The Mets are introducing Paul DePodesta via conference call this afternoon, and since Matt Cerrone’s a bit sick, I’m live-blogging it for him at MetsBlog. Check it out, if live-blogged conference calls are your thing. Also, if live-blogged conference calls are your thing, maybe take up table tennis or something.
Craig Calcaterra gets to the Mets on his comprehensive list of each team’s best and worst uniforms of all time. I pretty much agree with everything he’s got here, but he neglected to mention the epic 1997 white-hat experiment (which I still prefer to the black hats).
Scouting Don Wakamatsu with Jeff Sullivan from Lookout Landing.
I saw this post on MLB Trade Rumors, about how Edgar Renteria would be willing to move to second base, and it got me thinking.
The Mets would be wise to sign a middle infielder of some sort this offseason. We know this. None of the various in-house options at second base — Ruben Tejada, Daniel Murphy, Justin Turner, Reese Havens, and, lest we forget, Luis Castillo — is yet appealing enough to merit a place in the Opening Day lineup.
And not only will they need to find someone who is, they’ll also need to make sure they’ve got a solid backup to Jose Reyes at shortstop.
So I got to thinking maybe Renteria could fill both the team’s needs. He could open the season at second base and be the backup shortstop, provided Murphy is on the Major League roster somewhere and deemed capable of filling in at second.
Renteria got $10 million dollars for his efforts in San Francisco in 2010, a sum befitting a postseason hero but hardly appropriate for an injury-plagued middle infielder who played in only 72 games. I have no idea what Renteria will cost moving forward, though I’m near-certain it’ll be way, way less than $10 million.
Renteria is hardly a good hitter at this point, but he’s not terrible for a middle infielder, either. His .707 OPS in 2010 fell just shy of the league average for second basemen, though it marked his best season in three.
He would likely make up for his hitting at least a bit with his defense. He can still capably cover shortstop, the toughest position on the field, so presumably he could more than handle second base.
The ideal fit for the Mets would be a guy that would be willing and able to assume a full-time bench role if and when one of the young internal candidates proves worthy of playing every day. I don’t know Edgar Renteria personally so I have no idea if he fits that description, but I know he has a reputation as a great clubhouse guy and that he considered retiring after the 2010 campaign due to his various aches and pains.
So if the cost isn’t prohibitive, Renteria might make a nice option for the Mets’ 2010 middle infield.
Incidentally, Renteria is indisputably the all-time best of the nine Major League players to ever hail from Colombia. It’s sort of amazing how Renteria is just a bit better than fellow Colombian shortstop Orlando Cabrera in just about every category: Renteria has a .287/.344/.400 career line, Cabrera’s is .274/.320/.395; Renteria has 2252 hits, 135 home runs, 887 RBIs and 290 steals, Cabrera has 1948, 118, 803 and 208; and now Renteria has played for two World Series winners, Cabrera only one.
But perhaps Cabrera takes solace in his dominance in the sacrifice-fly category. Oddly, Cabrera has been in the top 10 of his league in sacrifice flies in each of the last five seasons, and led the American League in the category in 2006, 2007 and 2009.
Hat tip to Mets Police for pointing out this high-school Spanish project puppet show, featuring a Mike Piazza bobblehead as the narrator.
Oddly, in my junior year of high school, two friends and I also videotaped a puppet show for Spanish class using paper-bag puppets. It was an alternate ending to a short story we read called “El Arbol De Oro,” and all I’ll say is that our teacher deemed it “muy pornografico.”
Rob Ryan, speaking from the Browns’ facility near Cleveland, pointed to his early victories as a college assistant (Tennessee State over Morehead State) and noted that he owned more Super Bowl rings than Rex (two to one). Rex Ryan said in a telephone interview that he triumphed the last three times they stood on opposing sidelines and that he had never lost to Rob in the N.F.L.
The trash talking even extended to whiffle ball, a Ryan family pastime.
Rob: “I absolutely kill him. His bat’s tardy.”
Rex: “He’s delusional. I buckle him with the knuckle curve. He’s never been the same since I hit him in the head with a golf ball when we were 10.”
I imagine come Sunday the Ryan vs. Ryan angle will be so blown out that we’ll be sick of hearing about it, but before then, enjoy this tremendous read from Bishop.
Also, I’ve mentioned this here before, but every time I see Rob Ryan I think, “man, Thor really let himself go.”
Baseball is a results business.
So is just about every other business, incidentally. I think the term “results business” might even be redundant. Is there any business that’s not a results business? Like can I find a paying job somewhere where my boss won’t care about my performance or the bottom line, but about how much fun I have or how much I learn from the experience?
For what it’s worth, if you Google “is not a results business” — in quotes like that — you only get five results, and they’re all about soccer.
But that’s not the point. What I’m trying to say is that I should temper my enthusiasm, since the Mets’ new front office hasn’t won anything yet. Hell, as a team, Sandy Alderson, J.P. Ricciardi and Paul DePodesta haven’t even done anything yet outside of letting Hisanori Takahashi walk.
Still, after six seasons of Omar Minaya — and Steve Phillips and Jim Duquette before him — it’s hard not to get excited for a front office that appears primed to evaluate players objectively and work to build a sustainable winner from within. These are the things I’ve been bleating about since I started writing for SNY.tv in 2006.
And now, it seems, it’s really happening. Is this really happening?
I’m getting ahead of myself. And despite all my attempts at rationality, the perpetual reminders here that the Mets are not cursed or jinxed or otherwise damned mostly aim to quiet my own ingrained Mets-fan dread. This must go wrong. Right?
I know that’s not true. I know that, in the right hands, it shouldn’t be too difficult to create a regular winner on a $130 million payroll.
But, you know, results business and all. So I will proceed with cautious optimism.
Good work by Sam Page at Amazin’ Avenue rounding up relevant quotes from Paul DePodesta’s blog.
Tedquarters 