Congratulations to Endys Game, the winner of the Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest for May!

For winning the May contest, Endys Game 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, Endys Game 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.

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

The full May 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 June.

Congratulations to englishgrey, the winner of the Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest for April!

For winning the April contest, englishgrey claimed the New York Mets 1986 Collector's Edition DVD Set, which is a nine-disc collection featuring Game 6 of the 1986 NLCS and all seven World Series games in their entirety.

Having won a month, englishgrey 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.

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

The full April 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 May.

We have 37 entries in our Pair Prediction Reader Contest.  Here is a breakdown of the choices, keeping in mind participants chose which pair option they thought would be greater at season's end:

Walks by Oliver Perez - 32
Strikeouts by Livan Hernandez - 5

David Wright's OBP - 26
Luis Castillo's OBP + 30 points - 11

Plate appearances by Gary Sheffield - 13
Plate appearances by Fernando Tatis - 24

Innings pitched by J.J. Putz - 31
Innings pitched by Francisco Rodriguez - 6

Jose Reyes's UZR + 5 - 32
Jimmy Rollins's UZR - 5

Postseason wins by the Mets - 35
Postseason wins by the Phillies - 2

Stolen bases by David Wright - 28
Caught stealings by Jose Reyes - 9

Innings pitched by Mike Pelfrey - 8
Innings pitched by John Maine + 30 - 29

Brian Stokes's ERA - 15
Darren O'Day's ERA - 22

Home runs by Daniel Murphy - 12
Home runs by Jose Reyes - 25

Cy Young Award votes for Johan Santana - 36
Cy Young Award votes for Cole Hamels - 1

Carlos Beltran's UZR - 22
Endy Chavez's UZR - 15

Starts by Oliver Perez lasting atleast 7 innings - 20
Starts by Oliver Perez lasting less than 4 innings - 17

Joe Smith's FIP - 26
Sean Green's FIP - 11

Home runs allowed by Aaron Heilman - 31
Wild pitches by Johan Santana - 6

Major league plate appearances by Fernando Martinez - 24
Home runs allowed by Brad Lidge - 13

A few notes:

• The lack of faith in Oliver Perez is not surprising.  Although he did last 4.1 innings yesterday.
• Johan Santana is the man around these parts.
• I'm intrigued by the Carlos Beltran/Endy Chavez UZR battle.  Hopefully Endy can hack it as a full time starter.
• Brad Lidge gave up a home run in game #3 this season, after giving up 2 all of last season.  All I can say is, it's about time his luck ran out.  Lidge has the lead on F-Mart in their little matchup.
• Good luck everyone!

This contest idea is borrowed from Beyond the Boxscore (which got the idea from Pro-Football-Reference). Here are the rules, also via BtB and adjusted for our contest:

Below you will find 16 pairs of numbers. In each case, you tell me which number will be bigger in the 2009 season. One point for each correct answer. Most points wins.

Ties go to the side that had fewer votes. For example, here is a pair of numbers:

Wins by the Yankees
Wins by the Red Sox

Let's say 41 people take the Yankees and 54 take the Red Sox. If the Yankees and Red Sox end up with the same number of wins, then each Yankee-backer will get a point and each Red Sox-backer will not.

There's also a fun tiebreaker question at the bottom, just in case. We won't know the results until the season is over, and there is a to be determined prize for the winner. To enter, copy the pairs into a text editor (i.e. Microsoft Word), delete the choice you're not picking, and paste the ballot into a comment. Ballots are due Wednesday at midnight.  Take 5 minutes to do this, and maybe in 7 months you'll be awarded a book or bobblehead or something.

The pairs:

Walks by Oliver Perez
Strikeouts by Livan Hernandez

David Wright's OBP
Luis Castillo's OBP + 30 points

Plate appearances by Gary Sheffield
Plate appearances by Fernando Tatis

Innings pitched by J.J. Putz
Innings pitched by Francisco Rodriguez

Jose Reyes's UZR + 5
Jimmy Rollins's UZR

Postseason wins by the Mets
Postseason wins by the Phillies

Stolen bases by David Wright
Caught stealings by Jose Reyes

Innings pitched by Mike Pelfrey
Innings pitched by John Maine + 30

Brian Stokes's ERA
Darren O'Day's ERA

Home runs by Daniel Murphy
Home runs by Jose Reyes

Cy Young Award votes for Johan Santana
Cy Young Award votes for Cole Hamels

Carlos Beltran's UZR
Endy Chavez's UZR

Starts by Oliver Perez lasting atleast 7 innings
Starts by Oliver Perez lasting less than 4 innings

Joe Smith's FIP
Sean Green's FIP

Home runs allowed by Aaron Heilman
Wild pitches by Johan Santana

Major league plate appearances by Fernando Martinez
Home runs allowed by Brad Lidge

Tiebreaker: What will the average mph be for Franciso Rodriguez's fastball (according to Fangraphs)?

Last year I was sent a bunch of copies of MLB 08: The Show for PlayStation 3. For one reason or another I never wound up unloading them all, and I have five copies of the game sitting in my office. Consider them leftover 2008 swag. I realize MLB 09: The Show is already on store shelves, but everybody likes free stuff, even year-old video games.

So rather than burn the games I'm just going to give them to you guys. I'll even cover shipping within the continental US. The first five people to email me and correctly answer the following easy questions will get the games. The only requirements are that you *must* have an Amazin' Avenue account and at least 10 comments to your credit, so be sure to include your AA username in the email¹.

Here are the questions:

1. What was the date of the first ever post at Amazin' Avenue? (Hint: try searching the site for "sabermets")
2. What is the URL of the Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest? (Hint: check out the "Contest Rules" link on the left sidebar)

Good luck.

¹Don't sign up and post ten useless comments today. You'll get bupkis for that, pal.

The Amazin' Avenue Swag Contest is back for the 2009 season. We've moved the contest to its own domain, so now you can always find it at swagcontest.com. If you're new to the site or just don't remember what the Swag Contest is all about, here are a few helpful links:

• contest rules
• explanation of scoring
• last season's August wrap-up

The basic gist is that every Mets game has a corresponding contest form with some fill-in questions to answer. You'll always have to predict the score of the game as well as the Mets' starting pitcher's game score, and then we throw in another couple of questions that will change from game to game. After each game is over, we fill in the correct responses and every entry is scored based on those answers. At the end of the month, the person with the most points wins a prize, which could be a Mets DVD set or some items from the team shop or something else we think of along the way.

So you can get acclimated before the season, we've set up the swag contest to run for the remaining twelve spring training games, including this afternoon's matchup with the Astros. So check out the links above for more information and then head on over to swagcontest.com to participate.

Thanks to the folks at WhatIfSports, we now have prizes to give out for the 'Name That Pitcher/Batter' posts. You can read more about them in this post. They offer many unique sports simulation games including SimLeague Baseball and Hardball Dynasty.

The Prize

For any particular contest, one grand prize winner will receive a $15 gift certificate to WhatIfSports, which will cover a full season of any of their baseball offerings.

The Rules

1. One winner per contest. The first person to correctly guess the mystery player will be deemed the winner.
2. One guess per person per contest. Only your first guess in a particular contest will be considered, so make it count.

Today's Mystery Pitcher

Lazy Monday, short week, nothing interesting going on. The free agent market is moving at a snail's pace, with the Mets just barely dipping their toes in the water. Let's kill some time guessing another illegible Mets autograph! No cheating, now. No scouring autograph galleries on the internet somewhere.