Forgive me if I don’t shed tears

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In this way, Minaya is not much different from most general managers. Theo Epstein has won two titles with Boston and smartly built a perennial contender. But he has also signed Matt Clement, Julio Lugo and Mike Cameron while giving away Bronson Arroyo in a trade.

Similar examples abound all over: the Philadelphia Phillies’ former general manager, Pat Gillick, overvalued Adam Eaton; the Tampa Bay Rays’ Andrew Friedman blundered with Pat Burrell; the Yankees’ Brian Cashman sank $46 million into Kei Igawa….

But it would be sad, in a way, if Minaya is dismissed. He had nothing to do with so much of the mess at Citi Field, and he would probably leave the team in much better shape than most people realize — kind of like the Padres, who fired Towers at the end of last season and have discovered he was not so bad, after all.

– Tyler Kepner, N.Y. Times.

Look: It’s not like I’d root for anybody to lose his job. Omar Minaya is by all accounts a decent guy and everything. But sad? I don’t know. If he loses his job after this season, he’s going to get seven figures for the next two years to do jack. Hardly a tearjerker. I’m sure he’ll land on his feet.

And Kepner’s premise is pretty silly. Every GM makes mistakes, for sure. Cherry-picking certain ones and using them to argue that every GM is “not much different” is ridiculous. Minaya has made more big-ticket mistakes, and more egregious ones, than the men he is compared to in the article. That’s why it seems like he’ll lose his job. That’s why the Mets have a $126 million payroll and a .500 club.

That’s the thing. You want evidence of how Minaya is different from Epstein, Friedman, Cashman and Gillick? Which of those GMs will have teams in the playoffs this year? Which of them had teams in the playoffs last year? The year before? Which of them hasn’t had a team in the playoffs since 2006, despite consistently massive payrolls?

I vaguely agree with part of Kepner’s conclusion. I think the future is a bit sunnier than Mets fans can imagine it right now, because there are decent young players on the horizon and on the current roster. But Minaya’s tenure has been nothing like Towers’ in San Diego. Let’s not sugarcoat it — he has not made the most of the team’s payroll or roster, not now, not in 2006, not ever.

The greatest moment in TedQuarters history

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I missed Hard Knocks last night — I was TiVoing it in favor of the Mets game — but I’m told that Mark Sanchez was wearing a Taco Bell hat during one scene in a team meeting.

This, the intersection of Taco Bell and Mark Sanchez, is obviously the greatest moment in TedQuarters history. If someone can send me a screengrab or something, that would be tremendous. Until then, I’m just going to assume it looked like this:

Based on a Google Image search, that is by far the most common type of Taco Bell hat so I’m just going to go ahead and figure it’s the one Mark Sanchez was wearing. Also, if anyone has this or any other type of Taco Bell hat, please email me and we can negotiate a price.

And furthermore, one of the other Google Image returns for “Taco Bell Hat” is this photo, one of the more conflicting and terrifying images I’ve ever seen.

Gee whiz

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Dillon Gee had, on the surface, a shaky outing for the Buffalo Bisons last night, allowing four earned runs on nine hits — including a homer — over 5 1/3 innings.

But Gee struck out eight and walked one, and that’s kind of Dillon Gee’s thing. He’s got 144 strikeouts and only 34 walks in 145 innings in Triple-A this year. That’s an exceptional ratio. And he’s still only 24.

Problem is he’s got a 4.84 ERA on the season. Part of that probably comes from pitching in front of a defense filled up with Quadruple-A mashers doing right by the city of Buffalo and wrong by their pitching staffs, but part of it is probably because he gets hit pretty hard. Gee has allowed 155 hits and 19 homers in those 145 innings.

I was planning on writing more about Gee, but then I saw that Toby Hyde promised to write something about Gee today, so I’ll leave it at that. I’m interested in seeing what Toby has to say.

My point is this: I’d much rather see what Gee and his stellar peripherals could do at the Major League level for the rest of the season than watch the Mets trot out Pat Misch every fifth day.

Gee’s probably not great, but they can’t all be aces. Maybe after an audition against Major League hitting in front of a Major League defense, the Mets can slot him in as a back of the rotation guy for 2011.

Also, he’d be the single biggest boon to area headline writers since Jae Seo.

The Teufel Shuffle

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Talking to Tim Teufel about some of his B-Mets, with footage of some of his B-Mets:

I really wanted to ask him if he taught players the shuffle but he was pretty serious about everything and I thought it would be weird.

Are the Mets better or worse off than they were last year?

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OK, that’s not a rhetorical question and it’s not one I’m fully prepared to answer yet. Allow a braindump of sorts — I’m trying to figure it out.

I’m thinking about about Bob Klapisch’s column today and a couple of things I wrote this offseason, most notably this piece that pissed a lot of people off.

Klapisch strongly suggests that Jerry Manuel and Omar Minaya will be canned after the season. I thought that should have and would have happened last year, so I’ll believe it when I see it. And obviously a lot of the Mets’ future hinges on whether it does.

The fanbase is angry right now, pitchforks and torches. The Mets are no fun to watch, and for some crazy reason we don’t even get to see the kids play every day. We watch Luis Castillo hobble and Jeff Francoeur hack instead, and we get mad. I’m with you.

But thinking about the future, are you more or less optimistic about 2011 and 2012 than you were last year at this time?

Last year we weren’t sure Jose Reyes would ever be decent or healthy again. He hasn’t had a great year, sure, and now his contract status is up in the air, but he has been pretty damn good since mid-May, once he (presumably) got up to speed.

David Wright, though, has had another weird year. Still a good year, but, like 2009, not as good as his years from 2005 through 2008. That’s an investigation for another post.

Johan Santana has been healthy and effective. It appeared he may have been getting exceptionally lucky — or something — at the beginning of the season, but he now appears to be striking out batters like he used to.

Oh, I could go on and on. You know the rest. The Mets are a year closer to getting out from under some big, bad contracts. Angel Pagan is awesome. Jon Niese looks pretty good. Josh Thole might be a serviceable Major League regular. Ike Davis has been pretty bad stats-wise as far as first basemen go, but he hasn’t entirely embarrassed himself — a decent sign for a 23-year-old rushed through the Minors.

They added the Jason Bay contract, which looks pretty terrible right about now. Bay looks like a pretty safe bet to bounce back a bit next year, but obviously that deal, with the vesting option and everything, looks like something of an albatross after the season Bay put up in Flushing.

And then there are the guys in the system. Fernando Martinez has yet to demonstrate he’s a hitting machine and shouldn’t be in the Majors, though he’s still quite young. Kirk Nieuwenhuis appears to have taken big steps forward, as has Wilmer Flores. But Reese Havens has struggled with injury and the crop of pitchers in High A ball has struggled.

I’m recapping lots of stuff you already know. So what do you think? Do the Mets, as a franchise, appear better or worse prepared to compete in the future than they did a year ago?

Diddy ranked second highest-earning hip-hop artist

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I linked this just because I’m wondering: Do we still really consider Puff Daddy a musician at this point? The Wikipedia tells me he’s apparently got a new album coming out this year, but when I think of Sean Combs I really don’t associate him with music at all. I guess I sort of think of his music-related projects, but really I think rich-guy-at-large, like an eccentric millionaire type who does all sorts of millionaire things. I heard he was awesome in Get Him to the Greek, incidentally. 

Calcaterra: Contract disqualification a P.R. move

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He’s a lawyer, so he’d know better than me. I’ve never actually heard of a player’s contract being disqualified — at least not in those terms — before so I figured it was John Ricco pulling out some little-known MLB contract stuff he knew about from his time in the league office, but it does sound a bit too good to be true. Either way, obviously the union’s going to fight the hell out of it.

Please, please stop calling athletes ‘soft’

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Despite a headache, a doctor’s recommendation that he sit out and a bump on his head so large that he had to wear one of Babe Ruth’s larger caps, Gehrig played the next day against the Washington Senators to continue his streak at 1,415 games. “A little thing like that can’t stop us Dutchmen,” Gehrig told a reporter, according to Jonathan Eig’s definitive biography of Gehrig, “Luckiest Man.”

In 1924, during a postgame brawl with the Detroit Tigers, Gehrig swung at Ty Cobb and fell, hit his head on concrete, and was briefly knocked out. While playing first base against the Tigers in September 1930, Gehrig was hit in the face and knocked unconscious by a ground ball. He was knocked out again by an oncoming runner in 1935.

Those are the four incidents in which Gehrig’s being knocked unconscious was notable enough to be reported in newspapers. He most likely sustained other concussions that were never noticed or considered meaningful — for example, when he was hit in the head with a pitch during a 1933 game against Washington but continued playing — either in baseball or while serving as a halfback for Commerce High School in New York and later Columbia University.

– Alan Schwarz, New York Times.

Amazing, absolute must-read article from Schwarz investigating the long-term effects of head injuries in sports and how repeated brain trauma can mimic ALS, commonly called Lou Gehrig’s Disease, which Gehrig himself actually might not have even had.

The article freaks the crap out of me for a number of reasons, but the main thing that matters is how we tend to romanticize players like Gehrig — guys who played every day until they were no longer physically capable — and discount the possibility that they would have enjoyed longer, more productive careers if doctors knew then what we all know now.

Athletes tend to be tough guys. They want to play. And yet when they actually yield to the advice of their doctors and trainers — or better yet, their own bodies — and wait out injuries, people label them ‘soft’ and question their desire. That’s awful.

The physical toll that professional sports put on an athlete’s body is remarkable. It’s not like going to the gym or playing rec-league flag football like we do. I wrote about this at length last year: We need to stop pretending we understand other people’s pain.

Also — on a completely unrelated note — it turns out Gehrig is buried about 500 yards from Babe Ruth, in an adjacent cemetery. That strikes me as amazingly poetic, though I guess it stands to reason that a lot of Yankees would retire to the same general area. Both sites are walking distance from my house. I checked out Ruth’s resting spot not too long ago; I should probably visit Gehrig’s too.

It’s too bad this thing’s not real, because otherwise I’d be on my way to try one right now

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Some fellow named Me Gusta at Brain Residue created a minor Internet stir today with a phony KFC test sandwich, the Skinwich, purportedly five layers of fried chicken skin with american cheese and bacon on a bun.

If the name weren’t enough to give away the hoax, the guy made it pretty clear by saying that test stores were located on Colbert Blvd. in Ekaf, Maine, the corner of Third and Twain in Tihsllub, Oklahoma, and on Dense St. in Eritas, California. Read the town names backwards.

Furthermore, anyone with any good sense should realize that KFC would never put out a sandwich like that without some sort of special sauce on it. That should give up the joke immediately.

Nonetheless, it’s a funny idea for a delicious-sounding sandwich, made all the more hilarious by the guy’s scathing writeup. The sandwich looks like this:

Straight up, that thing looks amazing. Maybe a little too good, really — like the product shot of the Skinwich, not like the Skinwich you’d actually get if you went to KFC and ordered it. Anyway, shame they’re not really making this thing because it’s practically begging for a TedQuarters review.

Also, and perhaps funniest of all, some clever asshat at Geekologie didn’t get the joke and wrote a whole post ripping the thing.