(bumped to top of page. contest deadline is 5pm today. --eric)

The season is over and the witless rumors are already afoot. As we brace ourselves to be inundated with similar baseless piffle in the coming weeks and months, the best defense against rampant speculation is, well, rampant speculation, but at least an effort can be made to be somewhat realistic in our rampancy. Having said that, we'd like to announce the 2009 Amazin' Avenue Offseason Plan contest, where you guys get the opportunity to don your general manager caps and dream up a plan to fix the Mets.

Here's how it works: we're going to set a deadline by which all entries must be submitted via FanPost. We will select the best of the bunch (three, five, it depends on how many good entries we receive), and then we'll present those finalists to the community for a vote. We will be periodically bumping some of the best plans to the front page. As for the rules and guidelines, they are as follows.

1. The title of your FanPost must begin with 'AAOP:' (no quotes). You can follow that with whatever title you want, but it must begin with 'AAOP:' so we can easily distinguish them from non-contest FanPosts. If you do not follow this rule your entry will be excluded from consideration. It's a very simple rule so try not to screw it up.
2. The deadline for FanPost submission is 5pm EST on Monday, 11/16/2009. No exceptions.
3. There is no mandatory length, but obviously you'll want to be as verbose as is necessary to elucidate the genius of your plan.
4. Total 2010 payroll can't exceed $150 million, give or take a few bucks. Same goes for 2011 and beyond, so don't try to backload your deals to skirt the 2010 payroll restriction.
5. Use spellcheck and proofread for grammar, punctuation, and usage errors. If you can't be bothered with making your entry readable then we can't be bothered with actually reading it.
6. Try to make it look good. Add some images and some tables. MS Paint something. Strong writing (and good ideas) are of paramount importance, but asthetics still count. I'm not saying that a straight essay can't win, but I am encouraging you to spice it up a bit.
7. Feasibility of plan execution is important. Don't suggest the Mets trade Bobby Parnell for Joe Mauer. It ain't going to happen.
8. Whether or not the Mets might realistically execute your plan doesn't matter as long as the plan itself can be considered realistic given the current free agent and trade markets.
9. If you have already written an offseason plan in the FanPosts, feel free to clean it up (or not) and repost it (Rule #1 above still applies).
10. ADDED: Free agent salary should be realistic. We're not going to quibble over a million dollars here or there (who would?), so if you want to call Matt Holliday $17 million or $19 million, it doesn't much matter for the purpose of this exercise.

The winner will receive, courtesy of Uncommon Goods, a small slab of rusty metal. Actually, it's a piece of steel from Shea Stadium, framed in plexiglass and suitable for display on your desk, wall, shelf, mantel, nightstand, casket, or anywhere really. You can read more about the item or buy one for yourself or someone else at Uncommon Goods.

That's it. You can start posting now. Good luck.

Congratulations to beelzebot, the winner of the Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest for August! Actually, Michkin won the month by a landslide, but having already won the July contest he wasn't eligible for another prize. So, yay second place!

For winning the August contest, beelzebot claimed the Essential Games Of Shea Stadium DVD Set, which is a six-disc collection featuring some of the most memorable Mets games played at Shea in their entirety.

Having won a month, beelzebot is not eligible to win another monthly contest this season. However, there's a chance to win a prize every single game for racking up a perfect 100 on that day's contest, so he (or any other monthly winner) could still cash in there. It's not easy to score perfectly; you have to get all five questions right, including nailing the pitcher's game score right on the nose. However, this is a neat way for past winners to keep playing and for folks who missed a few games or joined the monthly contest too late to participate and still win a prize even if they are too far behind to win the monthly contest. We've yet to have a 100-point scorer but we've had a handful of 90s.

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I know I'm way late on this; the winner required an international delivery so I wanted to sort that out before posting the results.

Congratulations to Michkin, the winner of the Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest for July!

For winning the July contest, Michkin claimed the Essential Games Of Shea Stadium DVD Set, which is a six-disc collection featuring some of the most memorable Mets games played at Shea in their entirety.

Having won a month, Michkin is not eligible to win another monthly contest this season. However, there's a chance to win a prize every single game for racking up a perfect 100 on that day's contest, so he (or any other monthly winner) could still cash in there. It's not easy to score perfectly; you have to get all five questions right, including nailing the pitcher's game score right on the nose. However, this is a neat way for past winners to keep playing and for folks who missed a few games or joined the monthly contest too late to participate and still win a prize even if they are too far behind to win the monthly contest. We've yet to have a 100-point scorer but we've had a handful of 90s.

Here are the top ten scores for the month of July:

The full July scoreboard can be found here. As a reminder, the scores for the month are aggregated by username and e-mail, so make sure you use the same ones every day. Also, make sure the e-mail address you use matches the one you signed up with here on AA; if you signed up at SB Nation with a junk email address, now is your chance to update that to your real one.

Thanks again to everyone who participated this month. I think we all had a lot of fun, and hopefully it made the games and the game chatters here a little more interesting.

Just a note that I've updated the Swag Contest Scoreboard, which had been left in disrepair since the All-Star break. Here are the current standings:

As always, the latest game form is available at SwagContest.com, and you can read the rules here.

Prince Fielder won last night's All-Star Game Homerun Derby with 23 total homeruns (six in the finals), but more importantly, two of you have won prizes in the Amazin' Avenue Homerun Derby Contest.

Eight people correctly chose Fielder as the winner, so we had to go to the first tie-breaker for total homeruns by the winner. Amazingly, three people tied for the closest total with 24 (just one shy of Fielder's actual total), so we had to continue to the second tie-breaker, which was the total homeruns by the runner-up Nelson Cruz. Cruz swatted 21 homeruns overall, which squid92 nailed to take home the grand prize.

Second prize went to gogomets, who missed Cruz's total by just one homer.

Congrats to our winners and thanks to everyone for playing. As the 2009 Mets teeter on the brink of irrelevancy we'll find other creative ways to give away some comforting swag.

The All-Star game may have lost its luster years ago but that doesn't mean we can't still have some fun with it. The homerun derby, too, is less exciting now that everyone isn't all goosed up on steroids (or are they?); it's basically just a well-structured batting practice featuring All-Stars instead of regular stiffs. Nevertheless, I found some stray swag lying around the house and figured this would be a good time to unload some of it during tonight's festivities.

To enter, just fill out this form; all fields are required and only Amazin' Avenue members with at least 50 total comments are eligible. If you're a long-time reader but never got around to creating an account, sign up for one now and you could be eligible for the next swag giveaway.

The winner will receive this Mets DVD and this baseball rules book. Runner-up will received just the book. One entry per person. Entries received after the start of the derby will be discarded.

This year's entrants are:

• Carlos Pena
• Brandon Inge
• Nelson Cruz
• Joe Mauer
• Albert Pujols
• Adrian Gonzalez
• Prince Fielder
• Ryan Howard

Congratulations to metslaw, the winner of the Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest for June!

For winning the June contest, metslaw claimed the Essential Games Of Shea Stadium DVD Set, which is a six-disc collection featuring some of the most memorable Mets games played at Shea in their entirety.

Having won a month, metslaw is not eligible to win another monthly contest this season. If the Mets are fortunate enough to make the postseason we will have some sort of playoff contest, so he would be eligible for any prizes there. Also, there's a chance to win a prize every single game for racking up a perfect 100 on that day's contest, so he (or any other monthly winner) could still cash in there. It's not easy to score perfectly; you have to get all five questions right, including nailing the pitcher's game score right on the nose. However, this is a neat way for past winners to keep playing and for folks who missed a few games or joined the monthly contest too late to participate and still win a prize even if they are too far behind to win the monthly contest. We've yet to have a 100-point scorer but we've had a handful of 90s.

Here are the top ten scores for the month of June:

The full June scoreboard can be found here. As a reminder, the scores for the month are aggregated by username and e-mail, so make sure you use the same ones every day. Also, make sure the e-mail address you use matches the one you signed up with here on AA; if you signed up at SB Nation with a junk email address, now is your chance to update that to your real one.

Thanks again to everyone who participated this month. I think we all had a lot of fun, and hopefully it made the games and the game chatters here a little more interesting. Here's to more fun and even more participation in July.

Back around Opening Day, we posted a reader contest.  Sixteen pairs of numbers were presented, and the goal was to choose which number in each pair would be greater by season's end.  The contestant with the most correct choices wins a prize.  If the contest ended today, the prize would be this:

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