I stuck around to watch the end of last night's painful, painful game, and spent the final innings growing angrier and angrier at Willie Randolph's inexplicable managerial decision in the 7th inning.

For those of you just tuning in, we started the night with a "short bench" due to the double-header - Pelfrey had been called up to pitch the second game, and Beltran was hurt but not on the DL. Paul LoDuca was injured running the bases in the 7th and left the game (El Duque pinch-ran). The pitcher's spot was due up in the lineup, but rather than bat Ramon Castro - who was going to have to come into the game in the top of the next inning to replace LoDuca - Willie went with Marlon Anderson. In so doing, Randolph ensured that we'd have no more batters on our bench, which forced him to send Tom Glavine to the plate in the bottom of the 9th.

Gary Cohen said that the only reason he could think of for this move was because Willie liked the pitching matchup better with Anderson versus Castro. But both Cohen and Mex agreed that, despite this reasoning, it was a pretty absurd move to make. Needless to say, I - and just about everyone in Mets fandom - seemed to concur as well, particularly when Glavine made out in the 9th.

Poll

Did Willie Randolph Make the Right Move Last Night?

0%

Yes

0 votes

4%

No

1 votes

95%

Hell, no!

21 votes

22 votes | Poll has closed

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Hallelujah! The MTA is finally making the obvious, smart move that fans have long clamored for:

All aboard the Mets express!

Fans can zip home on the No. 7 line starting Thursday after the Amazins take on the Cincinnati Reds. New York City Transit is beginning long lusted-after express service weeknights from Willets Point/Shea Stadium to Midtown.

...

And after much complaining from the oft-downtrodden Mets fans, MTA and New York City Transit listened. Express trains will arrive on the middle track every six minutes shortly after the game ends and will continue to run for about an hour.

Transit is also ramping up local service. More local and eight express trains will arrive every six minutes.

Transit officials expect that the increased service will shave off six minutes of both trains' service. A trip from Shea to Times Square will now take 25 minutes instead of 31, and riders heading to Queensboro Plaza will get there in 13 minutes, not 19.

Six minutes might not seem like a lot, but check this observation out:

Research has shown that consumers routinely perceive the wait to be far longer than it actually is.

"We have good clocks in our heads for roughly three minutes," said Paco Underhill, founder of Envirosell, a retail consulting firm.

"Once we get beyond that, time expands wildly," he said. "If somebody is there for 4.5 minutes and you ask them how long they waited, they will say 15 minutes."

The article in question was talking about supermarket checkout aisles, but I'm sure the findings apply to waits of all kinds. So six minutes is going to make a big difference. Just think about how much faster it feels to take the express out to the games rather than the local. I know I'm always happy to let a local or two pass by at Grand Central in order to get on an express.

Anyhow, with parking more difficult at Shea due to the construction of CitiField, the new service comes at a great time. And with the city focusing heavily on sustainability, getting more people to ride the subways is clearly a good move. Unfortunately, express service won't be added for weekend games (right now it doesn't exist in either direction), but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. Though who knows - maybe one day it will!

The New York Press recently launched its annual whinier-than-thou slugfest known as the "50 Most Loathesome New Yorkers". Mike Piazza is ranked all the way at #13, but the NY Press doesn't seem to have a good understanding of how baseball works:

Mike came to New York with such promise in 1998. He fulfilled most of that promise. He turned the Mets into a playoff winner in 1999 and led them into the World Series in 2000. Those were good years, and when the Mets went sour Mike Piazza tried to pull the team up. It didn't work.

But he tried and New York loved him for that. So much so that we were willing to play him into 2005. Hell, for his lousy 2005 year, New York gave him $16 million dollars. But even by 2003 it was clear that Piazza was a terrible catcher.

The joke in gay bars in New York was, what do a lot of gay men and Mike Piazza have in common? They both can't throw a man out going for second base. (At least he deflected the "gay rumors" with good humor and a Seinfeldian "Not that there's anything with that.")

Mike, we stuck by you anyway. New York always had your back. So how did you repay us? You ran away when the going got tough--not for the team, but for you. And Mike, that makes you a selfish baby. Now we're glad, glad, glad to see you go. We hope the door didn't hit you on the way out of Gotham. New York is bigger than any one athlete. We swallow them whole. So when we like you, behave or we will destroy you. Just ask Ed Whitson, Calvin Scharadi, Chuck Knobloch, Charles Smith, Neil O'Donnell and Tim Berra. We will eat you and your young. Piazza knew his contract would end in 2005. He could have gracefully retired. We in New York would have hailed him. Given him a job with a Minor League team or in the front office--and maybe one day he could manage the Mets.

But Mike's ego got the best of him. We even would have let him stay if he learned first base and signed as a part time player for the Mets as a back-up at catcher and first. But no, Mike will not accept aging gracefully. The American League--where he would be a natural as a designated hitter--passed on him and he fled to San Diego to be a "star" again. Mikey, your time has come and gone. You should have retired in 2005 and let us given you the big sendoff. But you are going south to a baseball wasteland and will disappear like Ed Whitson.

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You've probably already seen this bit of news:

Twins top pitching prospect Francisco Liriano was arrested by the Cape Coral Police Department early Thursday morning and charged with driving under the influence.

The 22-year-old pitcher was pulled over on Cape Coral Parkway around 1:58 a.m. ET after leaving a bar in Cape Coral, Fla. Liriano was issued three sobriety tests at the scene and failed all of them. He was given a breathalyzer test at the police precinct where his blood alcohol level registered at .133. The Florida legal limit is .08.

Despite this, according to MLB.com, team management is sticking with Liriano:

Twins general manager Terry Ryan, manager Ron Gardenhire, and Liriano met with the media on Friday morning to talk about the incident. Ryan said that Liriano's status on the team will not be affected and there are no plans to fine or suspend the pitcher, but rather to let the law take its course.

Poll

When will the Twins trade Kyle Lohse?

12%

June

8 votes

15%

July

10 votes

21%

Right at the trading deadline

14 votes

0%

April

0 votes

28%

Not this season, but eventually

18 votes

7%

May

5 votes

14%

Never

9 votes

64 votes | Poll has closed

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(moved from diaries. --Eric)

If you've been following the latest statistical research, the answer, as you might expect is "No", or at most, "Not really." The NYT has a good article today on the subject, vis-a-vis where David Wright should hit in the batting order:

Mark Pankin, a financial adviser based in Lincoln, Va., has developed one of the most advanced computer models of lineup behavior, a method that simulates all the interactions among hitters and their tendencies to hit doubles, draw walks and more.

Using last year's statistics, Pankin turned it loose on the Mets and a half-dozen plausible batting orders.

Whether Lo Duca, Wright or Beltran batted anywhere from second to sixth, each order scored at rates of 4.82, 4.83 or 4.84 runs a game -- which over a 162-game season would be a difference of merely three total runs.

"No matter how you look at it, switching hitters around only makes a difference in the second decimal place," Pankin said. "It basically doesn't matter." (Emphasis added.)

What's even more interesting is that Pankin uncovered something rather counter-intuitive about batting orders that does matter:

Strangely enough, Pankin found that the most efficient lineup (assuming Reyes led off, an inevitability) featured Lo Duca second, then Delgado, Wright, Cliff Floyd and then Beltran; the worst had Wright batting second and Beltran third. (Even allowing Beltran to improve from last year's disappointing New York debut did not change matters much.) The reason, it appears, comes in how managers gear their lineups toward first-inning potency, at the expense of later innings.

A Reyes-Wright-Delgado start did enjoy the best first inning -- but carried with it a 59.3 chance that the Nos. 4 or 5 hitters (Floyd and Beltran) led off the second inning, costing that frame more than the first inning had benefited. With Reyes-Lo Duca-Delgado-Wright-Floyd-Beltran, the best hitters (Delgado and Wright) usually came up with either runners on base in the first or led off the next.

"You weaken the first inning a bit, but you strengthen the second," Pankin said.

It appears as if Pankin is on to something. According to Stats LLC, over the past five seasons, more runs were scored in the first (1.16) than second (0.97) innings. But the average of those two (1.06) was still lower than any inning until the seventh -- when relievers start taking over -- suggesting that managers are indeed overplaying their first-inning hands. (Emphasis added.)

So it seems that a smart manager would actually try to balance his 1-2-3 with his 4-5-6. Which means we can be sure that Willie Randolph won't do that.

I'm sorry. I just hate bringing politics into baseball. But sometimes, you just get forced into it. We all know about Anna Benson's rantings, her monster ego, her snarling at Carlos Delgado's principled stance against the war in Iraq. But Tom Watson points us to some stuff Anna's puked out that makes her previous remarks on the record look positively tame in comparison:

I honestly have to tell you...I hate your fucking guts. Forget about how un-American you are, how politically retarded you are, or how fat you look while slobbering your political garbage all over everyone, mainly, I despise you for the fact that you make money off of influencing the young minds of America to be Bush-haters.

Anna, who makes even Michelle Malkin look brilliant by comparison, continues:

Continue reading this post »

Michael Lewis, whom everyone knows as the justly celebrated author of the seminal "Moneyball," is back with a new story in this week's NYT Magazine. Alright, I realize it's not about baseball, but I figured the piece would be of interest to Moneyball fans because it describes a college coach (Texas Tech's Mike Leach) who, like Billy Beane, has emphatically thrown out the rule book and started anew.

Does stuff like this sound familiar?

Schwartz had an N.F.L. coach's perspective on talent, and from his point of view, the players Leach was using to rack up points and yards were no talent at all. None of them had been identified by N.F.L. scouts or even college recruiters as first-rate material. Coming out of high school, most of them had only one or two offers from midrange schools. Sonny Cumbie hadn't even been offered a scholarship; he was just invited to show up for football practice at Texas Tech. Either the market for quarterbacks was screwy - that is, the schools with the recruiting edge, and N.F.L. scouts, were missing big talent - or (much more likely, in Schwartz's view) Leach was finding new and better ways to extract value from his players. "They weren't scoring all these touchdowns because they had the best players," Schwartz told me recently. "They were doing it because they were smarter. Leach had found a way to make it work."

Chad Bradford's ears are burning. Like Beane & baseball, Leach re-assessed what's actually valuable in a football game, and found otherwise ignored players who could give him precisely that value. More on the flip.

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Everyone always praises Leo Mazzone's alleged pitching genius to the skies - he's the baseball equivalent of Lee Strassberg, the longtime acting instructor whose best-known role was Hyman Roth in Godfather II. But how clever is he, really? From today's NYT:

For a guy who makes the postseason every year, Leo Mazzone can become a little annoyed watching the games. Mazzone, the Braves' renowned pitching coach, can handle the bloated time for commercials, the countless glove-tugs and pensive resin-bag bounces. But when it comes to all the times a relief pitcher trots in to face just one hitter before leaving for yet another, he, like many onlookers, gets a little fidgety.

"I think all that matchup stuff is overrated," said Mazzone, a plain-spoken West Virginian. "Just go ahead and pitch."

Contra Mazzone, however, the rest of the article goes on to make it clear that using one-batter pitchers has a big impact. In a thousand such at bats this year, hitters have only hit .170 and slugged .282. (In 2004, it was even better: .131/.209.) These kinds of numbers don't lie - and what's more, they even include the screwups who get yanked by Joe Torre after one disastrous at bat.

Pronouncements like these make me wonder about these supposed baseball gurus. Mazzone's remark sounds no different to me that Minaya's anti-intellectual remarks about on-base percentage. I suppose Mazzone is not making the ultimate decisions on when to use pitchers, but I'm sure Bobby Cox listens to him intently.

Mazzone has an unmatched track record - but who knows? Maybe it would be even better if he paid more attention to the stats.

In a column in tomorrow's NYT, Murray Chass makes the following claim:

With the Mets, a good performance seems to bring punishment, not reward. It must be a tough-love form of motivation.

He backs it up by offering the following evidence:

They waited far too long to yank Kazuhisa Ishii from the rotation, tolerating his wildness (48 walks in 89 1/3 innings, nearly 5 a game) and his hefty earned run average (5.04). They watched Aaron Heilman pitch a one-hitter in April and 10 days later allow two hits in seven innings, then they banished him to the bullpen. They saw Jae Seo give up one hit in seven innings and exiled him to the minors.

Do you think his assessment of Heilman and Seo is fair? If so, the treatment of Heilman, Seo and Trachsel after their impressive performances is either psychotic or idiotic. (And yes, I realize that Minaya might be playing some clever deep game by making Zambrano look more tradeable by keeping him in the rotation instead of Trachsel - but come on, Steve Phillips is no longer the general manager of any team in baseball, which means that there aren't any suckers big enough to fall for that ruse.)

Some trade rumors, according to Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

The wild-card standings make the Indians believe they can still contend, but their offensive woes might be too overwhelming. If they get decent offers for Kevin Millwood and Bob Wickman, both will go. The Tigers might ultimately believe it's necessary to move pitcher Jason Johnson and outfielder Rondell White. For the last-place Royals, it's always about dealing established players for prospects.

So, if the Indians trade Wickman, who would become their closer?

There have been a lot of diaries and front-page posts recently excoriating (rightly so, in my opinion) the management decisions of one Willie Randolph, dugout boss of the New York Metropolitans. (Check here, here,  and here for the recent crop.)

Anyhow, this is not a diary about WHETHER the Mets should fire Willie Randolph. We can argue about that till the cows come home, as they say. This is a diary, rather, with a simple question: If the Mets WERE to fire Willie, with whom might they replace him?

If they fire him right now, that would presumably limit their options to a current Mets coach or an ex-manager without a job at the moment. If they wait until the end of the season, that opens up many more possibilities. Anyhow, if you have any thoughts, let us know. Me, I've got no clue. Maybe Sandy Alomar, just because he's been around since forever (and was once, very, very briefly, a Met)?

I have been to some playoff games at Shea where the house was packed and the atmosphere was electric. I even saw a post-season game against the Giants that the Mets won in the bottom of the 13th inning. But last night's game was by far the most exciting I've ever witnessed in person, period.

Though the score was low throughout the game, neither starter seemed to have their "A" stuff - it felt like both Benson and Washburn were struggling at times. Add to that the hot, humid weather and the hour-plus rain delay, and it felt like a pretty sleepy game.

Carlos Beltran's superlative, home-run thieving catch in the 7th inning finally got the crowd pumped - and what a catch it was. I immediately turned to my girlfriend and said, "That's highlight reel material." More below the jump.

Continue reading this post »

And no, I'm not talking about his abysmal stats this season, or the fact that he looks about as comfortable at the plate as Rey Ordonez. Rather, our .250-hitting catcher had this to say yesterday:

Mike Piazza, who was not in the starting lineup, spent his free time getting a baseball autographed by the radio commentator Rush Limbaugh. "It was like meeting George Washington," Piazza said.

What an utterly idiotic thing to say. I'm not carping about personal politics - if you love Rush, more power to ya. But jeez, I've fucking met Al Franken, and I sure as hell wouldn't compare him to George Washington. More like driving over the George Washington Bridge, only a little funnier. Has Piazza gone nuts? Yeesh.

I confess I'm not a Rockies fan - just a fantasy baseball afficionado. I picked up Brad Hawpe a while ago - it looked like he has a little power, plus of course, he plays at Coors - but have kept him on my bench because he wasn't starting regularly.

It looks to me like he has been getting a lot more starts - seems that he's started all but two or three games in May. He's also put together a nice line for himself so far: 871 OPS, 20 RBI, 4 HR. He's also fairly young - he's not quite 26 yet.

So the question is: Is Clint Hurdle giving this young man the starting job? Is it worth putting him in my fantasy lineup? Or is this just a blip and is he likely to go back to missing two or three starts a week?

Thanks for any info!

I was reading an NYT profile of Miguel Tejada and this bit jumped out at me:

Although Tejada has a six-year contract worth $72 million, he still displays the verve of the 17-year-old who was signed for $2,000 in the Dominican Republic in 1993 by the Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, who was working as a scout for the Athletics. Tejada said the Mets saw him, too, but declined to offer him employment.  (Emphasis added.)

Wow. Alright, alright, I can anticipate the responses: Who knows what some 17-year-old kid in the DR is gonna do, scouts sign millions of players who turn out to do nothing, etc. etc. But just pause for a moment and think what it would be like to have had Miguel Tejada in our organization. Wow.

Good news, people:

On the 63rd day of a dispute that had kept almost a third of the local television market from watching most Mets games this season, the MSG Network and Fox Sports New York were restored to Time Warner Cable's systems in time for last night's game against the Cubs. (The game was delayed by rain.)

The agreement between Time Warner and Cablevision will last until 2008. No other details were announced, and officials from each side declined to discuss the settlement.

Executives for Time Warner and Cablevision, which owns MSG and FSNY, met through the day in the Manhattan office of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

Spitzer humbly takes no credit for the settlement ("I gave them some coffee and cookies, and maybe that helped"), but I think his involvement is always an incentive to get a deal done. (He did play a key role in ending the YES Network cable dispute a few years ago.) Perhaps he waited a bit longer than some of us might have liked, but I trust his judgment for choosing the right time to get involved.

Anyhow, the bottom line is, we've got our Mets back on TV. Now, let's just win a few games!

As our host has pointed out, closer Danys Baez is widely believed to be on the trading block.

Tampa Bay Online:

Available: Closer, Slightly Used

What need have the Devil Rays for an established closer? And is there a greater need among so many potential contenders?

These are two issues the Rays need to be exploring, because Danys Baez might never have more trade value than he does right now.

Baez, who was 30- for-33 in save opportunities in 2004, entered the weekend with one save in two opportunities this year. Two save chances in a month isn't enough to warrant a relatively steady closer such as Baez.

He is the Rays' second-highest- paid player ($3.75 million), but would be a great bargain for bullpen-thin teams such as the Giants, Cubs, Rangers, Braves and (in the wake of Jason Isringhausen's injury) the Cardinals.

Deals aren't normally made this early in the season, as teams try to settle problems by tinkering within the organization. And the Tigers, with established closers Troy Percival and Ugueth Urbina, might have a greater sense of urgency to move a reliever and, theoretically, would ask for less than the Rays.

But Tampa Bay GM Chuck LaMar, who made baseball's best trade-deadline deal last year in acquiring Scott Kazmir for Victor Zambrano, ought to be listening now if anyone calls about Baez. By July, it might already be too late.

Continue reading this post »

I noticed that Bob Wickman's numbers don't look too pretty in the early going: 0-1 with a 6.48 ERA and 2 blown saves so far. Granted, four of those earnies came in one awful appearance (his first of the season), but this isn't what I'd call a stellar record so far. Plus his ERA the last two seasons he's pitched (he missed all of 2003) has been well over 4.

David Riske, meanwhile, has yet to give up a single earned run in 11.1 innings so far. When given a chance to save games in recent years, he's done quite well, and his stats in the past few years have been a lot better than Wickman's. (I guess being 29 years old instead of Wickman's 36 is a big help, too.)

Anyhow, do you think there's any chance that Riske could replace Wickman as the Tribe's closer, especially if Wickman falters soon? Also, a lot of clubs are looking for bullpen help, especially for closers. Might either Wickman or Riske get exported to another team, especially if the Indians continue to play poorly?

This is not a diary on how to reach Interstate 95. It is, however, a discussion of the roadmap to the MLB playoffs. It's a path we're all hoping the Mets will take this season, so I wanted to know, how far do they have to go?

The conventional wisdom says you need to win 90 games to make the playoffs. As is often the case, the CW is wrong - or at least, irrelevant. As John Allen Paulos would explain, it'd be like McDonald's saying, "Over 40 served!" True, but not helpful.

I took a look at all ten completed seasons since major league baseball moved to the wild-card format - ie, from 1995 to 2004. The 1995 season was slightly shortened, to 144 games, so for the purposes of simplicity, I extrapolated those numbers out to a 162 game season. (It turns out that my conclusions are almost identical even if you only look at the 1996 and onward data.) I left out 1994  because, of course, there were no playoffs and no team had played more than 115 games, so I didn't feel comfortable extrapolating. These stats, by the way, do include one-game tie-breaker playoffs.

Anyhow, here's what I found out. The average (mean) number of wins of the 80 playoff teams I looked at was 95. It turns out that the median number was also 95. This works out to an average record of 95-67, or a 58.88 winning percentage, for playoff-bound teams.

Only one team has ever won 95 or more games during this time-frame and not made the playoffs: the 1999 Cincinatti Reds, who 96-67 and missed the post-season because they lost to the Mets in a one-game playoff.

But, to drive a stake into the heart of the CW, a number of teams have won over 90 games but missed the playoffs, all in this millennium: Cleveland with 90 wins in 2000; San Fran with 90 in 2001; the Dodgers with 92 and both Boston and Seattle with 93 in 2002; Seattle again with 93 in 2003; and both Oakland and San Fran with 91 in 2004.

Counting Cincy in 1999, that's a total of nine 90-win teams who went home in October, or an average of almost one per season. Really, though, it's been closer to 2 per season for the past five years. Ouch.

Obviously, a wild season could change shift the numbers a bit, which is why I don't want to use 94 wins (which covers every team but Cincy) or 97 wins (which covers all teams) as the benchmark - I'll stick with 95.

So if you need 95 wins to comfortably make the playoffs, as I said, that requires a 59% winning percentage. The Mets are now 0-3. This means the percentage of their remaining games they now have to win to reach 95 has, believe it or not, ticked a full point higher: They have to win 60% from here on out.

Before I wrap up, let me acknowledge that this is all highly speculative. A full 37 teams have reached the playoffs with fewer than 95 wins, including 13 of 20 wildcards. Thirteen teams (including 3 wildcards) have made it with fewer than 90 wins, with the low-water mark set by Houston in 1997 with just 84 wins. Obviously, the Mets - or any other team - could always get lucky.

But another way of looking at the CW is this: 76 teams have won 90 or more games since 1995. Nine of those teams failed to make the playoffs. That means 12% of 90-win teams get screwed. I don't love those odds. But even if you are content to root for the Mets to hit 90 wins, they've still knocked themselves a percentage point into the hole, from 55.6% to 56.6%.

As a wise man once said, it gets late early around here.

From today's New York Times:

The New York Mets, desperate to bolster their untested and underperforming bullpen corps, signed right-hander Sidd Finch, Jr., son of the legendary one-time Mets prospect Sidd Finch, Sr.

Like his father, Finch pitches with one foot bare and the other in a workboot. His fastball, though, edges his dad's by a hair, clocking in at 169 miles per hour. Despite his youth, lack of professional experience at any level, and the fact that no one has ever heard of him, General Manager Omar Minaya said he expects Finch to be able to contribute immediately.

However, one official in the Mets organization, on condition of anonymity, expressed some doubts: "The kid's spent his formative years learning how to pitch in Tibet. I'm not sure he's ready for the pressures of New York, especially not if he's going to carry that damn French horn around all the time."

While I'm eager for any help the Mets can get, color me skeptical.

Sorry for three diaries in a row, but this seems like important news, given the flurry of discussion around here lately about the Mets' rotation. Looks like help might be on the way for Los Mets:

The Mets, in need of a fifth starter after losing Steve Trachsel to a back injury for at least three months, are in serious negotiations with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the left-hander Kazuhisa Ishii, according to a person close to the talks.

The Mets would trade the backup catcher Jason Phillips for Ishii, the person said. Phillips is hitting a team-leading .550 this spring (11 for 20), with a home run, four doubles and nine runs batted in. He slumped badly last season, after a solid first season with the Mets.

The Dodgers are badly in need of a starting catcher after trading Paul Lo Duca last season.

Ishii, 13-8 with a 4.71 earned run average last season, pitched 172 innings and started 31 games. But he has averaged nearly 102 walks in his three seasons with the Dodgers.

So, two questions: First, who would the Mets' backup catcher be if they trade Phillips? And second, can one of you stat-heads do one of those neat workups on Ishii's past numbers & current projections?

Our gracious host Eric favorably discusses a story about Willy Randolph encouraging his players to be more aggressive on the basepaths. Eric's main beef is that Randolph picked out a bad base-stealing role model - Pete Rose.

My complaint is different: The Mets simply do not need to steal more bases, nor attempt to steal more bases.

Before I go any further, let me say that I'm a big Moneyball/Billy Beane devotee. If I recall correctly, Beane calculated that you need to steal at a 75% success rate in order for SBs to have a positive impact.

In 2004, the Mets did keep their heads above water on this front. They stole 107 bases (fourth-most in the NL, and materially behind only one team, the Brewers, who had 138) and got caught 23 times, giving them an MLB-best success rate of 82% (107/130).

Only three other teams in the NL actually were above the 75% mark: Cincy, Milwaukee & Philly. Houston was a shade under 75%, and Washington nee Montreal was a little over 74%. Other teams were materially below this mark. The AL was even bleaker, with only two teams, the Angels & Devil Rays, above 75% (and both just barely) - though they did lead their league in total steals (1st & 2nd respectively).

If Beane is right - and I personally have seen no statistical analysis which contradicts him on this point - then the Mets are in good shape if they keep up their past performance. But Randolph should not be concerned about stealing more bases. His guys already steal plenty, and they have a high success rate.

The addition of Beltran means the Mets will automatically get more steals this year - and he's been a brilliant thief (89% success rate) throughout his career. The Mets' four main basestealers from last year (Matsui, Reyes, Floyd and Cameron) will all be back in full-time roles this year, as will David Wright (who stole 6 in half a season in 2004).

So the Mets need to just keep doing what they've been doing. No modifications on this front & we'll be just fine.

Newsday (along with other NY papers) has a story today (Sunday) describing Carlos Delgado's complaints about how the Mets courted him:

Carlos Delgado accused the Mets of playing the ethnic card in their failed negotiations to land him before he signed with the Marlins, according to a story in Friday's editions of the Toronto Star.

The Hispanic link that general manager Omar Minaya said helped him sign Pedro Martinez and Carlos Beltran apparently had the opposite effect with Delgado, who did not appreciate the Mets' tactics. "At the beginning, that was their approach," Delgado told the Star. "It doesn't matter if you're Latin, American or Italian; if we're going to talk business, talk business. I'm not doing you any favors, you're not doing me any favors because we're speaking in Spanish. I'm a man first. I am nobody to tell anybody how to approach me. You do what you have to do, then I decide what I want to do."

Delgado was also unhappy that (at least in his eyes) he was an afterthought for the Mets when they visited Puerto Rico to talk to Carlos Beltran.

Now, two alternate stories you can tell about the wooing of Carlos Delgado:

1) Delgado is complaining for the sake of complaining. He's a rich and successful man who got what he wanted, so why is he bothering to whine? The corollary to this point of view - call it the "pampered star/sour grapes" position - says that you wouldn't want a malcontent like this on your team anyhow. (The mitigating factor here is that Delgado's agent seems to have pushed this story at least somewhat against his client's wishes.)

OR

2) The main alternative view is that this is yet another example of the "same old Mets" pursuing negotiations with a free-agent superstar and demonstrating, once again, club management's tin ear and lead feet. Call this the "The Ghost of A-Rod Rides Again" viewpoint. Of course, the people in charge of the Mets now are a different gang than the crew which let Alex Rodriguez slip away. But that doesn't mean they aren't culpable for not handling this tete-a-tete more carefully.

Carlos Delgado is obviously no Vince Coleman, so I'm not sure how much I believe the "sour grapes" story. For all his complaining now, I'd still much rather have him on our team than not.

At the same time, I think Minaya should have been a little more savvy and realized that his "Hispanic connection" sales pitch wasn't working in this particular case. He also should have handled things in such a way that Delgado didn't feel like an after-thought. I mean, yeah, these are superstars, and for better or for worse, you do have to give them special treatment if you want them to come work for you.

But the bottom line is, we don't really know (and can never know) how truthful Delgado is being. In other words, had Minaya laid out the red carpet for him and been more subtle on the Latino front, Delgado may still have signed with the Marlins anyway. Like I say, we'll never know.

So I chide Minaya & co. for not handling things better, but I also don't necessarily think things would have gone differently had they done a better job.

What do you think?