Friday Morning Applesauce: Mets One Up Red Sox Clubhouse, Considered Moving Wright

Dan Patrick went a little deeper into the history books yesterday, asking Al Leiter a very specific question about the Mets clubhouse that definitely appeared to have caught Leiter off guard. It's definitely worth listening to the interview if you haven't already, although I don't know how many conclusions I'd make from it.

In more important news, the Orioles have been rumored to be interested in interviewing JP Riccardi for their vacant GM position. The have been multiple sources on Twitter that have denied the club's interest in JP, but in my opinion it's worth pointing out the story anyway.

Irving Picard seems to believe that he's not going to have a favorable outcome in his attempt to sue the Wilpons over the whole Madoff affair and seems to be trying to bypass this step in the process. The longer this drags out can only hurt the Mets, so hopefully this gets resolved sooner rather than later.

There was also some talk that the Mets have discussed moving David Wright to the outfield to allow Daniel Murphy to play at third. While I'd be all for moving Wright if there was an Evan Longoria nipping at his heels, I don't think it makes too much sense to do so for Daniel Murphy.  

Around MLB

The Brew Crew evened up the NLCS yesterday behind a strong performance from Randy Wolf. Game 5 will be tonight at 8:05 EST for those of you planning to tune in. The WSJ ran a story about how the Yankees released Brew Crew closer John Axford yesterday, something I hadn't heard about until very recently.

The ALCS also got a little closer as the Tigers won 7-5 over the Rangers to draw within a game at 3-2. In that game Nelson Cruz continued to show why he's among the elite players in baseball.

Baseball Prospectus took a look at why teams tend to miss on their evaluations of young hitters so often. I'm sure most clubs would love to have a re-do on their evaluations of Mike Trout and Jason Heyward at this point.

BtB ran down a post 2011 NL West all star team using less traditional statistics. These types of articles are always fun reads for myself, as it really does tend to show how some traditional statistics tend to miss certain players.

Some guy named Eno did a preview of the 2012 free agent catching market over at FanGraphs. This one might be worthy of note, as catcher is a position where the Mets seemingly could upgrade without breaking the budget.

The Padres are going to be adding a few extra names to the free agent list this offseason, stating they are declining several options yesterday. Several of these guys could be fits as Mets, so they'll be worth keeping an eye on.

Finally, the LA Times takes a look at how declaring bankruptcy could end up costing Dodgers owner Frank McCourt.