Turning Heel

Last night’s loss was too much to take, so time to BASH THE FUCK out of the Mets.

Players:

1) Dave Wright – Dave, I’m glad you are the face of the franchise and will put up .300/30/100 easy, but can you not include 200 fucking strikeouts?  This is getting ridiculous

2) Jose Reyes – Jose Jose Jose.  Take off the fucking doo-rag and get a hit with RISP and 2 outs.   Every time I see you in that position, all I can think is Willie Mays Hayes in Major League II.    Stop trying to be a hero,  just get a fucking run in.

3) Ollie Perez – Dude, can you not get so butt hurt every time a call doesn’t go your way?  A runner gets on that should be out, and next thing you know you’ve given up 3 runs.  There’s tons of pitchers who have ‘great stuff’ but few have heart, fewer have balls and the rare pitcher has both.    However, we just signed you for $12 mm./yr. so time for the testes to drop buddy.

Management:

1) Wilpons – HOW ARE YOU TOO FUCKING CHEAP TO SIGN MANNY?   Ask any Mets fan and the #1 problem is that we shrivel like a dick in a cold pool when it’s late and close.  Manny would solve that, period.  We would have made up for his salary by the additional revenues from making the playoffs. 

2) Omar Minaya – I could write a book on this one, but long story short.  How could you not just give Derek Lowe (a proven winner) his money, and settle for Ollie Perez (a proven nutcase)?   How could you give Alex Cora $2 mm./yr. when Orlando Hudson signs for $4 mm./yr.?  How could you forget that we may need a catcher this year?    I mean you know nice job and everything signing the top free agents in the market (Pedro, Beltran) when you were the highest bidder, but a good GM builds a TEAM.    And for the record, while our bullpen may be sick now that doesn’t mean shit if we have no rotation.  

3) Jerry Manuel – Listen, I think the gangster is a great motivator and coach, which is why he was, and hopefully will be in the future, a great bench coach.  Unfortunately, while I’m not suggesting he needs to be Tony LaRussa tactically, one of the reasons he was run out of Chi-town was his lack of tactical skills.  It’s showing now.

Fans:

1) Any Mets fan who thinks they’ll win the World Series – Just shut the fuck up.  Get your head out of your ass. 

2) Any Mets fan who is like ‘blah blah blah we’re better than the Yankees.”  – Dickhead, we are in the National League.  I’m glad you and your moron Yankee fan friends want to play who’s is bigger, but our team sucks and probably won’t win the divison.   This is what you should be concerned about, period.

3) Matt Cerrone  -  Just to make it clear, I check Metsblog.com daily and have a lot of respect for the work you and the rest of your staff have done.    But can you have a fucking opinion for once?   Every post I have ever seen on that site is ‘while I can see how the Mets should have (insert smart move), I also see why Omar would have (insert idiotic move here).’ and so on.    Pick a side and stick to it, I know you don’t want to offend anyone but sometimes that’s how you earn respect.   It’s one thing when it is a tough decision, but when the Mets do something that is stupider than all hell, you don’t have to try to justify it every single time.  I know you got that SNY money coming in, but your readers aren’t stupid.  The straddling the fence shit is pissing me off more and more every day.  

It’s going to be a long season.

Jerry Manuel announced today that Daniel Murphy will be in the 2 hole, regardless of whether there is a left or right handed pitcher on the mound.   Thank god.   I know Castillo has come into camp in great shape and all that bullshit, but let’s be serious.  Even if he has a great season, gets on base at a .375 clip and plays great defense up the middle, he has no business batting near the top of the order (although leadoff would not be a horrible idea).   The dude has no power, period.   All of his Slappy McSingles are just going to move Reyes over, which is fine and all, but the one thing I feel the Mets lacked the most last year were big innings, especially at the start of the game.  

While Murphy is by no means a power hitter, he should probably drive ~15 home runs, but that’s not the point – he is a pure doubles hitter.   Reyes has the reputation of being the most exciting player in baseball – there are few things more exciting than seeing the guy fly around the bases and scoring from first on a gapper to the outfield.   Unfortunately for the 2008 Mets, Castillo’s gappers tended to be in the infield.   While there is always something to say about ‘productive outs,’ I think there are fewer things more productive than a huge inning.   I haven’t looked at the staaaaaaaats, so I might be wrong, but I feel the Mets would always have these 1 or 2 run innings when it seemed that they really should have plated a few more than that.   As horrible as our bullpen was last year, I can’t see them blowing so many games if we had come into the later innings with a more comfortable lead. 

On the flip side, Castillo is a somewhat ideal player to have in the 8 hole.   As the Mets’ lineup is lefty heavy as-is, a switch hitter at the bottom will help break things up in that regard.   Furthermore, being a patient hitter in front of a pitcher won’t hurt, as he will take a lot of crappy pitches and probably walk a lot.    At the least, he will clear the pitcher spot a lot with 2 outs, and at best will be bunted over to give Reyes to knock in some RBIs, as Castillo still has decent speed and can get around the bases OK.   

It’s a good start, but I don’t think we should stop there.  Without going into detail, The Book explains that LaRussa is right, and the pitcher is best suited to the 8 spot, as it would gain an average of 1.9 runs for a typical NL team.   While 0.012 runs per game may not seem like a lot, the more you optimize your team, the more things add up.   The Hardball Times has a good article about batting the pitcher 7th/8th, but with the current Mets team, 8th would be ideal.   After the first time through the lineup, it would open the Mets up to the ‘two leadoff hitters’ idea, and could really make for some interesting baseball.

No complaints though, I have full faith in That Gangster Jerry M.  Lets go Mets!

I’m not going into staaaats or anything, but I do need to have my predictions timestamped somewhere, so that after the season I can look at them and either claim to know a lot about baseball, or have been ripped off.

AL EAST:
1. Yankees      (96-66)
2. Rays            (94-68)
3. Red Sox       (93-69)
4. Orioles         (76-86)
5. Blue Jays     (70-92)

AL CENTRAL:
1. Indians        (89-73)
2. Tigers          (83-79)
3. Twins           (79-83)
4. Royals         (75-87)
5. White Sox   (71-91)

AL WEST:
1. A’s              (87-75)
2. Angels        (85-77)
3. Rangers     (76-86)
4. Mariners     (66-96)

NL EAST:
1. Mets          (91-71)
2. Phillies       (89-73)
3. Braves       (82-80)
4. Marlins       (75-87)
5. Nationals   (65-97)

NL CENTRAL:
1. Cubs         (93-69)
2. Brewers    (86-76)
3. Reds         (85-77)
4. Cardinals  (78-84)
5. Pirates      (76-86)
6. Astros       (68-94)

NL WEST:
1. Dodgers    (86-76)
2. Rockies     (85-77)
3. Giants       (83-79)
4. D’Backs     (78-84)
5. Padres      (70-92)

AL Playoffs:
Yankees over A’s, 3 – 1
Rays over Indians, 3 – 2

Rays over Yankees, 4 – 3

NL Playoffs:
Cubs over Phillies, 3 – 2
Mets over Dodgers, 3 – 1

Mets over Cubs, 4 – 2

World Series:
Rays over Mets, 4 – 2

Obviously the fan in me wants to say Mets win 110 games and sweep through the playoffs and win the world series, but that’s not realistic.   They should be pretty good this year, and while the bottom of the order and rotation could be a potential disaster, I think this is the year they don’t collapse at the end, and if they actually do make the playoffs, I see them getting to the World Series.  I can’t, right now at least, say in good faith that I could realistically see them beating the Rays in the end, but you never know.

The Rays may have struggles in the regular season, but they are exactly the type of team that can beat the Yankees in the playoffs.   However, while I think the Yankees will win the division by a few games, there will be a real dogfight for the AL Wild Card between the Sox and Rays.   Since I don’t like the Sox, I’m going with Tampa but it could go either way.  If the Red Sox do win out, I think the Yankees beat them in the playoffs and probably win the World Series.   Tampa is one of the most well rounded teams I have ever seen and would outgrind the Yankees in a long series, in my opinion.

The Reds will be better, and the Astros much worse, than people seem to think.   Both the Orioles and Rangers have a ton of good prospects coming up and should be division contenders within 2 – 3 years, possibly sooner.   The Mariners will be pretty horrible, and the Padres will be pretty shitty as well.   I’m not really seeing any team as a 100+ win or loss team, but you never know.    The predictions that I feel will look the stupidest at the end are the Cubs and Nationals.   Cubs could totally fall apart mid season, especially considering Bradley, Harden and some others are pretty damn injury-prone.   Nationals could surprise and be half-way decent, in no small part thanks to:

Because he’s made of wood!

Since there has been a ton of discussion on whether the Mets should sign Manny Ramirez in the last few weeks, I figured I should break it down quick.

As a pure stupid idiot, bleeding blue and orange, complete moron Mets fan I think the Mets HAVE to sign Manny.  He is one of the best right-handed hitters in the history of the game and one of the few players who has the ability to change an entire lineup.   Some people criticize him on his personality, and he can sure be an asshole, but honestly that’s something the Mets could use.

For better or worse, most of the Mets’ star players are not too outgoing when it comes to the press – they’ll answer a few questions, but not a single person in the dugout wants to be the center of attention, let alone take some heat after a bad loss.  Whatever behind the scenes shit happened in Boston was probably a two-way street, and the risk it could totally blow up exists, but it’s a risk the Mets HAVE to take.

If they leave the lineup the way it is going into the regular season, it’s going to be lefty-heavy and weak in general.   AKA the same fucking lineup as last year AKA another 88 win team AKA your New York Mets, who will string you along till the very last weekend of the year just to break your heart like every other fucking year.    Or you open the checkbook, sign Manny and get in the playoffs and who knows who else.    From a purely baseball perspective, the decision seems clear as night and day.   However, good ol’ Jeff Wilpon had to say this the other day to Bloomberg:

“I know the perception out there again is that ownership said no,” Wilpon said yesterday at Citi Field, the Mets’ new ballpark. “I don’t have the opportunity to say no because Omar hasn’t brought it to me as an option. Omar and the baseball staff aren’t interested.”

I’m guessing that he is trying to be a SHREWD negotiator, as the idea that your GM hasn’t even brought the idea of the best available free agent to you as on option probably means you need a new GM.    There’s a good chance they are just trying to play it down to drive down the price, but it looks more and more like he is sincere.  If that’s the case, Mr.. Wilpon is your classic SHRODE.

That’s mostly emotion talking, but that’s what being a fan is all about and unfortunately for Mets fans, it’s usually disgust.   However, baseball is a business and the Wilpons are businessmen.   They received a lot of bad publicity when it turns out their investment firm, Sterling Equities, possibly lost hundreds of millions in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.   The key words to me though, are “investment firm.”    It takes money to make money, and Manny Ramirez is a good investment for the Mets. Here’s why:

Long story short, staaaaaaaats have been compiled that determines a player’s value added over your ‘replacement level player’ or your average shlub.    On the site Fangraphs, they have added them for every player so you don’t have to try to compile them yourself, it’s all there (and downloadable to Excel), and honestly that is fucking awesome.    There is a multi part series that explains all about “win values,” and Part Six correlates a dollar amount to each win over replacement level for a player.   With the economy the way it is, lets be conservative and assume we last year’s $4.5m/win doesn’t rise, although it probably will.    So now that we know how much a win is worth, we just have to figure out how many wins Manny will produce next year:

Over the last three years, Manny had a great year in 2008, a horrible season in 2007 and a decent one in 2006. Normalizing for the $4.5/m a win we’re using, he was worth $17.1m(3.8 wins) in 2006, $5.4m(1.2 wins) in 2007 and $28.4m(6.3 wins) in 2008. Assuming he will sign for $20m/year, if he can play either as good as last year or as bad as the year before it, its a pretty easy decision whether or not to sign him.

You could argue all day about how he’ll play, but if you average the three years together you get 3.75 wins per year.   As mentioned before, Manny adds value to a lineup, so we’ll round that up to an even 4 wins/year, which makes him worth $20m/year, exactly what the Mets could sign him for.    I assume if we signed him, we’d trade Murphy/Church and players received in return would make up for the value they would have provided otherwise.     But with the variety of risks(bullshit) that the Wilpons are worried about in regards to “Manny being Manny,” I guess you could see how they would justify not taking the risk in that it is a break-even investment, in theory.  But here’s the catch – this is no breakeven investment.

From this article on Portfolio.com, the Mets’ collapse in 2007 cost the team $3-5 million dollars, even if they only had two home games. If the Mets were to advance beyond the first round, having more home playoff games would earn the team “double-digit” millions.     Of course anything can happen, but its’ pretty clear to everyone that the Mets will be a high 80 wins team and probably just miss the playoffs again as they currently stand.   It’s also pretty clear that if the Mets do sign Manny, they get in.

Of course these are the Mets, so there’s always the possibility that everything will completely blow up.  However, when there’s a more than likely chance of earning potential “double-digit” millions on what is normally a breakeven investment, you go for it.   Simple as that.   So stop pissing off your fans and try to win a World Series already – cut the bullshit and sign the dude, maybe you’ll make back some of that Madoff Money, who knows.