Swept Applesauce - Met All-Star selections, electrical outlets, Perez returning, Cuban defection

by Joe Budd on Jul 6, 2009 10:22 AM EDT in Applesauce

Meet the Mets

For what it's worth, 4 Mets were selected to play in next week's All-Star Game: David Wright, Johan Santana, Francisco Rodriguez, and Carlos Beltran. Full rosters here.

Some words of wisdom from Charles Schulz.

Jonathan Niese's latest outing was a complete game shutout. Time to bring him back up?

NY Sports Dog argues that Beltran is the team's MVP.

The Mets lost to this guy yesterday.

John Franco has apologized to David Wright for saying he lacked leadership.

Tim Redding out. Oliver Perez in.

Fernando Martinez is aching.

Yahoo Sports' Gordon Edes doesn't see a lot of trade bait in the Met organization.

Bill Price lists some of the biggest Met free agent busts.

FanGraphs praises Jenrry Mejia as a bargain.

Mets Geek takes a look at Jeurys Familia.

Around the NL East

Are the Phillies good? Or are the Mets just really bad?

Ricky Nolasco has a 1.54 ERA since his stint in the minors.

I think Hanley Ramirez actually writes his own blog.

The Marlins have signed Luis Ayala.

Adam Dunn hit his 300th career home run over the weekend. But the Nationals have no plans to dump talent.

National reliever Joe Beimel wants to go back to the Dodgers.

Around MLB

FanGraphs compiles this year's defensive All-Star team.

One of the world's top left handed pitching prospects, Cuban Aroldis Chapman, has defected.

Minnesota will get outdoor baseball again.

David Eckstein has strained his hamstring.

Steve Serby talks with Derek Jeter. Jeter plugs his crap shoe and doesn't want to even think about playing another position.

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Comments

congrats dubs and belty

now either stay on the DL or come up with a fake injury and skip the game.

Lets hope that when gut check time comes again the Mets will pass it with flying colors.

by kendynamo on Jul 6, 2009 10:41 AM EDT reply actions

Time to see Niese up

And say bye bye to Redding

by Pat Andriola on Jul 6, 2009 10:43 AM EDT reply actions

I agree, but

isnt Redding already in the pen? I give Niese Nieve’s spot and leave Nieve in the pen and get rid of somebody out of the pen. Dessens maybe?

by mets81 on Jul 6, 2009 11:00 AM EDT up reply actions

w/Nieve and Redding in the pen. That should be the plan. But who knows? And then if/when Maine returns, there’s a decision to be made. Maybe Livan will have worn out his welcome by then. For those who fear that Livan’s spot is safe, I can refer to his performance last year as an example of a pitcher promptly earning his release.

by Zwill on Jul 6, 2009 12:31 PM EDT up reply actions

Do we even need Redding in the pen?

Can’t we just cut him?

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Jul 6, 2009 1:05 PM EDT up reply actions

I wish

but Omar signed him to a f-in major league deal.

by mets81 on Jul 6, 2009 1:16 PM EDT up reply actions

I don't mind him there

Seems like a solid option as the last (maybe second-to-last?) guy out of the pen. And as Mets81 said, he’s got the remainder of a $2.25MM contract going for him. If his presence came at the expense of someone of quality (i.e. Niese), I’d be upset. But I don’t think it would.

by Zwill on Jul 6, 2009 1:35 PM EDT up reply actions

Totally, Livan will probably commence suckitude soon

but he’s been better than Redding, by far, and Nieve is just as likely to fall of a cliff as Livan is.

Yeah, in a perfect world, Perez would be Sandy Kofax or on another team, but at the very least he should outpitch any of the Livan/Nieve/Redding slopfest and the organization would pull its head out of its ass and promote Niese and leave him the f alone.

by mets81 on Jul 6, 2009 1:16 PM EDT up reply actions

Good point on Livan

It feels like he’s been dodging bullets all year and it’s catching up to him. If he’s not pitching in Citi Field, he is at an extreme disadvantage. I hope they’d be willing to cut loose with him if he continues to get ripped. He should not have a long leash based on last year’s performance (and heck, his last 5-6 years). When it goes for guys like him, it goes fast.

by David G on Jul 6, 2009 3:32 PM EDT up reply actions

Ike Davis homered

Good stuff!

by jasondg on Jul 6, 2009 11:48 AM EDT reply actions

Price's article was good

But I wouldn’t put Wagner and Saberhagen on that list. Sabes actually pitched pretty well, he was just surrounded by some pretty bad teams. Wagner’s a tough call, but I’d say he was a marked improvement over Looper, and was at least as good if not better than Franco.

by dcmetsfan on Jul 6, 2009 1:46 PM EDT reply actions

have to agree

regarding Saberhagen, the won-loss thing isn’t really all that significant (starting pitchers on the early-‘90s Mets, as a rule, didn’t have winning records because the team was cruddy), and as shitty as the bleach thing was, it’s extraneous to his baseball performance. generally, he pitched well (not as well as he did in 1989, but you can’t have a career year every year). should the Mets have seen the injuries coming? I don’t know, maybe. he threw over 250 innings each year from 1987-1989, and then in 1990 and 1991 he made 20 and 28 starts. maybe they should have, and should’ve given up less for him as a result. to me, that’s the real question, rather than how many times his record was over .500.

regarding Wagner, I dunno. his performance with the Mets up until the injury was basically right in line with his career norms, and he was (lest anyone forget) pitching phenomenally in 2008 until he got hurt. I get the hunch Bill Price is a “but he blew a game in the 2006 NLCS he is teh sux0r” kind of a guy though.

by JoshNY on Jul 6, 2009 3:04 PM EDT up reply actions

on the other hand...

is an acquisition worse if everyone saw it coming that a guy was going to suck (Mo) or that nobody in their right mind should have expected it (Alomar)?

by JoshNY on Jul 6, 2009 3:07 PM EDT up reply actions

Good question

I just don’t think there was any way to predict Alomar falling off the cliff that fast, so in a sense that makes is more disappointing. We at least could prepare ourselves for Vaughn to fall on his face (literally and figuratively), but not Roberto.

Speaking of whom, he’s up for a Hall of Fame vote next year. Wasn’t he a rock-solid pick before he put on a Mets uniform? I think I’d vote for him, despite what he did for the Mets.

by dcmetsfan on Jul 6, 2009 3:23 PM EDT up reply actions

Interesting question

In part, because the standards for second basemen aren’t tremendously well defined. Ryne Sandberg, Joe Morgan, and Rod Carew (whose career was split about evenly between 2B and 1B) are the only second basemen to be voted in by the BBWAA since Jackie Robinson in 1962, with none voted in between Robinson and Morgan in 1990. (Was 2B such a thin position that there was really nobody good enough between Robinson’s retirement in 1956 and Morgan’s first full season in 1965? I wonder whether there may have been some guys back then who suffered from a lack of understanding of position scarcity.)

I’ll include figures for Morgan and Robinson, but I’m not really going to use them as points of comparison; Morgan is one of those guys who would be on the top floor if the Hall of Fame put the best players on the top and the most borderline inductees on the bottom, and Robinson didn’t play in the majors until he was 28. I think Alomar compares favorably to the other guys though. Using Baseball Prospectus’ WARP3 (because baseballprojection.com’s WAR database doesn’t go that far back):

Morgan: 127.4
Carew: 85.8
Alomar: 81.0
Sandberg: 75.8
Robinson: 67.9

(By the way, I think it’s crazy that Morgan only pulled in about 82% of the vote a year after Carl Yastrzemski, a very good player to be sure but not in Morgan’s class, got almost 95%. I guess that’s what playing in a big media market and winning a Triple Crown will do for you.)

But really, I think because Carew moved positions mid-career, I think you have to be comparing Alomar to Sandberg.

Alomar career raw numbers:
OBP .371
SLG .443
HR 210
SB 474 / CS 114

Sandberg career raw numbers:
OBP .344
SLG .452
HR 282
SB 344 / CS 107

Both were thought of, right or wrong, as very good fielders; Alomar has ten Gold Gloves in his trophy case and Sandberg has nine. Sandberg took a few years to get voted in and eventually squeaked by with 76.16% of the vote. Sandberg played almost his whole career as the face of the Cubs (where would the Phils trading Sandberg and Larry Bowa for Ivan DeJesus rank on a list of the worst trades the Mets have ever made? pretty far up, I’d guess), while Alomar once spat in an umpire’s face and was accused of giving his girlfriend AIDS and worked his way through seven different organizations. Looking at things that sabermetricians don’t give much credence to but BBWAA members probably do, Sandberg won an MVP award and Alomar has two World Series rings.

Based on the comparison between the two, I think Alomar should be a Hall of Famer (in part because 2Bs are underrepresented) and probably will get in, but my guess is not on the first ballot. Next year he’ll have to contend with holdovers including Andre Dawson, Bert Blyleven, Lee Smith, Jack Morris, Tim Raines, Mark McGwire and Alan Trammell (speaking of middle infielders not getting as much Hall of Fame love as they probably deserve), as well as other first-time eligibles including Barry Larkin (who IMO has the best case among all the newly eligible players), Edgar Martinez, Fred McGriff, Robin Ventura, Andres Galarraga, Kevin Appier, and sure-fire first-ballot inductee Turk Wendell.

Can you tell I didn’t have a lot to do at work this afternoon?

by JoshNY on Jul 6, 2009 5:29 PM EDT up reply actions

Trammell should definitely be getting more consideration.

And I honestly would strongly consider Ventura. A month or two ago I was going to make a 3B chart comparing the HOF 3Bs to Ventura.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Jul 6, 2009 5:37 PM EDT up reply actions

Jeter

I read that interview. The guy refuses to say pretty much anything about anything. Not a bad policy I guess. But he really evaded the question about moving off shortstop. Maybe he’d just retire. He does seem to have improved his defense somewhat, but he’s 35. At some point in the not distant future he’d need to move or go back to being the huge liability he was a couple of years ago, and worse.

by wobatus on Jul 6, 2009 2:58 PM EDT reply actions

I'd like Minaya to take a chance at grabbing Tejada

right now.

Our lineup is abysmal and for the Mets to really get back into it they are gonna have to string games together after the break. I think Tejada improves the lineup for now and makes it better than what we had to start the season.

I also think you have to consider Delgado done for the season. Even if he comes back he’s not gonna be the same or capable of putting up numbers right away.

by Chickendirt on Jul 6, 2009 3:06 PM EDT reply actions

Keeping Redding

In the pen, rather than cutting him, is the type of flawed logic that continues to doom this team. There is no understanding of the term “sunk cost”.

by David G on Jul 6, 2009 3:29 PM EDT reply actions

Seriously. +1234...etc.

You already payed the money. Consider Niese and Redding’s salaries aggregate. Ok? You’re paying both of them no matter what. So…pick the better player. It’s not hard.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Jul 6, 2009 5:26 PM EDT up reply actions