Going through the Motions Applesauce - Ricco could replace Minaya, Utility players, Pedro, Mets miss on Rios

are strapped to players ankles, and we can count the exact amount of strides taken to a ball, divided by the amount of time and a meter-per-second speed is calculated, well I’m not giving credence to zone ratings or defensive metrics, so there! :)

Getting on base sucks. That’s just no way to win.

Awesome journalistic access ya got there — getting to speak with Jim Duquette. You’re the envy of all of us.

Since you ended up responding to a couple off-the-cuff comments of mine…

(1) Church for Francoeur: I don’t think this was necessarily a terrible trade, but it being good depends a lot on Francoeur learning to overcome his deficiencies, and he’s had a couple years to work on them with little success. I actually thought this was a great trade for the Mets when I first heard about it, because I hadn’t been keeping track of what Francoeur was doing in Atlanta and mostly remembered all the hype he was getting in 05-07. When I looked at his numbers, I saw two things:

(a) His good years were not as good as the hype suggested.
(b) Pitchers learned to take advantage of his weaknesses in 08-09 and he hasn’t adjusted.

Church is a decent platoon outfielder. He is who he is, and at 30 probably isn’t going to get any better. Francoeur could be something special if he learns to identify what pitches he can hit well and disciplines himself. He’s actually good at getting the bat on the ball — not too many K’s. But he hasn’t learned the lesson of “just because you can hit it doesn’t mean you should.”

It won’t matter at all what Francoeur learns this season, but next year it might.

(2) Jim Duquette. Yes, I have always assumed he was largely responsible for the Kazmir trade. If there’s some good reason I shouldn’t be blaming him, I’d be happy to hear it. But while on the subject, let me say that I suspect the Kazmir trade may be THE WORST TRADE THE METS EVER MADE in terms of actual effect on their reaching the post-season. I’m not saying that Kazmir is anywhere near the best player the Mets have traded over the years, where they did not get enough in return…but given that they missed the playoffs by one win two straight years, when Kazmir was pitching decently, and during both years the Mets spent some time trying out some extremely random (and not very effective) pitchers at the bottom of the rotation, I think it’s fair to say the trade probably cost the Mets two playoff appearances.

Would like to see spry youngsters like Mike Lamb and Chip Ambres get called up to the bigs to show what they can do. Show off that sick AAA depth!