Category Archives: Words

Binghamton stuff

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Some notes from a swift trip to the 607:

– Wilmer Flores’ double to deep right-center had to be the highlight of the B-Mets’ 1-0 win over the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. I’m (for the millionth time) no scout, but I enjoy watching Flores hit the ball. By aesthetics, at least, he has a really nice swing, and he hits the ball harder than you’d expect from a guy who looks young even by 21-year-old standards.

Flores played second base on Tuesday night. He looked OK there but didn’t get a ton of chances. Flores says he feels most comfortable at third base, but everything I heard from people who have been watching him suggested he’s been at least passable at second and first this year in his first season off shortstop. If he can hang at second, he should at least have a Major League career. He just turned 21 a couple of weeks ago, so there’s plenty of time for him.

– B-Mets’ pitching coach Glenn Abbott is a great talker. Abbott, a veteran of 11 Major League seasons and an Arkansan with a bouncy twang, shared some stories from his 40-plus year career in baseball. Among the highlights: Abbott was the pitching coach for the Huntsville Stars in the Southern League in 1994 when Michael Jordan played for the Birmingham Barons.

Abbott intimated that Jordan was known as something of an easy out (he hit .202 with a .289 OBP, after all) but a tireless worker. Jordan apparently showed up early every day — including on the road — to work on base running and playing the outfield. Michael Jordan, the best athlete of his generation, just started playing baseball one year and was good enough to be a bad but not inconceivably bad hitter at Double-A — a level at which baseball players are impossibly good by normal human standards. That on its own is impressive. But it’s somehow both incredible and not at all surprising to learn that Jordan brought his remarkable competitiveness to the sport. Jordan, with three NBA MVP awards on his mantel, left basketball to essentially become Rudy for a year.

– Greg Peavey threw seven shutout innings to earn the win for the B-Mets. I don’t know from Peavey, but his fastball sat around 93 on the stadium gun and he didn’t seem to have much trouble throwing his breaking ball to both sides of the plate for strikes. His stats say he hasn’t struck out many hitters above low-A ball, but he did fan six in the game. And Peavey’s shown great control in his first two Minor League seasons. He has a 5.13 ERA for the year, but he’s only 23 and I wonder if he’s the type of guy who could dial up his fastball a bit (and tally more strikeouts) and prove effective in a relief role down the road.

– Before the game, we stopped at Lupo’s Char-Pit — as we did last year — on Catsmeat’s advice. I got a chicken spiedie, which looked like this:

A spiedie is just chunks of marinated, char-grilled meat on a soft, split-top white roll. It tastes like a summer barbecue: Hot and fresh, simple and delicious. There’s some barbecue sauce and hot sauce on the counter f you want it — and I do. But the meat’s the focus here, as it should be.

– My hotel room had a Speakman Anystream shower head. It is the best type of shower head. They come in a few different shapes and sizes, but in my experience they’re consistently great across the board. At my first apartment in Brooklyn we had terrible water pressure, so I went into a local hardware store and asked the dude if there was anything I could do about it. He took me to a back room — no joke — and sold me a Speakman Anystream with its flow restrictor removed. Thing was like a tsunami. I brought it home and put it on our shower without telling my roommate about it, so when he turned on the water later the blast nearly took his arm off.

I know no one asked, but I really can’t say enough about how great this thing is. I’m not a paid Speakman spokesman or anything; it’s just incontrovertible fact. Look at all the glowing reviews on Amazon. This is what the Speakman Anystream in my hotel room looked like:

Vegas, baby?

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If the Bisons decide to cast their lot with another major league team – the Blue Jays are the obvious choice – based on the cities’ geographic proximity and the Jays strong farm system, the Mets will be forced into an affiliation in the Pacific Coast League. The Blue Jays have been affiliated with the Las Vegas 51s, so Vegas will be open. Vegas is just an awful place to develop pitching. The ball flies and the infield baked into a hard surface. Las Vegas as a team this year, is hitting .304/.371/.456 in a PCL that averages .279/.346/.432. At home, the 51s have hit .313/.386/.487. Yikes.

– Toby Hyde, MetsMinorLeagueBlog.com.

So I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, a move to Vegas — with its awful environment for pitchers and wonky offensive stats — seems like it could be bad for the Mets’ Minor League player development, which is absolutely paramount to the team’s eventual return to contention. On the other, a move to Vegas seems like it would be very, very good for Mets- and sandwich-bloggers who visit the organization’s Triple-A team once a year for work.

It makes perfect sense for both the Blue Jays and Buffalo Bisons to affiliate, so that seems pretty likely to happen. Toby also presents the possibility of a return to New Orleans. That would presumably be better than Las Vegas for player development since it’s a more or less neutral park, and even better yet for the Mets- and sandwich-bloggers visiting the Triple-A team once a year for work.

Mets organizational all-name team

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For no reason at all. With thanks to Toby Hyde, whose daily Minor League recaps constantly remind me of all the great names in the Mets’ system. I originally intended to put out only a starting lineup, but once I started plumbing the system’s depths I grew indecisive and decided to go with a full 25-man roster.

Starting pitchers

R.A. Dickey: Every team needs an ace. Dickey would probably crack the roster for the entendres alone, but adding that a) his first name is a set of initials that doesn’t include a J, which is somewhat rare; b) the initials in question are commonly used to refer to the guy confiscating your toaster oven in your freshman-year dorm; and c) his initials are RAD makes him a front-of-the-rotation guy.

Dillon Gee: Probably underrated. Obviously there’s the West Coast rap connection, but also a slew of easy headline puns — GEE WILLIKERS! Also, did you know that Dillon Gee is the only Major Leaguer ever with the first name Dillon? It’s true. Casey Stengel’s middle name was Dillon, but every other Major League instance of Dillondom has been a surname. There have been 15 Minor Leaguers to date named Dillon, including a Dillon Thomas in the Rockies’ system.

Jeurys Familia: Jeurys Familia is the only person ever named “Jeurys” to play affiliated baseball and, based on quick Googling, by far the most notable “Jeurys” in the world. As such, it seems like no one has any idea how to pronounce it. I’ve heard HAY-your-is, but the Buffalo broadcasters say “JAY-or-EES.” I tried to settle the matter myself when I interviewed him this year by introducing myself. “I’m Ted,” I said, extending my hand. “Familia,” he said as he shook.

Hansel Robles: When I see “Hansel Robles” on the organizational depth chart, I think, “Oh, that’s right — the Mets signed a couple of dutch dudes a few years back.” But no, Hansel Robles was born in the Dominican Republic in 1990. Also, that Hansel is so hot right now: He’s got a 1.34 ERA in 60 2/3 innings at Brooklyn and has walked only seven guys all season.

Rainy Lara: Another Dominican pitching in Brooklyn with impeccable control, Rainy Lara’s first name is an adjective describing a weather pattern marked by droplets of water condensing in the sky and falling to Earth. The possibilities for warmup music are almost endless, but I’d probably pick “Purple Rain.” I haven’t seen Lara pitch yet; it would help if he’s purple.

Relief pitchers

Frank Francisco: We get so caught up in wondering why he’s still the Mets’ closer that we forget how great his name is. But it is. He’s the Los Angeles Angels of pitching, at least in terms of redundant names.

Taylor Whitenton: Fun fact: Taylor Whitenton is the name of a character from Caddyshack played by William Zabka that was lost to the cutting-room floor.

Richard Ruff: Stop! Drop! Shut ’em down, open up shop! Oh! No! That’s how Single-A pitchers with 1 1/3 innings above Rookie Ball roll!

Flabio Ortega: The only Flabio to play affiliated ball (this will be a trend on the all-name team). Flabio sounds like a mean tabloid headline that’ll run whenever Fabio lets himself go.

Jack Leathersich: The only lefty in the All-Name Team bullpen, Jack Leathersich was Clint Eastwood’s arch-nemesis in the Man with No Name Trilogy.

Robert Gsellman: If I were Gsellman’s teammate in Kingsport I’d try to get the nickname “Typo” to catch on.

Nabil Crismatt: I’ve got nothing. The only Nabil and the only Crismatt to ever play affiliated ball.

Catchers

Jean Luc Blaquiere: I studied art in grad school. The main thing you learn when you’re studying art in grad school is how to b.s. your way through art museums. If I saw a little tag next to an impressionist painting that said “Jean Luc Blaquiere,” I’d be all, “I find Blaquiere’s work a little contrived, but he really knows how to use paint.” Then you’d be like, “No, that’s just a stray leftover name tag from the Binghamton Mets’ field trip to the art museum; this is a Renoir.” And I’d say, “Oh, of course — haha, I was kidding.” But I wasn’t.

Nelfi Zapata: The only Nelfi to ever play affiliated ball. Also, should team up with Binghamton outfielder Pedro Zapata and call themselves the Zapatistas, obviously.

Xorge Carrillo: The only Xorge to play affiliated ball. Hard to think of a more badass first name.

Infielders

Valentino Pascucci: I assume you realized this was coming. It’s impossible to say “Valentino Pascucci” without using your hands at least a little bit. Before I ever spoke to Pascucci, when he was but a series of impressive Triple-A statlines, Matt Cerrone and I used to fantasize that I’d get him on the phone and he’d have a hilariously stereotypical Italian voice, like, “Hey! I just-ah hit-ah the homers!” He doesn’t, but he does hit-ah the homers.

Merqui Marmolejos: The only Merqui to play affiliated ball. Another good headline name. If he’s really good at defense, maybe “Merqui De Sod!” If he turns into a talented but in some way flawed prospect, maybe, “Merqui Future.” Stuff like that.

Yucarybert De La Cruz: For the first couple days of his life, Yucarybert De La Cruz’s parents intended to call him “Burt.” But it so happened that when the guy with the birth certificate came into the hospital room, they were in a little tiff over who’d hold him on the way home. So the guy said, “Hey, what are you going to call this little fella?” And his mom, who wasn’t paying attention, was like, “You carry Burt,” and the dad said, “You carry Burt!” So the guy with the form was like, “OK, Yucarybert it is,” and by the time anyone realized what had happened he had written it down in ink, and 18 years later baseball’s professional ranks got their first ever Yucarybert. At least that’s how it plays out in my head.

Dimas Ponce: Famed conquistador of the Brooklyn infield. Also: Born on my 10th birthday.

Ismael Tijerina: Maybe not quite up to the standards of the rest of the all-name infield, but we need a shortstop.

Outfielders

Lucas Duda: I think sometimes we sleep on how great a name “Lucas Duda” is. Sounds like he could be a character in Point Break, which happens to be his favorite movie. Also, when he hits home runs, I like shouting out nonsensical combinations of words or sounds that vaguely rhyme with Lucas Duda like “Buddhist Luda!” or “Mucus Tupa!”

ZeErika McQueen: Runaway winner of the system’s Best Name honors since he changed from ZeErika Hall. May be the world’s only ZeErika. Also may have retired, but there’s no all-name team without him.

Vicente Lupo: Vinny the Wolf leads the Dominican Summer League in OBP and OPS.

Hengelbert Rojas: Affiliated baseball’s only Hengelbert ever, obviously. Not its first Rojas, unfortunately. Cookie Rojas is still cool though.

Gregory Pron: Another one for the headlines. WRATH OF PRON! etc. Also possibly from the future.

Sandwich of the Week

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I was in Ithaca last weekend for a wedding. I saw some gorges because I knew about them because of that t-shirt. I looked for a t-shirt that says, “Ithaca is Borges” but I couldn’t find one.

The sandwich: The Sui hot-truck sub from Shortstop Deli in Ithaca, N.Y.

The construction: Pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, ground sausage and mushrooms on toasted garlic bread. I ordered mine with extra crushed red pepper.

Important background information: The Shortstop Deli is owned by the same people who own “The Hot Truck,” a popular mobile restaurant on the Cornell University campus. I’m not familiar with the full history of the thing, but supposedly the original owner realized the best way to cut costs was selling what he called “Poor Man’s Pizzas” — pizza ingredients on french bread sandwiches. Purportedly, the guy who brought french-bread pizza to Stouffer’s was a Cornell alumnus trying to imitate the Hot Truck.

The Shortstop Deli is always open. It hasn’t closed since it opened in 1978. I suspect to college students that’s about the best thing ever. Also, as an added bonus, their menu is baseball-themed. My wife and I split a “double” sized Sui, though I probably could have been talked into a home run.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Oddly comforting. Actually, it tastes a hell of a lot like if you took the two best french-bread pizzas you could find and smashed them together into a sandwich. It feels like something I’d want to accompany some homework, but not really college homework. Middle-school homework; the time when you craved and appreciated and frequently enjoyed french-bread pizzas.

The best part is the bread. Baked locally at Ithaca Bakery, it’s way softer on the outside than most french bread you’ll find, so it toasts to only a mild crustiness. The inside stays soft and soaks up a lot of the sauce and greases, so basically you’ve just got the crust to shield your hands from all the pizza stuff and add a touch of crunch. In that way, it’s a lot like eating a folded slice of New York pizza, only a bit more substantial.

The meats add meat, primarily, and peppery flavor on top of that. They combine with the red pepper here to give the sandwich at least three slightly different flavors of peppery heat, which is nice. It’s hard to distinguish ingredient from ingredient when you’re tearing into the things, and the mushrooms seem like they serve as sponges for soaking up and delivering sauce more than anything else. That’s fine because I don’t much care for mushrooms.

The cheese stretches off the sandwich to your mouth as you bite it — again, like pizza. Melted mozzarella, as you probably know, is delicious and provides a chewy consistency that’s key to giving this sandwich some interesting texture.

It’s greasy as anything, and I suspect it would be unbelievably delicious while drunk and hungry in the middle of the night. It was very delicious while stone-cold sober at about 3 p.m., too.

What it’s worth: Maybe the most impressive part — the double, which provided a reasonable but not big meal for two people, cost $7.25. A single, stripped-down version of the sandwich (with no meat) costs only $3.95. It’s good to get away from Manhattan sometimes.

How it rates: 84 out of 100.

 

Twitter Q&A, pt. 3: The randos

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https://twitter.com/jeffpaternostro/status/236462847528411137

Samuel L. Jackson and it’s not even close. People read this site and assume I’m a pretty mild-mannered guy, but that’s only because I’m terrible at conveying my moods in print. Every single word written on this site is rife with unadulterated rage, and I don’t know anyone who could better capture that for an audiobook than a shouting Sam Jackson.

“THIS SANDWICH IS TOO SALTY! IT’S ALL CARLOS BELTRAN’S FAULT! YOU AND EVERYONE YOU KNOW SOMEDAY WILL DIE!” etc.

https://twitter.com/Devon2012/status/236462884358602752

Yeah, actually I do: Walk places. Everything’s pretty spread out in the suburbs, and you grow accustomed to getting in your car whenever you need to go anywhere. And I know plenty of people who do the same thing with the subway in the city: Charged with going someplace a mile away, they’ll consider the best subway to take, then walk a half mile to get to that train and a quarter mile on the other side.

You can cover so much ground on your feet. Manhattan, especially, is so much smaller than it seems. Walking is cheaper than the subway and typically more interesting, plus you get some exercise.

And to me, there’s almost no better feeling than when neighborhoods I’m already familiar with connect in my internal map. Does that make sense? I’ll be walking someplace downtown, south of the grid, trying to generally make my way east on the way home from a restaurant or something, and I’ll come upon a park or a building or a music venue I’ve been to plenty of times before and generally knew how to get to by subway but had never really bothered to situate in relation to other stuff in the city. Then it feels like the whole city is collapsing and I have a much better handle on the area. I like knowing where things are and how to get places.

I’ve been riding my bike a bunch lately. I’m not sure I want to recommend it because it comes with some risk, but it’s definitely the fastest way to get around. Very liberating. Shaves 15 minutes off my commute.

https://twitter.com/abadlani91/status/236463059672133633

There are plenty, but they’re all probably too weird to detail here. I do still want to ask Cole Hamels if he’s seen the embarrassing photos of Cole Hamels. I kind of suspect he has by now.

Depends on the distance of the fence, I guess. But if you’re swinging for a home run you probably won’t. I generally suck at softball and hitting slow pitching in general, but I think I made a breakthrough about a month ago when the only working batting cage at the place I went was the slow one. I swung so wildly and so far in front of the first pitch that I realized why the junkballer guy in Brooklyn baseball owns me: I get excited and don’t wait nearly as long as I need to. I’ve started trying to drive slow pitches to center field to correct the timing issue; I still end up pulling them a bit but at least I make good contact sometimes.

https://twitter.com/KevinTracey1/status/236471627255271425

If that’s what it takes to get people to Mars, then hell yes I’d watch it. Would I rather humankind’s first visit to another planet come from statelier designs? Sure. But it turns out we kind of suck at space travel. Maybe with the type of budget you could expect for what would inevitably become a worldwide television phenomenon we could make some progress.

It takes almost a year to get even unmanned craft to Mars, so it’d be funny if they launched but the show sucked and it got canceled after a few weeks. Now you’re stuck on this spaceship and you don’t get to be on TV! Sorry bub, you’ll have to settle instead for this all-expense paid vacation to Mars.

Friday Q&A, pt. 2: Food stuff

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Well, as mentioned, I’d definitely want some time alone in the Taco Bell test kitchen before I did anything. But I’ve long hungered for something I’d call the Magma Gordita Crunch. It’s basically a Cheesy Gordita Crunch and Volcano Taco hybrid.

The issue is, Taco Bell doesn’t often put multiple sauces on the same taco-sized item, so you’d have to get creative to get the Lava Sauce and the Zesty Pepper Jack Sauce — both of which are crucial to my enjoyment of this item — into the same thing. The way I figure it, you start with the Gordita shell, but instead of using the yellow-and-white MexiMelt cheese to attach it to the inner taco, you use the Lava Sauce. Then you stick the red taco shell inside, with ground beef, cheese, lettuce and Zesty Pepper Jack Sauce. So it’s not as simple as a Volcano Taco inside a Cheesy Gordita Crunch.

Again, to reiterate in case Taco Bell is listening: Gordita shell, then Lava Sauce, then red crunchy taco shell, then seasoned beef, cheese, lettuce and Zesty Pepper Jack Sauce. No need to credit me or anything if you want to pretend it’s your own idea, but a shoutout on Twitter would be cool. And I have experience in fast-food commercials.

https://twitter.com/eliwerc/status/236473730077978625

Are we talking about sandwiches from Kosher delis or just sandwiches featuring a combination of ingredients that are Kosher? If it’s the latter, it almost has to be some sort of barbecue brisket sandwich. Brisket, when prepared correctly, is amazing and moist and delicious and requires no cheese. The best brisket I know of in New York City is at Hill Country, but I’m anxiously awaiting the coming of BrisketTown.

If we’re talking about sandwiches from Kosher delis, I’m not sure. I tend to find the traditional, New York City-style overstuffed pastrami sandwiches a bit overrated and usually way overpriced — especially at touristy mainstays like Katz’s and the Carnegie Deli. I’ve heard great things about the Second Ave. Deli and I’ve been meaning to try it but I haven’t yet.

Are we counting those hot dogs inside knishes from Ben’s Kosher Deli as a sandwich? Hush Puppies I think. If so, it’s that. What a concept.

Good question. I can’t answer this with much confidence because typically when I travel I try to eat the best available local delicacies in every city, and it’s rare that those are at the ballpark. So the only places where I feel like I know the food inside and out are Citi Field and Digital Domain Park in Port St. Lucie. Off the top of my head, I’m going to put it like this:

5. Chicken-fried Steak sandwich at the Ballpark in Arlington: I don’t even remember if it was good, but I remember that it was a chicken-fried steak sandwich.

4. Pretzel at Digital Domain Park in Port St. Lucie: I think about these whenever I see hot pretzels sold elsewhere. Specifically, I think: “That hot pretzel is not going to be nearly as good as the one at Digital Domain Park.” It’s not the pretzel itself, it’s the way it’s prepared: Grilled over charcoal, served piping hot, salted to order. So good. Now I’m thinking about them again.

3. Chili Half Smoke from Ben’s Chili Bowl, Nats Park: I haven’t actually been to the Ben’s location at the ballpark, but I love Ben’s half smokes so much that I assume they’re awesome everywhere.

2. Single Shackburger, Citi Field and elsewhere: I practically never get it anymore due to the lines, the availability of Shake Shack near my home, and the array of other options at Citi Field. They’re so good though.

1. Corn on the Cob, Peoria: I’ve written about this before. In the midst of a three-week, 5,000-mile baseball road trip during one of the worst heatwaves the Midwest had ever seen, my friends and I went to a Peoria Chiefs game. We had all eaten a ton of fast food and ballpark fare on the road and my insides felt like they were revolting against me. Out in the right field corner of the stands, they were roasting fresh corn. It was the first non-processed, non-fried food I ate in weeks, and it was absolutely amazing.

No, because sandwiches don’t have mouths or stomachs or consciousness. But otherwise, probably. I’d make a delicious sandwich. I suspect I’m not Kosher though.

Friday Q&A, pt. 1: Mets stuff

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Nothing I can reasonably imagine him doing. He did hit a home run last night, which was nice. A hot month would go a long way to convincing everyone he’s not toast, but if Bay’s going to stay on the Mets through next March, his chances for staying with them through April depend a lot on what happens in camp. If he shows up looking rejuvenated, the Mets can’t find another — or a couple more — righty-hitting outfielders in the offseason and/or they endure a spate of injuries to outfielders in the Spring, maybe he cracks the club. That’s the idea of keeping him around, anyway. If there are five obviously better outfielders ready for the big leagues come Opening Day, they have to be past the point of giving Bay the benefit of the doubt based on his resume and contract.

There were a lot of questions about Jason Bay’s future with the club. My bet is the same as it has always been: He comes to Spring Training and we read all about how he’s in the best shape of his life and determined to make good on his contract once and for all, but the Mets bring in another righty- or switch-hitting outfielder anyway. Bay’s outplayed by one or more of the fringe roster candidates — Lucas Duda, Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Fred Lewis if he’s around — and for a while everyone frets that Bay will make the club because of his contract and blame the Wilpons and Sandy Alderson. Then near the end of camp, he’ll be sent off — either cut or dealt in a Gary Matthews-type deal where the Mets eat most of his salary. Which of those outcomes probably depends on how he looks in Spring Training.

https://twitter.com/MitchNYM/status/236462601654136832

Massive disclaimer: I really don’t know what I’m talking about with prospects. I defer to Toby Hyde on all things Minor Leagues. Even if I sometimes disagree with his take on young guys, I assume he knows way more about them than I do and is probably, in truth, correct.

That said, I do think much of the SABRry side of the prospecting business has strayed a little too far away from using Minor League stats to predict success. Obviously there’s a ton of value in traditional scouting for prospects, but I suspect guys like Ruben Tejada get overlooked despite consistently strong numbers for their ages when they lack any overwhelming tools.

So to that angle, two Mets prospects I like are Jack Leathersich and Rafael Montero. I haven’t seen either throw a single pitch outside of a intrasquad scrimmage in March, but there’s so much to like about their Minor League numbers.

Leathersich has struck out 36.7 percent of batters he has faced in High-A as a 22-year-old. I understand that he’s supposedly relying on a deceptive delivery, but I just don’t think you can fake those results. He’s been hit a bit harder at High-A than he was in Low-A and short-season ball, but he’s also been victimized by a high batting average in balls in play. I guess I’d be more bearish on his prospects if anyone could find me some examples of lefties who struck out nearly two batters an inning in A-ball and fizzled at the higher levels — presumably they exist, I just don’t know enough about the Minors to know them.

Montero seems like he’s a bit more on the radar so I’m not sure he counts as a sleeper, but he’s got impressive control for a guy his age. Maybe he gets hit harder as he rises through the system, but I’d bet on him over a guy who throws harder but can’t throw strikes.

Pitching prospects be pitching prospects, of course.

Going with yes. Right now it’d be hard for the Mets to deal Santana without eating a lot of his massive salary for 2013. The only way that changes is if Santana pitches the way he did in the first couple months of this season in the first couple months of next season. And if Santana pitches like vintage Santana again, the Mets could be too good to want to trade off pieces. So the only way he looks likely to be elsewhere are if he’s great but the team sucks and they want to get back some value for him while they can, or if they’re so hard-up for cash that they’re willing to eat a lot of his salary just to part with the rest of it. Both those things could happen, but I’d say the odds are better that he pitches too ineffectively to be traded, he pitches effectively enough to keep the Mets in contention, or he gets hurt again and can’t be moved.

https://twitter.com/cormac_leddy/status/236462805069479936

Depends on how much money they have to spend and if they’re ready to bro it down, because Nick Swisher always wants to bro it down, 100 percent of the time.

I’d probably lay off, though, no matter how badly and how frequently I want to bro it down. Swisher’s a nice player, but he’ll be 32 by next Opening Day, he’s benefited from Yankee Stadium the past few years, and though he’s a switch-hitter, he’s got a pretty pronounced platoon split of late — and not the type the Mets could use. He’d be another guy in the lineup that doesn’t hit lefties well, and they’ve got plenty of those already.

Central Park carriage horse breaks reins, hearts

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The mayhem started at around 4:20 p.m., when the horse’s driver tried to make a sharp turn into the park at the north side of Columbus Circle, witnesses said. The horse lost its balance and went into a frenzy, according to Sidiki Tapsoba, who arranges pedicab rides in the park.

“The horse lost control,” said Tapsoba. “The horse ran, trying to go back to the place it lives.”…

An officer at the scene said the horse ran to Ninth Avenue, where it made a left turn and then waited at the red light. A female pedestrian was able to grab hold of the horse’s reigns briefly, and a police officer reportedly tied it up to a nearby pole.

– Marc Beja, amNY.

Y’all know I eat meat with abandon and am in general no hardcore animal-rights activist or anything. But everything about this story seems so sad to me, including but not limited to the photos of the tranquilized horse prostrate on Ninth Avenue in front of Burrito Box.

“The place it lives” is a stable on 52nd and 12th, but… you know. Also, how depressing is it that the horse is institutionalized enough to wait at a red light? Seems like this is no life for a horse. It still had its blinders on when it woke up and was ushered into a police van.

Sorry if I have less sympathy for the injured-but-generally OK driver and passengers of the carriage. Certainly it sucked for them too, but probably not as much as a life of dragging a massive carriage around the same route every day, punctuated by one fleeting moment of terrifying freedom that ended in a drugged heap in Hell’s Kitchen.

It’s ya boy

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Suite owners will have access to a Champagne bar serving Armand de Brignac, an expensive bubbly that Mr. Carter promotes and in which he holds a financial interest, according to a biography by a writer for Forbes. The arena will contain a 40/40 Club, an iteration of his sports-bar-style nightclub chain. There will be a Rocawear store, selling his clothing line, on the arena’s exterior. Even the advertising agency used by the Nets, Translation, is half-owned by Mr. Carter.

There is also an important intangible asset, particularly for a rapper: the bragging rights that Mr. Carter has enjoyed as a part-owner since Mr. Ratner’s group paid $300 million to acquire the Nets. His slender stake was enough for Mr. Carter to thump his chest in his lyrics, promising to “bring you some Nets.”

Mr. Carter has capitalized further on his Nets investment by extending the Jay-Z brand into endorsement deals normally reserved for elite athletes. He stars, wearing a Nets cap, in a Budweiser TV commercial that was broadcast during the Olympic Games. And he was named executive producer of the basketball video game, “NBA 2K13.”

– David Halbfinger, N.Y. Times.

Good read from the Times on Jay-Z’s role in the Nets’ move to Brooklyn and vice versa. Bonus points because it refers to the Jiggaman as “Mr. Carter” throughout.

I reserve the right to write more about this in the future, but I suspect I will take up some rooting interest in the Nets this season and likely abandon whatever minute attachment I still have to the Knicks. You may think this makes me a sellout or a bad fan or whatever, but I wasn’t a very good Knicks fan to begin with, fandom doesn’t seem to operate in any rational way, and I feel way more excited about the new-look Nets than the same-old Knicks.

Here’s what I’ve got off the top of my head:

Reasons to like the Nets
Play a few blocks from where I lived for five years, still hang out sometimes
Cool uniforms
Jay-Z affiliation
Tickets more likely to be available/inexpensive (?)
Brand new arena
Arena easier to get to from my home by subway
Not the Knicks

Reasons to like the Knicks
I liked them in the ’90s
??

Am I wrong?

What’s the deal with Jenrry Mejia?

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In regards to actual September call-ups, I expect to also see Jenrry Mejia and Robert Carson return to the roster. And I hope to see Jeurys Familia as well, since most insiders I talk to think he could be a terrific closer rather quickly. It might also be smart to get 3B Zach Lutz some at bats at this level to see what he’s all about…

– Matt Cerrone, MetsBlog.com.

In addition to presenting the news that Lucas Duda has missed the last four games in Buffalo with “dental issues,” Cerrone predicts which young Mets will join the big club when rosters expand in September. That list seems reasonable to me. I’d guess Elvin Ramirez and Pedro Beato come back too, since they’re on the 40-man roster and have arms.

The other Minor Leaguers currently on the 40-man? Rob Johnson and Mike Nickeas, both of whom we’re familiar with, plus Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Wilmer Flores, Reese Havens, Juan Lagares and Cesar Puello. Nieuwenhuis is hurt and Puello hasn’t hit in A-ball, so neither of them seems likely to see lockers in Flushing.

Lagares hasn’t repeated his 2011 success in Binghamton in 2012, though he has been a bit better since the All-Star break and does hit right-handed, play the outfield and steal bases — three things the Mets might want to check out. Havens, depressingly, has missed the last week with a stiff back after hitting pretty well in Double-A since June. Flores has posted a very Murphish .297/.343/.434 in his first 48 games at Double-A, but he’s only 20 and still in the process of finding a home on defense.

Familia has been up and down (and more down than up) all season in Triple-A, but he’s made two straight strong starts (after three clunkers) and hasn’t thrown as many innings yet as he did last year. So maybe he gets a call and a taste of big-league action before he heads back to the Minors next year to work out his control issues.

The most interesting guy on Cerrone’s list is Mejia. What’s the deal with Jenrry Mejia?

Once compared to Mariano Rivera by people who should not have been making such comparisons, Mejia struggled in the Bisons’ bullpen. Supposedly he paces himself better as a starter and tended to overthrow in a relief role. The results suggest something similar: Mejia has a 5.48 ERA in 16 relief appearances at Buffalo and a 0.95 ERA in six starts. Tiny samples abound, though, and Mejia’s underwhelming rate stats have not been way different as a starter than they were as a reliever. Also, his ERA as a starter has benefited from seven unearned runs. I didn’t see any of them and I can’t say to what extent they’ve been the fault of his defense, but it seems safe to say he hasn’t been nearly as good as his ERA.

The big thing about Mejia, though — or one big thing about Mejia, at least — is that 2013 will be his final option year, meaning despite Mejia’s age, the Mets have limited time to figure out what to expect from him at the Major League level. That’s a shame, because it seems like more than anything he needs some reps: Mejia has thrown only 68 2/3 innings this season, has yet to throw 100 innings in any season at any level, and only has 86 innings across three seasons at the Minors’ highest level. By all accounts he has terrific stuff, but the stats say he hasn’t honed it yet.

That’s not all his fault, obviously, but he’s going to need to do so pretty soon if he’s going to make good on his prospect pedigree for the organization that signed him six years ago.