Mets Morning News: David Wright named captain of the Mets, Niese will start on Opening Day

Meet the Mets

Unless you've been under a rock for the past twenty-four hours, you've heard the big Mets news: David Wright has been named captain of the team. Seemingly a foregone conclusions when the team signed Wright to an extension that keeps him with the team deep into his thirties, the Mets ended the "will they or won't they" speculation after their spring training game yesterday afternoon.

Greg Prince of Faith and Fear in Flushing penned "Ode from a Captain" in response to the news. Adam Rubin remembers all of the good times he's had with the captain. Rising Apple likes the news, too, since Mets fans have become accustomed to the team throwing its best players under the bus over the past, well, many years.

Speaking of foregone conclusions, Jon Niese officially got the Opening Day nod from Mets skipper Terry Collins. A relative veteran of the team, Niese was very good last year and deserves the honor that seems to be associated with such a start.

MLB Trade Rumors has been talking to players about their relationships with their agents, speaking to Ike Davis about his agent yesterday.

Shaun Marcum says that shoulder injury is nothing out of the ordinary at this time of year for him. If he's right, that's very good news.

Around MLB

Mike Pelfrey is apparently in the best shape of his life, having dropped from 270 to 240 pounds over the winter. He still occasionally indulges in junk food, though. Twinkie Town takes a look at Pelfrey and his new rotation-mates in Minnesota to see how much better they might be than last year's Twins rotation.

Hanley Ramirez will require surgery on his injured right thumb and could miss two months of action. Perhaps the Dodgers will be able to get by just fine without him, says Steven Goldman at SB Nation.

Major League Baseball is suing Biogensis for destroying the game of baseball or something. Please end this story now. Craig Calcaterra thinks the lawsuit will be laughed out of court. Here's hoping he's right.

The Yankees' battle with StubHub continues, and it doesn't sound like StubHub will back down anytime soon.

Who's going to win the MVP awards this year? Well, Ted Berg has the answers over at USA Today.

Beyond the Box Score writes about PresAVG and uses Dan Uggla as its case study. What's PresAVG, you say? They've got you covered.

Lest you think that only the Mets are capable of #LOLMets things, there aren't any Mets on this list of freak spring training injuries. Perhaps that's because Sandy Alderson hasn't jumped out of any planes recently.

There are trade rumors swirling around Rick Porcello of the Tigers, and Bless You Boys breaks down what Porcello's trade value is right now.

Chipotle has decided to give Bryce Harper free burritos for life. I'm as big of a Chipotle fan as your average minor league baseball player, but that's poor, Chipotle. That's poor.

Yesterday at AA

James Kannengieser surprised us all with a spring training edition of This Week in SNY. We hope you've missed Kevin as much as we did.

Jeff Paternostro has your Wright and Niese news. He also took a look at the minor league park factor numbers that were released yesterday. Expect some crazy OPS numbers coming out of Vegas this year.

David Moseder has your daily dose of Mets history.

And Matthew Callan would like to remind Mets fans that the 2013 Opening Day lineup won't even be close to the worst in the team history.