The following is an attempt to explain a puzzling fact about baseball. Mets fans may recall Gary Cohen glibly dismissing the emphasis that SABRE analysis places on strikeouts in assessing pitchers, on the grounds that obviously "a good pitcher will be able to produce weaker contact and thus maintain a low BABIP through skill". And common sense says he should be right.

Except that he is dead wrong.

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Yankee fans have long been criticized throughout baseball for behaving as though a world championship were their birthright, but the Yankee fan based stunned even their harshest critics by throwing metaphor completely aside and declaring the 2010 championship theirs by decree.

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(bumped from FanPosts)

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I do not count myself among those who condemn being a sports fan as a useless and irrelevant waste of time, although I certainly see where they are coming from, particularly in this day and age. In the past, when players and not laundry defined a team, when sports stadiums were named after public figures and local icons, and when fans were not treated as herd animals to be exploited and otherwise contained so as not to stain their rightful superiors, one could claim a certain romantic charm to following your team, as your team possessed a certain spirit of which you were legitimately a part.

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It isn't often that salary dumps take on the massive scale that I am about to propose, but it isn't often that outrageous contracts accumulate in major league teams the way they have with the 2010 New York Mets.  So here is my proposition:

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Here is the second in a set of polls that I'm conducting regarding the Amazin Avenue community's take on the perplexities of David Wright offense as of late.  The question is, basically, is David Wright the new Tom Seaver?  Is his current situation something that could have been avoided completely, but was nonetheless foisted upon him by an inconceivably venal ownership party?   Wright's weaker performance against fastballs in 2008 was already pointing to the possibility of something like the Wright 2009 season, but there is little doubt in my mind that ownership exacerbated the situation unnecessarily with that park.

This is just a poll (or three) regarding the string of very good work of analysis regarding Wright's contact problems.

One possibility that has not been mentioned (because it is rather far-fetched) is that Wright's struggles might be partially caused by managerial unpreparedness. All teams arrive to the park with a game-plan on how they are going to approach the other team's starter and relief staff, and it is possible that Jerry Manuel's being an utter ass places our players at a unique disadvantage here. Note that Wright had his best year with Hojo as hitting coach for the majority of the season, but that his struggles with fastballs and the strike zone truly began in late 2008 (although he hit curves well enough to be productive regardless). Wright's wFB/C (run production per 100 fastballs) tanked in 2009, but it also fell sharply in 2008 from his career marks. Notice that in 2010, his fastball production has rebounded, but everything else has tanked. This is consistent with observations of Wright missing hittable fastballs late in 2008.

Now, citing the managerial change as coincident to the decline of Wright's approach is a pretty egregious commission of the post-hoc, ergo proper-hoc fallacy. But it does give all of us another excuse, however redundant and faint, to get rid of Jerry.

Being a bit out of my depth, I present this as a poll to the AA community:

It was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the Amazin' Avenue  gamethread for the 20-inning marathon between the Mets and Cardinals had generated 4,000 comments, quintupling the Metsblog total.  I am not certain as to what the Alexa Rankings have to say about this, and I know that Amazin' Avenue readers participate in threads at a much higher rate than Metsblog "readers", who tend to be casual fans stopping by for a quick update, but it does raise as a serious possibility of a feat that seemed unfeasible a short time ago: that of Amazin' Avenue overtaking Metsblog as the prime Met resource on the web.

I also say that I feel little need to guard my optimism on this.  At very worst, it means that the best Met-source on the web has deservedly exploded, but will ultimately fail to overtake the official corporate outlet.  But there is little reason to believe that the worst will happen.  The economic patters of the internet are very different from that of the industrial model, and of the industrial media in particular, where capital requirements are high and access is restricted and given to favored parties.  Capital and access simply do not deliver much of an advantage in the New Media.  I'll leave it to the words of the inimitable Clay Shirkey:

The most watched minute of video made in the last five years shows baby Charlie biting his brother’s finger. (Twice!) That minute has been watched by more people than the viewership of American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, and the Superbowl combined. (174 million views and counting.)...

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

The reasons why the web outlets of the traditional industries are routinely overwhelmed by independent outlets in my opinion has less to do with changing business models proposed by Shirkey than with the inability of these industries to control access and entry into the medium.  Frankly, if television were suddenly opened to unhampered competitive enterprise (which it easily could be), something similar would probably happen.  Industries that must face open competition cannot afford clannishness and nepotism, since the wages of incompetence are an immediate loss of business to a hungrier competitor.  When an industry is dominated by a small elite and protected from competition, however, it is only a matter of time before this elite hardens into a caste and becomes, to varying degrees, hereditary.  Remember Jenna Bush, the dissolute college lush?  She is now a Today Show Correspondent.  It would be outrageous if we weren't so used to the insular, nepotistic world of the traditional media--the world of the singer who can't sing, the writer who can't write, and Unfrozen Caveman Sports Anchor.  To this day, this independent You-Tube spoof represents the most spot-on characterizations of Fred Wilpon ever made.  It is probably superior to most feature films made in 2009.

For similar reasons, I am optimistic that an increase in popularity for Amazin' Avenue will not result in a decline in the level of discourse.  I have maintained for some time that the typical Metsblog reader is far more intelligent than Matt Cerrone, and simply imbibes media chatter out of its ubiquitousness and a lack of alternatives.  Once exposed to a superior resource, most many fans will enthusiastically rise to its level.  Furthermore, the environment of Amazin' Avenue is one that encourages people to hold themselves to higher standards, without alienating too many people.  After a few episodes of knuckleheads mouthing ignorant nonsense and getting overwhelmed by superior arguments, people develop a sense whereby they can distinguish between real substantiated opinions and vaporous gibberish.

There is a peculiar tension in American society that I have not heard mentioned--that between political and economic power being concentrated into the hands of ever fewer people controlling more and more industrial resources, and yet of information being more than ever before free and open to anyone.  Regardless of your ideological, religious, political, or sports orientation, there are whole universes of resources available for you to develop and sharpen (and perhaps even alter) your outlook.  But the real power of the web lies in the way it alters the relationship between ourselves and our avenues of communication.  In the industrial-age model, media is an industry like any other, with the producers divided categorically from the consumers by every stage of the production line.  The New Model is utterly different in that the consumer is, to varying degrees, a producer as well, to the point where the distinction ceases to be all that useful.  The consumers of the New Media are often participants--active rather than passive players, in that even if they do not contribute to the content, they can email the host and provide relevant commentary or advice whenever they feel they have it; and the host is close enough to his audience to be able to hear it and value it.  The web host doesn't need market research.  He simply consults his market.  The sabermetric revolution hinged upon the ability of guys like Tom Tango and Joe Posnanski to network and feed off each other, and to gradually draw people into their web, to the point where they were incorporated into the establishment.  They were able to bypass the vetting processes and credentialing rackets that stultify progress so brutally today and achieve their legitimacy on their hard-won web-cred.

It is this quality of participation that can eventually bring large numbers of people to tune out the purveyors of dreck that believe to have them fitted and tagged by focus groups and test screenings.  So long as we see ourselves as consumers of a product that appears on a computer, we are little more than a niche market overwhelmed by the massive size of the Boys that Count.  As participants of a community, this can change.  This is why I hope that we celebrate the growth of Amazin' Avenue by simultaneously pushing to expand it further and to deepen it.  Simon's expansions into Twitter and Facebook and the publication of the Amazin' Avenue Annual, as well as his connection with Fangraphs, are excellent examples of this in action.  And we could all do our part to spread the word.  If there is a viewing being held in a local venue, we should go, and bring in any Mets fans from the outside.  If we believe that hundreds of emails sent to the organization might ever help make a point, we can do that as well.  (I hope to follow this up with an itinerary of things the AA community can do to become an effective force for the reform of the Mets.)

I am not accustomed to entertaining such optimism regarding human nature, and human endeavors, and I would never deny that there are several million tons of human mass that is mentally indistinguishable  from stockpiles of industrial waste (see WFAN).  But the emergence of the web has valuable lessons for those who are willing to listen.  All of us to some extent get our news, our entertainment, our networking, our retail products, and many other services from sources that would have languished in obscurity if not for this communications revolution.  I personally see genius springing everywhere, attaining various degrees of recognition not based on their access to controlled and regimented broadcast licenses, but on their ability to attract a following based on their own merit.  John Taylor Gatto once said "I believe that genius is as common as dirt.  We suppress our genius only because we haven't yet figured out how to manage a population of educated men and women".  While I wouldn't go that far, I do agree that the regimentation and mechanization of the American production process has done much work to suppress the human enterprise that is bursting from the wellsprings.  This, combined with a suppression of commercial enterprise has seen a surge of creative output from amateurs.  I see no reason why with the right networking this cannot expand to something even greater, not just in sports, but in any aspect in which you would like to involve yourself.  If you participate in any of these sorts of ventures, I encourage you to do what you can to see these people face to face and see if you can get anything done.  The idea of the American public being composed primarily of a great unwashed mass of stupid is, I believe, a manufactured one, calculated to produce cynicism and powerlessness, in exchange for an impotent sense of superiority amongst those who see it.   If I ever feel myself getting uppity, I need only to consult the latest from Sam, Eric, and James K. to remind myself of how ordinary I am, and how great it is to be ordinary.

Some have shrewdly pointed out that the final two paragraphs of my last post seem to contradict my original thesis; and they are right.  In retrospect, I am far too harsh on Omar Minaya at the opening of the post.  I do continue to maintain that my observations remain valid when it comes to describing Jerry Manuel’s performance.  The things he does are simply the results of a simple mind making decisions on the most shallow and flimsy of impressions while not allowing the slightest avenue for rational thought of any kind.  Thus, Omir Santos is given pride of place over Ramon Castro because one grand slam proves that he is clutch and shows that he has a nice short swing.  Thus, Alex Cora bats second because he’s a smallish, slap-hitting middle infielder and smallish slap-hitting middle infielders bat second, while first-base power bats like Mike Jacobs and Frank Catalonatto bat cleanup.  (Forget that Catalanato was never a power-bat; he’s a big guy who plays first, and is thus a power bat in the eyes of Jerry Manuel’s purely impressionistic and thought-devoid universe.  (I would give odds that Manuel really thinks Catalonotto is a power bat for this very reason, and that he has never checked Catalanatto’s batting stats, nor would he trust them if he had.)  Regardless, Manuel’s performance is best attributed to a determined and unrelenting idiocy that dominates his mental condition, which can never be understood by appealing to any rationality.

Omar Minaya’s situation is different.  I must refer to the post offered by Sam Page some months ago that is on the very short list for finest posts ever on Amazin’ Avenue.  Here, Page basically gives what should have been the final word on the Omar Minaya matter.

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This is written in response to John Peterson's poll of what the worst flaw of Omar Minaya's thinking is.  I answered "none of the above" because in my view, the poll misses the bigger picture of the problem with Met management's procedural thinking.

So what does this bigger picture consist of  What is the central problem of the Mets Organization philosophy?  What is Omar thinking?

Are you ready?

Nothing.

People of normal to above-average intellect greatly overestimate not just the capacity, but--more pertinently in this case--the inclination of deficient minds like Omar Minaya's or Jerry Manuel's to think at all.  When Jerry directs Luis Castillo to bunt with a position player on the mound, he does so out of an unthinking mental reflex, like a dog responding to a high-pitched whistle.  It is not that he is thinking something stupid, but that he is stupid, which makes him less inclined to think at all.  The spark of neuron activity that would be necessary for the thought to enter Jerry's mind that perhaps bunting might not be the best idea in this particular situation--a non-pitcher on the mound who cannot throw a strike-- does not activate in the mind of a Jerry Manuel the way it would in a normally functioning brain.

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This is written largely in response to letsgocyclones' excellent post on the intransigence of the mainstream media regarding the Mets' insane misuse of Jenrry Mejia. The post raises certain issues that occasion a bit of further reflection.

The most crucial aspect of this face-off, in my opinion, is that this is an issue where all logic and reason fall onto one side. If you believe this to be an arrogant posture, consider Kevin Burkhardt's retort, posted in response to the thoughtful analysis of AA's inimitable Sam Page: "I want the Mets to win now, not in three years; that's the way I feel". The opposition, in consistently resorting to these explicitly emotive, unargued (not underargued--unargued) and defensive arguments in effect concedes my point that all evidence and reason are on the side of allowing Mejia to develop as a starter.

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No reflections or attempts at analysis here.  I'm just indulging in some feel-good non-analytical Nieuwenhuis love, one of the few pieces of good news this season and proceeding to convey how good the news of his emergence is.

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No, this is not about Dub's magic helmet.  This is about Davy starting to get too nice for his own good.  It started with his backing down on a perfectly reasonable stance against Mike Francessa's vendetta, which was a transparent scheme to generate ratings based on sensationalism (and if it resulted in the Mets stupidly dumping Wright, all the better for Mike, who would then be able to trash the Mets for a decade--and who doubtless would be leading the chorus ridiculing the Mets for making the move for which he lobbied ferociously).

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This isn't second-guessing.  This is an illustration of how a GM who was not incompetent would have thought the '08-'09 offseason through.  Any one of us could have thought this through and not laid a turd in the '08-'09 offseason.

Oliver Perez?  His fastball has been losing velocity since 2004, and if it dips any more, his control problems will do him in and he could very easily fall short of replacement.  (Good thing I know what replacement is!)  Let someone else waste $4M on him.  We could use the picks to beef up the farm.

We need a relief ace pretty badly.  Our bullpen is a train-wreck.  Feliciano was more unlucky than bad and has a solid track record of being able to eat lefties and hold his own against righties.  So we will hold on to him (unless a no-brainer comes along).  What...somebody wants to give me a warm body for Schoenweiss??  I would have settled for a cold body that somebody needed to bury.  Done!  OK...back to business.  Frankie is an obvious choice, and we've got the cash for him, but he's coming off a career year in a meaningless category that might inflate his price tag disproportionately as compared to his real value.  We'll offer him what I think he's worth...$4M/year for three years.  If someone wants to give him more, let him risk it.  If it doesn't happen, we've got a solid guy in Fuentes and we can outbid the Braves (by just enough) for Rafael Soriano.  Trading Heilman would be selling real low...but his trends are not good, so we'll shop him.  One more year of sucking and we can simply trade him for a french fry; (he doesn't make much money).

Hmmm...the Mariners have something interesting on the table.  Putz for a boatload of average prospects.  Obviously this will require some negotiating.  Chavez for Reed isn't happening, but I can deal with Smith for Green.  And he is not getting Carp, Carrera, Vargas, and Cleto (maybe in 2007).  Considering the contract and the possibility of damaged goods, I'm keeping Carp..and he can take or leave the rest.  If Putz does well, I can get picks for him in 2010 when he leaves for free agency.  If he falls apart, such is life.

Hmmm...Lowe wants a fourth year, and at his age, that's probably going to bite us.  If we want to win in 2009, we'll need to pay that price (the Braves are looming).  If we play for 2010, we can pass on him and get some stopgaps.  Odalis Perez and Randy Wolf will be solid options for a year or two, and if Jon Niese dominates AAA, either one will be easy to trade (especially considering the bargains that these two underrated pitchers will get us in this market).  By 2010, F!Mart will be ready It depends on what we'll play for, but they're both good options.

Which do we take though?  2009 is risky.  The corners will be weak no matter what, Delgado is at a constant risk of tanking, and the Wilpons will not dump Castillo.  But it has good potential if things break right.  If F! and Niese don't work out, 2010 could quickly turn into 2011 or longer, and Lowe will be solid for at least 2 years, so I'm inclined to go for Lowe, and we'll still have Ollie's pick to compensate.  Santana, Lowe, Pelfrey, Maine, and Wolf will be formidable for a good chunk of time.  Santana, Mejia, Holt, Pelfrey, Maine, Gee and Niese, in the long run?  In addition to any surprises, drafts and minor-league trade acquisitions along the way?  I like it.

Corner outfield...it's weak and Danny Murphy is way too much of a regression risk.  Ibañez?  Type A?  With that kind of defensive liability for a very good (not great) hitter at corner outfield?  OK, he's in an extremer pitcher's park but the bad outweighs the upside here.  Do we want to take the kind of risk with Parker Bro...*ahem* Milton Bradley?  Delgado's a risk and he can fill in (poorly) at second if it comes to that.  Abreu, Burrell and Dunn are the best options, and Burrell is being lowballed by Tampa (and he was not offered arbitration!).  That clinches it.  Burrell it is.  Murphy will be a (potentially super) sub to spell Burell against tough righties and back up Castillo in case he tanks.  (We will let him sink or swim at second.)

If that's not enough we can shop Murph.  He's killing the winter league and someone might bite.  We could package him (with Carp, say) for a guy like (Lord willing) Adrian Beltre? 

So what am I doing for the short term and the long term?

Short Term:  Nice rotation.  3 of the best studs in baseball at premium positions.  Church has a mediocre bat for a corner outfielder, but his glove makes him an average player, and Burrel should be adequate.  Delgado with Evans to spell him against some lefties?  Let's cross our fingers.  Castillo?  If he tanks, we might have to put Murph in that position and again cross our fingers.  With Fuentes, Soriano, (perhaps K-rod) and Feliciano back in form (and without Schoenweiss) our bullpen should rebound (statistically, it's a certainty).  And Parnell and Kunz could mature.  Bench: Endy Chavez and some easily acquired strong backups.  With our 4 superstars, we always have a chance.  Estimated Cost: about $100M, but well-spent.

Long term: Schneider, Wagner, Delgado, and their contracts are gone in 2010, leaving us with only Castillo as a real albatross.  Wright and Reyes get raises, but are still well under market value.  We still have a very strong rotation and a good and inexpensive bullpen.  Ike Davis and Nick Evans are a good bet for a cheap and effective first base platoon in Ike finds his power.  F! should be ready.  But he might not be, and we have no catcher (Thole is interesting, though) or right fielder unless we resign Church (and we really would like a better option).  We have holes, but we only have $70M or so in well-chosen commitments and we'll have some money to spend to fill those holes if our prospects don't pan out.  (Matt Holiday comes to mind.)  The plan: F! Beltran, and Holiday in the outfield.  Wright and Reyes on the left.  Evans, Murphy, Castillo, and eventually Ike on the left (with an eye for a mid level and highly tradeable upgrade--Nick Johnson, Adam Laroche, Marco Scutaro, Mark DeRosa, Iwamura, or Adam Everett--if it's necessary).  Johan, Lowe, Pelf, Maine, Niese, possibly Holt and Mejia on the mound.  Soriano, K-Rod (or Fuentes) Feliciano, Parnell (perhaps) on the left.  Cost: if prospects pan out (and we can trade Lowe) about $115M (we add Holiday).  If not, about $135.  We'll have to acquire some mid-level talent like Laroche and Scutaro.

If injuries or power outages to key players kill us, those are the breaks, but it's a solid plan.

The Mets starting lineup (including our starting pitcher) on August 11th was very close to the worst possible starting lineup a professional team could field given the assumption of good faith, in that a clone of every starter in the game could have been acquired off the waver wire during the past week and a half; (indeed, our starting pitcher for that game was subsequently released).  A fair question to ask then is, yes, the Mets have been ravaged by injuries.  But they also field a payroll of about $130M (the $140 mark is misleading, since it accounts Sheffield's salary as being liable to the Mets).  Even with these injuries, should this team be this bad?

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Reprecussions positive and negative:

Positive: 

1.)  Obviously Bernazard had to go.  Yes, I don't trust Rubin and I think that was a hit piece, but Bernazard's behavior and comportment has no place in any profession, and it's about time he got what was coming to him.  He was competent, but hardly irreplaceable.

2.)  I would not be surprised if Fred Wilpon actually did still root for the Dodgers.  If he devoted half of his exqusite P.R. sensitivity to the business of being in command of a baseball team, the Mets would be perpetual playoff locks.  Ergo, a debacle like this was pretty much the only thing that gives Mets fans strong grounds for hoping that Omar Minaya is demoted from his position at GM.  His talents are undeniable, but the evidence that he is, all in all, the wrong man for the job is now overwhelming.

Negative:

1.) I am no fan of Adam Rubin, and my impression of him is that he is smart enough to realize that the copious quantities of ink trashing the Mets farm system are spent in the service of intellectual dishonesty and just plain dishonesty.  I would not be the least surprised if he was in fact belittling the Mets farm in order to push key players out of their posts so as to attain a position in player development.  Rubin, being fairly intelligent, comes off looking way too good when pitted against Minaya's rambling, incoherent codswallop. On a better note, there is little chance that the Wilpons will now take the P.R. risk of rewarding him with such a position, as it would simply raise suspicions further.

2.) If Omar gets fired, the N.Y. media might be dangerously emboldened.  The N.Y. media have displayed too much influence already and Omar would have been much better off throwing Bernazard under a bus and making the decision seem like a no-brainer so that the media would have played the traditional role of informing rather than becoming agitators and advocates, and--even worse, getting its way.  If the media were to become even more powerful in this town than it is, be prepared for 100 years of baseball futility.

Occasioned by David Wright's being completely overmatched by a AA/AAA fringe pitcher Rodrigo Lopez, I take this opportunity to ask, what are David Wright's luck-neutral stats?

There are two projections I'll make: one pessimistic and one optimistic.  For the pessimism, I regress Dub's BABIP to his career .350 and keep his K%, XBH% , BB%, GB/LD/FB and HR/FB constant.

A .350 BABIP over (297 ABs - 82 Ks) is 75 hits for a .252 BA.  Giving him the same XBH% yields 23 XBHs, and obviously, the same HR/FB results in 5 HRs, since I'm holding his batted ball profile constant.  This yields 15 doubles, five homers and 3 triples for 111 total bases and a .373 slugging percentage.  His 44 BBs and 2 HBPs give him 121 times on base for a .352 OBP.  So David Wright is posting, in reality, a .252/.352/.373 vital stats line that resembles a down year for Luis Castillo.  This, for a 3rd baseman in the NL in 2009, is crap.

Let us give him some more generous assumptions.  Citi Field has theoretically robbed him of 6 home runs and Wright's LD% is matching his career high of 2008 at 25%.  (It's probably safe to say that Wright got unlucky in 2008 given his expected BABIP.)  So if we add about 20 points of BABIP and up his homers to 11, the line adjusts to .269/.367/.468.

So, given the most generous assumptions possible, Wright has been a somewhat-above-average NL 3rd baseman.  With less generous assumptions, he has been a more-or-less severe liability at the plate.  What is dragging all his numbers way down is of course, his inordinate number of strikeouts.  This gives a better account of Wright's struggles with making contact better than I ever could.

There is obviously something wrong with David Wright's approach, and I don't think I'm qualified to make a guess about what it is, nor do I trust Keith Hernandez, who quite simply diagnoses the same ailment to every batter who struggles (He's uppercutting, his swing is too long, he's not going the other way, etc.)  I don't blame Hernandez for what appears to be an obvious bias in favor of contact hitters and against power hitters and strikeouts, as that was the way he played and his substandard power for his position is what is unjustly keeping him from the Hall of Fame.  However, I would like to ask the Mets community if anyone has any clue what is ailing David Wright, how serious it is, and whether they have a clue as to what he should be doing.  His current rate of production is simply substandard for a Major League 3rd baseman whose defense has stagnated after much promising improvement over his career, and it is further exascerbated by how awful he looks at the plate.  Good pitchers, like Sabbathia, Gallardo, and A.J. Burnett, have made him look like a minor leaguer, and he has occasionally been blown away even by fringe pitchers.

Alex Cora looked much better against Rodrigo Lopez than Wright.  I doubt immensely that from this point on, Wright will be a worse hitter than Alex Cora (even in this immensely productive--for Cora--year).  But the fact is, our superstar's luck-neutral performance has been average at best and Slappyesque at worst.  Does anyone have a clue as to what gives?

I would say it's slightly better than typical Metsblog chatter, but not much better.  As it's essentially Reyes for 2 average players of the type that are easily obtainable without sacrificing superstars and two prospects, one of which is a Niese-type that isn't particularly difficult to find, you're essentially betting Reyes on Bucholtz, and that's far too steep a bet for one prospect, regardless of how strong he is.  What surprises me is that no one considered the more reasonable option: redo the deal with Beltran instead of Reyes and Anderson instead of Bowden.

Beltran is a bona-fide superstar signed for 2 more years at a contract that, while certainly not cheap, is not outrageous.  As he is not home-grown, much older than Reyes, and had expressed a desire to play for the Yankees, there is little reason to consider him an essential component of the team's identity as is Reyes, whose phenomenal growth Met-fans watched lovingly for years (before many turned on him and Wright for the most retarded reasons imaginable like the piss-ant fairweather friends we all know several Met-fans to be).  He is a huge upgrade over Ellsbury and would lock the Sox up as a favorite in the division--and give them a good shot at humiliating the Yanks in 14 straight games.  Plus, the New York media would overlook the fact that the trade almost punts 2009, since they are stupid enough to think that Ellsbury's whiteness and grission compensate for Beltran's unbelievable awesomeness.  ("WHooOOOo's kidding whOOOoooOOOoo?  Of coa's Ellsbury's bedda' than Beltran!!")

Beltran for Lars, Bucholz, and Elsbury is a deal.  Easily leveraged around Murphy and certain other lower-level Red-Sox prospects.

Ironically, though the Yanks and Mets don't do deals, their needs and resources seem to compliment each other.  Every word I said about the above trade could be said regarding Beltran for Austin Jackson, Phil Hughes, and Melky.  ("WHooOOOo's kidding whOOOoooOOOoo?  Of coa's Melky's bedda' than Beltran!!  He's got like 10 clutch hoemuhs")