So apparently Jeff Passan and co. over at Yahoo have a live chat called "Blogapaloozathon" every opening day, and they're doing it tomorrow as well. I stopped by, using the chatname "Lets Go Mets" and spoke my mind. The chat after the jump really shows how biased and snarky some of the national bloggers, like on Yahoo, really are.

 I started with:

[Comment From lets go mets: ]
I don't think that the Mets are as bad as everyone makes them out to be. They have an above average lineup, Omar and Jerry are gone, the bullpen is underrated, and the rotation is thin, but has some solid parts. Compared to the rest of the division, I can see them fight for the Wild Card.

The response:

Jeff Passan: The only wild card the Mets are fighting for is the Joker in their deck.

[Comment From Mariners Fan: ]
as a Mariners fan, the Mets are among a precious few teams whose situation I don't envy.

[Comment From Braves fan: ]
Charlie Sheen has a better shot at the Noble Peace Prize than the Mets have at a playoff berth.

I countered with

 [Comment From lets go mets: ]
but in all honesty, look at the lineup. last year, the mets won 79 games with players like francoeur, barajas, cora, and castillo, players with sub .300 obp. theres no black holes in the lineup anymore. and the pitching had a decent era next year. who knows the next steps that niese will take this year. young and capuano are low-risk, high-reward additions. im not saying the mets will win the world series. but with that division, they can be an underrated surprise for the wild card. 

More jeers from the internet crowd:

Comment From Braves fan: ] Who are you trying to convince, lets go mets? Us or yourself?

Another Yahoo employee, Alex Remington, writes back:  "Theres no black holes in the lineup anymore"? Um... look again.

Honestly, that was stupidity at its finest. I used specific, concrete examples, and I even brought up on base percentage, and you come up with "look again." Back yourself up, will you? Check the stats every once in awhile, that would help too.

I respond: Comment From lets go mets: ] im not trying to convince anyone. everyone has their fan loyalties, and will believe in their team no matter what. i just sense national media bias against the mets

With this, Passan had to stop going off topic (at the time he was making up haikus about nothing. Seriously. That's what was happening, this event was a mess) and said this: "OK, can we have a Mets discussion for a second? This is going to apply, in fact, to all teams. We don't have a bias against you. We don't dislike you or your team. Fans can't step back and objectively view their teams' strengths and weaknesses. We do. Objectively speaking, the Mets stink like Jersey."

Obviously, someone was getting a bit touchy. But in all fairness, I wasn't going after him. I wrote back:

[Comment From lets go mets: ]  im not saying you jeff, im saying that some people in the national media show their fan loyalties, like stark with the phillies, and sherman with the yankees

Passan: And me with the Royals!

Whoa, wait a second. You just indicted yourself. I let you off the hook, Jeff, by naming Stark and Sherman, and you just latched yourself back on. Not to mention, your comment "the Mets stink like Jersey" isn't going to exactly win your brownie points. Other commentator responses:

After that last comment, I tried to submit others, but they weren't putting mine up anymore. Shame. I stuck around for a few more minutes, but nothing really went on. The conversation shifted to Passan running a poll asking if he was a stud (really? Your self esteem is so low that you need to run a poll?) and then to barbeque and which style was the best. Seriously, it got that bad (someone mentioned garlic fries and garlic ice cream).

I finally clicked out of the chat when someone with common sense finally noted: "There could at least be a little baseball talk sprinkled in"

Passan responds: (Silence).

After that, I was done. You get paid to watch and talk baseball with common sense and rationality, not to deride people's differing opinions with snarky comments and going off topic about irrelevant things. But I was thinking, tomorrow, they're doing this again. If anyone has free time tomorrow, go on Yahoo baseball and log onto the chat. Hopefully, we can flood this idiot's chat with our comments. And if anyone was interested in seeing today's chat, here's the link: http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Jeff-Passan-s-sixth-annual-Opening-Day-Blogapalo?urn=mlb-wp1967 There, you can find more idiocy that I didn't even see.