First off let me apologize for leaving you guys with nothing to read yesterday. I was sick all through the weekend and am still sick as we speak. It does seem to be getting better, which is always a positive sign. Plus, it's nice not having to go to work for a couple of days.
In any event, today is Day 1 of the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft. The Mets pick ninth in the first round and then not again until the fourth round. They lost their second and third round picks to the Red Sox for signing Pedro Martinez and to the Astros for signing Carlos Beltran, respectively. Given the quality of those two players I don't think too many Mets fans are going to be complaining about the lack of early draft picks.
The draft begins at 12:30pm ET. MLB.com's Draft Central will have full coverage of the draft, including live video and audio feeds of the proceedings. Mike Oliver has a couple of great new articles at MetsGeek.com today that I will link to at the end of this post.
As for who the Mets will actually take in the first round, it's still anybody's guess. The top twelve or so players are all likely to go in the first twelve picks, but it seems that most of them could be chosen anywhere in that span, with the possible exception of the first couple of picks. The consensus is that the Diamondbacks will take the currently-positionless Justin Upton (B.J.'s little brother) with the first overall pick and that the Royals will take third-baseman Alex Gordon with the second pick.
Minor League Ball held a mock draft on Sunday in which the Mets somehow ended up with Cameron Maybin, Baseball America's third-highest rated draftee. He apparently has high contract demands and many feel he will fall a bit.
According to Ken Rosenthal of The Sporting News, the Mets and the Marlins are the finalists in the Danny Graves sweepstakes. Whee! Fortunately the Marlins appear to be the favorites, though we should find out one way or another within the next week or so. The worst case scenario is that the Mets will sign Graves and give him a spot on the big league club, displacing a more deserving pitcher like Heath Bell or Aaron Heilman. Danny Graves is almost certainly a worse pitcher right now than Mike DeJean, and Mike DeJean is a terrible pitcher. The Marlins will be doing the Mets and me a favor by signing Graves.
The Mets take on the Astros tonight in the first game of a three-game series. The rest of baseball is in the midst of interleague play, so this series is the lone "National League" series on the docket. Pedro Martinez goes against Roy Oswalt in tonight's game. That pitching matchup should be considered a slight edge to the Mets, while they sport a much more significant offensive edge.
I'll check in throughout the day with draft updates.
Oh yea, one other thing. Regarding the game chatters: though there's certainly room for substantive, analytical discussion, more often than not they are simply a forum for quick-thought reactions, good or bad, to the game as it happens. If you aren't into that sort of thing, simply don't read the game chatters. As for the poor grammar and spelling, some of that can be attributed to the fast-paced nature of the game chatters. Some people also happen to have only a rudimentary grasp of the English language to begin with (you know who you are), so misspellings and grammatical miscues are par for the course.
I'm also considering adding some kind of contest to the open threads, where you get points for correctly picking certain things before the game starts, like the WFAN star of the game or the first player to hit a homerun, etc. The person with the most points at the end of the season will win an AA t-shirt, or something like that. Suggestions for how the contest should work (rules, etc.) are welcome from anybody.
Amazin' Avenue Daily Web Links
- MetsGeek.com: Mets Bloggers Roundtable (OFF)
- MetsGeek.com: Draft Primer: Part III (Michael Oliver)
- MetsGeek.com: D-Day (Michael Oliver)
- MetsGeek.com: Committed, Forgotten, and Wounded (Michael Oliver)
- MetsGeek.com: Upcoming Series: Houston Astros Pitchers (Andrew Hintz)
- FlushingsFuture.com: Minor League Notebook: June 7, 2005
- The Hardball Times: Finding Flaws: NL East (Ben Jacobs)
- The Hardball Times: Freaky Pitching Leaderboards (Studes)
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