Friday Morning Mets Newsstand

by Eric Simon on Mar 7, 2008 12:49 AM EST in Applesauce

I only keep a handful of non-Mets baseball sites in my RSS reader. I've got Fire Joe Morgan. I've got Dan Agonistes. And I've got Joe Posnanski. There are plenty of other great baseball sites out there, but on top of all of the Mets blogs and newspapers, Keith Law's non-baseball blog and lifehacker, plus, you know, doing actual work and writing for this site, a man has only so much free time.
Posnanski, an award-winning columnist for the Kansas City Star is somewhat reknown for writing exceptionally verbose blog entries that manage to be both interesting and utterly readable in all of their 3,000-plus-word glory. Recently, Posnanski has been running poetry-based previews for all of baseball's divisions. Yesterday he wrote up the American League West using limericks.
Can't find the MLB Gameday applet for spring training games? Liam Moran has the hookup, posting all of the week's gameday links for cactus and grapefruit league action. A godsend if the game isn't televised, you don't have MLB.tv or a Slingbox.
Over at Baseball Prospectus (subscription required), Marc Normandin runs down the top ten fantasy ballers at each infield position. The Mets have nary a representative at catcher, first or second, but Normandin ranks Jose Reyes and David Wright the first at their respective left-side spots. The rankings are largely based on PECOTA VORP projections, but also includes a bit of touch-and-feel from Normandin's gut. I was a little surprised to see Wright slotted ahead of Alex Rodriguez, but PECOTA actually projects a higher VORP for our third-baseman -- 69.3 to 63.3 to be exact.
Pedro Martinez was scheduled to make his spring training debut last night against the Nationals, but the rainout means that his first start will be pushed back. Instead, he will throw two innings of a simulated game on Friday.
Anthony DiComo has a nice profile of Robert Parnell at Mets.com. Parnell is competing with about a hundred other pitchers for a spot in the Mets' bullpen this season.
Jonathan Papelbon pissed and moaned his way to a $775,000 contract in his third year, his last contract before he becomes eligible for arbitration next offseason. So many 1-3 year service time players have been bitching to the media about how their below-market contracts are insulting, while Johnny Maine just goes about his business. If you don't like the way the CBA works, bring it up at your next union meeting. The players have had it so good for so long, and the indentured servitude of a player's first three seasons are the only weapon that fiscally conservative general managers have left in their arsenal. Don't look for it to go away any time soon.