Category Archives: Mets

From the Twitter: Trade Murph?

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None of the above. I think the Mets are playing this one right.

Murphy does not look like a second baseman and suffered season-ending injuries in 2010 and 2011 while making plays at second*. But the Mets’ other options at second are Justin Turner, who’s not a great fielder himself and can’t hit like Murphy, Ronny Cedeno, who’s likely a much better fielder than both but can’t hit much at all, and Reese Havens, who hasn’t played a game above Double-A and has yet to stay healthy enough to play 100 games in a season.

Murphy will be 27 on Opening Day, has a 111 career OPS+ and is under team control through the end of the 2015 season. If he proves he can handle the keystone, he will be one of the team’s most valuable assets moving forward. The injuries and inexperience, combined with Murphy’s defensive reputation, are worrisome. But Murphy has never looked nearly as bad in the infield as he did in the outfield, and since he seems game for trying his hand at second, the experiment appears worthwhile.

It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to trade Ike Davis or David Wright right now, since both are arguably at the nadir of their value. Davis missed most of 2011 with a lingering ankle injury. Wright spent time on the disabled list with a broken bone in his back and endured the worst season of his excellent Major League career.

Also, and for the I’ve-lost-count-how-manyth time, the 2013 option in Wright’s contract belongs only to the Mets. If the Mets trade him at any point in the 2012 season, the acquiring team will get only a part-season’s worth of Wright (unless he signs an extension or agrees not to void the option) and compensate the Mets accordingly. If Wright enjoys Citi Field’s new dimensions and bounces back in 2012, the Mets can pick up his option after the World Series and trade him then (if for whatever reason they wanted to).

So think about this: They could trade Wright during the 2012 season and get back whatever some team is willing to give up for a part season of Wright, or trade him after the season and get both the full 2012 season’s worth of Wright and whatever some team is willing to give up for a full season of Wright.

Excuse the rough math, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that in all likelihood:

(Part season of David Wright on the Mets + package of players the Mets receive for a part season of Wright) < (Full season of David Wright on the Mets + package of players the Mets receive for a full season of Wright)

Unless some team is absolutely desperate at some point in the 2012 campaign and willing to blow the Mets away with a trade package, it just doesn’t seem likely Wright will get moved. Please, everyone, keep that in mind moving forward.

It makes no sense to trade David Wright this season. It makes no sense to trade David Wright this season. It makes no sense to traid David Wright this season.

*- I initially, incorrectly, had “while making double plays” here, but Twitterer @TLJNYM reminded me that Murph’s 2011 injury came while attempting to apply a tag on a stolen base. Then David Wright played shortstop.

Mets over-under

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This one was on the original list I put together when starting this project, but I’m running it today because Aaron Gleeman set the exact same over-under in a post to Hardball Talk yesterday. I suppose it’s not terribly shocking: Gleeman seems like a reasonable guy and a fan of Johan Santana, and this seems like a reasonable, if perhaps optimistic, projection for Santana.

Context: Johan Santana missed all of 2011 following shoulder surgery. He threw a 29-pitch bullpen session yesterday and is scheduled to make his first spring start on March 5. Santana averaged 32 starts a season from 2004 to 2010, but he will be 33 by Opening Day. Several pitchers that endured the same anterior capsule surgery as Santana have struggled to return to the mound. But Santana is totally sweet.

[poll id=”62″]

Valentine forwards *third* version of wrap creation myth

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In a YouTube interview, Valentine says he invented the wrap in 1980 when the toaster at his restaurant was broken and a regular customer ordered a club sandwich for five straight days. In this version of the story, Valentine claims that after five days of trying to make the toaster work, he offered the man a club sandwich wrapped in tortilla, cut into thirds with melted cheese on top. “And from that day on,” he says, “they called it a wrap.”

But in an interview with Ken Hoffman of the Houston Chronicle in 2010, Valentine says he invented the wrap “a few years” after he first opened the restaurant in Stamford in 1980. He again cites the broken toaster, but there’s no mention of the five-day lag for inspiration. And this time, Valentine says, “In the mid-’90s, the Food Network was visiting our restaurant and my manager called the Club Mex a ‘Wrap.’ The name stuck.”

– Me, here, Nov. 30, 2011.

This website has already established that venerable baseball manager and culinary pioneer Bobby Valentine is guilty of either misremembering or slightly misstating the details of his purported invention of the wrap sandwich. By both accounts, he invented it because a regular customer wanted a club sandwich and the restaurant’s toaster was broken. But the details of the story vary.

Now, via Bill Pennington of the N.Y. Times, comes yet another version of the story. Check it out:

“I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was 1982. I had been buying $4 toasters from Caldor. I wouldn’t buy an expensive toaster because we didn’t have that much money and there was only one menu item involving toast: a club sandwich. But the banker who loaned us money came in for lunch often and he always wanted a club sandwich on toast.

“So the banker comes in one day and the toaster is broken. In fact, it broke and we had thrown it out. The waitress comes into the kitchen with a long face wondering what we’re going to do because the banker wants his club sandwich. Well, we had just put nachos on the menu and we were ordering tortillas from Phoenix, too.

“I was cooking and I looked over at the tortillas that were sitting there. I grabbed one and put all the ingredients of a club sandwich into the tortilla. I rolled it up and I melted a little cheese on the top to keep the tortilla from opening up. And I said: ‘Tell him, we don’t have club sandwiches today but this is a club Mex.’

“And he ate it and liked it. A few weeks later, my manager goes on a local food-network program and they ask if we have invented anything unique at the restaurant. And he says: ‘Yeah, we have a club sandwich that we wrap. Bobby made it up.’

Again we have the regular customer requesting a club sandwich and a broken toaster. But note: Valentine claims to “remember it like it was yesterday,” but this time it’s definitely 1982 — not 1980 — and there’s no mention of the five straight days in which the banker ordered his club sandwich. Also, this time the it’s a “local food-network program” that came and visited and not the Food Network, and this time it’s only a few weeks after the invention of the wrap, not the mid-90s.

To Valentine’s credit, the human memory is a strange thing and the events in question happened at least 30 years ago. Plus, every decent storyteller will tell you there are always minor details that get emphasized and exaggerated with time for the sake of improving the story.

If Bobby Valentine wants to say now that he remembers it like it was yesterday, that it was definitely 1982 and that it was a local food program that helped establish the name “wrap,” let’s just take him at his word. This is the man that brought the fake mustache to the Major League dugout. I’ll allow him some embellishments here and there.

Via @DanDotLewis.

Mets over-under

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Context: Daniel Murphy appears to be the favorite to open the season as the Mets’ starting second baseman, barring injury. Murphy has played 24 games at second in the Majors and 19 in the minors. His 2010 and 2011 seasons ended due to injuries suffered at second base. Both first baseman Ike Davis and third baseman David Wright endured injuries in 2011, and, with middle infielders Justin Turner and Ronny Cedeno ticketed for the Mets’ bench, Murphy seems the most likely to replace Davis or Wright if either misses time or gets traded.

[poll id=”64″]

Selfish Beltran still helping Mets

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Carlos Beltran, no stranger to surgery, actually convinced Jonathon Niese to have a nose job by offering to pay for the procedure before Beltran was traded to San Francisco last season.

Beltran’s proposal was motivated more by looks than by function. The preoperative Niese had a nose befitting a journeyman boxer, and evidently took some ribbing from teammates about it. But when Niese, 25, decided to take Beltran up on the offer, a doctor discovered that the issues were more than skin deep.

“It was all messed up,” said Niese, who arrived Monday at Digital Domain Park. “If you saw the CAT scan, you’d be grossed out.”

– David Lennon, Newsday.

As @SanpeteRTU pointed out on Twitter this morning, very few would have predicted Jon Niese’s nose would be in the best shape of its life come Spring Training. But Lennon’s story adds that the rhinoplasty helped Niese breathe easier, which allowed him to work out harder and drop 10 pounds this offseason. So apparently both Niese and his nose are in great shape.

Hard to say if the nose job will actually make a difference, but I’m hoping Niese finally pitches to his peripherals and everyone credits the new nose. That’d mean Beltran, in absentia, gave the Mets perhaps their best Major League and Minor League pitchers.

“Mets” over-under

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Context: I will likely attend 30-35 of the Mets’ 81 home games in 2012. Last year, I probably got Shake Shack burgers slightly less than half the times I went to Citi Field, but I would have went more often were it not for the lines. For the length of the 2011 season, I lived in Westchester and did not have access to Shake Shack burgers within a few blocks of my home, as I do now. I never get more than one burger at a game.

You may think this is entirely in my control but I would argue otherwise.

[poll id=”59″]