Mets Won’t Bid Against Selves For Lowe
I’ve been seeing on my RSS feed that the Mets will not increase their offer to free agent pitcher Derek Lowe because they don’t want to bid against themselves. Lowe turned down the Mets offer of $12 million per year for 3 years. He’s looking for $16 million per year. If there are no other bidders at this point in time and the Mets are refusing to up their offer then this is going to take a while as Lowe will probably wait until the last possible moment before negotiating in the hopes that another team will step in to up the ante.
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Reports: Burrell Signs With Rays
There have been reports throughout the day that Pat Burrell has signed a two year contract with the Tampa Bay Rays. Burrell will get a 2 year contract worth $16 million. Burrell has had so many big games against the Mets throughout his career. It’ll be nice to see him playing with a team where he can do less damage to the Mets.
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Pics of Shea Demolition
WCBS880.com posted fresh pictures of the Shea Stadium demolition taken by traffic reporter Tom Kaminski in Chopper 880 this morning.
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Vargas Signs With The Dodgers
The Mets have taken aim at their starting rotation as the next area to address in the offseason. One person who will definitely not be included is Claudio Vargas. Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times is reporting in his blog that the Dodgers have signed Vargas to an incentive laden one year deal.
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Cowher Out, Shanahan In?
The Jets plot thickened over night last night as everyone teams first choice for filling a head coaching vacancy, Bill Cowher, took himself out of the running. The rumor is that Cowher wanted to bring in his own personnel guy. Despite general manager Mike Tannenbaum saying he would be willing to redefine his job to get Cowher in the house it would still make for a very uncomfortable situation.
Another interesting development is the sudden availability of Mike Shanahan. Shanahan was fired as the Denver Broncos head coach after 14 seasons. The firing comes after a disappointing season in which the team finished 8-8 but out of the playoffs for the third straight year. Shanahan immediately becomes the front runner for every open head coaching job in the NFL including the Jets.
Another name in the mix is Marty Schottenheimer. Schottenheimer is another very successful coach who is available. He’s got a 200-126 career record but has never gotten a team to the Super Bowl. If he gets the job it would be interesting to see if he retains offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, who happens to be his son.
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Lowe-ball
The Mets have reportedly made a low ball offer to Derek Lowe. The offer is for 3 years at $12 million per. That’s $36 million. Compare that to the $90 million over 5 years Lowe is looking for. We’re in for a negotiation here.
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Jets Play Themselves Out Of Playoffs, Fire Mangini
As I watched the sports reports on TV last night and listened to the news this morning I was annoyed to see how the Jets loss yesterday was being portrayed. Everyone was saying that the Jets loss yesterday knocked them out of the playoff. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since New England and Baltimore both won their games the Jets would not have made the playoffs even if they won their game.
As a real Jets fan I realize the exact point in the season when the Jets fortunes changed. In November the team won back to back games against New England and then unbeaten Tennessee. The wins were not what did them in. It was the media claiming that they were the team to beat. Real Jets fans know that historically the Jets always lose when they are viewed as the team to beat. beat. Unlike most teams when you talk about the Jets in this manner the wheels come off and the season comes undone.
As proof I offer the Jets schedule and results after those wins. They went 1-4 in the final 5 games of the season. Three of those games were lost to teams (Denver, San Francisco and Seattle) with sub .500 records. Of those three teams only Denver ended the season with a .500 record (8-8). It was at the point yesterday where they couldn’t even make the playoffs with a win.
As part of the skewed (uninformed?) reporting the media played up the role that former Jets quarterback Chad Pennington played in the Jets demise. The fact is that he played no role in the Jets being knocked out of the playoffs yesterday. But he did play a large role in helping his new team, the Miami Dolphins, improve as the year went on and make the playoffs when they beat the Jets yesterday.
As I’ve been writing this post the Jets held a new conference in which they announced the firing of Eric Mangini. While the search for a new head coach takes shape the questions will linger about Mangini’s firing. Should he have been fired? I don’t know for sure but the team definitely underperformed in the later part of the season and a coach needs to be accountable for that. The big changes to the team for this season were a beefed up offensive and defensive line as well as the change in quarterback from Pennington to Brett Favre. General manager Mike Tannenbaum was responsible for that, not Mangini.
I’m going to make an obvious bid for Bill Cowher to be the next head coach of the Jets. He’s the best coach I can think of who is currently available. He can rejuvenate the defense that is full of talent but seemed to fade late in the year.
A more important hire may be offensive coordinator. Brian Schottenheimer’s game plans didn’t change very much with the quarterback change. I don’t think it’s going out on a limb to say the Jets offense would have performed the same with Pennington as it did with Favre.
At the news conference Tannenbaum was asked about Favre. Tannenbaum said he wants Favre back to complete the last year on his contract. I’ve had mixed feelings about Favre all season. As much as I liked Pennington the team definitely needed a change at QB. And when they got Favre they accepted everything that comes with Favre. Even the negative things such as interceptions. I wasn’t surprised by the number of interceptions he threw this year. What surprised me was how many of them were bad interceptions. Balls thrown into double and triple coverage. Balls thrown to spots where there were no receivers. Balls thrown badly.
Late in the season rumors began to surface of of an injury to Favre’s throwing arm. The rumors were fueled by Favre himself. He’s going to be having an MRI on it this week.
It’ll be another fascinating offseason for the Jets as they look to settle the coaching staff and figure out what to do at QB.
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Long Live George Steinbrenner!
Though control of the Yankees has been turned over to his son the legacy of George Steinbrenner lives on. Yesterday the team signed first baseman Mark Teixeira to an 8 year, $180 million contract. This comes on the heals of signing CC Sabathia for 7 years at $161 million and A.J. Burnett for 5 years at $82.5 million earlier this month. Add to that the contracts for Alex Rodriguez & Derek Jeter and the Yankees have the top 4 salaried players in the game as well as the leagues highest payroll. And the rumors are still hot about a Manny Ramirez deal in the works.
This got me thinking about Yankees general manager Brian Cashman. Cashman has received all kinds of accolades during his tenure. But how good is he really? He’s obviously a good people person to have been able to deal with the Steinbrenners this long and have achieved such control over baseball operations. But when ownership is willing and able to open the wallet the way Yankees ownership traditionally has been it makes the job of general manager a lot easier. Being able to sign high priced free agents (like Teixeira) and taking on bad contracts as parts of trades is a tremendous advantage. But how well would Cashman do in a smaller market such as Pittsburgh, Milwaukee or Oakland?
Just a thought.
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Mets Introduce New Bullpen
The Mets introduced Francisco Rodriguez to the New York media yesterday and J.J. Putz today. Rodriguez was the premier free agent of this offseason and a very important signing. But what could be more more important is Putz and how he adjusts to being a setup man as opposed to the closer he was in Seattle. The acquisition of Putz is a chancy one as he will have to (a) change his mindset to that of a setup man (a job he has held before) and (b) keep his head on the prize of winning games as opposed to getting somber about being in a non closer role. At today’s press conference he said the right things to allay these fears but you never know what can happen in the course of a 162 game season. Stay tuned.
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Mets Make Splash at Winter Meetings
It’s been a while since I posted and with all the action that went down during the winter meeting in Las Vegas last week I figured it’s time to post an update.
The biggest news of the week occurred in the bullpen where the Mets made a splash with a couple of bold moves on Wednesday. The first was the signing of this years marquee free agent Francisco Rodriguez. Rodriguez, better known as K-Rod (even though there’s no K in his name), set a major league record with 62 saves in 2008 and has saved 40 or more games in each of the last 4 seasons. I don’t usually agree with signing a player coming off of a record year (since there’s nowhere to go but down) but the Mets got him for three-years at $37 million which is a pretty low price for someone of his caliber.
After signing K-Rod the Mets went on to make an old fashioned mega trade landing Seattle Mariners closer J.J. Putz in a three team deal that included the Cleveland Indians. The Mets gave up Jason Vargas, Endy Chavez, Aaron Heilman and Joe Smith in this deal but also got outfielder Jeremy Reed and reliever Sean Green. Putz will serve as the 8th inning setup man for K-Rod and also serves as closer insurance in case K-Rod gets hurt. Last season the Mets were without a closer down the stretch after Billy Wagner got hurt and that was a major factor in this years collapse.
I had mixed feelings when I heard about this trade because I really liked Chavez and Smith and also thought that Heilman was never taken care of properly by the Omar Minaya regime. But the pros far outweigh the cons as the Mets shortened their games to 7 innings as they now own the 8th and 9th innings of games in which they have a lead (at least on paper).
Lastly, on Friday the Mets made an addition by subtraction move by trading Scott Schoeneweis to the Arizona Diamondbacks. This is one of the biggest stories of the week to me as Minaya was actually able to find a team to trade him to. Schoeneweis, as I’ve said in the past, is only in this league at this point in his career because he’s a lefty. He’s got no other redeeming factors. I don’t like to talk negatively about a player so I wish him the best of luck and hope he proves me wrong this year.
Team Minaya still has their work cut out for them as they need to settle issues at second base and left field as well as complete the starting rotation and middle relief corps. But they made a big splash and got a big start in improving the most troubled part of their roster last week.
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