At Optimistic Mets Fan, Ceetar makes an argument I can completely get behind, getting Ommegang beers at Citi Field. I would kill for their Saison on tap somewhere in the stadium, it would definitely help wash down whatever is going down on the actual field.
Over at Yahoo Sports, some pressing questions about the Mets and fantasy baseball.
At Beyond the Box Score, our own Bill Petti takes a look at how Michael Pineda will fare with the move from Safeco to Yankees stadium, and David Fung takes a graphical look at the trade, using the OLIVER projection system. Meanwhile, Dave Cameron thinks all the talk about Pineda's splits is overblown.
The Nationals extended recent trade acquisition Gio Gonzalez for five years, with team options for six and seven. Will need to see the money before I can really say how good a deal it is for the Nats one way or the other, but these pre-FA extensions rarely carry too much risk for the team. I don't know how I feel about having another competently run organization in the NL East.
It looks like Yu Darvish's negotiations with the Rangers will go down to the wire. I'm 90% certain this gets done in the end, though no doubt it will be right around 11:50PM on deadline day.
Johnny Damon is in the mix to DH for the Yankees. I have no clue why they just don't keep the DH slot open and rotate all the old and banged up verteran hitters they are rostering instead of adding another old and banged up hitter to DH full-time.
Wendy Thurm has an excellent piece over at Baseball Nation about MLB's struggles to market to their growing female fanbase. I will just add that I think the whole MLB fan cave thing is kind of ridiculous anyway.
I'm also going to take this moment to shamelessly plug John Sickels' Prospect Handbook. It's crazily in-depth, usually going about 40 players deep in every system, and is a useful resource for prospect mavening.
And now, your Mets video highlight to tide you over until Spring Training: Heath Bell, meet Lucas Duda
Nothing like the old 20-hopper up the middle to cap a ferocious comeback. Hope to see more of those off Bell this year.
And your non-baseball link of the day: David Chang, chef of the Momofuku empire, talks bourbon
Totally worth it just to watch Chef Chang get drunker and drunker as the filming progresses. He also has an awesome aside about American beer.