Red Light Shakeup

FLUSHING, N.Y., October 5, 2009 - "The New York Mets today announced that Bench Coach Sandy Alomar Sr. and First Base Coach Luis Alicea will not be returning for the 2010 season. Alomar Sr. will be offered another position within the organization.

Hitting Coach Howard Johnson, Pitching Coach Dan Warthen and Bullpen Coach Randy Niemann will return to Manager Jerry Manuel's staff in the same positions next year. Third Base Coach Razor Shines and Catching Instructor Sandy Alomar Jr. will be part of the Major League staff in 2010 in yet to be determined roles."

In a related move, the Mets have announced that replacing Shines as third base coach will be a New York City traffic light. Runners will have to adhere to the light, which will be showing red, yellow, or green at various and random times. But the club feels that the traffic light, which can't see which runners are where because it is a traffic light, will have just as good a success rate as Shines. Furthermore, the traffic light will not have a salary, and will only require maintenance costs and a replacement light bulb or two. The light will don uniform number 64 for the upcoming season.

Marriage And Divorce

So did you hear that Tori Spelling and Jessica Alba decided to forget men all together and get married to each other? Yes indeed. Tori decided to take Jessica's last name and now she will be known as Tori Alba.

That's not funny.

Here's what else isn't funny: Tori Alba, er...I mean, Yorvit Torrealba could be the Mets next starting catcher. Awesome. A guy who hit .212 away from Coors Field is going to (gasp!) leave Coors Field and come to the Mets?

Meanwhile, Paul Lo Duca is in a room somewhere with Ozzy Osbourne posters on the wall...staring at the telephone waiting for a call from the Mets as if he was waiting for a call from the prom queen. He shouldn't hold his breath, as the Mets have all but served him with divorce papers. Here are the list of Met priorities at catcher that are ahead of him:

• Yorvit Torrealba
• Ramon Hernandez
• Gerald Laird
• Ronny Paulino
• Miguel Montero
• Kelly Shoppach
• Sandy Alomar Jr.
• Benito Santiago
• Jorge Posada (Omar's still at the window waiting for Posada to show up with two duffle bags saying "I changed my mind!")
• Gary Lee Cavagnaro
• A wet sack of flour
• Yogi Berra (It's that Yankee pedigree.)
• Paul Lo Duca

It's just what the Mets do, isn't it? You have Lo Duca, a guy who enjoys being a Met, and has repeatedly said (begged?) that he wants to remain a Met, and that he loves being a Met and he loves the fans. So what do the Mets do? Ignore him as if he was that guy at the party that tells the same joke to everyone in the room, over and over again. It's really no wonder that other franchises regularly have players that come out and say that in their heart they'll always be a member of that team, while the Mets regularly have players like Tony Tarasco, who teach young pitchers how to smuggle hooch in peanut butter jars. (That's right, I brought up Tony Tarasco. What of it?)

But more than that, what exactly does Yorvit Torrealba bring to the table that Paul Lo Duca doesn't? He throws out more runners? That would be wrong, kind sir. Paulie has thrown out .234 while Yorvit has chucked .191. He handles a pitching staff better? Both catchers have an ERA of 4.12...you want to tell me Yorvit's 4.12 is more impressive than Lo Duca's 4.12 because of Coors Field? That's up for debate.

He blocks more balls? Four passed balls for Yorvit, two for Paulie. Zone rating? Well, Yorvit has him at .971 to .889. Even though I'm not smart enough to grasp what in the bloody world a zone rating is, I'm guessing that .971 is better than .889.

But the only formula that the Mets are looking at is TH + E...otherwise known as the Distraction Factor. Yorvit's Distraction Factor is near zero, if not exactly zero. Lo Duca's Distraction Factor? It's about 105. TH + E, if you must know, is Tabloid Headlines + Ejections. Too high a distraction factor does not jive with the Wilpons, who want to have a team of "oh golly gee" guys who aren't going to rock the boat.

Oh yeah, and Torrealba is six years younger too, a small fact that didn't prevent the Mets from re-signing Moises Alou to a "one out of every two games" contract, which tells me that it's the Distraction Factor that is keeping Lo Duca from returning. Because heaven forbid the Mets have any players that show some emotion and actually care about baseball a little bit more than your average run o' the mill robot.

***

Which brings me to Tom Glavine, because as you know, baseball is merely a game which nobody is devastated, only disappointed. He's not coming back. Hooray. But the Mets can at least get more out of Glavine now than they did during Game number 162. All the Wilpons have to do is offer arbitration to the man who so obviously wants to escape a challenging baseball environment like New York to return to the comforts of Alpharetta, GA. If the Mets do that, they will get the Braves 18th pick in next June's draft. Which brings about the question: If the Mets do that, and if a "number one" talent like Rick Porcello drops into their laps as he did all the way to the 27th pick last June, will the Mets draft him? Or will they do what everyone else until the Tigers did and let him go because they'd never want to meet his price?

Then again, looking at past drafts to try to pick out some great players that were drafted at number 18 to support my argument and not coming up with anyone better than Aaron Heilman from 1978 on, is it too harsh to think that if the Mets did get the 18th pick, they'd probably screw it up anyway? Before Heilman, the last two 18's they drafted were 1992's Chris Roberts (when players like Shannon Stewart, Charles Johnson, Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Todd Helton were still on the board), and 1991's immortal Al Shirley (when Aaron Sele was still on the board? The humanity!)

***

But why bother with the silly thing such as the draft when you can go get another player from Japan, a strategy which has worked so well in the past. No, not Kosuke Fukudome, who's been compared to Ichiro, but Hiroki Kuroda ... a pitcher who's been compared to Kei Igawa, only without the upside. That's comforting.

Here's a scouting report:

The Mets are also believed to be interested in Japanese righty Hiroki Kuroda, and one AL team official provided a scouting report to The Post, saying the pitcher's fastball is "average to slightly above average" and that he has a "good forkball." The official also said Kuroda "throws strikes and is a tough competitor."

Translated, that means he has a batting practice fastball, a forkball that hitters will learn to lay off by June, and when one of his strikes is hit over the apple in center field, he'll curse at himself on the mound. I know I'm excited.

Grey Dawn

After a seventeen inning game, while throwing a pitcher making his first start back from injury, not much could have really been expected, so the All-Star break comes at a wonderful time for the Mets to rest their old bones.

Old bones which seemingly are getting older at an exponential rate.

If you missed it: Ricky Ledee was designated for assignment to make room for Dave Williams, who was the sacrificial lamb on Sunday for the Mets (although when you walk the opposing pitcher and giving up a dinger to a .228 hitter, most likely, you are sacrificing your own lamb). While Ledee may not be any great shakes, the man who got a reprieve on the roster is yet another quadragenarian, Sandy Alomar Jr, a catcher who supposedly gives the Mets more flexibility on the bench.

But only when full containers of Icy Hot are applied.

It's probably going to be a non-issue when guys like Lastings Milledge, Jorge Sosa, and Oliver Perez come back (and heck, maybe if we're good boys and girls, even Moises Alou will take a trip down the chimney to give all of us orange and blue boys and girls an early Christmas gift...although Moises will probably tear a labrum while handing the gifts out). But does it bother anyone else that Julio Franco (forget his weight, the guy is lucky that he's hitting his age) is taking up a roster spot that is probably better served by going to Ledee, who at least can pull the ball and can move around?

And most likely, nobody is going to pick up Ricky Ledee from under our noses, but what if someone does? What if the Royals, still stinging from not getting Milton Bradley, decide that Ledee is the answer to their problems? Maybe that's the scenario of a habitual weed smoker, but stranger things have happened, right? What if we lose Ledee? I mean, they'll survive, but what will it have been for? To get Sandy Alomar Jr. one last hurrah to be a battery mate with a minor league teammate that he never actually caught? Is that what it's come to? Have the Mets become the home of the farewell tour? Is Cher playing Shea Stadium next week? Since when have the Mets become Robin Williams in that movie about the kid that aged like 10 years every 12 months?

And Julio, for Pete Schourek's sake, hang it up! Look, I'm all for athletes hanging it up on their own terms as long as it remains fun. But Julio, you're Jake Taylor in Major League II, except nobody has the guts to pull you into a room and tell you that you'd be more useful as a coach than a player because it not only might alienate the locker room, but they're afraid that God will smite them for pushing an old man out the door before his contract was up. Who knows, as a coach you might have to take over for Willie Randolph before the end of the season, just like Taylor had to take over for Lou Brown. Randolph is undergoing shoulder surgery...what if there's complications? What if they find Bill Pulsipher's bone chips and Victor Zambrano's frayed ligaments and Randolph has to be locked up in a hospital room until Christmas for his own protection? Then what?

Now that Mark Buehrle is off the market, the moves that Omar Minaya may be relegated to are the ones to shore up the back end of the team...the bench and the middle relief. Maybe a guy like Jeff Conine, who needs to be rescued from the Reds who are currently rotting from the inside out, is Omar's best option for the bench. But he can't, because he's afraid that you, Julio, will sneak into his office and put rubber bands where his paper clips should be. Nobody should live their lives in fear. But that's what's happening, because you want to be Minnie Minoso on a pennant contender.

Look, hard times call for hard words. Julio, you deserve a World Series ring. You deserve credit for turning Carlos Beltran's New York career around in '06, along with saving Pedro Martinez's life from the bat-wielding Jose Guillen. But you've become like the kids in the playground playing five-on-five baseball and only using half the field...but you're using the wrong half of the field. If you were that kid, you'd keep hitting foul balls all day and the game would never end. Instead, you make games end too quick by grounding to second base.

Dude, you're older than dirt, stone tablets, and Howard Johnson!

Chip Ambres is sticking pins in your doll!

When you were a rookie, Transformers was a television show. Now it's a movie, and you're still playing...although not in your Optimus Prime. So please, show us the person you are and consider what I'm saying...and make us see more than your .200 average. Show us you're more than meets the eye.

Blood On My Hands

You don't know how hard it is to type right now, being that my eyes are bleeding from their sockets after gouging my eyes out with long needles during the bottom of the fifth inning.

But here's the bright side, when you combine the red of the blood with the blue of my mood spilled all over my white Mets jersey, you have the perfect color scheme for America's birthday. So at least it's festive.

This whole series brought back some bad AFC Championship memories.

It doesn't help that curveballs in that city act like helium balloons, as Orlando Hernandez's eephus pitch acted like to Todd Helton who was halfway to first base on his bases loaded walk in the fourth inning before the ball got halfway to home plate.

And you know we talk about how batted balls go farther, and how pitches stay up. How about throws from the infield? After the Helton walk made it 4-3 Rockies, Jose Reyes made shall we say, a bad decision going to first base on a backhander in the hole and two outs rather than going to third base. The ball took off in the mountain air and landed somewhere in Grand Junction to give the Rockies two more runs.

But all was not lost as the Mets pulled within 6-4 in the top of the fifth. But then all was lost as Hernandez had to leave the game due to incredibly high pitch count (some scientists put the number somewhere between 124 and infinity), paving the way for Guillermo Mota to enter the game to keep things close.

Instead, Mota gave six runs in two thirds of an inning causing some to wonder whether that was actually Mota, or Richard Todd throwing a touchdown to the guys in the wrong colored jersey.

And now, after a 17-7 loss, I'm blind.

But you know what gets my goat throughout this whole thing? It's the fact that for the first time ever, a team has swept the Yankees and the Mets during one regular season. And people who read that can't help but paint a picture in their minds of Yankee fans and Met fans commiserating together about the Rockies. That vision is inaccurate and grossly overstated. The conversation in the bar would actually go like this:

Yankee fan: "So you got swept by the Rockies too, huh? Too bad you don't have twenty six world championships that you can rest your head on at night."

At which point the Met fan would break their bottle over the Yankee fan's head and walk out of the bar with their heads held high...unlike the actual Mets, who leave Denver with their tails between their legs, Oliver Perez on the DL, and Sandy Alomar Jr. on the roster (a youth movement). Never have I been so happy to have the team in Houston in my life. At this point, anywhere but Denver.