Given the way things have gone for both the Mets and Venezuela in 2009, I’d say it’d be a good call to bring Josh Thole home. There are other winter-ball leagues, and Thole is hitting .419 with a .538 OBP down there, so they might as well find someplace safer where he could be challenged more.

Everything Chad Ochocinco does is art. Marvin Lewis needs to get on board or stand aside.

Alex Belth at Bronx Banter aggregates some of sportswriting’s greatest ledes. Ahh, Belth? You forgot “Val Pascucci exists.”

James at Amazin’ Avenue elucidates how much better Matt Holliday is than Jason Bay at playing the outfield. But James, he took one in the junk the one time I happened to take notice of his defense!

Derek Jeter’s next contract negotiation, whenever it may come, will be an interesting one. His defense was much better than normal this year statistically, but at some point he’s not going to be able to play shortstop anymore, and I suspect Brian Cashman realizes that. It’ll be very interesting to see how that plays out.

The Mets are reportedly pursuing John Lackey. This, of course, follows reports that the Mets won’t pursue John Lackey and confirms reports that the hot-stove season is a giant typhoon of nonsense and we shouldn’t believe anything we read.

Scott Boras says, “Chronological age does not have anything to do with a player of [Johnny Damon’s] genetics.” R. Kelly agrees, “Age ain’t nothing but a number.”

Sammy Sosa says his new skin tone is due to a European moisturizer. European, huh? Likely story. Early returns on retired Sammy Sosa suggest we can look forward to a lot more weirdness.

A slimmed-down Eddy Curry showed up at Knicks practice yesterday. It remains to be seen whether he’ll be any good at basketball, or at least good enough to be traded to clear cap space.

Stephon Johnson and Jessica Bader debate whether anyone cares about the Yankees’ 27th title at the Perpetual Post. Howard Megdal and I had a similar discussion on Perpetual Post radio on Monday.

And speaking of the Perpetual Post, Akie Bermiss, Zoe Rice and I discussed one of my heroes, Norm MacDonald, earlier this week.

Unsurprisingly, conflicting reports abound about what the Mets may or may not do this offseason. Matt Cerrone wraps up a bunch of them, and I remain skeptical. I don’t think that the journalists reporting from anonymous sources are lying to us, I just think offseason outlooks probably change rapidly — as they should — as the market develops.

Plus, Joel Sherman reports “a split camp” in the Mets’ front office, so sources could be from one side or the other of the split and only leaking the information they want leaked. It’s always important to consider the source’s motivation, too.

I think that the Internet culture and 24-hour news cycle have made scooping and rumormongering so important to Web traffic that journalists essentially push out whatever they hear without really concerning themselves with viability. And until someone starts holding reporters responsible for the amount of nonsense they publish, they have no real impetus to stop.

Joe Janish at Mets Today wonders why everyone’s been so complacent about the news of Tim Lincecum’s marijuana-possession arrest. He remembers baseball’s drug problem in the 1980s and the way it tarnished the game’s image.

Times change, though — look at the difference in perception between Bill Clinton’s admission of marijuana use and Barack Obama’s admission of cocaine use. People just don’t seem to care as much. I’m not saying that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s clearly a thing.

Dave Cameron at Fangraphs points out that Mike Cameron is probably a better pickup than Jason Bay. Of course, at least some of that is based on the fact that Cameron has added value because he plays center field (extremely well), so I wonder how much that would be diminished if he was signed as a left fielder, a non-premium defensive position.

The maelstrom of hot-stove nonsense is upon us. Marty Noble tosses out a slew of names in an MLB.com article. Some would be OK, some wouldn’t. Depends on the cost for most of them, really.

Neil Genzlinger at the New York Times gets a bit sanctimonious over Fox’s coverage of the NFL from Afghanistan. I feel like I’ve read a billion stories bashing athletes and broadcasters for comparing sports to war, and not a single one has ever included the perspective of an actual soldier who’s offended.

People compare stuff to war all the time — the most elementary card game is called “War.” I’d like to imagine the troops are smart enough to distinguish real war from metaphoric war and have more important things to worry about than being offended by Fox’s coverage.

A visibly undead Sammy Sosa surfaced this weekend. Color Omar Minaya intrigued.

Baseball America published its annual top-10 list of Mets prospects. Their site is currently screwy, so here’s the list from Mets Minor League Blog. Anyway, I try not to get too nitpicky about this stuff, because though BA does a great job tracking prospects, trying to order them in any specific way seems like an exercise in futility. Also, beware of spin.

The Red Sox picked up Jeremy Hermida in another non-non-tender deal. Essentially, the Marlins didn’t want to pay Hermida, but they didn’t want to let him go for nothing, so they spun him to the Red Sox, who can afford him.

Hermida is a decent, patient hitter who will probably have a couple of good seasons now that he’s entering his prime, but it doesn’t look like he’s ever be the star he appeared ready to become in 2007. I always thought he’d be a nice pickup if the Mets could get him on the cheap, but I won’t go nuts over it. They shouldn’t be in the business of trading away even marginal prospects for guys that probably aren’t as good as Angel Pagan.

The interesting thing is the deal itself. There was a lot of talk that these type of moves would happen, and now it seems they’re happening. I have a rare bit of inside info that confirms the Mets are at least aware of the trend (which should be a given, but it’s not with this front office), so here’s hoping they figure out a way to make it work for them.

The Mets added Shawn Bowman to their 40-man roster yesterday, protecting him from the Rule 5 draft. Bowman, a Canadian, hit a little bit at Double-A this year, but still strikes out way too much and his .392 BABIP suggests he probably got a little bit lucky. He mashed left-handers, which is nice, but he’ll be more or less useless against Major League righties without more seasoning.

In the least surprising bit of news ever, Tim Lincecum got busted for marijuana possession yesterday. I’ve seen a lot of jokes about how much sportswriter sanctimony will inevitably follow, but I haven’t seen any evidence of actual sanctimony yet. It could be that no one cares at all.

I’ve avoided mentioning the Canyon of Heroes parade today, but if you’re interested, Alex Belth from this here blog network will be on SNY’s coverage of the event.

For the rest of you (and Tim Lincecum), enjoy some Floyd:

That’s it for the 2009 baseball season, and good riddance. Good for the Yanks and the good people at Bronx Banter and Was Watching.

Maybe my favorite non-New York baseball blog is Drunk Jays fans. The language is rarely even remotely safe for work, but I enjoyed their quick World Series recap.

The Mariners picked up former Met farmhand Yusmeiro Petit off waivers, and Lookout Landing provides a nice writeup on the right-hander. Petit’s Minor League numbers, short stuff and all, are simply too good to ignore. The home run has been his bugaboo, but maybe pitching at Safeco Field will help him.

James at Amazin’ Avenue explains what would be on the cover of Duh! Magazine if it weren’t so hard for some people to grasp: “The goal is to score more runs than you allow.” It doesn’t really matter how you do that, so long as you do it frequently and convincingly.

Now the nonsense begins.

Good buddy Scott writes a perfect recap of Game 5 at Rockiescast.com.

Other good buddy Jake Rake explains why things keep getting worse for the Mets in a post to The Nooner’s blog.

Storming the floor lists the early favorites for the God Shammgod award.

Sam Page at Amazin’ Avenue joins me on the Mike Fontenot Express. I’ve been riding it for three years, so it’s nice to finally have some company.

This won’t earn Manu Ginobli any points with PETA, but holy awesome:

In a Daily News column that may have been deemed too dumb to publish online, John Harper explains how the “gritty, gutty” Phillies suddenly “don’t appear to be so tough-minded after all,” which, he notes, is exactly what happened to the similarly gritty and gutty Twins and Angels when they faced a superior Yankee team. Amazing!

(The column, I recognize, is from the early edition of the paper, which is probably why it didn’t get published online. But still.)

In a column that did make the online cut, Bill Madden revels in the trappings of tiny sample sizes.

Troy Smith, not the Heisman winner but the founder of Sonic, has died at 87. One time in college I drove from DC to North Carolina to go to Sonic, which sort of defeated the purpose of fast food. It was still awesome, though.

A part of Kate Gosselin will always love Jon. No part of me will ever care.

This is funny, from The Onion via Deadspin:

Joe Janish continues his 2009 Mets analysis series with his take on Daniel Murphy. I’m still ambivalent, but I think the Mets should stick with Murphy at first at least to start the season. More on that probably later today.

Diamondbacks reliever Clay Zavada won the American Mustache Institute’s Mustache of the Year Award, and showed up to accept it. Good for all parties involved. My former roommates and great facial hair men over at Rockiescast.com did a great job tracking baseball beards all year long.

Do you not get enough of me through this blog? Click here to apply for an SNY Digital Media internship and earn the opportunity to not get paid while listening to me spew nonsense all day long. Note: Internships are only available for students who can do them for college credit.

Tim McCarver said about three or four things that made no sense at all last night. Ron Darling usually makes a lot of sense.

Sam Page does a great job running down the ways in which Omar Minaya has failed. He points to the JJ Putz trade, a good example. Not included in Sam’s excellent writeup? Omar Minaya once traded two Minor Leaguers for 41-year-old Jeff Conine.

I haven’t been scouring, but I haven’t seen anyone note how cool it was that Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera, the all-time No. 1 and No. 2 pitchers in ERA+ and two total studs in the twilight of their careers, pitched in the same World Series game last night. They’ve pitched in the same game many times before, of course, but there’s a solid chance it’ll never happen again.

For what it’s worth, the two career ERA+ leaders before them, Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove, had a three-year overlap in their careers while pitching in an eight-team American League from 1925-1927, so without doing the research I’d guess they faced each other a few times.

A-Rod is super unclutch again. It’s almost as if players have random hot streaks and cold streaks that are simply amplified by small sample sizes in the playoffs and A-Rod’s lifetime postseason numbers are almost identical to his lifetime regular season numbers. But that can’t be the case, because he was so tight in previous years in the postseason and so loose and relaxed in the first two rounds this year. I’m so confused. (Note: Sarcasm)

One of the many great things about Halloween is that “Monster Mash” gets heavy radio rotation. What a hilarious song. One of my college roommates used to listen to it year-round. Weird dude.

One of the silliest things about Halloween, for what it’s worth, is the ridiculous prevalence of “sexy” costumes. One time at a Halloween party I met a girl dressed as — no joke — a “sexy chicken.” I mean, I’m certainly not going to argue with people’s right to show off their bodies, but at least find a clever way to do so. A sexy chicken? Really?