Just a couple of quick things before I go watch the Giants get massacred on national television.

1. I updated the game chatter hitlist as of yesterday's game and should get today's up shortly.
2. I know there are a lot of Giants' fans on here (unlike MetsGeek which seems to attract mostly Jets' fans). Definitely check out the SBNation Giants blog Big Blue View for game chatters and other good stuff. If you like the Jets for some reason I guess you can go visit NY Landing Strip. Or not. Whatever. They already got annihilated today.

Pedro Martinez threw a bullpen session for the Mets in Atlanta on Friday. You can check out some footage and photos at Bryan Biederman's Screwballs blog over at FOXSports.com. There's a video of Pedro goofing around and another of him tossing a few pitches in the bullpen.

At The Record and on his blog, Steve Popper points to Monday in Cincinnati as the likely return date for Pedro to big league action. Pedro seems confident:

"I feel like I can probably throw a little harder," Martinez said. "But there's no need. I need to get command of the pitches. From 85 to 88, if I have command of my pitches I'll get anybody out. I wouldn't hesitate to say that."

Sounds good to me.

UPDATE [2pm]: John Delcos confirms it: Petey is a go for Monday.

Pedro Martinez made his third rehab start tonight for the St. Lucie Mets of the South Atlantic League (A+), and the results were solid.

Player	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR
Martinez	5.0	2	2	0	1	4	0

Pedro probably has another couple of rehab starts to go before rejoining the big club. I'm giddy.

Yesterday, Jon Heyman ran a column at SI.com about five guys you would use to start a franchise. Heyman polled executives from around the league and, lo and behold, Jose Reyes was the leading vote getter. Jonathan Papelbon was second, though he actually garnered the same number of first place votes as Reyes. I love Paps as much as the next guy, but.... huh?

Anyway, this is always a fun exercise, so here are the five guys I would use as the cornerstone of a new franchise:

1. Albert Pujols -- He's having an off season, right? He's hitting .298/.401/.527 and rising. The best hitter in baseball.
2. Jose Reyes -- Love the guy, and it doesn't hurt that he plays for the Mets. The scary thing is that he likely hasn't reached his ceiling yet.
3. Grady Sizemore -- Walks more than Reyes, has more power right now than Reyes, steals bases at a higher percentage than Reyes. Strikes out more and plays a slightly less valuable defensive position, so he's one slot below.
4. Alex Rodriguez -- Love him, hate him, he's still a beast at age 31. He's been such a bust for the Yankees that he will win two MVP awards in his four years there.
5. Johan Santana -- I almost took teammate Joe Mauer here, largely because I hate the volatility of the starting pitcher market. Still, Santana is as good as they get.

Honorable mention:

• Chase Utley -- I passed because of his ridiculous home/road splits. .396/.473/.674 at CBP, .261/.350/.464 this season.
• Joe Mauer -- Will be super valuable as long as he stays healthy and stays at catcher. Will still be plenty useful if he eventually changes positions, but he is superlative behind the dish.
• Jake Peavy, Justin Verlander, Brandon Webb, some other pitchers who I am too afraid will get injured to start my franchise with.

Your turn.

It has stopped raining here in Jersey, but apparently the powers that be wanted to get away from the big city as quickly as possible and made the decision mighty early to postpone tonight's game between the Mets and the Cardinals.

The teams will have to make the game up on a mutual off day. A cursory glance at the calendar turns up September 27th as a possibility as the Mets will be in the middle of a homestand and the Cardinals will be in between series in Milwaukee and Pittsburgh.

The good news for the Mets is that Orlando Hernandez will be pushed to tomorrow and the team will not have to make a roster move -- likely to have been a recall of Mike Pelfrey -- in order to accommodate the four games in three days against the Phillies this weekend. I was looking forward to see how much Pelfrey has improved in recent weeks, but I guess that will have to wait for another day.

Another game washed away by the nor'easter, as the Mets' two-game series with the Phillies has been pared down to a lonely one. Today's game will be made up as part of a double-header on June 29.

Matt Cerrone touched on this earlier, but these first two weeks of the season have been like watching a hyperactive child taken off Ritalin. The schedule has been so obnoxiously punctuated by fits and stops that I've had a bugger of a time getting comfortable.

Here he comes to save the day!!!

Yes, that's a special, fitted hat. He's quite serious about what he's saying, as well. Woof. Here's to another great year for the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club, and another great year of blogging at Amazin' Avenue!

In his recent column at ESPN.com (subscription required), Rob Neyer handed out accolades for this offseason's best signings. Among them was Moises Alou's one-year, $8.5 million deal with the Mets.

It's not that Alou would be a good fit for every team; he wouldn't. But the Mets are rich, they're contenders, and in the short term they desperately need production from a corner outfield slot. At his age, Alou's a gamble. But he's exactly the right sort of gamble for a team such as the Mets.

Here's what I said a month ago at MetsGeek on the same topic:

The worst-case scenario in signing Alou is that he completely breaks down physically and ends up missing much or all of the season. After all, Alou is 40 years old and has only played in 221 games over the past two seasons. In the event that he isn't healthy enough to contribute or is struck down by some urine-borne debilitating virus, the Mets have only to swallow the remainder of his guaranteed $8.5 million samoleans and they can rid themselves of him entirely. Unlike terrible signings of the past regime like Roger Cedeno and Mo Vaughn, the Mets have in no way mortgaged current or future flexibility -- payroll or otherwise. There will be no albatross contract here.

The move appears even shrewder with the benefit of hindsight, as the last four weeks' worth of contracts make that $8.5 million seem like a relative pittance by comparison.

Upon learning that the Mets signed Moises Alou to effectively replace Cliff Floyd in left field at Shea, David Wright described the news as 'bittersweet'. Anyone who has followed the Mets over the past couple of seasons knows that Wright and Floyd were very close friends and, though the writing had been on the wall since the season ended, both players took Floyd's likely departure the way any of us would take our best friend moving away. One of my best friends moved from NYC to a suburb of Seattle last February and, though we keep in touch as much as possible, it's still pretty crappy.

Once again the BBWAA has let me down, or: they have met my depressed expectations of them. Ryan Howard is hardly a poor choice for MVP. The problem is that he wasn't a great choice. He was probably the fourth fifth best player in the league, behind Pujols, Beltran, Cabrera and Berkman. His team didn't make the playoffs, and wasn;t even that close to making the playoffs, trailing the wild card winning Padres by three games to end the season.

Howard won the MVP because there's one thing that baseball writers may love even more than a winner, one thing that gives them an erection faster than Derek Jeter playing the game the right way: gaudy homerun (58) and RBI (149) numbers.

Beltran finished fourth in the voting, but even with his rough September he still led the league in win shares above bench. Ryan Howard finished 7th (!). For reference, SBNation picked Albert Pujols, who was just a shade behind Beltran in WSAB. Beltran got a huge bump from his gold glove defense in centerfield, Pujols got a little credit for his passable defense at first, and Howard got almost no credit for his woefully inadequate glovework at first.

In the final BBWAA voting, Jose Reyes finished seventh, David Wright ninth and Carlos Delgado 12th. Not a bad showing at all for the boys on orange-and-blue.