The Mets held their second-annual Holiday Party for Kids today 
at Shea Stadium, during which John Maine dressed up as Santa Claus, with Mr. Met and Oliver Perez by his side.
For a photo, check out Adam Rubin’s for the Daily News.
According to Joe McDonald, texting from Shea to his blog for New York Sportscene, while talking to reporters, Mets GM Omar Minaya sounded as though he is prepared to have a young player be the team’s fifth starer.
At his blog for the Journal News, John Delcos came away from the event writing, “The kids came away happy, but no arm is heading this way.”
{ 30 comments }
At least Maine wasn’t dressed up as Mrs.Claus
Great, then let’s move on.
Pedro
Maine
Perez
El Duque
Pelfrey
Done.
still not confident on Pelfrey in the 5 spot….even if he has a nice year, it seems like he’ll max out at arounr 150-160 innings, based on his workload over a fullseason thus far. Combined with the fact that Pedro is a 6 inning guy, and inconsistency of some of the others, you are looking at another scenario in which the bullpen will be responsible for a huge number of innings…I think it may be prudent to pick up a guy who you know can give you close to 200ip, and sat a 4.5ish era….Pelfrey can essentially platoon with El Duque, who is good for usually 20-25 starts
I have a feeling it will look more like this:
Pedro
Maine
Perez
El Duque
Livan or Bartolo
Pelfrey will fill spots should any of these get injured.
thats what I was thinking…Livan is the safe pick here, given Colon’s injury history, but all else being equal, Bartolo is the better pitcher. Ultimately, it may be better to play it safe, and go with Livan
no,no,no, hell no. el duque sould never ever be slotted in a starting rotation ever again. he’s unreliable
There is no way that Duque’s brittle body can handle the stress of pitching as frequently as he would have to out of the bullpen. All you’d be doing is rushing him into his stint on the DL.
I don’t know. I think that we need to see some consistency out of Pedro before we pop him at the top of our rotation. I am sure that the rest has helped, but he’s no spring chicken anymore and he did have major surgery on that arm. He looked good at the end of the year though…
you guys are acting like pedro isn’t the ace. come on guys! there is no other pitcher coming to supplant him as the number one.
also, if the mets don’t pitch pelfrey this year, you might as well forget about him ever having value in a trade. why not use him as the 5th starter?
Shhhhhhhh. You cant use logic in here. You have to go on wishful thinking.
As I posted in other sections, not getting a big arm would have been easier to digest if Willie was fired. Since he was retained, the pressure is even higher for Omar to make a move (which is a lot harder to do). Firing Willie could have been the way to go.
Strong agreement here. It’s impossible to figure out exactly what went wrong, or why, but you know that the guy who was supposed to be captaining the ship was — at the very least — not helping. And, collapse aside, they had been playing .500 ball for months. Status quo should not have been an option, but that’s what we got.
I guess Omar was confident that he could keep Willie and pick up and replace enough players to change the feel, but so far that has not been the case (getting rid of Loduca and Milledge isn’t enough). If this team (as currently constructed) had a different manager, I’d feel a little bit better about 2008 (and at least it wouldn’t have been status quo).
Should have fired Willie a long time ago. Better load up on the middle relievers, Willie thinks he’s managing the Skanks.
It is so easy to waffle back and forth on whether it is essential to add an arm. Right now, I am of the midn it is a major disappointment that the rotation will be two guys who likely won’t make it through the season (Pedro and Old man Duque) two that although they showed solid improvement last year were totally inconsistnet and could as easily go backwards as progress, and an unknow 5th starter, who as of now could be a complete disaster (ie Pelfrey circa 2007).
At least Omar feels good about it.
If the Mets are under .500 at the ASB, Willie goes. Omar can wait until the offseason.
why wait until then? give him 40 games, under or at .500, axe him
I’d like to, but remember, the Mets last year after 40 games looked nothing like the team that finished the season. I think you commit to him to SOME extent. Heck, look at Charlie Manuel after their sluggish start. Some might say the Phils won in spite of him, but they did win.
That said, I wouldn’t wait all year. Mid-season is a happy medium.
When ever the Mets do the Holiday Santa event, I will forever think of the hot Mrs. Claus, Anna Benson.
I bet when she showed up Omar had too lossen up his tie, then he got the elbow form his wife for staring too long.
At which point he told his wife, “This is absurd, dressing like that around children, I’m gonna take care of this”
Omar trades Kris Benson and he and his wife lived happily ever after.
That is until he pursued Posada, then she got upset cause Posada’s wife is not to shabby.
and Omar knew he had a chance with Mrs Posada cause Jorge looks like an Elf.
The End (going insane after a slow off season)
i understand omar cant say anything too extreme while talking to the media but honestly i hate the “if we have to go with what we have we’ll be happy” nonsense; because its simply not true. if we go with what we have we are at best a 2nd place team and even that seems like a stretch. el duque will take his vacations the bullpen is a total ?, pelfrey is a ? bc who knows if he will last through the year, and the offense is so soft its pathetic. reyes wright beltran should be solid but alou will miss EXTENSIVE time and delgado is going to be bad im sorry but its pretty obvious he doesnt have it anymore, on top of schneider hitting a gaudy 235 and church not being able to hit lefties, this offense is going to be a joke next year. so all in all the offense takes a step back, and the bullpen and rotation at best stay the same although its more likely they also take a step back. but at least omars happy.
You know, someone sould tell Willie and Omar to get on the same page. Omar trades fror Church because of his “range” in the outfield (he constantly hangs his hat on this being a step up from Green, who, btw, was not the RF starter at the end of the year, Millz was) and 43 doubles. So, Omar is selling Church as the everyday RFer. Meanwhile, that baffoon Willie comes out and says Church has to “earn” the job. Against who, exactly? This guy is becoming an absolute joke. He is caught up in some old school “I’m the manager” mode that is ridiculous. What do you think will happen if Church is on the roster at the beginning of the year and Willie starts Gomez in right?
It just never gets any easier to get behind this team. Every time you think they’ve turned the corner, the FO does something that makes you scratch your head.
Depressing off season to this point.
“You know, someone sould tell Willie and Omar to get on the same page.”
Amen to that. In fact, tell Omar to get on the same page with his loud mouth.
Based on how the roster is setup right now, Church will be in right and Gomez will be down in AAA. Theres no room to carry him. Chavez and Anderson have the bench outfield spots. Easley and Gotay have the infield ones. Castro backup catcher. 5 backup positional players if you go with a 12 man pitching staff. Church wont be sent down because the fans really will form a lynch mob if they sent down a guy that they just got in a trade for Milledge. Unless they get rid of Chavez or Easley, Gomez will be in AAA.
its time for the Mets to think about parting ways with Omar….he can’t make a trade to save his life.
A rotation of Pedro, OP, Maine, El Duque, and Pelfrey without significant upgrade in the bullpen guarantees mediocraty (sp?). Omar has overstayed his welcome…..
What is Maine doing OUTSIDE OF VIRGINIA?
i wonder who will be out there to replace omar after next year barring a miracle that this team makes a deal or actually improves using the same exact players.
HAHA, nice work……sadly, it is true.
hahahahahahahaha………….maddd funny photo….OP thinks he’s gangsta….not that good a photo tho…lol. funny tho
ok i’m gonna cut and paste a comment i just made on Delcos’ blog entry, cause it really irritaed me…
I’m going to agree with stick’s first comment…career years? how can you call this a career year for Maine when he is 26 yrs old and this was really his first full season in the major leagues. man i guess you don’t really have much confidence in the 10-15 years he has left in his career to call this his career year. this statement is open for some criticism, but i’m gonna go ahead and say that john maine has ace stuff and could very well be the ace of this staff one day. but that is just my opinion.
Same thing really goes for OP…same age, and he really only had one other full season in the bigs. that ‘04 season with the pirates when he was lights out. 240 k’s and a sub-3 ERA. yur gonna call ‘07 his career year? See that’s the problem with the Mets organization, and more-so the fans (and this is coming from a die hard met fan) is that you’re so quick to judge players and write them off without giving them time. the alex rodriguezes and the johan santanas are few and far bewteen. you can’t draft a 22 yr old on June 6th and expect him to be a stud major leaguer on June 7th. Lastings Milledge is 22 yrs old and never got more than 180 at bats in the majors, when most kids his age are playing college baseball for crying out loud, and everyone gave up and said he’s crap. it just boggles my mind. and if you even extrapolate his numbers to a full season, it’s actually a really good year for a 22 yr old. although we got a solid defensive catcher and a good right fielder for him, i think we’re really going to regret that trade one day. maybe even next year.
ok just doing some venting, sorry
would love responses…
I’m not going to miss Milledge. Do I think we should have gotten more for him? Yes. Do I believe he will ever live up to the hype of some of the posters here as the next Gary Sheffield? Hell no. Some people swear we traded away the next Willie Mays…only time we may regret it is when he burns us during the games, but I don’t think his career is going to be anything special.
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