El Duque is back... err... sort of

El Duque had a nice rehab start last night with the St. Lucie Mets, going five innings and allowing three hits, one walk and two runs while striking out six. St. Lucie is the Mets' High-A affiliate in the Florida State League (FSL) and is three big stepping stones from the big leagues. El Duque has clearly established himself as a big leaguer, but the poor chumps on the Vero Beach Devil Rays* are something considerably short of major league caliber. It may not be much, and Hernandez is supposed to dominate inferior competition, but it's still far more encouraging than had he been blown out by a bunch of kids with a paucity of professional experience.

* Yes, apparently the Vero Beach Devil Rays were allowed to keep their pagan name while their MLB counterpart caved to big religion** and cleansed themselves of their demonic leanings.

** May not have been actual reason. The organization ostensibly changed their name, logo and team colors to get a "fresh start". That's fine; there's no room in baseball for half-assed unbelief. I like my beer cold, my TV loud and my Satan worshipping baseball teams fa-laming.

Mike Hampton sucks at staying healthy

I'm beginning to think he just doesn't want to pitch anymore. Ham-bone was scratched before his scheduled start against the Pirates last night because of a strained left pec. I love Mike Hampton. He was mostly terrific for the Mets throughout the 2000 season and he was an absolute stud in the NLCS against the Cardinals. He was also kind enough to leave the Mets for the clear skies and superior schools of Colorado, leaving the Mets with a lousy sandwich pick they wasted on some bum. Hampton as done practically doodily-squat since then, turning in a decent year for the Braves in 2003 and otherwise pitching either horribly or infrequently or both. Anyway, thanks, Mike.

The end of an era?

According to The Big Lead, crumbum and hater of anything newfangled Murray Chass is a whisker away from finalizing a buyout with The Grey Lady. While this is certainly good news, part of me will miss the old coot. In celebration of Chass's long history of shaking his fist at things and chasing kids off of his lawn, take some time to read everything FJM has ever written about the guy.

Also at The Big Lead is a neat interview with Keith Law, just a bright, regular guy who wrote for Baseball Prospectus and then landed a gig in Toronto's front office. Definitely worth a read.

More of me, this time in audio form

The guys at Aceman & the Kwass were kind enough to ask me on their BlogTalkRadio show last night. The two hosts are big Mets fans and we had a good time chatting about all things orange-n-blue. I'm something of a live interview neophyte so I encourage you to give it a listen and let me know what you think. All comments and criticisms are appreciated. Gracias.

An awful lot has transpired since The Collapse™ last September, and in a few short hours we will finally join the rest of the space-time continuum by putting 2007's bitter ending behind us. The magnitude of The Collapse™ and its place in baseball history should be forgotten now; whether the pain stuck with you for hours or days or months can fade back into irrelevance along with the useless husk of Fernando Tatis's career. It's over; now let's move on.

The page was officially turned for many of us when the Mets acquired Johan Santana two months ago. His arrival didn't change the events of last season, but it did occupy a spot in our conscience of such considerable width and breadth as to displace those depressing thoughts to a ne'er-searched and mite-filled corner of our minds. As important, the local and national media had something to write about regarding the Mets that didn't involve the words "Worst" and "In Baseball History". At the time, the Mets' offseason was decidedly uninspiring: the regrettable trade of Lastings Milledge and a puzzling four-year pact with an aging Luis Castillo were all we had to show for nearly four months of offseason. Santana changed all of that; the Mets became relevant again and many of us actually began to look forward to this year's spring training.

Now that the season is upon us we can find out whether the Mets's paper airplane will soar atop the NL East or crash land into mediocrity. The pundits and projectioners see good things happening, but Mets fans know better than to count their chickens before they've hatched. This team has been built for a championship, but things can still go awry. The offense, especially absent Moises Alou, has some holes. Carlos Delgado is a big unknown, and we would only be guessing if we pegged him for rebound over regression. The corner outfield spots are question marks; will Ryan Church hit lefties? Will Endy Chavez or Angel Pagan hit at all? I don't even want to talk about the catching crapshoot.

The offense is not all bad, though. The Mets will be at or near the top of the league in production at shortstop, third base and in centerfield, where their young nucleus will be counted on to shoulder the offensive load. To get such offense at three premium defensive positions is a luxury, and the Mets will hold a real advantage there over their closest rivals. In many ways their offensive core is inverted; most teams get the majority of their run production out of first base and the outfield corners, relying more heavily on defense everywhere else. The Mets have it backwards, though, and if they can get anything approaching league-average offense at those other positions -- Moises Alou's eventual return will help with that -- they can leverage their advantage at the other positions to beat up on the rest of their division.

Offense aside, the Mets will lean on their pitching staff for success this year, with Santana's presence strenghening the top spot as well as the rest of the rotation. Pedro Martinez could be the best number-two in the league; John Maine is going to have a huge year. Oliver Perez is in the walk year of his contract and is a Scott Boras client; look for some gaudy contract year numbers there. The Mets have some iffiness in the fifth spot, but who doesn't? Given health, the Mets have the best starting rotation in the National League and, whether or not pitching actually wins championships, now allowing runs is one of the two most important things a team can do to improve their chances of victory.

Beyond the starters, the front end of the bullpen is strong; the back is not terrific, but it's not dreadful, either. Scott Schoeneweis and Joe Smith can be productive if used almost exclusively according to their respective platoon advantages. Cheat sheet for Willie Randolph: this means Smith pitches against righties and Show against lefties. Write it down, man; it isn't that hard.

Speaking of Willie, he and Omar Minaya may be on the hot seat if the season heads south in a hurry. Will they begin to manage/general manage as if their jobs are on the line? Does Fernando Martinez get traded for Xavier Nady at the July deadline?

Your season has come? Perhaps. The team, the time, the Mets? I guess. The Mets have thankfully eschewed their hokey slogans in favor of just trying to put the best product they can on the field and let the rest sort itself out. They're going to sell upwards of four million tickets this year with or without the tired baseball platitudes, so it's nice to see that they will finally let the players do what they do best and let the marketing department busy themselves selling foam fingers and bumper stickers.

Baseball is in the air. Opening Day is here. Let's go Mets!

Spring training games -- or, more specifically, player performances in spring training games -- are meaningless, and I don't know that I can stress this point enough. It's easy to get wrapped up in spring stats, to look at Raul Casanova and remark, "Wow, this guy is slugging .629! How the heck could Tampa Bay let this guy go?" The obvious answer, at least to anyone with at least an elementary understanding of sample sizes and random variation, is that Casanova, given a couple hundred plate-apps, would more closely replicate his pathetic career marks of .234/.301/.380 accrued over 1026 at-bats than the .314/.368/.629 that he has hit in an impossibly inconsequential 35 spring at-bats.

Casanova is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of players who have ever had a spring training performance remarkably out of line with their career norms. "But he's in the best shape of his life", a random uninformed friend or possibly Dusty Baker might reply. Perhaps, but to make an ostensibly intelligent roster decision based on such a small number of plate appearances against arbitrary and often woeful competition is lunacy, especially when you consider how much money is riding on the success or failure of baseball teams in general and the Mets in particular.

I don't mean to single out Casanova, whom the Mets might have to promote to begin the season with Ramon Castro probably heading for the disabled list. Casanova might actually be a bad example because, given a blessing of good team health, he wouldn't be competing for a big league spot at all. A better example is the guy who is trying to distinguish himself from the pack in order to slide into a big league role that would really be available to him even if the rest of the team were healthy.

Two guys who *are* competing for an actual spot are Angel Pagan and Brady Clark, both of whom might make the club with Moises Alou out of action for the next month and the Mets' likely inclination to carry an extra position player in the season's early going. Neither is a terrific player, but the Mets don't really have any superior options immediately available to them. Or, at least options that wouldn't require giving up some non-existent minor league talent in return.

The Mets are also trying to finalize their Opening Day bullpen, a task which is still on the "To Do" pile and the results of which may hinge -- somewhat remarkably -- on the principals' performances in the last two exhibition games of the spring. That's right: forget everything anyone has done in their major or minor league careers up until this point. Those large sample sizes collected over a period of months or years? Not arbitrary enough. Instead, let's pick two random games -- say, the next two -- and base some fairly important baseball operations decisions on the decidedly random performances in said two games. It sounds completely ludicrous, but it's exactly what the Mets are doing. To wit:

The Mets don't know [what's going to happen], either. Two exhibition games now remain, and manager Willie Randolph has made it clear that he's willing -- almost eager -- to use both of them. His decisions need perspective; these games will provide it.

The article linked above was written by Anthony DiComo for Mets.com. I can't really tell if DiComo is editorializing something that Randolph has actually said -- that is, that he will base his decision(s) for the final bullpen spot(s) on the microcosmic results of the next two games -- or if this comment is DiComo's alone. I think we know that Randolph hasn't made up his mind yet, and he will really wait to see what happens tomorrow and Saturday before deciding to go one way or another. I don't think that I am exaggerating the truth when I say that Willie Randolph is going to construct the back end of the Mets' bullpen according to the events of two utterly meaningless spring training games. If he weren't, he would have already made his cuts and his promotions at this point. If we assume that he doesn't yet know which relievers will round out the bullpen, then it's pretty clear that everything that happened before today has not provided sufficient empirical evidence to sway him one way or another.

I'm not sure if there's a portmanteau rich enough to describe my feelings about this, but here goes: it's prepoculous. Preposterous and ridiculous. That's right: suck it, Carroll!

"His decisions need perspective; these games will provide it." How? How could they possibly provide any perspective other than that of sheer randomness? If Matt Wise goes out there and pitches like dogshit tomorrow while Mr. 6.46-career-ERA-mostly-as-a-reliever Brian Stokes pitches three scoreless innings, Stokes makes the Opening Day cut and Wise takes a long walk off a short pier? The level of asininity required to make a call like that is beyond comprehension, and yet it is almost certainly going to happen sometime in the next two days. Perhaps multiple times.

All we can do is throw up our hands in unbridled bewilderment and hope that the better players happen to actually perform better in these next two arbitrarily-selected talent showcases.

I think I mentioned the other day that AA would be converted to the new SBNation platform this Thursday (i.e. today). Well, I apparently lied, as the site isn't getting flipped until Saturday. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go check out Athletics Nation, which was the first baseball site to be switched over. About half of the baseball blogs have been converted so far, with five going under the knife last night and another five -- including this one -- set for renovation in the wee hours of Saturday morning. If you want a quick list of new features, check out this intro post at Over the Monster by our esteemed tech guru Trei Bruntrett. A facsimile of that post will appear in this space when the cutover is made, so you can kill some time and be one step ahead of the game by going there and reading it now. Go on, I'll wait.

Ok, while they're off reading, let's look at a few interesting names that were recently released by their former teams. Well, the players were released, not the names, but you catch my drift.

Claudio Vargas, who was released by the Brewers on Tuesday to save the team some $2.7 million. Here are his last three years:

Year	IP	ERA	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	FIP
2005	132.1	5.24	6.46	3.20	1.70	5.44
2006	167.2	4.83	6.60	2.79	1.45	4.90
2007	134.1	5.09	7.17	3.62	1.54	5.08

He hasn't been especially good, but he has been pretty decent overall and he doesn't turn 30 until June. His homerun rate is a bit high, but that should be suppressed somewhat by Shea Stadium. His strikeout and walk rates have been respectable. The Mets don't need him to be Sandy Koufax; they just need him to be serviceable for a handful of starts when needed and to keep the Mets in the game on days when an otherwise credible starter isn't available. Signing Vargas shouldn't cost more than a million bucks, if that, and he would provide some insurance -- or, as in this case, an actual fifth starter -- should the Mets need it at some point this season.

Marcus Giles was released by the Rockies after hitting .321/.457/.536 in 28 meaningless and arbitrary spring training at-bats. Giles has notched OPS+ marks of 87 and 68 the past two seasons, and may actually be finished at age 29. He has some patience at the plate and doesn't strike out that much, but he has very little power and is nothing special in the glovework department. Is he a better option than Fernando Tatis?

Rudy Seanez was dumped by the Dodgers and will be 39 this year, but he has maintained a terrific strikeout rate throughout his career. He gives up a few too many walks to be terribly useful, but the Mets could probably do worse than to offer him a minor league deal with a promise of first call if/when the Mets need another bullpen arm at some point this season.

In other news, a couple of former Mets properties were traded yesterday, as the Padres acquired Justin Huber from the Royals for a PTBNL and the Braves traded Tyler Yates to the Pirates for minor league pitcher Todd Redmond. Concurrent with the Yates deal, the Pirates cut Byung-Hyun Kim and Jaret Wright.

Good news: I just ordered an iPhone. After years of suffering with Verizon's awful phone selection I finally decided to jump ship. I'm still using the Motorola Q that I bought a couple of years ago, and am bewildered that Verizon hasn't come up with anything better in the interim. The other smartphones they have released are all too thick; the Q is less than a half-inch deep, which allows it to fit comfily in my pocket. The iPhone is about the same thickness and some 200% snazzier, so I'm definitely excited about it. Any iPhone owners out there please leave your impressions in the comments here. Do you love it? Are you underwhelmed? Did I just throw my money down the toilet? All welcome.

Bad News: The Mets still don't have a fifth starter, though it could very well be Jorge Sosa. We know that Mike Pelfrey and Orlando Hernandez have done little to distinguish themselves this spring, though I think it's safe to assume that once Hernandez is back in game shape that he will take the ball every five, at least until he succumbs to some random malady that is only supposed to afflict 80-year-old Jewish men.

Meanwhile, Jorge Sosa might be the man to make a couple of April starts while Hernandez is still working the kinks out of his antique engine. Sosa was credible as a starter last season, posting a 4.59 ERA in 80.1 innings; nothing flashy, but completely serviceable for the last line guy in the rotation. He was terrific to begin the season and fell apart shortly thereafter, but with any luck the Mets will only need him for a few outings at the very most, so hopefully he can get in and out before things inevitable go "boom".

In other news, Reed Johnson signed with the Cubs, so despite Dan Scotto's ovations from Queens, Johnson will be suiting up on the North Side and the Mets will break camp with Endy Chavez, Angel Pagan and maybe, just maybe, Brady Clark as their three-four-five outfielders.

Speaking of Endy, I love the guy; I was at Shea for the catch, and Jebus knows that Endy will be living off the residuals of that magnificent piece of glovework for the rest of his days. That said, he's really a stinker with the bat. He plays a mighty fine defensive outfield regardless of where you put him, but he would have considerable difficulty hitting his way out of a paper bag and for a team with championship aspirations I really wonder if great defense is enough to slide by at a premium offensive position like left field. No one is saying that defense isn't important, but it's not nearly as important as offense, and the Mets are going to be sorely lacking in that department from a certain corner outfield spot as long as Moises Alou and his pee-hands are on the shelf.

I'm going to be out of town for the day, though I'll be back tomorrow night. Not that any of you care, but I'll have limited access to the internets or, at least, this site, so I expect the three of you who regularly post comments here to behave yourselves.

Here are some links.

• Rob Neyer thinks that David Wright will be the best player in baseball over the next five years. That's good news for the Mets, and Mets fans, and teeny boppers. Neyer put together a list of the top fifty ballplayers over the next five years, and the Mets have three such gentlemen in the top seven: the aforementioned Wright at numero uno, Johan Santana at #5 and Jose Reyes at #7. Carlos Beltran clocks in at #26, just for good measure.
• Over The Monster compiled a PDF preview of more than 50 Red Sox players. The list is very sharp and informative, and it's something we should consider doing here if I had either the time or the inclination to do so.
• Someone named Joe Lavin found a pre-release copy of the new Jose Canseco tell-all at a local bookstore, mistakedly put on the shelf a solid week before it was supposed to go on sale. I bought Canseco's first book, Juiced from the bargain shelf at Borders for less than three bucks, and it was actually far from awful. I was a big fan of Canseco during my formative baseball years, so some of my enjoyment was likely derived from nostalgia for the slugger, but the fact that much of what he wrote actually turned out to be true scares me more than I would care to let on.
• John Sickels asks if Twins fans will be satisfied with their return on the Johan Santana trade in five years time (ed note: what's with all of the "five years" articles today?"). My guess is "No", they won't be satisfied.
• I missed this last week, but Joe Sheehan talked about small sample sizes and the absurdity of using spring training stats as any kind of barometer for future big league success over at Baseball Prospectus.

Here's today's Mets swag game thread contest form (more info here). The Mets take on the Marlins at 1:10pm in PSL; video via SNY or MLB.tv.

Ugh, now what? Orlando Hernandez and Mike Pelfrey both had their respective fifth-starter asses handed to them by the Cardinals on Sunday afternoon, further distorting what was already a slowly-developing potato sack race for the last spot in the rotation.

El Duque made his first start of the spring and, after throwing in the mid-seventies during a simulated game last week, was apparently rocking the mid-eighties this time around. Though pretty fast for a jalopy, 85 isn't enough mustard to get the ball by established major leaguers like opposing starting pitcher Todd Wellemeyer (1-for-2 on the day). All told, Hernandez allowed five runs on four hits in just three innings, striking out one and walking two.

Thankfully, I didn't see any of the game when it was on, as I was amidst a marathon five-hour Resident Evil 4 session on Wii. I went back and watched some of it on MLB.tv later on and was surprised to see El Duque look even worse than his pitching line would have you believe. Despite a sweet "Mirror, Mirror" goatee*, El Duque had very spotty control of most of his repertoire and featured a fastball that was noticeably devoid of life.

*Perhaps fitting, as this crappy El Duque must be from a diametrically opposing universe from the real (read: good) El Duque. We'll know for sure if this one stays healthy all year.

I'll concede that we should cut Hernandez some slack; having pitched using his customary stork-kick for so many years, many of them under the iron fist of Ramon Fidel Castro, there is unquestionably an adjustment period as he acclimates himself to pitching like everyone else. Radar gun flakiness notwithstanding, his fastball was reportedly ten clicks quicker on Sunday than it was last week, so given another three weeks it doesn't seem so unreasonable that he could ramp it up to the low-nineties by then. Given the assorted off-days in early April -- scheduled and otherwise -- the Mets won't need a true fifth starter until the middle of the month, so that gives El Duque a bit of leeway as he continues to get himself into playing shape.

El Duque wasn't alone in his brutal suckitude yesterday. Mike Pelfrey, who is also competing for that last rotation spot, was so much worse than El Duque yesterday as to make the Cuban's outing seem decent by comparison. Pelfrey allowed eight runs, all earned, on 13 hits in just 4.1 innings, a bit-spitting of biblical proportions. When Pelfrey struggles it is usually because he can't keep his fastball down, and this game was no exception, as his "sinker" would consistently drift up in the zone. I wrote about this last week, but Pelfrey will continue to fail at this level if he can't induce more groundballs. Sunday was more of the same, as Pelfrey recorded just four outs on the ground, just half of his flyball out total. That ratio needs to be flipped for Pelfrey to be successful.

I'm not the sort of fan/writer/basement dweller to throw around tired baseball platitudes like "step up his game", but Pelfrey has to be kicking himself for letting a golden opportunity to win a starting job with this team slip away. El Duque is a mess right now, and this was the perfect time for Pelfrey to "step up his game" and win the last starter spot out of spring training. Even a decent spring -- 3.50 ERA with so-so peripherals -- would have done it. But, much like intelligent design, that hasn't exactly happened. Pelfrey has an ERA of 8.31 in 17.1 innings and a lousy 6-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio. That's called "not getting the job done", whether you're from the new school or the old school.

To make matters worse, the Mets don't even have a passable Plan C. They've got Tony Armas in Triple-A, but he just arrived in the states last week after sorting out some visa issues, so he won't be ready for anything for at least a few weeks. Also, he's Tony Armas.

What else? Jorge Sosa, I guess. He was decent as a starter last year until his weak strikeout-to-walk rate came face-to-face with a little something we like to call "regression to the mean", and *bam*, he turned back into a pumpkin.

What the Mets could really use is a guy like Kyle Lohse, whom the Mets could have had for pennies on the dollar (i.e. $4.25 MM), but for whatever reason they didn't make an offer and Lohse signed with the Cardinals. It's possible that the Mets were interested but Lohse simply preferred a guaranteed spot in the rotation. Whatever the case, one year and $4.25 million seems like a pretty reasonably-priced insurance policy.

So now we wait and see. It may be that both Pelfrey and Hernandez stay behind -- Pelfrey in Triple-A and Hernandez in extended spring training -- until the Mets actually need to call on that fifth starter. Maybe one or both of them will figure things out by then and we'll have gotten all worked up over nothing. One prominent trait of championship teams is player depth*, and the Mets have very little in that department right now, particularly in the rotation. As it stands they have four guys for five spots. What happens if one (or two!) of their other four starters get hurt? Bad things, man. Bad things.

*Unconfirmed, but sounds reasonable.

Last night I took part in an online chat at The Happy Recap along with Jason from Faith and Fear in Flushing, Joe from Metsmerized Online, and the inimitable Steve Keane from The Eddie Kranepool Society. Here are the questions that were asked along with my responses:

Q: Who are you, what is your blog and address, how long have you been blogging, and how did you become a Met fan?

A: I am who they thought I was.* I write at AmazinAvenue.com and administer MetsGeek.com. I started blogging at a site called SaberMets about four or five years ago, and I owe my fandom to my father, who was a Giants' fan and a Yankee-hater, so when the Mets came into being they were a natural fit for him.

* Hopefully somebody got this Dennis Green reference.

Q: How big was Pedro's start and how well he pitched in his first start of the spring?

A: It was big in the sense that he had reasonable command of all of his pitches and he didn't hurt himself, which is saying something at this point of the spring. I was particularly encouraged that he was hitting 89 on the gun with some consistency, so it's not unreasonable to think that, given another couple of weeks of preparation before the season starts, he will be around there, or even in the low-nineties, when the real games roll around. 91-92 with his assortment of off-speed pitches will be tremendous, accepting the normal caveats of good health.

Q: Who gets the nod as the Mets 5th starter this season? Pelfrey or El Duque?

A: Kyle Lohse?* If Orlando Hernandez were ready to roll I don't think there's any doubt he would be the guy, and even though he isn't ready right now, the Mets probably won't need a fifth starter until the middle of April, so it's entirely possible that he will be ready by then. I still think Pelfrey can be a very good pitcher if he is given some time to work through his issues (e.g. control), and I think there's still a chance he makes the team out of spring training as the long man, though if Jorge Sosa is around that may not be an option. So... El Duque if he's healthy, Pelfrey otherwise.

* At this point in the chat, somebody's sarcasm detector failed miserably, as I was unnecessarily informed that Lohse had signed with the Cardinals. I know Kyle Lohse signed with the Cardinals, and for a pittance, so I was joking when I suggested that he should be the Mets' fifth starter. My sense of humor is obviously wasted on everybody.

Q: What are your thoughts short term and long term on Johan and the trade that got him here?

A: I think it was a good deal for both sides, especially considering how much the Mets had to pay to keep him here. Assuming his health over the next four or five years, it will probably be one of the most important trades in the history of the franchise. He is one of the few best pitchers in baseball and he is just entering his prime as we speak. Gomez, Guerra, et al could turn out to be very good big league players, but an opportunity to acquire a Johan Santana comes along once a decade, if even that often.

Q: Being bloggers, what is your response to what Bob Costas said about what you guys do, calling bloggers "pathetic get-a-life loser"?

A: It's unfortunate that he threw a blanket over non-mainstream Internet media in the way that he did, although to a large extent what he said wasn't terribly inaccurate. The signal-to-noise ratio on the web is tough to navigate, even for those who grew up using it (i.e. not Bob Costas). That said, blogs et cetera make mainstream journalism less relevant every day, and even a big star like Costas has to feel the crunch every now and again. Besides, my mother's basement is in New Jersey, not Albuquerque.

Q: How important is Fernando Martinez to the Mets future? Is he really the teenage hitting machine...the next Big thing to come out of NY or is he all hype?

A: It's tough to say that the franchise's future depends on one player. The Mets have the wherewithal (read: cash flow) to stay competitive for a long time via free agency and player development both domestically and internationally. Martinez is a very nice prospect, but he probably isn't even one of the ten best prospects in all of baseball, so I would hope the Mets aren't putting too many eggs in that basket.

Q: Do you think Willie will have a better handle of the bullpen this year, or will he revert to his mishandling ways of the bullpen?

A: A manager's handling of the bullpen is directly proportional with* the quality of same. Two years ago, when the Mets had Wagner, Sanchez, Heilman and Feliciano all healthy and dominant, Willie Randolph had a tough time messing things up. Last year, Schoeneweis and Jorge Sosa were mostly lousy coming out of the pen, and that reflected poorly on Randolph because, given lemons, he threw up his hands and said, "Me confused" and sent Show out to face three tough righties. Willie doesn't handle a poor bullpen very well, but he is certainly not unique among managers in that regard.

* This should have been "proportional to" not "proportional with", but whatever. I'm my own worst critic.

Q: What are your thoughts of some recent talk* of Beltran in a couple of years moving to a corner OF spot?

A: I think at 32 he will still be a very competent defender and, given the dearth of decent bats at centerfield throughout baseball, Beltran would have to be completely hobbled by injuries to warrant a move at that point. He has suffered nagging injuries over the first three years in New York, but they haven't stopped him from playing a phenomenal defensive centerfield. That, and his bat is much more valuable in center than in one of the corners, where offense is available in far greater abundance.

* Has there really been recent talk about moving Beltran to a corner? I realize the guy is banged up, but have you seen the dreck that can be found patrolling centerfield around the big leagues these days? Good luck finding someone to replace Beltran's production with the bat or the glove out there.

Q: Last Question. Prediction time. How many wins for the Mets this year, and how far they go in the post season?

A: I'm going to fake a connection problem and tune back in after everyone else has gone. I'll go with 93 wins and a loss to Boston in the World Series.*

* God I hate predictions. The various computer projections peg the Mets at 90-95 wins, so I split the difference and went with 93. I'm also not terribly confident that they will make it to the World Series, but it's not like there are a ton of great teams in the National League. Despite their injuries, the Mets will be a very good team this year. If some guys can stay healthy and some other guys can rebound a bit (I'm looking at you, Delgado), the Mets can be a great team.

You can check out the rest of the chat, including the responses of the other participants, at The Happy Recap.

The Mets lost 6-5 yesterday to the Cardinals in Jupiter, with Mike Pelfrey turning in a rebound performance of sorts. Last time out -- Saturday -- Pelfrey allowed eleven baserunners and seven runs in 3.1 innings. After the game, Willie Randolph said that Pelfrey "didn't have a feel for the ball" on a windy day in Port St. Lucie. The tall righty only allowed two runs -- one earned -- yesterday, but if we dig a little deeper into the boxscore we see that he didn't really pitch all that well.

Big Pelf may have limited the damage in terms of runs allowed, but he also coughed up six hits and two walks in just 4.2 innings for a WHIP that nearly brushed two. Anything close to two baserunners per inning would land a pitcher square in the middle of Stinksville and, though the "ER" column looks pretty good, no pitcher, Pelfrey included, can afford to have so many guys clogging the bases and still expect to come away in decent shape more often than not.

Even worse than the glut of baserunners is that Pelfrey showed a general inability to keep the ball on the ground often enough. Pelfrey has the arm to get the ball near the mid-nineties and, though his secondary stuff isn't there yet, his fastball is a very, very good pitch when has has it working. On those good days, Pelfrey's heater has a very heavy sinking action, the result of which is ball after ball being hacked into the dirt. Pelfrey will develop into a successful pitcher as his off-speed stuff comes around as long as he can work that sinker. When the sinker is on, touching 94-95 with plenty of life, hitters will feel like they're swinging into sand. Pelfrey had that tough sinker working when he was at Wichita State, and he had it working that one fine day in Atlanta last September, but for most of his big league career that sinker has been pedestrian and Pelfrey has subsequently been knocked around.

Which brings us back around to yesterday's effort. Against a crummy St. Louis offense, Pelfrey recorded one out via the whiff, six outs on the ground and seven outs in the air. Quite simply, a groundball ratio like that isn't going to get it done for him. With his slider and changeup as mediocre as they are right now, and his overall control nothing to write home about, Pelfrey is going to get killed if he can't generate a copious supply of groundball outs. If the fastball isn't working, forget about it. He might have the occasional game like Thursday, but you can bank on an ERA in the high fives if he's going to insist on putting a couple of guys aboard every time he trots out to the mound.

Of course, it's just one spring training game. In his last game, the seven-run debacle, Pelfrey recorded three strikeouts, six groundouts and just one out in the air. The final results weren't good, but those numbers are more along the lines of what I would like to see from him. One report following that game said that Pelfrey "couldn't get his sinker down", but the reality appears to be quite the opposite. Now, it's easy to look at the final lines for has last two starts and conclude that Pelfrey might be better off keeping the ball in the air; clearly, he gets roughed up if he allows too many grounders. More often than not, though, anything resembling a 6-to-1 groundball-to-flyball ratio will be a good barometer for Pelfrey's success.

You'll find that it's especially tough to gauge overall pitching performances in spring, as team defense is often sub-standard and knowledge of opposing hitters is a total crapshoot. Add to that the revelation that Pelfrey might have been tipping his pitches last week, plus our customary trepidation about the reliability of small sample sizes, and that leaves us little of substance to go on in March. Still, I retain very high hopes for Pelfrey. There are no guarantees that he will ever develop into a semi-dominant starting pitcher, but I think he has the tools to get there eventually.

Orlando Hernandez appears to be getting better by the day, and the Mets probably won't need a fifth starter until the middle of April. If Hernandez is ready to go, he's going to be the guy; he has already said that he has no interest in going to the bullpen and, given his resume as a starter, I'm inclined to go with him until he inevitably lands on the disabled list at some point in the coming months. Pelfrey may start the year in Triple-A, or he may earn his way onto the big league roster as a long man, depending on what happens with Jorge Sosa in the final weeks of spring training. Pelfrey needs to get his work in and he needs to improve his secondary stuff, but I want so desperately to see him succeed with this team, and I think it's going to happen sooner than a lot of people think.

In yesterday's Newsday and on his blog, David Lennon talks about Barry Bonds and the impact he would have on the Mets. Actually, his feature article is mostly player reaction to the possibility (apparently not) of the Mets signing Barry Bonds to play left field while Moises Alou is hurt and I guess fill in wherever once Alou gets back. Buster Olney mentioned the Mets as a good fit for Bonds, and this is actually one of the rare times I agree with him on anything.

We know what Bonds is: a narcissist, a cheater, a lousy husband, quite possibly a perjurer. The last one, really, is the only one that should seriously give the Mets -- or any other team -- pause. There have been plenty of cheaters, not even including the countless masses who have used amphetamines over the years to gain an edge. Baseball has also seen it's fair share of disfunctional individuals. Too, infidelity is hardly an uncommon occurrence among ballplayers; sadly, the unfaithful athlete is the rule, not the exception.

He never choked his coach, slammed his wife's head on the hood of a car, slapped his wife in public, or any of the other assorted malfeasances of countless baseball ne'erdowells. Too, he was never caught whacking it in the presence of minors.

Perjury is a big deal, and is a very tough thing to prove, whether or not Bonds actually committed it (we know he used PEDs, but the grand jury will have to be convinced that he did so knowingly when Bonds claimed that he didn't). Any team signing Bonds will surely work clauses into his contract to terminate same in the event of arraignment, perjury trial, et cetera. Most signs indicate that any trial would take place after the 2008 season, so it's quite possible that Bonds could play this year unencumbered, at least by actual proceedings, if not the endless questions about the trial to come.

I understand why teams are leery of signing Bonds, but whatever your feelings about the man, I think the way he has been blackballed by Major League Baseball in general and Bud Selig in particular is catty and disgraceful. Many probably feel that the circus Bonds will bring with him -- his baggage -- is too much for any team, let alone the public relations-conscious Mets. More to the point, signing Bonds would take a massive set of balls, the likes of which I am fairly certain the Mets don't possess. For as long as I can remember, the Mets have used the New York media as the sounding board for decisions within their baseball operations department. Someone wrote a story about Scott Kazmir's attitude towards veterans or his taste in music, and he gets traded to Tampa Bay. We're treated to articles about Lastings Milledge recording a rap record or pissing off some elder Mets and he is promptly shipped off to Washington. I don't expect that pattern's cessation anytime soon.

I want the Mets to sign Barry Bonds because he would help the team immensely on the field and because he would make the team a ton of money off of it, and as an avid fan of his baseball accomplishments, I count myself among those who would gladly pay to see him don a Mets uniform. If the Mets don't sign him -- and everything we've heard indicates as much -- I truly hope he signs with some other team, even if it's the loathsome Yankees or Phillies. Whatever his transgressions, Bonds has brought so much good to the game of baseball that I think he deserves to leave the game when he is ready to hang up his cleats, and not because there wasn't a team with the stones to bring him to their town.

The Mets will play their first non-intrasquad game of the spring today against the University of Michigan, though their first televised game won't be played until Friday against the Cardinals in Port St. Lucie. If you're anything like me, you're practically seething at this point just to see some real game action, even if it's only of the half-assed spring training variety. MLB.com has the spring training broadcast schedule, and the good news is that nineteen games over the next five weeks can be seen on TV. No news on whether any of the exhibition games will be broadcast in high definition, though I have it on good authority that most if not all of the Mets' regular season road games *will* be in HD. This is great news for those of us with big flat panel teevees, and not really news at all for those of you still in the dark ages who would sooner spend their disposable income on "food" and "shelter" and other "conveniences that promote life". Good luck with that.

So we know that much of the next five weeks will be televised, and despite the Mets strengthening their rotation with the acquisition of Johan Santana, the team is not without its share of question marks. One of the biggest uncertainties is the future -- 2008 as well as beyond -- of Carlos Delgado. The Mets hold a $12 million option for 2009 with a $4 million buyout, which effectively means that Delgado will cost the team $8 million to keep him around after this season. The 2009 option could have vested at $16 million had Delgado collected enough MVP shares, but that seems pretty unlikely at this point. Considering the way the big guy seemingly fell off a cliff production-wise last season, that $8 million seems like a lot to swallow right now, especially when you consider that it could be put to better use on the Mark Teixeiras and Adam Dunns of the free agent world.

Offensively, the Mets got well below league average production out of their first basemen last year, and most of that blame falls on Delgado's shoulders. Here are the Mets' team ranks at first base relative to the rest of the National League last season.

OPS: 11th (.797)
AVG: 15th (.260)
OBP: 13th (.344)
SLG: 11th (.453)

That's terrible, and if we consider that Delgado is almost certainly a detriment on the basepaths as well as with the glove, we can reasonably conclude that the Mets got well below league average production all around. They more than made up for any shortcomings at first base with terrific performances at third and in center, but that only helps to disguise the fact that the Mets need to see some significant improvement at first. Not so long ago -- all the way back in 2006 -- the Mets got solid offense from Delgado. Here are their team ranks from 2006.

OPS: 6th (.887)
AVG: 12th (.272)
OBP: 9th (.359)
SLG: 5th (.529)

Delgado was a little better than those aggregate numbers: .265/.361/.548 overall, but any way you cut it the Mets lost a lot from 2006 to 2007. Can Delgado regain his form? Thirty-five year old sluggardly sluggers don't usually start improving in their old age, though Delgado blames his dropoff last year to mechanical problems with his swing. Willie Randolph has indicated that he didn't feel Delgado made adjustments quickly enough last year, though he seems to attribute that more to stubbornness than physical regression. In the afore-linked article, Ben Shpigel talks about Delgado's offseason workout program in which he dedicated himself to re-learning his swing.

At first, Delgado concentrated only on his swing mechanics, practicing with a tee so his muscles would remember how it felt. He moved on to a hitting machine and then took batting practice. Shortly after arriving here Monday morning, Delgado entered a batting cage with the process committed to memory. Stay back, recognize the pitch, step with the front foot -- the right foot -- and swing. Just as he once did.

Delgado even said, "It's harder to hit .240 than to hit .300 in a funny kind of way." I guess that's funny in an ironic sort of way, though when I relayed the story to Rey Ordonez, the former Met shortstop failed to see the humor.

The good news for Delgado is that he *did* seem to pick things up in the second half of last season. Here are his pre/post All-Star Game splits:

First half: .242/.305/.435
Second half: .285/.375/.469

The improvement is certainly encouraging, and supports Delgado's claim (or was it Randolph's?) that he was slow to adapt his swing to whatever was ailing him. Beyond even the first and second half splits, Delgado hit .321/.383/.566 over 60 plate appearances in September. It may just be a small sample size fluctuation, or it may be Delgado finally finding his stroke in the season's waning days. He seems to think that his early struggles were a result of a general lack of focus on his part:

"I wasn't as focused as I needed to be. I ended up thinking too much, trying to do too much, trying to fix it too quick, instead of just stopping for a second and making an adjustment."

Whatever the problem, Delgado committed himself this offseason to getting into shape and correcting whatever flaws his swing happened into last season. His appearance has been described as "leaner and stronger" (link), and I'm not going to discount the possibility that he could bounce back and have a season more in line with what 2007 should have been: a slight dropoff from his 2006 numbers, but not such a precipitous decline as 2007 actually offered. If we consider 2007 to be an abnormally unproductive year for Delgado, it isn't such a stretch to think that his performance could slide back into the gradual declination track that it appeared to be on prior to last season.

Delgado isn't the perennial MVP candidate that he once was, but the Mets don't really need him to be that guy considering the offensive surplus they have at some other positions. If Delgado can stay healthy this year and provide league average offense for a first baseman, that'll be more than enough to help push this team to the top of the NL East.*

* not a guarantee

Kudos to those of you who recognized the anagramic nature of this post's title.