Humpday Applesauce

Happy Wednesday to all. Despite the snow-shortened week, I still consider today Humpday. I hope that you all are as disappointed as I am that we will not be able to watch Livan Hernandez pitch today due to lack of TV coverage. Reading a live boxscore just doesn't capture the same magic.

Around Port St. Lucie

Yikes, not really a banner day yesterday for Mets pitching. Johan Santana will probably miss opening day, 5th starter candidate Freddy Garcia can't throw a fastball, and newly celebrated prospect Dillon Gee did not live up to his hype. 

Mike Francessa vs. David Wright/Ryan Church heats up. Francessa has so little clout with Met fans that I doubt that he has any chance of winning this feud. If Francessa is hoping to hurt Church and Wright's popularity, he is going to fail miserably. If, however, he is using this stir the pot, create controversy, and gain listeners, then he is a much smarter man than me.

You can't fault the Straw for not being honest. I always identified with the all-too human Darryl.

Oooo.... SNY is making some technical improvements in their broadcast. This is awesome. Watching a bunch of other baseball broadcasts through MLB.TV has made me realize how great SNY is. Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling are as entertaining a broadcast team as there is. The camera work is also far superior. Glad to see they're making more upgrades to their already outstanding product.

What good is 200 IP if they're awful innings?

A-Rod is realizing the joy that Mets fans have had for the past six years.

Around the NL East

The Nationals are confident that Jim Bowden's departure will not complicate whatever "plans" the team had, particularly in re-signing Zimmerman.

I'm definitely not misreading this article. Tommy Hanson pitched three innings yesterday, striking out the side in the first and allowing only an unearned run.

The Phillies are hoping to replace the suspended J.C. Romero with Will Ohman who is playing a little hard to get.

Marcus Giles is looking to catch on in Philadelphia.

Around MLB

This story makes you rethink our attitudes toward the players who disappoint us. I thought of two people immediately after finishing this article: Donnie Moore and Rick Ankiel. While he's not a Met, I'm glad that Ankiel was able to overcome his early career hiccups and become the type of player that he is (even though he had a little pharmaceutical help). Some players, like Moore, are never able to recover from this adversity.

Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don't make. Would anyone want Soriano over Reyes? The Rangers are trying to pick up the pieces from that whole fiasco and one way to accomplish that would be to get this prospect in the bigs soon.

I wish I remembered what a championship felt like or at least have a vivid enough imagination.

Here's one suggestion to fix the WBC. I really like the idea of playing it during the All Star Break, but I am going to disagree with this analysis in one regard. Say what you will about Selig's reforms, the games have been played at a high level and have been signifcantly more interesting than their predecessors. It's certainly not the fairest way to determine home field advantage, but from a purely personal point of view, I have enjoyed watching the games significantly more than before. 2008's All Star game was a perfect example of an exhibition game played to the highest level and it wouldn't have been that way without the Selig reforms.

Stat Fix

How great was Barry Bonds? Leaving aside the steroid issue, Bonds' career is baseball's greatest by one ranking.

Philadelphia News

Philadelphia's mayor is going to have to raise taxes to fix the city's budget crisis.