There’s something about that Shane Victorino that I just can’t stand.  For one, he’s a Philly.  Maybe it’s also the way he carries himself.  Maybe it’s his bad attitude.  Maybe it’s his feistiness, his hard-nosed style of playing the game or just his clutch.  But most of all, I think it’s because nobody in the Mets’ roster fits that mold.  If we’d only have someone who’d continually bang into walls (don’t get any ideas, Ryan Church), who’d bark at the pitcher while pointing to his head and/or body when thrown at…

Bottom line is, we need some fire in our team.  Someone who the opposing team just doesn’t want to mess with.  I realize these aren’t the type of things that generally constitute great players (See Garcia, Karim), but over the past few years we’ve become way too complacent, always preferring to sulk rather than fight back.  This fact is obvious if you look at our come-from-behind wins in 2008.  The Phillies were one of the top teams in the league, the Mets were horrific.  Let’s hope for a turnaround next year; let’s hope for a team that won’t settle.

There has been some chatter lately in the Mets blogesphere, with some people such as Mike Nichols from Mets Blog going to the point where they say signing free-agent 2B Orlando Hudson is a must-have. 

Granted, the 2B situation is pitiful with Luis Castillo on the books for three more seasons.  But, let me promise you - throwing large sums of money at Orlando Hudson isn’t the solution.  Hudson is a solution to the Mets’ 2B woes the way chocolate cake solves depression - at first it might seem like eating your problems away will fix things, but in reality you end up with 20 extra pounds that you wish you could just shed off (or $20 million dollars, whichever it may be).    

Last season, Omar Minaya was searching for a 2B with some speed, who could play decently in the field and bat second in the lineup.  Luis Castillo, going last off season, was a 32 year old with a .294 career batting average, 325 career stolen bases, three All-Star game appearances and three Gold Gloves.  Although he had a few physical ailments that held him back last year, he looked far better than the aged player he looked to be for most of this season. 

By the time next season begins, Orlando Hudson will be 32 years old.  He has a .282 career batting average, with limited power, and he doesn’t steal many bases.  He has three gold gloves and one All-Star appearance.

While Hudson and Castillo are clearly different players, and having Hudson is obviously preferable than to having Castillo, there are some stark similarities.  Hudson probably will last longer than Castillo did, but O-Hud probably won’t be productive over the entire contract we would have to give him, which would most likely be for at least three years.  The signing of Castillo should at least provide a lesson to us and Omar Minaya, and an expensive one at that.  It doesn’t make sense to sign role players to long and fairly expensive contracts when they have probably already seen the prime of their career. 

There are better causes that the Wilpon’s money can go to this off season than an aging 2B that will require a lengthy contract.  Maybe Hudson would be a nice piece for the Mets next year, but will he be two or three years from now?  O-Hud is far from a must have for the Mets this off season.     

In Marty Noble’s most recent mailbag on NYMets.com, he discusses why he thinks David Wright is the Mets MVP over Carlos Delgado. This made me think about what defines an MVP and more specifically, a team MVP. This will be a long post so bear with me.

Valuable (noun): Of great use or service. I.E. “Valuable Advice.”

WHEN DETERMINING A TEAM MVP, YOU MUST CONSIDER THREE FACTORS:

1) Which player contributed most over the course of the entire season
2) Which player contributed most when it mattered most. Luckily, and also unfortunately, it mattered most for the Mets in September. For example, you would say that July was most important for the Marlins (when they were near the top of the division).
3) The “But-For” Test. But-For this player, where would the Mets be? This is a difficult test but very important in determining a Team MVP in a given year. What would the 2008 Mets have looked like had X player not been around?

The test cannot be based solely on (1) because a player because a great player could easily tank in September. The test cannot be based solely on (2) because a player could struggle ALL YEAR only to come up in September. The test cannot be based solely on the But-For test because numbers alone don’t answer the question of where the Mets would be without a given “valuable” piece of the puzzle.

There are five players I would consider for Mets MVP: Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, David Wright and Johan Santana. All five players had very strong statistical years. Finding an MVP among them is a difficult process.

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It was reported by the Associated Press that injured Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer is to see a Mets team doctor to have his elbow examined.

Now I’m not a Bengals fan, but if I was I’d be incredibly nervous about this news.  Considering how swimmingly the Mets’ doctors handled the whole Ryan Church concussion thing, I wouldn’t be surprised if Palmer was told to rub dirt on the elbow, turn in place three times and utter the mantra “This elbow’s hurtin’ alright…hurtin’ the other team!” before returning to the field immediately.  In other words, look for Palmer’s arm to fall off next week, ending his career.

I’ve heard it in numerous different hypothetical Mets 2009 rotations. Some of them have the Mets not resigning Pedro Martinez and Oliver Perez and replacing them with just one starter — CC Sabathia or Derek Lowe or AJ Burnett or whoever.

Ultimately, all the theories have one starter replacing two starters, which puts the name Jonathan Neise in the No. 5 slot.

I would love to think baseball is like MLB 2k8 or Baseball Mogul where I could just plug in Neise and simulate a season to see how he turns out. But it just isn’t like that, and I worry that Neise is not ready. After all, he had very limited time at Triple-A. He had three starts in the big leagues this year — two bad and one good but also the second game of a doubleheader against the Atlanta Braves.

It would not surprise me in the least if Neise is not with the Mets to start 2009. I would suspect it would take an electric spring training in addition to a wide-open vacancy in the starting rotation to put Neise with the team. I think they are inclined to both give him more seasoning and filling the vacancies through the offseason.

In the unlikelihood that the Mets actually go with Neise already in the No. 5 slot in 2009, I would fear a scenario like what Mike Pelfrey endured in 2007, where he is just met with struggling and it takes a long time for him to get over it. It’s hard for a young starter to just “learn” in the big leagues, especially with a fanbase as obsessed as the 2009 Mets fanbase will be.

When it comes to playoff rooting, there’s always two schools of thought: either you root for a team within your division (or league) or you root against said teams because of the bitter rivalries from the season.

I am in the latter group. This might sound sacreligious, but I would never describe myself as a “National League fan” or an “NL East fan.” Sure I love National League baseball. I think it’s more interesting and requires more strategy. And uh, I’m a fan of the New York Mets in the NL East. But I’m not blindly a fan of all the teams in the division and/or league.

In fact, when I think about it, I usually find myself completely against those teams. When the playoffs started, I identified the Tampa Bay Rays as the team I’d root for. I also decided I wouldn’t really care if the Boston Red Sox or the Los Angeles Angels won either. Those three teams are AL teams.

When glancing over the NL teams, I really didn’t care for any of them. I decided to hope the Los Angeles Dodgers won the league because they were the lesser of the four evils. And it would stick it to the New York Yankees, which is funny.

But out of all eight teams, I despise the Philadelphia Phillies and prayed they would be quickly eliminated, hopefully in a three-game sweep at the hands of the Milwaukee Brewers. Yes, the Brewers took the last playoff spot. They celebrated on the last day of the season at the expense of the Mets. But to be honest, the Phillies and Marlins left more of a bad taste in my mouth on the last weekend than the Brewers. The Brewers were inconsequential. They contributed friendly fire and accidentally shot us down on the way to glory. I don’t really hold anything against them. So I was fervently rooting for Bud Selig’s boys against the Phillies.

Of course, they failed, which honestly makes me more bitter about the Mets not making it. I felt the same way in 2007. When the team that claimed your playoff spot just dies in the first round, it’s like they wasted it. (I realize these are contradictory ideas, but it being the Phillies dying in 2007 made me feel better. The Brewers just makes me resentful of them.)

So now I root for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and right now it looks like they are going to fail as well. I don’t know if I can take a Philadelphia Phillies World Series, especially coming off a Super Bowl that was absolutely hellish for a Jets fan (New England Patriots vs New York Giants. There’s not a worse possible matchup for a Jets fan to endure.)

So please, Dodgers. Please Red Sox. Please Rays. I cannot take the Phillies really being “the team to beat,” not just for the NL East but for all of Major League Baseball.

Brett Myers (Phillies Pitcher) was 3-3 today, with 3 RBIs and 2 runs scored.  He also had a hit and a walk in his NLDS debut. 

Somebody trade for this guy and teach him how to play second base, please.

Yesterday the Mariners met with the Mets’s VP of Player Relations, Tony Bernazard. Bernazard took a big hit from the media amidst the Willie firing. Of course, as the firing began to look like a good move, his potential involvement in the end of the Willie Randolph era became much less newsworthy.

In a report for Newsday just after the Randolph firing, Ken Davidoff wrote:

“Take this for what it’s worth, but Wednesday, I received two phone calls from industry contacts – the first, a longtime friend of many Hispanic players, and the second, a scout from an American League team. Both, unsolicited, brought up Bernazard, both professed to not know him and both offered the same sentiment: ‘I hear he’s a really bad guy.’”…Early Tuesday morning, when the hatchet fell on Randolph and the two coaches, Bernazard could be seen in the team hotel, giddy as a schoolgirl with a new dress.”

There were many stories like this. He spent too much time in the clubhouse. He gave the players confidential evaluations of Randolph. Maybe this was all true or maybe he was just a former employee of the Player’s Association and the Director of Player Relations doing his job so I have had trouble buying that he stepped over the line. Nonetheless, I never trusted him. But whatever he was doing it apparently worked. He knows his future as a GM is not with the Mets and teams are interested in the controversial VP of Player Relations.

Others competing for the Mariners job:

Kim Ng, Assistant GM for the Dodgers: You may remember her from the 2003 Winter Meetings when Bill Singer, then a special assistant to Mets GM Jim Duquette, asked her why she was there, about her heritage, and eventually mocked her in fake Chinese. If you’ll believe it Bill Singer, who was fired by the Mets shortly after the incident, as of this summer was working for the Nationals as the Coordinator of Pacific Rim Operations. You just can’t make that stuff up.

Tony Lavaca, Assistant GM for the Blue Jays

Jerry DiPoto, Director of Player Personnel for the Diamondbacks: You may remember Jerry from his 2 year stint with the Mets as a relief pitcher in 1995 and 1996. He pitched 115 games for the Mets with an ERA of 3.98.

Peter Woodford, Assistant GM for the Diamondbacks

So the Seattle Mariners search for a GM has a little Mets flare to it. It would be really nice to have the first woman become a GM but it would be nice to not have to deal with the drama of Tony Bernazard. Even if he wasn’t the meddler he was made out to be, he was at times a distraction. All five candidates have paid their dues so it should be interesting to see how Bernazard stacks up next to the rest of the field.

For a Mets fan, this time of year always brings us to a fork in the baseball road:  Go after the exciting, “win now” free agents (I’m looking at you, ManRam) or sign some other team’s boring leftovers and hope they become a steady presence in our ball club (Well hello there, John Maine).

Although I must admit it’s very tempting to just throw money at “proven” players and slowly morph ourselves into the Yankees, I’ve come to realize that in more cases than not, winning teams in the past few years have had a nice blend of veterans, homegrown talent and overachieving youngsters.  This trend becomes even more evident in the bullpen, which was our obvious weakness all year long.  Let’s take a look at what two teams playing the LCS have done with their bullpen:

Tampa Bay Rays:

Veteran:             Troy Percival

Homegrown:     David Price

Overachiever:    Grant Balfour

Los Angeles Dodgers:

Veteran:             Hong-Chih Kuo

Homegrown:     Jonathan Broxton

Overachiever:    Joe Beimel

Much of baseball, specially pitching, SPECIALLY bullpen pitching, is a bit of a crapshoot.  Having said that, I hope Mr. Minaya takes this blend into consideration and doesn’t blow it all on one proven veteran, as this is a team that has many holes to fill.

I remember listening to WFAN in August of 2003 and hearing then-General Manager Jim Duquette promise Mets nation that Jason Phillips was untouchable. At the time he was getting his first long look in the big leagues (albeit at age 26) and he looked like a complete hitter. He drove the ball to all fields and was a solid .300 hitter with some pop (and speed that makes Ramon Castro look like Jose Reyes but that’s another story). A disappointing year later he was traded for the great Kaz Ishii.

While he is much younger than Phillips’ 26, could Daniel Murphy be a similar story? I personally don’t think so but right now Murphy is without a position and has only 131 at bats under his belt and has decent trade value. He was exposed a little at the end of the year and maybe we could get some reliable bullpen arms for him.

I guess the question is:

Is Daniel Murphy the next Jason Phillips or is he the lethal combination of Wade Boggs and Robin Ventura that would fit nicely in the number two hole between Reyes and Wright for years to come? He’ll likely be somewhere in between but these are the things Omar must work hard at this off-season. It’s not easy to evaluate the upside of guys like Nick Evans and Daniel Murphy. I personally hope that Omar finds out that Daniel Murphy is the 2B of the future.

Watching Derek Lowe tonight and throughout the year, it has become clear that he is exactly the kind of pitcher the Mets need to go after in the offseason. While he struggled in the 6th inning tonight, he has showed me enough to make me realize I would rather have Scott Boras fleece us for Lowe than fleece us for Perez.

Obviously the bullpen is a priority but that is a much more complicated topic that I intend to get to another time with Schoenweis, Heilman, Feliciano, Joe Smith and Duaner Sanchez ALL under contract. The bullpen needs a makeover and it will involve trades, hopefully a signing and finding the right pieces (Kunz, Parnell and Co.).

Our lineup is also in a holding pattern. Before looking at Orlando Hudson, any potential Leftfielder, or the peculiar Ryan Church situation, I would like to see how the Arizona Fall League plays out. If Daniel Murphy proves to be a competent second basemen, then he is a very good hitting second basemen that would allow us to adjust accordingly with respect to the outfield.

Starting pitching is one aspect of the team that could be discussed now. Right now Johan Santana, John Maine and Mike Pelfrey are under contract. Here’s what is going down:

1. Maine: Arbitration eligible and coming off surgery (of what was reported as the biggest bone spur Maine’s doctor has ever seen). He’ll want to strike a deal in arbitration and the Mets would be wise to extend him into his thirties at a “I just had surgery and haven’t had a payday in my entire career” discount? Nonetheless, he’ll be a Met next year and should be healthy by Spring Training.

2. Oliver Perez: Let him go. I’ve enjoyed watching him when has his electric stuff but I do not expect Boras to give the Mets a discount for saving his career. Offer him 4 years and 50 million and if Boras tries to negotiate let him go. Let’s see how Boras does in the open market. Unfortunately, I think he will do well with a 27 year old lefty with great stuff. We know better than to give him ace money.

3. Pedro Martinez: If he wants to get paid for what he is then I am fine with having him back. If he wants anything more than 3-5 million a year then we probably should let him go. Even if we do sign him, he probably won’t pitch the whole season but we owe it to him for making the Mets respectable again. I would guess he won’t be back but the Mets definitely owe it to him to make a modest (though low) offer.

4. Derek Lowe. Sign him. He is the Anti-Oliver Perez. He is solid. He’ll bring some big game experience and could be a rock in our rocky rotation. Johan is Johan. Pelfrey is great but still not the kind of sure thing we need. Maine is not a sure thing. Derek Lowe is a sure thing.

He is 36 but has not lost a step. I believe he would be a very safe 36 year old free agent signee. He has shown no signs of dead arm like Pedro did pre-4 year contract. I would give him at least 3 years and 36 million. This will probably turn into a bigger contract though if Lowe continues to pitch well in the playoffs. Maybe he has a knack for winning world series’ in contract years (one year contract?). Boras will get Lowe a big contract but it won’t be as big as Olivers because of age. With Maine, Pelfrey, Niese(hopefully) and Johan (still under 30), we can afford an experienced, reliable starter (Pedro is not reliable).

5. Jon Niese. If we pick up Lowe, we have him, Johan, Maine and Pelfrey. Those are four pretty reliable starters. If we give Niese a safety net of maybe Pedro and bunch of Claudio Vargas type starters, then this could work. I’d like to see him get a full year under his belt. He struggled a little bit but he has some serious potential with that curve (hold back your Zito comparisons).

Rotation:

L Johan Santana
R Derek Lowe
R John Maine
R Mike Pelfrey
L Jon Niese
R Pedro Martinez?

Now, i don’t run the Mets, and many might say it’s a good thing that I don’t run the Mets. My opinion is that it’s not our money, and we the Wilpons should spend their money to improve this team. Like our colleague Gary Grund, I am all for homegrown guys. If Daniel Murphy can prove he can play 2nd base this winter that’d be terrific, but if not I’d entertain signing the “O-Dog”. We need help at SP, LF, and in the bullpen, so here is my wish list for 2009

To-Do List:

• Sign CC Sabathia to a 6 year 130m contract: Call me crazy, but I’d love to see a Santana-Sabathia two headed monster at the top of the rotation. Giving us Sabathia, Santana, Maine, and Pelfrey for the next five years would be awesome, and give us a chance to win which is all I ask for year in and out.
• Sign Manny Ramirez to a 4 year 60m contract: Yeah, Manny is out of his mind if he thinks he is going to get 5 yrs 100m at the age of 37. I will take my chances with Manny for the next 4 years, as he showed he is still one of the top players in the league while hitting .400 in two months with the Dodgers.
• Sign Relievers Will Ohman Damaso Marte and Dan Wheeler to 3 yr 12m contracts: The stats speak for themselves, these are quality relievers who can actually get guys out. Sign them up for my team!
• Sign RP Guillermo Mota: I kid, I kid.
• Sign 1B/PH Daryle Ward to a 2 yr 8m contract: Ward would give us the power bat off the bench we sorely needed this year.

Things Not To Do:

• Sign Francisco Rodriguez: Please, if we give this guy 80m to pitch one inning I will be livid. If anyone saw KRod pitch this year, he didn’t have his “lights out” stuff. KRod’s fastball topped out at 93 mph for the most part, and his slider flattened out after the first half of the year. He had guys on almost every inning, and every game was a tightrope. I think we saw enough of that this year. Pass.
• Resign Oliver Perez: Please, I know Perez was unhittable from late June to early August, but his last six starts were not good, as he posted an ERA over five. This is not someone I want to shell out 75m for. Pass.

There it is, ladies and gents. Now take it in, and write your opinions in the comments section.

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