Quote of the Day
I’ve definitely given up my share of whatever you want to call it. But on opening day, it stinks.
– Braden Looper on his opening day meltdown against the Reds.
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Mets Thrown for a Loop-er
The Mets played a very good game yesterday. The bullet points are as follows:
- Pedro Martinez was shaky for the first few batters but then settled down and had a great outing the rest of the way.
- Carlos Beltran showed us why he’s making the big bucks by hitting a homer in his Mets debut.
- Kazuo Matsui homered in his first at bat of the season for the second year in a row.
- Braden Looper blew the game in the ninth inning by allowing 3 runs including 2 homers.
If you want more details you can get them here.
The bullpen has been fingered as the Mets weakness by all who have been paying attention during the off season and spring training. But yesterday was different than the kind of bullpen meltdown I would have expected. Manny Aybar (2 Hits, 1 ER, 2 SO) didn’t pitch very well in his inning but Dae-Sung Koo (2 SO) did. The big surprise was Looper. I wasn’t a big fan of his when the Mets acquired him to be their closer last year but he proved me wrong and had a great year. I’m still questioning whether he can be a dominant closer on a dominant team but this is one of only two relievers guaranteed to make the team out of spring training (the other was Mike DeJean). I’m not going to jump on Looper yet (it’s only one game). Instead I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt that it was opening day jitters. I only hope that he can shake those jitters off otherwise it’s going to be another very long summer.
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Benson on the DL
Looks like I made an accidental prophecy this morning regarding Kris Benson‘s injury. I mentioned this morning how injuries like Benson’s strained muscle can turn into nagging ones over the course of the season if not treated properly. Rather than pitch through it the Mets decided to put Benson on the DL (hence treating the injury seriously). Let’s hope that a little rest followed by some careful rehab early in the season will result in a healthy Benson for the rest of the season.
In the meantime the Mets will need someone to fill Benson’s slot in the rotation. The smart money says it’ll be Aaron Heilman. If I had it my way it would be recently traded Matt Ginter. Benson’s turn won’t come up until Saturday so we’ll have to wait until the end of the week comes before seeing who it will be. There also remains the possibility that Benson’s spot could be skipped if there’s a rainout between now and then.
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Stinnett Released
The Mets released catcher Kelly Stinnett less than a week after signing him to a minor league contract. The Mets had signed Mike DiFelice to a minor league contract a day after signing Stinnett. The presence of DiFelice made Stinnett a redundancy that the team felt it didn’t need.
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Cameron’s Wrist
Mike Cameron will likely miss opening day due to his wrist injury. Cameron had surgery on the wrist in December but still aimed to play on opening day. Doctors said the pain he was feeling in his wrist was due to scar tissue and happens often during recovery from this type of surgery. Still, I have to think that pushing hard to play on opening day had something to do with it too. I also have to think that if Cameron had treated this injury seriously enough during the off season he still could have played on opening day. I’ve mentioned previously in this space how Cameron waited until he felt discomfort in December to have the wrist thouroughly checked instead of having a proper exam right after the season. If the cartilage damage was dicovered in October instead of December I can’t help but think that he’d be ready for opening day. This is yet another reason to treat all injuries seriously.
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Benson Pushed
Number 3 starter Kris Benson felt tightness during a bullpen session the other day and will have his first regular season start pushed to Saturday against the Atlanta (he was originally schedule to pitch Thursday against the Cincinnati Reds). Everyone is downplaying the injury and it probably is nothing but I always worry about people who get these kinds of injuries late in the spring going into the regular season. They’re the kind of injuries that tend to nag thought the whole season if not trated properly. Let’s hope this gets treated properly.
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Ginter Traded
The Mets made several moves over the weekend to get their roster down to the 25 man limit. Among them was trading Matt Ginter, the man I believe should be the fifth starter, to the Tigers to open up a spot in the bullpen for Felix Heredia. Ginter had a great spring but was out of options so he became the odd man out. I don’t agree with this move one bit and have to believe that the retention of Heredia, who sported a 6.28 ERA in 47 appearances for the Yankees last year, has more to do with manager Willie Randolph wanting to have a familiar face from his Yankee days around.
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Steroid Suspension #1
Tampa Bay Devil Rays outfielder Ãlex Sanchez became the first player suspended under MLBs new steroid testing policy. Sanchez will be suspended for 10 days starting today. In perhaps one of the dumbest plays I’ve seen in baseball since I retired from little league as the least successful rightfielder of all time (I don’t think I ever caught a fly ball out there), Sanchez blamed the test results on over the counter supplements and said he would fight the suspension.
My take? If you’re taking over the counter supplements that would cause a positive test result then you should skip the 10 day suspension and go straight to the second step punishment of 60 days based soley on stupidity.
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Calm Down, Red Sox Fans
Whitney at Misery Loves Company has an excellent rant asking Red Sox fans to get on with their lives. They’ve been basking in the afterglow of their world series victory and rubbing it in the rest of the worlds faces even worse than us Mets fans did in 1986. Worth a read.
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Remembering Sidd Finch
Today is April 1, 2005. Twenty years ago today the Mets introduced a phenom even greater than Dwight Gooden. The country met him through a much celebrated Sports Illustrated article by George Plimpton titled “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch”. The story spawned a book of the same name. In today’s New York Times, Alan Schwarz takes a look back at Sidd Finch in his column titled “An Old Baseball April Fools’ Hoax”.
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