Buried in an interesting post on Travis Taijeron and other minor league notes (including Bobby Scales' return to Japan) is the first mention I've seen of the source of Zach Lutz's broken hamate bone. It says he broke it "swinging in a cage pregame." There's nothing in the article to suggest that he was hit by anything.

Assuming that this was a non-contact injury, I think it's at the point where we need to resign ourselves to the fact that while some of his prior injuries (e.g. HBPs) may have been simply bad luck, an injury like this (as well as Lutz's history of previous stress fractures) suggests that Lutz is, unfortunately, prone to injuries that will likely prevent him from ever being a regular major leaguer. Which is too bad, since he can clearly hit.

Like most people, I thought the officials' short spot of what looked like a first-down run by DJ Ware in the 3rd quarter of Sunday's game was incorrect. The Giants didn't challenge, and to make matters worse, TV showed no replay - although Pereira tweeted that he saw a replay and it was the right call. Thanks to the excellent blog FootballZebras, though, there's evidence that the call was actually correct - Ware's butt was down short of the first down. The real culprits here are Fox, for not showing any replays that would have confirmed the refs' spot on the play.

Interesting. Given his injury history, I'd imagine that at this point he'd be looking for either league-minimum or even a minor-league contract. He certainly performed well enough in his very limited time to warrant at least a look, and I wonder if the Mets generated enough good will with him last year to be a first choice.

Crazy idea - with his shoulder issues, maybe conversion to a reliever wouldn't be out of the question? On the theory that he'd stand a better chance of staying healthy with more limited innings.

So apparently someone has taken it upon himself to upload the entirety of Super Bowl 42 to Youtube...in Spanish. I don't speak a word of Spanish, but this has got to be the best call of the Tyree catch I've ever heard (fast-forward to the 10-minute mark for the fun). Just a bit more emotional than Joe Buck, no?

Then click here to get the Burress TD and the end of the game.

Any reason not to put in a claim? Admittedly, assuming Ike makes a recovery, he'd either be a bench piece or a AAA masher, but it can't hurt to have depth. Plus, lefty power (and power in general) isn't something to sneeze at. KC never really gave him much of a chance at the big league level, and he's certainly an Alderson-type player with good plate discipline.

I guess the home-run-in-his-first-at-bat thing will now be a few paragraphs further down in his bio. Too bad; for all of his faults, I always had a soft spot for him after his unsustainable hot streak to start his career in 2005.

Jason Bay: 338 Plate Appearances, 0.6 WAR (Fangraphs)
Scott Hairston: 108 Plate Appearances, 0.8 WAR

I'm not going to pretend that Scott Hairston's level of production (swelled, obviously, by his game yesterday) is sustainable (if it were, and he played the whole season, he'd have the 3rd-highest WAR on the Mets, behind only Reyes and Beltran), but at this point playing Bay over him is folly. He clearly has far more raw power (.296 vs .095 ISO), and is simply a better player. I know this is beating a horse that has already been fashioned into glue, but if the Mets are going to continue to toy with the idea of contention, it simply doesn't make sense to keep giving Bay starts in left. I'm tired of getting false hope every time Bay flares a single to right-center that "this time" maybe he's got it. If the Mets are going to do things like using Izzy over Parnell as a closer - indicating that they're placing a priority on winning games this year - then it's about time Hairston got his shot.

A New York MSM sportswriter praises the Mets? Actually calls them overachievers and uses the words "grit" and "gritty"? Advocates the re-signing of Jose Reyes? Wow.

from Mr. Jake Taylor.

So yesterday, Adam Rubin put up his projected Mets 25-man roster at this point. I can't really argue with any of them as projections, in terms of them being predictions of what's likely to happen. But as to the merits of this roster, one thing I wanted to throw around is the matter of Chin-Lung Hu. Pretty much every projection I've seen assumes that he will make the major league roster. Such projections seem warranted in light of the Mets' holding a press conference to announce his signing a couple months ago, indicating that they view him as a means of promoting themselves in the Taiwanese market.

I'm going to address this purely from a performance standpoint, though - is there a strong reason to have a slick-fielding, poor-hitting middle-IF on the team, particularly given that the Mets' starting SS is one of their best players? Hu is more or less worthless as a PH (heck, I'd probably prefer Dickey), which makes our bench weaker. That hopefully will be mitigated by the fact that I expect that this regime will be smarter and less rigid about using its backup catcher as a pinch-hitter than JerryBot (as well as less wasteful of players in attempts to get purportedly favorable matchups) , so hopefully Hu doesn't see many at-bats, but it's still a liability in longer games needing multiple pinch-hitters.

Hu's primary value, as I see it, is as a late-inning defensive replacement at 2B or a spot-starter/injury-emergency-replacement for Reyes at SS. That's not to be sneezed at given (1) that whoever winds up at 2B will probably be a defensive liability, and (2) Reyes's recent injury history, which probably warrants giving him more days off to preserve him. That said, Hu's bat is basically in Alex Cora territory, and his presence on the bench means that a superior hitter (at this point, possibly Nick Evans, assuming that Harris and Hairston make it) will be left behind and perhaps lost for good.

So my question for the field is: is it worth it for the Mets to carry Hu for his glove, or are they better off carrying an additional bat like Evans, and (a) taking their chances with defense at 2B and (b) using a combination of Emaus/ Hairston/ Harris/ Murphy/ whoever as the backup/emergency SS?

Isola, in the linked tweet above, seems to think that Kelenna's on the short list to get cut depending on who's signed. On the other hand, Hahn's recent tweets have indicated that he's close to returning and would likely see game action soon. Anyone know the real deal?

Did the Mets' owners meet with Bud Selig to discuss the team's finances? Becuase the combination of the headline, sub-headline, and first sentence of the linked article are somewhat ambiguous as to that.

So Octavio Dotel just signed with the Blue Jays. As a Met fan who was at Game 5 of the 1999 NLCS to watch Dotel, then a rookie, give up the lead and then get the win in the Grand Slam Single game, I couldn't believe that Octavio Dotel is 37 years old.

But then I wondered something and looked a bit further. It turns out that Jamie Moyer, who still has aspirations of playing this year, is about 11 years older than Dotel (11 years and about a week). So 11 years ago, when Robin Ventura hit that ball over the fence and Dotel was a rookie flamethrower for the Mets, Jamie Moyer was 37 - as old as Dotel is now. And he's still pitching. If Octavio Dotel pitched as long as Jamie Moyer, he'd pitch until at least 2021.

This is certainly an encouraging list, if in fact Heyman's musings have any basis in fact. As I understand, they're all forward-thinking guys who could hopefully be counted on to steer things in a more analytics-driven direction as opposed to the guesswork of the Minaya regime. I didn't know a whole lot obout Hahn, but this article makes him sound promising. And my guess is he'd come the cheapest, given that he's never been a GM before.

A lot of this - well, all of it, really - is plowing over old ground, but I thought it was worthwhile doing anyway just as a demonstration. The 2010 Mets opening day roster was full of the products of questionable decisions (as the link in this post title indicates). How did those decisions pan out? Let's take a look.

Still on active roster
Blanco
Castillo
Wright
Pagan
Santana
Pelfrey
Feliciano
Niese
Takahashi

Traded for minimal value
Barajas
Francoeur

Designated for Assignment

Jacobs * **
Matthews
Cora
Catalanotto
Nieve *

* Assigned to minors after clearing waivers
** Later traded for minimal value

Sent to minors
Green

On active roster after demotion and recall
Mejia
Igarashi
Tejada

Injured
Tatis
Maine
Rodriguez
Bay

In his own special category
Perez

With the understanding that even good teams make many roster moves over the course of a season, this list is simply staggering. No less than half of the Mets' opening day lineup, pitcher excluded (Barajas, Jacobs, Frenchy, Cora) has either been DFA'd or traded for peanuts. In other words, no less than half of the players whom the Mets deemed the most worthy and capable hitters in their entire organization have subsequently proven to have zero or extremely minimal value. The rest of the opening day roster was riddled with bad decisions that had outcomes that were entirely foreseeable, such as Oliver Perez' ineptitude, Maine and Green's injury problems, FCat having nothing left, and the Mejia debacle.

The Mets did ultimately "correct" many of these mistakes, but the motto for this season should be "A Day Late and a Dollar Short." The Mets' unwillingness to spend resources on glaring holes such as 2B left them exposed, and their unwillingness to make obviously necessary moves until the last possible minute, have cost them numerous games and have brought them to this point. And the fate of many of the players on their opening day roster is an indictment of the judgment of the team's management.

7 IP, 1 H, 8 K, 2 BB, 0 R. Something to get excited about.

Hmm. Maybe the Twins will trade him straight-up for Beltran? One problem for another.

Jason Bay has been decidedly mediocre for the Mets this year. He's obviously not remotely as poor as Francoeur, in that he's playing above replacement level (1.3 WAR as per Fangraphs), largely because he's getting on base - but he hasn't been very good either, and has clearly underperformed expectations substantially.

This is a theoretical question, since obviously the Mets are not going to do anything of the sort: Assume the Mets begin to play better and remain in contention for a playoff spot, but that Bay continues to muddle along the way he's going now. How much more rope would you give Jason Bay this year (clearly, he'll be around for a while, but this is just for this year) before benching him in favor of, say, something along the lines of a platoon of [Chris Carter/Lucas Duda] and [Nick Evans/Mike Hessman]. It's at least possible that such a platoon would out-produce Jason Bay offensively, although it might be rather poor defensively (I don't know much about Duda defensively, but the other 3 would likely be below-average or well-below-average left fielders). Again, this would obviously involve some roster manipulation depending on the platoon (e.g. DFAing Frenchy and/or one of the catchers), but assume that you can do that.

Basically, what I'm curious about here is: to what extent does Bay's previous track record of production, combined with his current above-replacement-but-not-great production, warrant continuing to play him every day, and to what extent do people think that a platoon along the lines of what's suggested above might be an improvement?

MiLB.com is hosting "Moniker Madness," an NCAA-tourney style bracket where voters can crown the best name in the minors. I noticed that heading up the Icicle Reader bracket is our own ZeErika McQueen. In a nice twist, he's facing off against 16 seed Mike Piazza (of the Angels' AAA affiliate). Let's send him to the Final Four!

(Incidentally, the names are pretty good, but the Name of the Year Blog still is tops in this category.)