The Mets lost to the Orioles by the score of 4 to 3 today in Fort Lauderdale.
- Orlando Hernandez allowed one run, four hits, and one walk, while striking out two over five innings of work. He lowered his spring ERA to 6.75.
- Mike Pelfrey threw 3.2 innings, allowing three runs on six hits, while walking three and striking out two. Pelfrey’s spring ERA rose to 8.14.
- Jose Reyes had a single and a double in three at-bats. He also scored two runs and stole two bases, increasing his spring total to five.
- Carlos Beltran and Carlos Delgado were both hitless in two at-bats.
- Ryan Church was 0-for-5, leaving five men stranded.
- Fernando Tatis, who played both first base and left field, was hitless in four at-bats, lowering his spring average to .212.
…well, if today’s appearances were the determining factor for the final spot in the Mets starting rotation, then el duque clearly came out on top…i was hoping big pelf would seize the opportunity, but its becoming more obvious by the start, pelfrey needs to gain more confidence and experience by pitching in the minors…
…alright, duque, you “earned” your spot as the fifth starter, but now the question is, can you remain healthy until your expected first start on April 5…
{ 108 comments }
It’s also apparent that Tatis has not earned his spot.
Sure, he has. He’s played 13 games in his career other than 3B. Versatility, I believe is what it’s called according to Willie and Omar.
I like the observation on Rotoworld:
Fernando Tatis went 0-for-4 on Friday, leaving him 7-for-33 this spring.
Tatis has been talked up as a bench candidate in recent days, even though there’s nothing new to support his case that wasn’t there a month ago or even a year ago, when he spent all season in Triple-A. He has no homers and one walk in his 33 at-bats.
If you’re under the age of 30, you better be named David Wright or Jose Reyes to make the team…
or: beltran, church, heilman, perez, maine, santana.
Or aaron heilman, or joe smith(last year at least), or ryan church or angel pagan….
I’m talking about POSITION players. Beltran is 30+ now. Church is the only exception and he’s right on the cusp…
easy mackey, beltran turns 31 in a month and santana, heilman and church all turn 30 within a year. the point is a valid one, particularly when it comes to the reserves…Willie and Omar give way too much preference to the old crusty vets, which may come back to bite us in the arse. endy is 30, castro 32, anderson 34 and easley 39. great name btw, every fantasty baseball team i field is called the mackey sasser all stars.
young players should be developing in the minors, not rotting on the bench. How many young players are sitting on the bench across the league? answer: not many. You want a veteran because he knows how to handle a situation, he knows his role, and he doesn’t pout for being in that role.
Mookie you raise an interesting question. I wonder exactly how many youngsters are sitting on the bench through the majors. How many teams are slowly integrating their young talent into the lineup?
If I were manager I would love to have a veteran team. It would make my job so much easier. I wouldn’t have to bother teaching the game and instructing some youngster. It would leave my time free to make Subway commercials and play golf. :)
I was wrong about beltran. He is 30. Santana turned 29 a few days ago. Church and Heilman turn 30 after the season.
Willie and omar prefer players that know how to play the game. No need for “rookie mistakes” from your bench guys. Marlon, endy, easley, and castro are some of the best bench guys in the game.
Well I think it’s pretty clear come the home opener which player we should expect to get the boo-bird treatment when the roster’s are introduced.
Personally, I don’t get what Brady Clark has done to fall out of favor. We have two guys in Easley and Anderson who can back up Delgado at first in a pinch and I’m sure Clark could have played there too.
I can tell you why Clark wont get the spot……hes white….
ouch dude
stop making a fool of yourself
wow, that’s just stupid.
on that note:
MLB Front Page Article:
Mets represent diversity:
Team of many cultures shows impact of civil rights movement…
…”We have a group of people from different backgrounds, who speak different languages, come from different cultures, and all of us have come together for a common goal,” Wright said. “I think that’s a good example not only in baseball, but in life.”
Yea thats just unnecessary, go to another blog with those comments
it didn’t hurt newhan, schoeneweis, and sele last year. they were all terrible and made the roster.
i often joke about the omar favors latinos thing but obviously its incredibly stupid to say that here considering we just waived ruben gotay who is latino in favor of fernando tatis who is also latino. brady clark sucks and is an OF by nature, we already have enough backup OFers in chavez, pagan, and to an extent anderson. we needed a guy who can play the left side of the IF and 1B that hits right handed. i love gotay but sadly like some have pointed out theres simply no room and as for clark we already have enough of guys like him.
and for the record i think tatis sucks as well but hes fortunate enough to have learned to stand in the right hand batters box. i wouldve prefered getting a matt murton or kevin mench over pagan which wouldve allowed us to keep gotay but im not a gm.
Absolutely not. I don’t understand how this guy has made the team. He’s awful and has done nothing to convince anyone otherwise (except Willie and Omar, somehow). It defies logic in every single way.
Brady Clark, while not the second coming, is basically being punished for having a very good spring, and Brian Stokes may be given a chance despite doing nothing but sucking all spring long.
Brady is being punished because Tatis has played 22 innings at SS 10 years ago and 2 innings at 2B 2 years ago.
I’m beginning to think now whether or not Pelfrey is ever going to have success in the big leagues. Every time he is given an opportunity he seems to let his chance go by.
no, he is not ever going to. IMO
If this is what we’re really worried about… whatever. Let’s roll. Start the season.
What worries me is Delgado and Church are nearing the interstate (sub .200 avg) while Schneider can’t even get on it (.083 avg).
It’s Spring Training
dude, for two more days it’s spring training. that line is getting very old.
It is a small sample size. That’s the real point of saying it’s spring training. Even the very best hitters will have a stretch of at bats during which they hit for a terrible average. Couple that with people just getting into shaoe and working on mechanics, and it is quite valid to say it’s spring training right up until the bell rings.
Yeah, even Ichiro has his moments, ya know…
i’ve taken three stats classes, i know all about sample size. the issue is that delgado stunk last year (perhaps because he is aging ungracefully) and is looking not so great in ST. church isn’t that good to begin with so, sample size this ST doesn’t really matter.
I understand its S.T.
But are you telling me you’re confident in a 1B who turns 37 this year with numbers on a dramatic decline the last 2 years along with 2 VERY new faces who have yet to step on the grass at Shea Stadium.
I guess you should completely discard their ST numbers because Delgado is going to hit .300 with 35+ HR and 115 RBI and Church and Schneider will both handle the stress and pressure of playing in NYC like Derek Jeter. Its only given…
Yes. I am confident in him.
Spring training doesn’t answer those questions so why fret over it?
well, why fret over anything then? having it your way (sorry BK), we would only fret after game 162 (if we don’t make the playoffs, again).
i agree. the mets offense worries me. After 1-4, who knows if your going to get a whole lot. Delgado may struggle again and alou cannot stay healthy. Then we have church and schneider which i don’t believe we will get anything out of them.
At what point do we start to consider that maybe Pelfrey just isn’t that good, and he may never “get it together”???
if he does this act again next spring (if hes still on the team) its time to throw in the towel.
I’ve been convinced of it since the middle of last year. Has nobody else “considered” it?
i certainly have. how can you not? verlander, hamels, and the like don’t seem to struggle like this. waste of a first round pick. pelf might not be any better than a 5th starter. hell, he may never be that good. what i don’t see as even a remote possibility is pelf developing into a 1, 2, or 3. bad first round pick. (i know, hindsight…)
Ken Rosenthal picked the Braves to win the World Series.
That, my friends, is the highest of high comedy.
chris russo picked the braves to win the NL East. What a Giant fan.
Remember this a guy who opens up ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh good afternoon everybody.
Ask him tennis.
actually, it’s:
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, good afftahnoon evewy bawdy, how awe you ta-daaaaayyyyy!
gotay put them over the top!
so?
church, schneider for Millz looking better and better each day.
Seriously, i know this should be put to rest, but we NEVER gave milledge a fair shot. NEVER.
with green gone, had his chance this year, but we gave him away. just stupid
Yeah, we should just release Church and Schneider. If they prove to be key components of a winning ballclub, metsblog will be devastated.
milledge wrote his ticket out of town when he loafed after that willis triple on the last day of the season. The mets are better off without him.
But it’s O.K. when Delgado does it?
not even sure what you’re talking about with delgado (who likes using actual examples anyway?), but when Milledge has hit 30 HRs and driven in 99 runs for like 8 years straight, then yeah, he has the right to do whatever the f*ck he wants, is that good enough?
If you think Delgado is ever going to hit 30HR’s and 99 runs again you have lost touch with reality.
did i say that? where? please inform me where i said that. If you don’t realize that veterans are not treated the same as rookies who have done absolutely nothing in the game and act like they’re already hall of famers, then you’ve lost it.
not to mention think you’re bigger then the game and get thrown out of a meaningful game late in the season and trot around the bases after hitting a meaningless HR causing the opposing team to want to beat us even more in the final game of the season. But hey…GO MILLEDGE!!! And what exactly are yout alking about with Delgado? his infamous quote i bet? well hey, you’ve got something there, quotes are all i care about, in fact, they’re all that matter in the course of a season, quotes quotes quotes, forget playing the game and acting like a professional, just give me quotes and call it a day.
Great plan, lets keep old players who are regressing and get hurt all the time because they have put their time in and payed their dues. Watching Delgado strike out all season is going to be great.
that has absolutely nothing to do with the argument at hand, but hey, whatever, either way, I fail to see what Delgado has to do with Milledge, at all.
When a veteran is earning millions each year for playing a kids game the least you can expect is for him to give the game his undivided attention and not mail in a performance now and then. I remember Delgado making similar mistakes on the base paths as LM did and like LM he should not do it.
But you don’t send a young kid (and LM is just that) with enormous physical ability packing for youthful indiscretions. I don’t recall him doing jail time for violent crimes. So perhaps he can be saved from a life of crime. :)
Now, I guess the reason Glavine pitched poorly that last game was because the Marlins were incensed because of LM. Obviously the Marlins were a great team that tanked it all year and were woken out of their slumber by LM’s actions. BTW wasn’t Reyes involved in an altercation that woke up the big bad Marlins? Perhaps we should send him packing too. Next you’re going to tell me that LM was the reason the bullpen pitched like garbage down the stretch. C’mon Darkstar stop letting your hatred for LM get in the way of your baseball judgment.
this is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy! we give up on a young, super talented kid in milledge and everyone’s okay with it. we give up on a marginal player like gotay and everyone goes nuts. and people question omar and willie’s intelligence.
Great point.
milledge and gotay both suck
the difference between milledge and gotay is similar to the difference between vlad guerrero’s and mackey sasser’s arms.
Sadly, it’s not always about the baseball.
I agree. We never gave him a shot. We should have handed him the job and said make your name, but we brought him up, sent him down, sat him.
Terrible the way he was handled IMO
Fernando Tatis has ruined the 2008 season. You heard it here first. May as well sell the franchise and move it to Camden. D@mn you, Fernando.
It was said that Fernando would make the team this year, but I was hoping it would be Fernando Martinez, a.k.a. THM.
Was at the game today…El Duque looked great, Pelfrey looked scared to throw a strike over the plate. Ryan Church did something I have never seen, batting righty, his bat flew 5 rows into the stands over the 1st base dugout on consecutive swings, same place both times. He sucks! Bring back #44!
hi welcome to metsblog, ryan church is a lefty.
Meant lefty
seriously, did this guy just make up that ryan church story?
True story. He also watched a fly ball that he hit that made it to the warning track in left and got dropped and he jogged into second base….should have been on third.
yeah…because you want to pull a hammy legging out a meaningless triple in a meaningless game 3 days before the season starts…that makes alot of sense.
is he a white guy?
any idea what duque was hitting on the gun?
btw guys, the phillies grabbed chris woodward off waiers today also… dunno if that was reported yet
OH NO!!!!!!!!! Who cares?????
I dont know how fast as it isnt listed in Ft. Lauderdale Stadium but he threw a nasty change up a few times.
no, that was the FB!
This Tatis v. Gotay stuff reminds me, albeit only slightly, of a classic Simpson’s episode:
Notwithstanding Darryl Strawberry’s five homeruns, Mr. Burns benchs him in favor of the right-handed Homer, who he says will match up better against the opposing team’s left-handed pitcher.
Burns – Hey Strawberry! Hit a homerun!
Strawberry – Sure thing skip! *Hits a homerun*
Burns to Smithers – Hehe, I told him to do that.
Burns: “Hey mattingly, I thought I told you to cut those sideburns”…. (picture of mattingly, with sideburns shaved up to the top of his head)
Umpire: Okay, let’s go over the ground rules. You can’t leave first until you chug a beer. Any man scoring has to chug a beer. You have to chug a beer at the top of all odd-numbered innings. Oh, and the fourth inning is the beer inning.
Chief Wiggum [in baseball uniform]: Hey, we know how to play softball.
You think Canseco was on juice during that episode? He sounded pretty calm although he saved that lady’s entire livlihood frmo that fire….
and you think Mike Scoscia foresaw that he’d wind up being a top 3 manager in the game?
EVERYONE RELAX – POR FAVOR
Tatis also is a roid user….his best days might’ve been roid aided…..why is this guy in the big leagues? He is the Mota of last year…..I agree Milledge was thrown off the team by the Wilpons, who did it to Dykstra, Kevin Mitchell, David Cone and anyone else filled w/ piss and vinegar.
how long until gotay vs tatis doesn’t take over every thread? I’m setting the over under at two weeks or until Tatis has a big hit.
as I’ve said before, if our biggest problems are the 5th starter, having too many lefties (newsflash, most pitchers are right handed) and the 25th guy on the roster, we’re pretty far ahead.
Thinking Duque for sure now as the 5th…..old delivery looked good…………mind you he will get hurt but for the time being Pelfrey to AAA and Sosa ready for long relief
Also we talk about Tatis but Clark still may make it instead……………..also there is time for a Matt Murton deal……..or another pickup………..Wes Helms likely will be on the Phills but that type
Well, officially 2 days 20 hours and 7 minutes till game time. I think I speak for everyone when I say, I can’t wait.
It’s on!
MP’s prob is just image–how can you intimidate a hitter while wearing a retainer? Yecch.
How in the world do you keep Tatis & let Gotay go? Just crazy. Thank God Pelfrey is not out of options.
Mike Pelfrey/Paul Wilson/Bill Pulsipher = the same end result
Wilson and Pulsipher didn’t make it because of significant injuries and they didn’t have the surgical techniques they have now. Wilson used to throw very hard and he lost his fastball after the surgery. BTW Jae Seo also threw in the mid-nineties before he had elbow surgery. As far as I know Pelfrey has not had any major arm or elbow problems.
Mike Pelfrey sucks. Period. I don’t know why anyone is impressed with this guy. Absolutely zero command and he doesn’t fool anyone.
The sooner people stop thinking this kid is going to be a top of the rotation starter, the sooner they can move on from him.
I rather have kept Humber than him.
I bet Minnesota wanted Humber and had no interest in Pelfrey.
wwwDOTflickrDOTcom/photos/25109582@N07/sets/72157604288476058/
if you replace the DOT with a . you’ll get to my pics from Orlando yesterday…
he doesnt need to fool anyone … does brandon webb fool anyone?
hard sinker that he could throw 90% of the game and when it gets down he will get 1000 ground ball outs … that being said .. im so pissed off with this guy… he had a chance at the very least to put pressure on willie with that #5 spot …..
and the generation K pitchers were busts mainly bcuz they got severely injured …
and humber is terrible ….. and if i here francessa continue totalk about Ian Kennedy like he is a young stud im going to throw up…
middle of rotation pitcher AT BEST
Just keep Pelfrey in AAA until he doesn’t suck. Can we agree on that?
Brilliant! He’s going to stop sucking…soon…right?
Why would it matter how soon he stops sucking if he figures it out while in AAA?
And think about it if he is not mentally ready as a starter how is he mentally as a reliever? ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT AS A RELIEVER HE WOULD ONLY HAVE TO PTCH A FEW INNINGS BUT HOPEFULLY IF HE DOES HE WONT GIVE UP GAME TYING HOMERS!
OTHER HIGHLY TOUTED PITCHERS…TODD VAN POPPEL OR PETE SMITH OR WAS STEVE AVERY REALLY THAT GREAT?
MIKE PELFREY THE NEXT TODD VAN POPPEL!
ORIS HE THE NEXT ANTHONY YOUNG?
THE METS NEED TO TAKE A VERY CALCULATED LOOK AT THE 2008 DRAFT AND THE PITCHING INVOLVED WITH IT!
HOPEFULLY THE BEST PLAYERS AVAILABLE AT THE TIME THEY PICK WILL BE PITCHERS! IKNOW YOU TAKE THE BEST AVAILABLE PLAYER BUT PITCHING WINS GAMES! YOU NEVER HAVE ENOUGH OF IT! AND REMEMBER IF YOU DEVELOP A PITCHING STRONG FARM SYSTEM YOU CAN ALWAYS TRADE PITCHING FOR GOOD HITTING.
What? I’m sorry, I don’t speak caps lock.
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