets uniform prior to this year? Not buying it.

Far more indicative of his skill set than the 45 ABs he’s gotten this spring is the 2483 ABs he’s accumulated in the minor leagues. Pagan didn’t fare amazingly well during this time either, going .280/.338./.373 - numbers that would be fine… if he was a speedy shortstop who excelled defensively. Pagan does run well, but he appears to be cut from the same cloth as Endy Chavez, another backup outfielder for the Mets. They are useful as fifth outfielders who can be called upon as a defensive replacement or pinch runner, but why would you want two of them on your team?

Regardless of what I think, it appears that Pagan will be heading north with the team in a couple of weeks. But unless the Mets continue to be decimated by injuries, I just don’t see how they could justify keeping Pagan in the bigs for much longer. I hope I’m wrong on this one as I’d like nothing more than to see him succeed far beyond what I perceived were his capabilities as long as he does it in a Mets uniform. But history tells me that’s just a pipe dream.

This is the last in a series of posts in which we flout teams for their farcical offseason foibles and felicitously flatter them for their formidable fancy footwork. This message has been brought to you by the letter “F”.

If you google the words “Mets” and “collapse”, you end up with over 494,000 results. If you google “Mets’ historic collapse”, you get 108,000 more. Needless to say, I was tired of hearing it and reading it. But all winter-long the sportswriters here in New York would not let it die. The team was broken, the scribes wrote. They were demoralized, downtrodden, and despaired. Sometimes you didn’t even know they were writing about a baseball team. They could have easily switched a few words around to make into the script from the movie “Platoon“:

“Day by day I struggle to maintain not only my strength but also my sanity. It’s all a blur. I have no energy to write. I don’t know what’s right or wrong anymore. The morale of the men is low, a civil war in the platoon. Half the men with Willie Randolph, half with Billy Wagner. There’s a lot of suspicion and hate. I can’t believe we’re fighting each other, when we should be fighting them.” - Mike Lupica

But rationality has to take over at some point. Consider this:

1. The Mets lost 12 of their last 17 games (.294 winning percentage)
2. The Phillies won 13 of their last 17 (.765 winning percentage)
3. Both of the above happened. And the Phillies were still only one game ahead at the end of the season.
4. At the Major League level, even the best teams have a hard time winning 60% of their games over the course of a full season, and even the worst can’t mess up badly enough to lose that much more than 60%.

So what happened to the New York Mets in the last three weeks of the 2007 regular season was incredibly unlikely, if not improbable, and I never saw this as a team that needed a total overhaul. That’s not to say that they were perfect, of course. They may have been good enough as they were constructed to win a division title in 2008. But if they wanted to go head-to-head with the AL powerhouses, they needed to upgrade.

And upgrade they did. For the last two seasons, this was a team without an ace. Tom Glavine was no longer Tom Glavine and Pedro Martinez was healthy enough to only pitch 160 2/3 innings during that time. If it wasn’t for the emergence of John Maine and the reemergence of Oliver Perez, it would’ve been an ugly sight indeed. With Johan Santana replacing Tom Glavine and his 84-mph fastball in the Mets rotation, a weakness turned into a strength.

The other major addition(s) can’t really be called an upgrade. While I still believe that having Ryan Church instead of Lastings Milledge will pay more dividends in 2008, next year, all bets are off. And Brian Schneider is Brian Schneider. I believe he’s already broken records in the NY media for how many articles have been written about his ability to “handle a pitching staff” because there’s nothing else he can do (the previous record was held by John Stearns) . By the way, you know who must be really angry right now? Ramon Castro. The guy goes and slugs .556 in 144 ABs in 2007, only to have the team go out and fail to acquire Yorvit Torrealba, trade for Johnny Estrada, then trade for Brian Schneider. Brutal. But lucky for us, we’ll never know if he’s hanging his head despondently or if it just looks that way because his neck can no longer support his massive dome (If I disappear mysteriously within the next couple of weeks, just know that I probably deserved it).

The bullpen remains mainly unchanged, and I’m OK with that. While many pointed to the relievers for the Mets failures, I tend not to get too worked up over it. With the departure of Guillermo Mota, the only Mets arm that frightens me to see him on the mound now is Jorge Sosa. It’s not that I believe in Scott Schoeneweis. It’s more that I believe he’s a better pitcher than he was in 2007. I do have some concerns about Billy Wagner (who, according to this photo, likes to indiscriminately throw bagels onto the ground…), since he’s turning 37 during the season. The fastball just isn’t what it used to be, and Wagner himself seems to realize this as he’s apparently working a curveball into his repertoire. The Mets will benefit from having Duaner Sanchez back after an injury he sustained in a car accident back in July, 2006, followed by a fracture in his shoulder during Spring Training last year that ended his entire season. If Sanchez can perform as well as he was capable of a couple of years ago, he and Aaron Heilman should be a capable set-up duo.

But the 500lb gorilla in the room is that the injuries are already piling up. First, Carlos Delgado had an MRI on his bothersome hip. Then Marlon Anderson and Ryan Church collided while chasing a ball during a game last week. The next day, Ruben Gotay injured his ankle. Orlando Hernandez is changing his entire pitching mechanics because of pain in his foot (goodbye, leg kick), and now we find out that Jose Valentin actually has a dead guy’s ligament in his knee. As usual these days, Luis Castillo is still running like he’s been shot in his thigh. Moises Alou is out 4-6 weeks with a hernia. Not to mention that Carlos Beltran just played his first game this spring yesterday as he continues to recover from offseason surgery.

And I didn’t even mention some others. I’m not kidding. There’s more.

This has, fairly or not, been the main criticism of the Mets as they are currently constructed. No one was overly surprised to hear that El Duque, Delgado and Alou were already hurt, and yet, there isn’t anyone around that can replace their production - especially offensively. If Hernandez isn’t ready to go (although as the #5 starter, the team probably won’t need him for the first couple of weeks) for his first turn in the rotation, Mike Pelfrey would most likely step in and probably won’t perform much worse than Duque would have. It won’t be so cut and dried as to who should start in left in Alou’s absence, however. Technically, Endy Chavez is the team’s #4 OFer, but in actuality, he’s best suited to be a late-inning defensive replacement. The other options are Marlon Anderson and Angel Pagan. The latter is a “gritty” and “aggressive” player who probably doesn’t belong on a big league roster, and Anderson is a player who Mets fans probably think is better than he actually is, thanks to the .906 OPS he posted in 69 ABs for New York in 2007. The team has been rumored to be targeting Marcus Thames of the Tigers but he’s an out-making machine. It’s more likely that they stick with what they have and start the year with either Anderson or Chavez in Left.

ADDITIONS: Johan Santana, Ryan Church, Brian Schneider, Matt Wise, Angel Pagan, Ruddy Lugo, Steve Register

LOSSES: Tom Glavine, Lastings Milledge, Paul Lo Duca, Shawn Green, Carlos Gomez, Jeff Conine, Guillermo Mota, Brian Lawrence, Aaron Sele, Phil Humber, Chan Ho Park

PROJECTED BATTING ORDER:

1. Jose Reyes - SS
2. Luis Castillo - 2B (ugh)
3. Carlos Beltran - CF
4. David Wright - 3B
5. Carlos Delgado - 1B
6. Moises Alou - LF (once healthy)
7. Ryan Church - RF
8. Brian Schneider - C

STARTING ROTATION:

1. Johan Santana
2. Pedro Martinez
3. John Maine
4. Oliver Perez
5. Orlando Hernandez

BULLPEN:

CL: Billy Wagner
SU: Aaron Heilman/Duaner Sanchez

OFF-SEASON GRADE: B-

Had I written this report one month earlier before all the injuries, I most likely would have given this team a higher grade. But I can’t simply ignore the likelihood that this team’s lineup and rotation will remain in flux for a good portion of the season due to the various ailments facing its players. I really don’t mind having Pelfrey in the rotation, but neither Alou’s nor Delgado’s production can be replaced effectively as it now stands - and that’s saying something because Delgado especially can no longer be relied upon to post above-average numbers for a first baseman.

Despite this, I still see the Mets as the favorites (on paper) to win the division. I’m not one to think that some voodoo magic has been cast upon the entire roster due to the demoralizing defeats last September. They landed the best pitcher on the planet without giving up top-notch prospects (primarily because the Mets didn’t really have any). Brian Schneider may be a black hole offensively, but he’s replacing the nearly as anemic Paul Lo Duca. As long as Jose Reyes produces at the level he’s capable of, the Mets offense should be able to produce as much as they did in 2007. IF health were not a factor, I actually think that this Mets team would be at least several games better than any of their NL East rivals. While it’s unlikely that this injury bug will continue to permeate the clubhouse at this rate, there is a seed of doubt here. But that’s the only thing that could really keep this team out of the playoffs.

NOW LET’S PLAY BALL!

-Hot Offseason Action Index-

NOTE: This was an interesting experiment in liveblogging by only using a partially-updated box score and info that could be found on the internets. While diverting in its own way, this experiment is not likely to be repeated. D’oh.

So, my UmpBumping friends, I’m sitting here in my cube refreshing the box score of this Mets-Red Sox spring training game, and despite my own low expectations, I’m starting to get pretty excited.

Johan Santana has struck out 4 in 3 innings of work and has allowed two hits.

Jon Lester has struck out 4 in 2 and a third, and has walked one and allowed one hit.

The game is scoreless. As stuff happens, I’ll update.

Read the rest of this entry »

New York Times sportswriter, George Vecsey, penned a wonderfully ridiculous article in today’s edition, essentially playing the role of party pooper in the Johan Santana celebration. Why? Quite frankly, I’m not sure. And I’m not convinced that George knows either. He writes:

Omar Minaya may ice the deal for Johan Santana any hour now but, until further notice, the Mets are still the team that fell apart last September, disastrously.

The Mets still have to report to their legion of self-appointed probation officers, that is to say, Mets fans, on a regular basis from now until October to prove they are not recidivists in the worrisome habit of folding.

Actually, George, in case you didn’t notice, the majority of us Mets fans (rightly or wrongly), are quite happy at the moment. If we really are the “probation officers”, then the ex-con just dropped off James “Whitey” Bulger on our front doorstep.

I would strongly advise giddy Mets fans to envision the Marlins and the Nationals whacking them around in the final two weeks of last season. That should neutralize the euphoria, assuming Minaya and the family Wilpon sign the Twins’ star lefty to a six-year contract.

Why would we want to do that? That sounds about as much fun as punching yourself in the groin repeatedly just to prevent yourself from making a move on that incredibly cute girl standing across the room and giving you that ‘come hither’ stare. It’s completely irrational.

Essentially, the Mets are front-ending their pitching staff — Santana for the departed Tom Glavine. That upgrade does not necessarily make them a better…

And this is where Vecsey’s logic supernovas into a blackhole. Is he really arguing that keeping Tom Glavine may actually have been preferable to adding Johan Santana? Do I even need to post comparative statistics to prove how inane that suggestion is?

Even if Santana stays healthy, he is 28, and pitchers can fall apart in a heartbeat. For that matter, he did not have such a wonderful September himself.

See, George, you were so freaking close to making a coherent statement with that first sentence. Yes, pitchers (moreso than hitters) are a fragile bunch. But “he is 28″ is your argument? 28 is too old for you? I’m 27 and am still waiting to hit puberty for god’s sakes (any day now…). And picking one freaking month - 5 games - out of a pitcher’s 251-game career (that’s less than 2% of games he’s appeared for those who care) simply doesn’t make sense.

Besides, he can start only once every five games, or somewhat more than 30 starts a season.

Do I need to continue? Fine. I’ll keep going. By this logic, no starting pitcher in MLB is worth much of anything since they “can only start once every five games”. But Jon Rauch is more valuable because he pitched decently in 88 games.

Let’s say (Santana) wins 20 games. He is still taking up a certain number of starts that would have been made, and perhaps even won, by another regular.

I’m not even going to talk about VORP to get my point across. But this is like trying to minimize the impact of Alex Rodriguez by making a case for Wilson Betemit. Had the Mets not landed Santana, they would have trotted Mike Pelfrey - or even worse, signed Livan Hernandez - instead.

Little has changed since last September. Paul Lo Duca is being replaced by Brian Schneider at catcher, maybe an upgrade in defense and comportment but a downgrade in hitting, and they now have Ryan Church in right field, not necessarily a big deal.

Um, have you forgotten what you were writing about in the first place? Isn’t the whole point of this article to talk about the Mets trading for Johan Santana? That’s a “little change”?

The core of the team remains the same. Moises Alou was a rock last September, but he turns 42 this summer. David Wright is terrific, but not yet the assertive leader he may be someday. Carlos Beltrán has his moments.

You know something’s wrong when Moises Alou is described as “a rock” but Carlos Beltran - arguably the best all round centerfielder in baseball - is diminished to a “has his moments”.

On a team constructed with veteran players, many of them Latino, no critical mass of leadership emerged to shake Reyes out of his walkabout… It appears that nobody took Reyes into the back room and said, “¿Qué tal?”— what’s up?

See, now you’re just guessing to make a point. And not only that, what does being Latino have anything to do with anything?

Ultimately, you can make the case that the Mets shouldn’t have traded away their future. I disagree given the supposed talent levels of the prospects headed to Minnesota, but at least it’s a plausible argument. You can make the case that no pitcher deserves such a lengthy guaranteed deal and logistically speaking, you’d be right. But for a big-market team like the Mets - with their own cable network and a new stadium opening in 2009, the financial damage isn’t completely crippling.

But what doesn’t make sense is trying to argue that the 2008 Mets are not a better team now than they were last week. It doesn’t make sense to insinuate that keeping Tom Glavine instead of acquiring the best pitcher in baseball may have been the right move. And even Vecsey himself can’t believe that Carlos Beltran is simply a player who “has his moments”.

AAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See what you did, George? You reduced me to doing a terrible Lewis Black impersonation. I hope you’re happy, sir.