The Seven Year Stain

Now, it's going to take a lot of Kaboom to clean up what ails this organization. But one of the oldest stains that once had no hope of being cleaned was the stain left by Steve Phillips when he traded Jason Bay for Steve Reed.

The Mets have made an attempt to clean that nearly decade-old stain by offering Bay a four-year, $65 million contract on Thursday. And there's also a delicious irony in this as just a day after Scott Boras declared the Mets as a "financial juggernaut" in hopes of them opening the vault for a left fielder, that's exactly what the Mets did ... except they didn't open it for Boras' left fielder. Oops.

(Of course, the Mets also made it rain for Bengie Molina, as they've offered him a two year deal. To quote: "The team's bid for Bay, a native of Trail, B.C., was between US$60 million and $65 million over four years. Molina would cost much less." Not significant enough to mention, I guess.)

Bay/Holliday. Tomayto/Tomaato. At least to me. The difference to me is the opportunity to right a wrong committed so many seasons ago. Most likely, those seasons that have passed will wind up to be Bay's most formidable as a ballplayer, and we'll probably be in for the slow, painful decline of Jason Bay. But I prefer not to entertain such thoughts. Instead, I'll consider the power numbers he'll provide over the next few years for a team and a ballpark which could use some numbers, if he indeed takes this offer.

We can't erase the affairs, but we can erase the other stains ... one bottle of Kaboom at a time.

Vanilla Roulette

The gun was placed on the temple. The trigger was squeezed.

And the chamber had no bullet.

Boy that was close. At least that's the feeling I get from the second straight season of an inactive trade deadline for the New York Mets, the baseball equivalent of sugar free vanilla ice cream. Of course, the circumstances are a little bit different than they were last season, but the result is still the same. And that isn't a bad thing at all.

Well, at least against the backdrop of what happened to this franchise over the last decade, with star Jason Bay having been wheeled for Steve Reed in a deadline deal that had no effect on the Mets' standing in 2002, and the one from 2004 that doesn't need an introduction, it isn't a bad thing.

Am I willing to give Omar credit for doing the prudent thing and not letting a 5-2 stretch against the Astros and Rockies cloud his vision? Yes and no. Yes because we don't know all the particulars about every deal he was proposed, and for whom the other teams were asking for.

But no ... because we know that the Mets were in on Adam LaRoche.

Would LaRoche have helped? Probably. Would he have helped enough to get the Mets to the wild card spot? Not by himself. Now LaRoche and Victor Martinez would have been interesting, but that's another story altogether. But getting LaRoche by himself wouldn't have been worth the further stunting of Daniel Murphy, forcing Murph to sit down when playing the rest of this lost season at first base would have been the perfect opportunity to develop (not that the Mets have a player development head, but that's yet another story.) And it would have been in direct conflict with what Omar had been saying all along which was "If I make a deal, I have to take into consideration when guys (Carlos Delgado, in this case) were coming back from injury."

Now that paraphrased quote was probably nothing more than a built in excuse for coming up empty, but that's still another story. This franchise full of interesting stories. And for now, they're full of halfway decent minor leaguers, .500 beards (most teams have playoff beards, but y'know ... their goals are realistic) and shortstops who can't run.

Enjoy your bland ice cream. At least it's edible.