https://twitter.com/jenconnic/status/256755203183874048

I have some terrible news for you, Jen: The world’s going to end regardless of whether the Mets sign Dickey and Wright. Scientists believe that in about five billion years, our sun will explode into a red giant roughly 250 times its current radius. Briefly, experts thought there was hope that Earth’s orbit would widen enough during the transition to avoid a fiery death, but the current thinking says that a “tidal bulge” caused by the Earth’s own gravitational pull will drag it into the swelling star. Sorry, I know that’s a bummer but the upside is we’ll all be long dead by then.

https://twitter.com/arrabin56/status/256755516552933376

Hmm. Are we considering contract statuses? I’d probably work like hell to extend David Wright’s deal and then protect him if I could. After Wright, it’d be Ruben Tejada, Ike Davis, Jon Niese and Matt Harvey. If I couldn’t get something completed with Wright in time for the draft, I guess I’d cross my fingers and hope an expansion team wouldn’t want to draft a player only under its control for one more season and add Zack Wheeler to the list.

https://twitter.com/Ceetar/status/256756581692211201

Oh man, how great are condiments? I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but I had some stomach issues when I was living at home after college and my mom’s friend recommended some new-age feel-good book about how to deal with them. But it turned out the whole book was just this lady lecturing me with her opinions about why everything delicious is bad without providing evidence. And, look: I know Taco Bell is not optimal if you’re having stomach issues, so spare me that. But that’s hardly something you need a book to figure out.

Anyway, I put the book down for good when she started a chapter with, “Americans use too many condiments.” What does that even mean? Do Asians not use too much hoisin and soy sauce and sriracha? Do Europeans not slather their french fries in mayo? Americans use just enough condiments, lady, and if that’s barbecue sauce eating away the lining of my stomach then so be it.

Oh, to answer your question: It’s Sriracha. They already have Cholula, I know, and anyone familiar with the old background photo on TedQuarters knows I go through a lot of Cholula. But I’m hardly a one hot-sauce man, and the prospect of a giant tub of Sriracha with a tap attached has me salivating here in the office. (Note: Cholula is an SNY sponsor, but the Cholula bottles on my desk long pre-dated the sponsorship.)

https://twitter.com/OddMetsJerk/status/256757968060694529

I have no idea, but I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth or trying to figure out what exactly a gift horse is and why it has its mouth open. I scooped up a few and I’m heading out there with some Orioles-fan friends this afternoon. People: Did you even watch last night’s game? A 1-1 tie through 12 innings in a playoff game? That’s awesome baseball no matter what team you favor. If you have the means and can slip out of work early, I don’t really understand why you wouldn’t head to the stadium tonight. Get on it, though; tickets are already up to $25.

Also, I’ve found it can be great fun to go to a Yankee game and carry on like the worst type of Yankee fan. Boo A-Rod and go absolutely crazy every time Derek Jeter does anything. If you’re subtle enough, no one will even know you’re doing it ironically.

Years ago, one particularly incessant SNY.tv reader used to email me practically every time a player whose inclusion on the Mets’ roster I railed against did anything positive on a baseball field. If Marlon Anderson slapped a ground-ball single up the middle, seconds later I’d find in my inbox a subject-free message from this guy asking only, “What do you think of Marlon Anderson NOW!?” Stuff like that. Shawn Green makes a sliding catch, I get an email. Robinson Cancel somehow reaches first base safely, email. All the time. It was endlessly frustrating, but still somehow entertaining.

He gave it up around the time I started this blog; I suspect he just never joined me in the venture over from the network’s proper website, but I hope for his sake he found something more productive to do with his time. Maybe he fell in love. I don’t know. I kind of miss him.

Still, in the bottom of ninth inning of last night’s Yankees-Orioles tilt, when Raul Ibanez — a player frequently linked to the Mets during Omar Minaya’s hapless, years-long quest for capable corner outfielders and an option I frequently denounced — homered to tie the game while pinch-hitting for Alex Rodriguez against Baltimore closer Jim Johnson, I immediately checked my email to see if it was enough to prompt a comeback. I did so again after Ibanez hit a walk-off homer on the first pitch of the bottom of the 12th. No dice.

There are plenty of reminders of Ibanez’s unlikely heroics on the Internet and in the local newspapers this morning. Many of them — especially in the tabloids — focus on his production in A-Rod’s absence.

But despite the outcome, and leaving aside Rodriguez’s mostly baseless reputation for postseason struggles, Joe Girardi’s decision to pinch-hit Ibanez for Rodriguez against a right-hander with the game on the line should hardly seem indefensible.

Rodriguez is one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, but Joe Girardi had to manage to win the game in a short postseason series. And Rodriguez, for as dominant a hitter as he was in his prime, has not been immune to the effects of aging. After posting a stellar 153 park- and league-adjusted OPS+ over a ten-season run from 2000 to 2009, A-Rod has sported an only pretty-good 118 number in the same stat since the start of the 2010 season as nagging injuries began to take their toll on his offense.

This season, Rodriguez especially struggled against right-handers, sporting only a .256/.326/.391 line for the season. Since Ibanez posted .248/.319/.492 marks in the same split and the Yankees’ next four hitters all batted left-handed or from both sides of the plate, Girardi had pretty strong justification for the substitution beyond Rodriguez’s reputation for October choke-jobs. Maybe it was even in the much-reviled binder somewhere.

That’s what seems too often lost in discussions of whether the Yankees should drop Rodriguez from his third spot in the batting order this postseason (beyond, of course, research showing that the effects of batting order are wildly overrated): He’s not their best hitter anymore. Robinson Cano, Nick Swisher, Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, and Mark Teixeira all outperformed A-Rod at the plate this season. Certainly Rodriguez should earn some benefit of the doubt for the 647 home runs on his resume, but time could hardly care less, and seems more bent on debilitating A-Rod than it is Jeter or Ibanez.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out for the next five years of Rodriguez’s contract.