Twitter Q&A flavored product, pt. 1

More to come when I’m back from the studio. And on all prospect matters, I normally defer to Toby.

Depends on how you define “prospect.” But unless you count Mike Baxter as a prospect — and I’m assuming you don’t — the odds look pretty long for all of them. Since all the starting jobs appear pretty well set and the front office is unlikely to pull up a well-regarded young player to be a bench player or eighth-inning mop-up guy, it’ll probably take an injury in Spring Training to get a prospect on the Opening Day roster.

But all that said, it’s probably Kirk Nieuwenhuis. Nieuwenhuis missed most of last year with a season-ending shoulder injury, but he has got a few advantages on his peers in the Minor League system: For one, he has about a half a seasons’ worth of Triple-A experience, more than anyone else you’d like call a “prospect” at this point. Plus, he’s 24, he hits left-handed, and he plays the outfield, where the Mets don’t have a ton of obvious contingency plans behind the guys penciled in to start.

Still, it’s unlikely to happen unless a couple things go wrong (and Nieuwenhuis is fully recovered, of course). The Mets will probably want to give Nieuwenhuis more time to develop and show he’s as good as he played in the first couple months in Buffalo last year before they challenge him at the higher level. But since he’s furthest along than the Mets’ trio of young arms and plays a spot where they appear pretty thin, I’d put him down as likeliest to appear in Flushing in April.

Sandwich of the Week

No debate about this one. Could have been titled Sandwich! of the Week based on its size and general awesomeness.

The sandwich: Brody Special cemita from Cafe Ollin, 108th St. between 1st and 2nd Ave. in Manhattan.

The construction: According to the menu, the Brody Special is breaded beef, fried pork, ham, white cheese, yellow cheese, oaxacan cheese and pineapple on a cemita — a huge, round sesame-seed loaf. But there’s clearly other stuff on there too, including black beans, avocado, lettuce, tomato and something peppery.

Important background information: I was really hungry. Sometimes I worry that my sandwich ratings are hugely impacted by how hungry I am when I eat the sandwich. And in this case, it was about 8 p.m. and I hadn’t eaten anything substantial since an undersized cold-cut sandwich for lunch around 11:30, so I was hungry enough to be frustrated at having to tie my shoes before leaving the apartment. Stuff like that.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: This site has in the past praised sandwiches for their consistency of flavors and even distribution of ingredients, and the Brody Special can not boast either of those. And yet somehow, on this sandwich, it works so well: there’s this huge messy pile of ingredients, and with each bite you get a new mix of flavors, and each one is surprising, amazing and satisfying.

There’s delicious, tender, greasy pork in there, and salty ham, and a hint of beefy flavor. There’s creamy avocado and chewy white cheese. There’s sweet, juicy pineapple cutting through, and something unidentifiable and spicy to counter it. And lining the bottom of the sandwich — the only element besides the bread present in every bite — there’s a paste of crushed black beans, a flavorful, starchy binding agent that really ties the sandwich together.

The effect, hard as this may be to believe, not dissimilar from that of a really good Thanksgiving sandwich, with the pork standing in for dark meat turkey, the breading from the beef and the beans operating as stuffing and the pineapple filling in for the cranberry sauce as the sweet, fruity element. But there’s more to this: cheese, for one thing.

And the cemita bread itself is the perfect delivery vehicle for the variety of fillings here. I’m not a big fan of sesame seeds, but the loaf is thin but strong, easily withstanding the grease and juice and providing a nice crunchy, flaky outside to complement the mostly soft mess on the inside.

After the first bite of the Brody Special, I thought, “this is a really good sandwich, but probably just shy of the Hall of Fame.” Then after a couple more bites, I had it as a borderline, 90ish type — one I’d give more careful consideration.

As I continued eating, the melange of flavors and textures swelled and crescendoed, and by the final bites I wasn’t thinking about what I’d write in a review or my own stupid rating system or where I was or how I was getting home or anything beyond the boundaries of that bread. I got completely lost in the sandwich.

What it’s worth: The Brody Special cemita cost $10 and, for me, about a 15-minute walk. Due to my own hunger on the evening in question and the inherently inconsistent nature of the sandwich, I probably wouldn’t recommend trekking to East Harlem for it. But if you’re in the area and looking for something good, it’s worth the price. It’s huge.

How it rates: 93 out of 100.

Exasperated photos of Tom Coughlin

The forthcoming Super Bowl means I’m busy with things that don’t often appear on this blog, but that doesn’t mean I can’t have fun doing them. I finally learned how to use SNY.tv’s new photo gallery tool last week, so now I can build up things for the site like this gallery of photos of Tom Coughlin looking exasperated. Click Coughlin’s cranky face to launch:

And topping that, we’ve also got this gallery I can’t claim responsibility for: A history of Bill Belichick’s hoodie. Come for the hatred, stay for the captions.

 

Jeff Francoeur generous to Oakland bacon enthusiasts

They cooked and baked, from regular bacon to home-made chicharron with fresh cheese. All the way up to the chocolate-covered bacon. Seriously. They ate and they drummed, they shouted and had fun, they cheered and they ate some more. And when the game was over, there was a spare plate left for Jeff Francoeur….

The next day, he walked out to his position before the game, carrying a signed baseball in his hand. He spotted the familiar faces, smiled and threw the baseball over the fence.

There was a hundred dollar bill rubber-tied to the baseball. And an inscription: “Beer or Bacon Dog on me. Jeff Francoeur.”

Bojan Koprivica, Hardball Times.

Oh, Frenchy.

Via Craig Calcaterra.

Mets sign a Tuiasosopo

It’s true. It’s the baseball-playing Matt installation of Tuiasosopo, not the footballing Marques, Zach or Manu.

Unfortunately, for a big guy with a football pedigree, Tuiasosopo has never really shown a hell of a lot of power in the Minors. He’s got a career .255/.360/.430 line in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, though to his credit he has played his home games in Tacoma, hardly the league’s best place for mashing. That translates to a .223/.307/.357 line in the Majors at a neutral park.

The upside for Wally Backman and the good people of Buffalo is that Tuiasosopo plays all over the place. In the last two seasons with the Rainiers, he has logged time at all four infield positions — though only two games at shortstop — and both corner outfield spots. He strikes out a bunch and he hits right-handed, neither of which bodes well for his chances of spending any significant time with the big-league Mets. But he can draw a walk, and, you know, Moneyball.

People, camels: Still going

Princess, the star of New Jersey’s Popcorn Park Zoo, has correctly picked the winner of five of the last six Super Bowls. She went 14 and 6 predicting regular season and playoff games this year, and has a lifetime record of 88-51.

Her pick this year: The New York Giants.

The Bactrian camel’s prognostication skills flow from her love of graham crackers. Zoo general manager John Bergmann places a cracker and writes the name of the competing teams on each hand. Whichever hand Princess nibbles from is her pick. On Wednesday, she made her pick with no hesitation at all, predicting bad news for Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, even though the Las Vegas oddsmakers have New England favored by about 3 points.

Wayne Parry, Associated Press.

Really? We’re still doing stuff like this? I figured it would die out with the World Cup octopus, but then I guess I frequently underestimate people’s capacity for general silliness. We are, after all, still using a groundhog to forecast the weather.

But no one actually takes Groundhog Day seriously, right? Am I to take it that anyone, when really pushed, believes Princess the Particularly Lucky Camel can successfully predict the outcome of football games better than, say, a coin toss could? I doubt it, and even if there are a few people who do I strongly doubt they read this website, but just in case:

Camels can not read. Since I have no means of communicating with camels I have no way to confirm this, but I doubt camels understand the rules of American football or even the concept of competitive sport. If you can get a camel to explain to me the distinction between roughing the kicker and running into the kicker, I might at least listen to what it had to say about the outcome of the Super Bowl. But I refuse to buy that camels can just magically, psychically see into the future, because if they could I suspect there’d be a lot more camels.

Here’s what one item on the Taco Bell breakfast menu probably won’t actually ever look like

That’s the Johnsonville sausage and egg wrap, according to the AP photo wire.

So what’s there? Looks pretty obviously like it’s wrapped up and grilled in their quesadilla press like the CrunchWrap Supreme. And there’s a big, flat sausage patty with some scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese. Hard to mess that up, though I might appreciate some sort of sauce. I guess I could always add my own, but that’s tricky with this type of product: You don’t want to compromise the intricate wrapping they’ve done to keep it portable.