My oldest boy turns six today.
--
At SNY.tv Marc Raimondi continues his one-man assault on Willie Randolph's managing performance. In particular, Raimondi questions Randolph's recent usage of Pedro Feliciano; Raimondi argues that Feliciano is one of the better left-handed relievers in the National League and should be allowed to face some righties, not strictly used against lefties. He's right, too. Little Pedro has held righties to a .200/.305/.289 line while lefties are hitting .169/.295/.231. Considering how badly Guillermo Mota has been pitching I think the Mets would be much better served allowing Feliciano to take some batters off of his hands.
--
Via MetsBlog.com, Willie Randolph finally reacts to a lackluster performance by his team without sugarcoating a thing. He described the game as "horrible" and specifically targeted the Mets' inability to hold a big lead or tack on extra runs when the opportunity to do so was available. It was a terrible game against a lousy team and though there is never a good time to drop games like this it makes matters worse that the Mets are in a tight race with six weeks left in the season.
--
John Brattain has an article today at The Hardball Times about Alex Rodriguez's next contract. Based on the figures that have been thrown around lately it seems that most industry folk expect A-Rod to get something in the neighborhood of seven years and $200 million. The Mets might stick their beaks in to see what the water's like but it isn't clear that there is anyplace for Rodriguez to play on this team. Brattain suggests that any such deal would be pretty disastrous in the long-term as the "winner" of the Rodriguez Sweepstakes Redux would be paying the star infielder $30 million for his age 35-38 seasons or something thereabouts.
--
And finally, a nice Yahoo! profile of Sean Foreman, evil genius and mastermind behind the single most useful baseball site on the internets, Baseball-Reference.com.