Odds And Ends

Because an abundance of off-season blog posts aren't in the budget anymore (stupid sub-prime loans!)

The Mets have apparently offered Tim Redding a contract to be the next pitcher to lose the last game of the season and knock the Mets from the playoffs. Then he'll have more time to work on that golf swing.

Is it me, or is Scott Boras less of an agent and more of a used car salesman these days? ("I have an older model that still purrs, and a flashier model that sometimes has trouble with the ignition. I offer financing plans for both which involve a nice commission for me. What can I interest you in?")

And by the way, remember when we were sick of blogging about the Mets trading for Manny Ramirez? Now we're getting sick of blogging about signing Derek Lowe. How is it that over the years our sights just get set lower and lower?

Pat Burrell? Let him terrorize the Yankees now. Then maybe he'll work his way out of the Hall of Hate.

(Editor's note: Oh who are we kidding?)

J.C. Romero? You know, fifty games off is just more opportunity to rest so he can kill the Mets in the last 112.

And you know J.C. rhymes with G.N.C. What? I'm just sayin'. (For the record, J.C. probably got screwed.)

Pacifiers For Everyone

All right, our bullpen is awful. Yada, yada, yada. We know this. We know that the force of Mike Jacobs' home run was enough to knock Gustav down to a Category 2. We know this. I for one am not going to let Saturday's loss distract me from my focus right now ... and that's this:

Cody Ross needs to shut the f**k up.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I'm in the midst of working five straight holiday shifts and I'm kinda in a mood. So I'm taking my anger out on Cody Ross. Displaced anger? Probably. Sound familiar? Yeah, kind of like Cody Ross got unnecessarily uppity at Mike Pelfrey for hitting him with a fastball that ran inside while Ross was on top of the plate?

Oh, and then to top it off, wait to yell at Pelfrey until there were people in between Ross and the much bigger Pelfrey (they do call him "Big Pelf" for a reason)? Oh, what bravery. I mean, look at the picture above ... Cody's gotta get on his tippy toes to yell at Pelfrey. Dude, trust me ... if Pelfrey wanted to hit him, he'd know it.

I don't know what made Cody Ross upset, and frankly ... I could care less. He's just another one of the many whiny hypocrites we have here in the NL East. This division is flippin' loaded with them. Let's start with Jimmy Rollins and his constant yammering about how the Mets celebrate. Does it get play? Of course it did. It's fun to pick on the Mets for celebrating. But let me ask you this, is there anybody out there who noticed J.C. Romero stepping off the mound pounding his chest like King Kong ain't got nothin' on him after striking out Geovany Soto Saturday in the eighth inning? I sure as hell did. But you're not going to hear anybody complain about that, are you? So I'm the one that's going to have to do it. So settle down, Denzel. And the next time Rollins complains about the Mets celebrating, I'd be glad to show him the tape of his friend and teammate.

And much the same, nobody is going to take Cody Ross to task for his little fake temper tantrum on Saturday, so again ... I gotta be the one to do it. Obviously, Ross was waiting for Miguel Olivo to race out of the dugout and come to his defense ... not realizing that Olivo is in Kansas City with his own anger management issues. But to no avail. Then he goes and gets picked off (no truth to the rumor that Carlos Delgado was heard asking "Hey, Cody, tell me how my glove tastes" after that pick-off) and he wasn't a factor after that during the game.

Trust me, I know we lost. My anger towards Ross is magnified by my resentment of the Mets bullpen right now for making everything I wrote above basically toothless because they went and blew the game. But to me, hypocrisy is a bigger issue than one game. So thank you for letting me vent (because nobody else will). Now I can sleep easy.

Great Mysteries Of Life

So my brother calls me after the top of the seventh inning to inquire as to whether Carlos Beltran's at-bats were sponsored by Gorilla Glue.

If they are, my guess is that nobody would know ... since the advertisement would be placed on the very spot on the shoulder of the jersey where Carlos keeps his bat against pitchers like J.C. Romero.

So when Carlos was up with two outs in the ninth inning and the tying run two bases away, the stage was set for Beltran to make Brad Lidge look like Adam Wainwright, or to give him a Scott Podsednik flashback.

The very fact that he swung the bat is a moral victory. The fact that he made good contact turned out to be the great tease as Eric Bruntlett ... the same Eric Bruntlett that made a mess of himself last week at Shea Stadium, saved the day with a brilliant stab up the middle and drove a stake through our hearts as the Phillies hung on to prevent a sweep, 5-4.

Four out of six wins against Philadelphia is nothing to sneeze at. But it still doesn't explain why Adam Eaton makes the Mets sit and stay on command. It's become one of life's great mysteries along with such classics as "Why are we here?" " Is there life in outer space?" "Where do we go when we die?" And "If someone with a split personality threatens to commit suicide, is it a hostage situation?"

Or: "Is this game going to continue the long line of games where the Mets have an opportunity to step on a team's throats, with a seemingly hittable pitcher on the mound (except for us, apparently) only to wither and die (remember Tyler Clippard?)"

Or maybe: Why would Willie Randolph put Luis Castillo back in the two hole when Ryan Church has been working out just fine lately?" I mean, I'm all for Luis Castillo. But when it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

(You can weigh in on that in my completely tongue in cheek poll.)

Or even this: "Why I don't just turn the sound down on my television while a Met game is on ESPN?" Joe Morgan, who does like what ... one, two games a week, doesn't have time to research why Mike Pelfrey wears a mouthpiece? And they're on ESPN in New York again tomorrow? What exactly have I done to my television to deserve this retribution from it?

(The game's on SNY as well, right? Or is my channel guide just playing with my head?)

That one's too hard for me. I'll stick to easy ones like: "Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to look at things on the ground?"

Accentuate The Positive

I'm not going to be a complete curmudgeon (SAT word) and complain about certain things that I could complain about.

"A win is a win is a win" is what an old dear friend of mine used to say (of course, he used to say that about the Knicks so you know those wins are at a premium), and I'm going to take that tact here. The Mets have won their series against the Phillies, and they're back to .500 on the season. That should be enough to satisfy my palate.

I will not be focusing on the fact that the victory should have been in eight and a half innings and not flippin' twelve. I'm not going to focus on the fact that Carlos Beltran would have an excellent mindset at the plate if he indeed had a mind. I'm not going to sweat the fact that after Jose Reyes and David Wright executed a double steal in the eighth, and J.C. Romero had a 2-2 count on Beltran with first base open, a hitter that Romero has dominated on deck (Carlos Delgado), and every reason to pitch around him, Beltran went hacking at a pitch designed to be impossible to hit and unlikely to tick the strike zone and strike out.

I'm not even going to fret that these two Met victories over Philadelphia came with Jimmy Rollins on the bench (save for a strikeout against Billy Wagner in the ninth on Thursday) because Joe Morgan gave him medical advice.

And I'm in such a good mood, I'm not even going to mention how Aaron Heilman sucks koala bear testicles.

Instead, I will revel in the outing provided to us by John Maine (one run in six plus strong innings.)

I will pump my fist and wipe my brow over the jam that Scott Schoeneweis got the Mets out of in the eleventh getting Chase Utley to ground into a big double play.

And I will do a Reyes/Delgado hand slap over the fact that the clock hasn't struck midnight for Angel Pagan, and that he still gets hits ... including the big walk-off hit in the twelfth in back of Reyes' second extra base hit of the year.

(All that, and Claudio Vargas too? What did I do to deserve this?)

But then my heart will sink because it took me from February until ten minutes ago that the Mets have an Angel, and a Church on the team. How did I not see this and make a stupid joke about that up until now? I have to be a better writer than that. But otherwise, it's positive, positive, positive.

A win ... is a win ... is a win.