Good lord. The ineptitude of Omar's regime knows no bounds.

"The contract... includes a limited no-trade clause, meaning he could list 10 teams to which he could veto a deal. But according to two baseball officials with direct knowledge of the situation, Rodriguez’s previous agent, Paul Kinzer, never submitted the list of 10 teams. The Mets thought that once Boras assumed representation, he would scrutinize Rodriguez’s contract and either try to submit a list or perhaps file a grievance that might allow him to do so."

So they were in theory working against a full no-trade clause, more or less. And they had to get him traded before Boras figured this out.

"Rakoff now has the financial fate of the men who own the Mets before him. Last Friday, he pulled the billion-dollar lawsuit against the team’s owners... out of bankruptcy court and into his own. Rakoff could dismiss all or part of the case when he rules next month."

Apparently the Wilpons filed to have the case thrown out, and the judge agreed to consider it. Both this and the Bloomberg story (linked by the Times) suggest that the Wilpons' arguments are gaining ground against Picard. Which is not so good for anyone hoping for the end of Jeff's tenure as Chief Operating Officer of the New York Mets.

Einhorn wrote a Times OpEd with Michael Lewis in January, 2009, in the wake of the financial collapse and Madoff's arrest.

It's a long piece mostly about the bigger crisis, but includes the story of Markopolos' attempts to alert the SEC to Madoff's scam. They conclude that participants in the scheme were likely happy to turn a blind eye to irregularities, believing that if anything ever came to light it would be the end of the gravy train, but they wouldn't be otherwise culpable:

"Between the lines, Mr. Markopolos hinted that even some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have suspected that they were the beneficiaries of a scam. After all, it wasn’t all that hard to see that the profits were too good to be true. Some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have reasoned that the worst that could happen to them, if the authorities put a stop to the front-running, was that a good thing would come to an end."

Nothing conclusive, of course, and for all we know he's decided now that the Wilpons' intentions were as pure as the driven snow. It's a good piece, though, and Mr. Einhorn just looks better and better.

"Our payroll going into the season will be somewhere between $140 million and $150 million. I think that is significantly higher than we'd like to be on an annual basis."

This doesn't seem to be due to the latest news, but it appears that Alderson agreed with the Wilpons that he'd run the team on a "significantly" reduced payroll than it had been running.

This looks fun, mostly for the chance to hang out in the bullpen and the dugout.

From Rubin at ESPN, on Mejia: "Said another scout: 'The problem I have with it is there was no need to do it. At some point in time, it was like throwing Jerry a bone: ‘OK, you can have your one guy’ -- a ‘we’re-not-very-happy-about-this’ type of thing. I mean, there’s the experience of being there, but if they would have done it for a full year, I think they would have lost what kind of pitcher he was.'"

There is a clear storyline here, no heavy research required, which one would think the NY press would love to go after -- Jerry's short-term interests potentially actively harming a player. But you know, Jerry gives not just good quotes, but great quotes, so there is that.

Intrasquad, but this makes me happy.