(moved from diaries. still too depressed to blog. --eric)

Nelson de la Rosa, 2 feet 4 inches tall, died recently in New York. RIP.

He was Pedro's lucky charm in the 2004 postseason. My sympathies go out to Mr. de la Rosa's family (he not only had a wife but a child...clearly a stud) and I hope all his luck is now with our ace.

In other news, virtually all of the Mets had at least five surgeries today, some upwards of a hundred. They are all expected to be ready for spring training, from which point a new set of broken bones, torn ligaments and hanging eyeballs will accumulate, but be carefully disguised by the training staff until the season has concluded.

Whew! What a season! The Mets came out strong and were one first-week game away from claiming the NL East championship wire-to-wire!

Turns out that the Annual Prediction Poll this year was a bit pessimistic compared to the results. Most of you chose 90-94 wins, including myself. While a copycat poll was posted on the front page after the season began, people were still voting in it when the Mets had already leapt out to a huge lead, so it doesn't count.

What a wonderful thing to have been pessimistic in this way! Lets go Mets, make the postseason one for the ages!!!

(moved from the diaries. hoffman = awful --eric)

Big applause for Jose Reyes from the Pitt crowd...we might not know how nationally popular our young stars are.

Bittersweet to see Kazmir lined up in someone else's uniform. Bay to an extent as well.

Feel free to use this to comment on the game, which might determine how many games we'll have in Shea later on... =)

Whichever Met said this:

The long grand slam Dontrelle Willis hit against Jose Lima on Friday night still was in the Mets' consciousness on Saturday when they reassembled at Shea Stadium.

So when the topic of clubhouse conversation turned to David Wright's participation in the CENTURY 21 Home Run Derby on ESPN in Pittsburgh on Monday night, Lima's pitch to Willis was fair game.

"David should get Jose to throw to him," one teammate said in typical clubhouse sarcasm. "He'd win for sure."

When you get back to San Fran, I'm buying.

So shoot me for jumping the gun. But we have ourselves a little lineup controversy due to Bud's experiyament: "interleague" baseball.

Which means that Willie doesn't have to bat the pitcher in our upcoming games at Fenway and the roach, rat, and thief infested steaming pit in the bronx. He could bat someone else, if he wanna.

Who would dat be? Any ideas? We don't have Piatza to do it any more. So who is it?

Take the poll, and leave your representation below.

(moved from diaries --eric)

I think the news that we have traded Jorge Julio for El Duque Orlando Hernandez is crazy. Not only have we gotten way, way older, we have also weakened the bullpen we wanted to protect so much we trapped Heilman there and probably lost four games so far as a result.

With none of our backend starters, including El Duque, likely to eat many innings (Duque has averaged 5IP/start so far, and gone 2-4 with a 6.11 ERA for Arizona), Heilman and Sanchez will be over-used in the absence of Julio.

As Eli pointed out, this amounts to Benson for Duque (and Maine). Who fires on that trade? Julio at least had a sizable upside.

This was an impulsive trade that doesn't net us much more than what we already have on the mend in Bannister and Maine. Checkmarks like postseason experience don't do much for me when Duque is unlikely to appear as a postseason starter for us...we will need something better regardless. I would probably trust Trachsel over Duque in a postseason start anyway.

El Duque's K/9 is strong, and his K/BB is acceptable, but he is being hit fairly hard, with a 1.58 WHIP and a .545 SLG against. Shea will improve that SLG a bit, but it's not clear Duque will prevent as many runs over the course of the year as Julio may have.

I believe the trade amounts to a matter of confidence: Willie did not have faith in Julio, but he will obviously have faith in Duque (those shared championships on the Yankees will do that). Omar probably also looked at the relief performance in last year's postseason, and being postseason-bound, wanted someone he felt more reliable than Julio to call upon in a jam. Duque's role as a starter may be temporary.

There are always things we might not know behind the scenes, such as possible health or character issues with Julio (I'm certainly not suggesting there are any). However, El Duque's suspect durability...he has failed to reach 100IP in 2 of his last 4 seasons...means that we may well be going from the frying pan straight into the fire.

(moved from diaries. --Eric)

I kid you not:

After the game, both Lima and Lo Duca said that Hernandez told them that he was calling pitches farther off the plate strikes for Smoltz, but not for Lima.

''When the umpire said 'I'm going to give you a couple of inches off the plate, but I'm not going to give you 4-5 inches because you're not John Smoltz,' I'm trying to protect my pitcher,'' Lo Duca said.

I'm sorry, but the umpire openly admitted to having a biased strikezone. That is grounds for immediate termination. Bud Selig, you are on notice.

[UPDATE: 5/8 @ 9:35 AM by Eric Simon]: The Star Ledger has picked up on this story and has some interesting info; definitely worth a read.

With Henry Owens and Michael Pelfrey, two of our best prospects, dominating AA ball, a good question is why aren't they being brought up to at least AAA?

Thinking about this for a moment, I'm thinking how AAA might differ from AA outside the lines. I'm wondering if it may be a bad influence on younger players.

And I'm not suggesting that it may have more partying or anything. I'm just thinking that it probably has lots of really frutstrated guys in it that have had their taste of the big show and haven't been able to put it together. Not even well enough to be a sub...and lots of MLB subs are pretty lame.

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I'm more optimistic than I was last year, where the majority of you guessed correctly. Maybe we'll have similar excellence in prognostication this year.

Since I'm so optimistic, I'll put more wins higher on the poll, and shift everything up by five.

Vote now, before the season begins!

Lessee...Seo for...Duaner Sanchez?

Gaby Hernandez for...Paul Lo Duca?

Aaron Heilman for...

Wait. Stop me there.

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