Everybody freak out

The Mets offered Wright a six-year, $100 million contract extension on Monday, according to major-league sources.

It is an offer that Wright is certain to refuse.

Wright, who is under contract for $16 million in 2013, prefers a deal of seven years or longer, sources say.

Ken Rosenthal, FoxSports.com.

OK, here’s the thing: Our boredom with the baseball offseason shouldn’t have any impact on the way the Mets approach contract extensions with David Wright and R.A. Dickey. Luckily, the Mets don’t seem to operate that way. If they did, and they rushed to get deals done to appease impatient fans, we’d have something to talk about for, like, two days. But then we’ll have something else to talk about three or four or seven years from now when we realize the Mets promised far too much money to players too late in their careers because the Jets sucked and the offseason is long and everyone just got antsy.

Which is to say that I just don’t care at all about the sausage-factory stuff in the Mets’ negotiations with either player. I don’t fault Rosenthal for reporting it, obviously. I just don’t think it’s particularly productive or necessary to freak out about reports of the Mets’ first offer to Wright, since nowhere in the report did Rosenthal suggest it’s the Mets’ final offer to Wright.

We will know if the Mets and Wright (and Dickey) can come to mutually agreeable terms when they announce the contract extension. If it becomes clear it’s never happening, or if the Mets trade either or both of their stars, then we can all something something. But it’s still November. November.

Doing right by the people of Las Vegas?

By my count, the Mets have acquired eight players this offseason. It’s an odd lot: pitchers Greg Burke, Wanel Mesa, Scott Rice and Carlos Torres, infielders Brandon Hicks and Brian Bixler, catcher Anthony Recker and outfielder Jamie Hoffman.

If you squint, you can envision the ways most of them might help the Mets at the fringes of their 2013 roster. Burke is a reliever who had a lot of success in Triple-A in 2012. Rice throws left-handed. Torres has a history of decent strikeout rates. Bixler can play practically every position. Recker is a righty-hitting catcher who has hit some in the Minors. Hoffman and Hicks have shown power from the right side at different Minor League stops.

The odd signing — on paper at least — is Mesa’s, as the 25-year-old righty has not pitched in affiliated ball since 2010 and has never had any success above Rookie ball. He has struck out more than a batter an inning everywhere he’s gone, so — though I can find precious little information about him online — I’m assuming he throws gas and the Mets figured it worth taking a flyer on him and trying to adjust his mechanics.

The other mildly (or not at all) interesting thing about the signings is that every guy besides Mesa has recent experience in the Pacific Coast League, home to the Mets’ new Triple-A affiliate in Las Vegas. Bixler, Hicks, Recker, Rice and Torres all spent some time in the PCL in 2012, and Burke and Hoffman both played there from 2009-2011.

That could easily be a coincidence: Most of these guys, after all, have been bouncing around Triple-A for a few years, and half the Triple-A teams play in the Pacific Coast League. Or they could all have come to the organization on the recommendation of one particularly adamant West Coast scout.

Or it could be that Sandy Alderson and the SABRos feel there’s some value in bringing in guys who understand the particulars of PCL play — the light air, the hard ground, the massive offensive output — to a Triple-A club set to feature some prized prospects with only International League experience on their resumes.

Just something I noticed, is all.

Nolan Ryan is writing a cookbook

That’s pretty much the whole story: Nolan Ryan is writing a cookbook. It is to be called The Nolan Ryan Beef Cookbook, which would be a sweet title for a hip-hop album full of diss tracks targeting Robin Ventura.

Ryan’s a rancher, so maybe he also knows good ways to prepare beef. I’m open to it, at least. The guy’s good at stuff and he probably likes meat a lot.

But for my money, the standard-bearer in monocarnivorous baseball cookbooks is still Wade Boggs’ Fowl Tips. Every few months I search the Internet for a copy for sale, but nothing yet.

For those wondering, Boggs managed a tiny-sample .974 career OPS against Ryan, so score one for chicken in the long-fought battle for meat supremacy.

Also worth nothing: Customers who viewed Fowl Tips on Amazon.com also viewed Rawlings batting doughnuts and Everybody Poops.

Friday Q&A, Wednesday edition, pt. 1: Baseball stuff

Via email, Sean writes:

The reference to Wright’s acts of leadership behind the scenes of 2012 was interesting. I completely understand there is a line about what you can discuss in public forums, given your access.

Maybe you can share though how you find that line in your position, when you’re both a fan but it’s also your job and have some privileged access. Must be especially tough to police yourself given all the forums available for people to express any thought these days.

It’s not all that tough, honestly. Though I have a season credential to Mets home games and some level of access, I’m not a beat writer and I don’t typically travel with the team, so I don’t get nearly the type of privileged information those guys might. On the rare occasion I do, it’s tempting to go nuts and plaster it everywhere because EXCLUSIVE TEDQUARTERS EXCLUSIVE.

But I’ve done far too much trolling of vaguely written and anonymously sourced baseball scoopsmanship to do it myself as soon as I stumble on to any sort of inside information. Typically, I use whatever I learn to inform my writing, and a good conversation with someone inside the organization can provide months’ worth of context about roster moves and the like. But I don’t think it adds much to an argument to cite the nebulous authority that some seem to think comes along with credentials, so I do my best to avoid it.

https://twitter.com/metsthoughts/status/271292969255063552

I don’t know that there’s a good comp, for a couple of reasons. It seems like Jack Taylor’s indisputably impressive accomplishment did come in part due to Grinnell’s offensive system, which I don’t know much about. The previous D-3 single-game scoring record was held by another guy on Grinnell, who scored 89 in a game last year and came off the bench for seven last night.

Also, there’s almost no way a basketball player can score 138 points without taking better scoring opportunities away from his teammates. Look at that article: Even Carmelo Anthony appears to be taken aback. That can’t really happen in baseball.

All that said, I’m going with seven home runs. Our Internet is spotty today and I can’t draw up a more direct comp statistically, but it feels like seven home runs in a game at pretty much any level would be as remarkable and improbable as scoring 138 points.

https://twitter.com/tpgMets/status/271297458053713920

I’ll guess Josh Thole. When we did the Furious Five stuff last year, most of the players had to think a bit to determine their favorite sandwiches. That’s understandable; professional athletes don’t all interact with food in the same way professional sandwich bloggers do. But Thole was on it: Not only could he name a specific sandwich when asked his favorite — a Lobster Roll from Luke’s Lobster — but he said that the first thing he did when he came to New York was get sushi at Tao. So based on that little bit of evidence, I’m going to guess Thole is pretty dedicated to eating well. Lucas Duda is another obvious candidate but that’s purely based on his size.

https://twitter.com/TheSeanKenny/status/271310245781962753

I don’t know if Sean’s referencing something specific that I haven’t read or some particular item of misinformation. I know much has been made over what Jeff Wilpon said about R.A. Dickey and David Wright yesterday. It seems people are understandably pretty fired up that Wilpon said he’d rather keep Dickey and Wright through 2013 without extensions than trade them, since that’s pretty demonstrably not in the Mets’ best long-term baseball interests. But the counter — and I’m reluctant to even mention it, because I realize I’ll now inevitably be accused of shillery — is that it makes no sense for Jeff Wilpon to say, “Yeah, if we can’t get extensions done, we’re definitely trading them.”

Those of you reading regularly probably know I’m not the type to get too bent out of shape or sanctimonious over things people say. I’d happily abide misinformation from the Mets if I could be confident they were operating optimally and on behalf of becoming the best possible baseball team. For now I can only hope for that, though. The way they handle Dickey and Wright will tell us a lot more about what the Mets are doing than the way they say they’ll handle Dickey and Wright.

Finally, via email, Chris writes:

Have you realized the only year the Giants didn’t win the World Series in the past 3 years was when they had Carlos Beltran? Similarly, the only year the Cardinals haven’t won it in the past two years was with Carlos Beltran!

Typical Beltran. For all his “best postseason OPS in baseball history,” he’s never won the World Series, and that’s obviously his fault.

Sea tornado? Sea tornado

Via Gizmodo:

I may or may not have been out extremely late last night watching a certain unranked college basketball team take the nation’s No. 1 team to overtime only to be jobbed by what looked like (from my extremely biased perspective) awful officiating. And since the Internet will likely be slow on Friday, I’m probably leaning on the Q&A crutch this afternoon. Here’s a contact form for anyone who wants to submit a question and doesn’t have the Twitter:

Go back

Your message has been sent

Warning
Warning

Warning.

Select photos of Rickey Henderson doing stuff

In lieu of anything else to write about, I went to the AP wire to find a photo of Rickey Henderson to post. Problem is, there are way too many to choose just one. Here are some photos of Rickey Henderson doing stuff.

Here’s Rickey stealing a base in 1986:

Here’s Rickey Henderson celebrating breaking the Major League record for stolen bases in 1991:

Here’s Rickey calling timeout in 1999:

Here’s Rickey catching a ball in 2000:

Here’s Rickey scoring in 2000:

Here’s Rickey making a catch in 2002:

Here’s Rickey charming the crowd at a 2001 press conference:

Here’s Rickey hitting a home run in 2003:

Here’s Rickey sliding into home during a San Diego Surf Dawgs game in 2006:

Here’s Rickey wearing an awesome white suit at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony alongside Jim Rice in 2009:

Here’s Rickey posing with his own shoes at the Hall of Fame:

Here’s Rickey low-fiving Guy Fieri after homering in the All-Star Legends and Celebrity softball game in 2010. He also homered in the 2011 version of the event:

Here’s Rickey throwing out the first pitch before an A’s game in 2011, wearing… something:

Today in dumpster diving

Bedbugs destroyed our great dumpster-diving tradition, I think. It wasn’t long ago you could reliably find good stuff left up for grabs on street corners and figure someone just discarded it because they were moving and didn’t have the space or they were redecorating and going with a different color scheme. I still use a desk lamp I found in the lobby of my old apartment building about seven years ago. But if I saw that same lamp available in any public space today, I’d assume it was positively riddled with bedbugs desperate for a ticket inside my apartment to nest in my bookcase and breed under my pillow.

The Tigers cut Ryan Raburn today, which was not unexpected after his miserable 2012 campaign. Whatever happened to Raburn this season appears to be the baseball equivalent of a bedbug infestation: He went from being a good hitter in 2009 and 2010, to a slightly below average one in 2011, to sub-Jason Bay levels in 2012.

With Bay now gone, the Mets’ best righty-hitting outfielder currently in house is either Juan Lagares or Cory Vaughn, neither of whom has yet played above Double-A. If there’s any hope Raburn can return even to his 2011 form, it can’t hurt the Mets much to act on it. He’s hardly Scott Hairston in his ability to hit lefties, but presumably bringing in Raburn would not preclude Hairston’s return, given the organizational dearth of outfielders. Plus, Raburn’s not just an outfielder: He’s logged considerable time at second base in the Majors, with stints in the infield corners as well.

At 32, he looks like a reasonable low-risk option to fill a platoon or bench role in Flushing in 2013. If it pays off, Raburn would be a very useful guy to have: Depending on how the outfield shakes out, he could split time with Mike Baxter or Lucas Duda in a corner and/or spell Daniel Murphy and Ike Davis when they need days off, especially against tough lefties.

I know, I know. LOLMets. But it is what it is, and Raburn looks like a particularly good fit for the Mets, given their needs.

Hat tip to Eno Sarris.