The Doctor Is Out

Boy am I glad I asked all these questions about the future. I seem to have been given the answers already. Allow me to quote myself (narcissism, you are my friend):

The first option seems to be the most likely option as reported by most, and that's the return of Omar and Snoop for 2010.

And apparently, the Wilpons have given both the "vote of confidence". Although we know how "votes of confidence" usually end up.

Are the Wilpons going to stop spending the way they did with Pedro and Beltran all together because now they have their shiny new ballpark?

The answer apparently is yes, as the Mets have reportedly turned down Doc Halladay in a trade for Fernando Martinez, Bobby Parnell, Jon Niese, and Ruben Tejada. So the prognosis for this team seems to be more of the same old, same old. Whether it's the right move or the wrong move to turn it down, it's the most horrible message to send to the fan base at the most horrible time.

You know this means that in three years the Mets are going to wind up trading Martinez, their number one jewel, for a disgruntled corner outfielder and a back-up catcher. With the Mets luck, that'll turn out to be a washed up Lastings Milledge and an injury prone Jesus Flores.

But hey, the Mets are over .500 with Frenchy on the team. Hooray.

I don't know Tony Bernazard, but everything I read about him tells me that I shouldn't trust him as far as I could physically, or even mentally, throw him.

Yeah, we got that answer too:

"The scouting community has been abuzz with an account of Mets VP Tony Bernazard going into a profanity-laced tirade directed at the organization's manager of baseball operations at Citi Field, which left witnesses in the section behind home plate aghast. According to two sources, scouts had settled in a row behind the plate during a recent game. Bernazard arrived and found a Diamondbacks scout sitting in the seat he wanted. When Bernazard's underling suggested that the Mets VP wait until the end of the half-inning to change the seating arrangement in order to minimize the disruption, Bernazard went ballistic in a rant against his Ivy League-educated deputy."

Not for nothing, but where I come from a profanity laced tirade can get you fired. Wonder if this one gets Tony Bernazard promoted.

Seriously, how much more evidence can hit you in the face before you finally call a doctor to fix the broken bones?

(Oh wait, the Mets have already told the doctor to stay in Toronto.)

A Place For Your Cup, But Not For You

In this season with a litany full of firsts came another first: First regular season game for your blogger at Kiti Field. After attending one preseason game (and only sitting in my assigned seat for about two innings), I would be a fool to assume that I would know everything I need to know about these new digs. I knew that this old dog would need to learn some new tricks.

Here's what I didn't expect to learn: I didn't expect to learn that just because my ticket has a seat number on it, it doesn't necessarily mean I have a seat.

No, seriously. I had Section 406, Row 5, Seat 10. It was printed right there on the ticket. I found seats eight and nine fine. But where was seat ten?

In fact, we had seats 7-10. Seat seven doesn't exist in this row either. Eight and nine? Bolted to the floor. Seven and ten? Nowhere to be found.

As you can see in the picture above, seat ten had a cupholder. Seat ten, however, didn't have a seat!

I'm extremely confused. But then came an oasis:

Gasp! A seat! It came after one of the staff members was told that the seats were missing and he said, "Oh, I have to get you folding chairs". Then he stood there for ten seconds before he realized he actually had to go get the chairs. And honestly? Seat ten was quite comfy. It had arm rests, was all cushiony, and I could move it closer to the railing if I wanted to.

But I still have to get used to this new math. Eight and nine? Sit right down. Seven and ten? Empty spaces with cupholders. I have a lot to learn about Kiti Field.

(Editor's note: Really, I have a lot to learn. Was the seat intended for handicap access? Because that's the only thing my feeble mind could come up with. And if it was, why would they sell it to me? Or is this whole thing just completely screwed up? Please help me become a better blogger and let me in on the joke.)

Here's what else I learned on Sunday: I learned to recognize the Daniel Murphy groan. It's the specific groan you hear from the crowd after Murphy butchers another fly ball while you're off getting a hot dog from the Nathan's stand. It's a very distinctive sound that the crowd makes that's unmistakeably Murphy. I swear instead of the Baseball Tonight crew, Dick Clark and Ed McMahon should be doing "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes" from a platform in left field.

So here's the scorecard: Two games, one calendar month. One windburn, one sunburn. Two games almost single handedly ruined by Oliver Perez, who has his own distinctive crowd groan. It sounds more like "boooooooooo!"

And now there's talk that Perez is going to the bullpen. Nice. A $36 million mop-up man who needs to be coddled and stroked for every step he takes. All because Perez's most consistent two months of his career came right before free agency (gee, no red flags there). And because the Mets penny pinched on Derek Lowe because they were afraid of his age and that he'd be useless the last year or so almost like Pedro Martinez turned out to be.

Yeah, about that ... Oliver Perez is useless now!

$36 million. You could bailout the MTA with that money. Instead, we get to watch Oliver Perez derail every fifth day and move his large contract to the bullpen when Tim Redding, now thrust into the role of savior, returns from injury. Until then, please welcome 40-year-old rookie Ken Takahashi to the big leagues to provide veteran leadership and no doubt to fool everyone to think his 0.77 ERA in Buffalo means anything, just as it didn't with the journeyman he replaces: Casey Fossum. (Nelson Figueroa is in Buffalo right now saying "you've gotta be kidding me".)

Maybe the roster spot would have been better filled by our hotshot catcher, Jesus Flores. Oh wait! We let him go so in the Rule V draft he could hit 47 home runs against the Mets this series!!!

What? Too soon?

(Speaking of catchers, I hear Fluff Castro is on the DL with a hurt feeling.)

I mean, Perez has to go to the bullpen, right? Snoop Manuel threatened changes if this garbage continued, and Perez has continued his garbage on Sunday. Would Manuel go back on his threat?

That wouldn't be very gangsta.

Stranded No More

I loved Gilligan's Island as a child. Syndication of this show got me through a lot of early mornings getting ready for school. As I look back on the show, I realize a couple of things:

1. Tina Louise was hot. And ...
2. If Aaron Heilman had inherited these stranded castaways back in 1964, there would have never been a show. Because the castaways would have gone home immediately like every runner on base when Heilman comes into the game.

Because of the archaic rules of baseball, recent call-up Claudio Vargas was tagged with the loss tonight after 6 and 1/3 innings of three hit baseball. We know better, as Heilman gave up the same amount of hits while only getting one batter out. And now this clinches a homestand of at least three losses in seven tries, meaning that the good work done during the 3-3 road trip against Arizona and Los Angeles is pretty much negated ... meaning that more people will want Willie Randolph fired. I know who I want fired:

Let's review: Aaron Heilman had gotten the second out in the seventh, and had Jesus Flores on an 0-2 count. Then he fooled around and fooled around and fooled around and Flores worked the count full and I thought, "at least Heilman will do the smart thing and walk him rather than give up the base hit to get the run home." I should have known that Flores would line the 3-2 pitch to left field to give the Nationals the lead. It didn't matter, as everybody would have come home anyway. P.S. For those of you who thought that Lost would have been a better reference than Gilligan's Island, I've never seen Lost. Gilligan's Island, I've seen. And I stand by my assertion that Tina Louise was hot. But from now on, I'll do my best to stay consistent with the generation I'm living in. But thank goodness that Aaron Heilman wasn't alive in 1964.

Whoop De Do

For those hoping that there would be howls of fury from Colorado for losing Steven Register to the Mets in the Rule V draft, similar to the howls of fury originating from the Nationals heist of Jesus Flores in last year's Rule V draft, and that this year the Mets would be the fleecers and not the fleece-ees, here's the take on Register from "Up In The Rockies":

"The other news of the day is that the Mets picked up Tulsa Drillers closer Steven Register in the Rule 5 draft. Whoop-de-doo. Register had potential, but he wasn't the Rockies’ top prospect by any stretch. Evidently the Rockies weren't planning to use him in 2008, so we’ll see if he can stick with the Mets."

Okay then, there go those hopes. So the winter meetings bore the fruit of a guy who inspires the mantra of "Whoop de do." Great.

So this is our winter meetings haul: Steven Register...who's not Johan Santana.

But on the bright side, he's not Guillermo Mota either.

***

There is a report that Andy Freed will come to the Mets from the Devil Rays to replace Tom McCarthy as Mets radio announcer. This, as you know, would complete the Scott Kazmir trade.

In Omar, I've Lost Trust

The sun was shining when I woke up this morning.

It was shining because the first thing that I saw was that Billy Beane had officially put Dan Haren on the trade market. Oh glory. And here we are in Queens with all of these trade chips to get him. We've got Carlos Gomez, we've got Mike Pelfrey, we've got Phil Humber, we've got Kevin Mulvey, and we've got the guy that Billy Beane has been salivating over for many a fortnight...Lastings Milledge.

What?

We don't have Lastings Milledge?

The Washington Nationals have completed a trade sending veteran catcher Brian Schneider and outfielder Ryan Church to the New York Mets for promising outfielder Lastings Milledge on Friday.

Both the Mets and the Nationals scheduled conference calls at 3 p.m. today to announce the deal. Schneider, in a telephone interview, said he spoke with Mets General Manager Omar Minaya, who confirmed the trade.

"It's done," Schneider said.

And I'm beginning to think the Mets are done as well.

Remember the good old days when Lastings Milledge could have brought back Manny Ramirez? I remember those days. Those were fun days. The Mets were on the upswing after the brutal Art Howe era, and Metropolitan prospects were the bee's knees. Oh, it was fun. But oh no, the Mets couldn't get a Hall of Famer for Milledge, because Lastings Milledge was going to have so much upside. There's no way the future of the franchise could so callously be cast aside. Who knows, a deal even better than Manny Ramirez could come along someday. Maybe for a younger big bat. Maybe for an arm!

Oooh! Maybe for Brian Schneider and Ryan Church!!!

Now you all should know me well enough by now to know that I'm not into absolutes such as "biggest this", "worst that", or "most vomit ever expunged in one sitting". I'm not going to say things like that for the pure sake of saying them. So I'm not going to compare this trade to the infamous Scott Kazmir trade.

"People always like to say, 'What if?' But the positive that's come out of this is what we learned from our mistake. We have moved on." -Jeff Wilpon, on the Scott Kazmir trade.

Really? A 22-year-old outfielder with upside through the roof for a .235 hitting catcher and a journeyman outfielder? That's what you've learned from the Scott Kazmir trade? This was a bad trade when I thought Ryan Church was 25.

He's 29!

And I've aged about ten years in the last four hours.

(Editor's note: Do any of you find it ironic that the Mets basically gave the Nationals Jesus Flores via the Rule V draft, and now that he may be ready to start, we let them do it by trading for Schneider?)

And here's the kick in the head out of all of this: People are going to respond to this blog, and other Met blogs and say something along the lines of "Milledge was a dog, he didn't run hard after that Dontrelle Willis hit in the corner during the last game of the season." To those people I say, don't even bother. Because guess who was benched last season for not running out a ground ball?

For those who said Ryan Church, collect your door prize.

So now, in addition to Johan Santana being pretty much out the window because Omar is at least smart enough not to put Jose Reyes in that deal, now Dan Haren is out the window. If Billy Beane was cooling a bit on Lastings Milledge, you think he's going to take a package that includes Ryan Church and Johnny Estrada? But never fear, because Omar is probably going to sign Livan Hernandez and tell us he's every bit as good as Santana, Haren, and Joe Blanton. Great. Let's reunite the rest of the 2004 Expos that went 67-95, shall we? Tomo Ohka doing anything these days? Carl Everett is with a Long Island Duck last I checked. Maybe Carlos Gomez can get you Jose Vidro and his bad knees. Can a Fernando Martinez for Jon Rauch and Shawn Hill deal be far behind?

And I haven't even mentioned the part of the deal that points out that Lastings Milledge is going to face the Mets 19 times a season for the next 20 years??? A top prospect traded in his own division??? To a team that had a comparable if not better record than the Mets over the last 90 games of the 2007 season??? To a team who's future might be 2008 while the Mets' future may be 2006? Who does this??!!?!?!??!!?

The Mets, of course.

I'm going to ask you all this: Would you be surprised in the least if say...six months, a year, two years down the road you started hearing that Milledge was traded because there were whispers in the clubhouse that certain veterans wanted him gone? Would you? Because I wouldn't. After all the little lateness and rap music incidents I'm not saying that it's going to happen, or that I know anything you don't. But I wouldn't be surprised to the point where if I was offered an even money bet on that I might take it. And if that happens? Then guess what: This franchise would officially be back where it started back in 2004 with Art Howe as the manager, and the inmates running the asylum. And isn't that what the Mets were trying to avoid by getting rid of the clubhouse lawyers like Al Leiter and John Franco anyway?

I'm not stupid. I know Milledge's value isn't what it used to be, fair or unfair. But a defensive catcher? A 29-year-old mediocre outfielder? For a top prospect? This is the best you could do? Are we that afraid of talent?

(Editor's note: Omar Minaya is currently on the Mike and Puppy show saying that "sometimes the fans don't understand, I go back to the time I made the Kris Benson trade and no one knew who John Maine was." All right, here's the difference: For as baffled as I was at the Benson trade...and don't tell me that didn't have something to do with an off-field incident too...at least a prospect came back for an older player. And I doubt that even Omar Minaya knew that John Maine was going to become the pitcher he did in such a short amount of time. This time, the young prospect is leaving the house and not coming to the house. So that's like comparing apples to oranges...or Anna Benson's cantaloupes.)

The sun is no longer shining. Night has fallen. And Lastings Milledge is on the Acela to Washington. How ironic the Mets get a guy named Church...because it's going to take a Hail Mary to get that ace pitcher now.

(And no, Livan Hernandez doesn't count.)