Over at the baseball blog for the New York Times, Charlie Nobles catches up with the rehabbing Jose Valentin.
According to Nobles, Valentin, who had been rehabbing a knee injury, but is now nursing a sore elbow, has been frustrated watching the Mets from the sidelines and believes he can help the team reach their potential.
…while i admire valentin’s work ethic and dedication, and by all accounts he is a great veteran presence in the Mets clubhouse, i have no interest in seeing valentin be apart of the Mets 25-man roster…this team needs to get younger, not older…and, adding a 38-year old coming off knee surgery looking to reclaim what he did two years ago is not the way to get younger…
…i’d rather see the Mets give a guy like Val Pascucci – or one of their higher ceiling minor leaguers – a chance, than give another opportunity to a aging retread….
{ 40 comments }
pascucci is not a young guy…hes 30, and when did this career minor leaguer become our savior….yikes
Yo Nichols, why are you hating on the Stache? You just lowered my self esteem :(
Writers on this blog need to let the world know that they are smarter than everyone else.
Including you smartass?
At least I don’t run around talking about how this Val guy is the next Mark McGwire.
It’s funny because these guys have probably never seen him play but think he is the second coming….
Once Again I’m the Rickey Henderson of this Post… I’m playing cards with Bobby Bo…. lol….
Stop.
In more substantive news, I could not disagree more. Val Pascucci is hardly part of a youth movement, and we’ve seen what happens if you assume a hot start in AA will translate to production in the bigs. Calling Valentin an “aging retread” evinces a serious misunderstanding of baseball, not to put too fine a point on it. If you’re worried about the age of the team, lose Easley, not Valentin. Valentin will be a steadying influence and should be a versatile bat and and glove off the bench. Pascucci is a minor league DH.
ok ….this is getting old and you weren’t…good job
Sorry, this just isn’t “LOL” material, nor should it warrant you to laugh at your own jokes… Just repetitively lame… :-( I respect your efforts in trying to maybe possibly lighten up the crowd, but it’s just annoying.
Dude…i appreciate a funny, maverick poster here and there, but your posts are more annoying than they are funny…at least you aren’t ending all of them with “>>>>” anymore…
I would love to see Valentin back with the Mets as some kind of coach!
When Valentin is ready, he’ll be back with the team.
Couldn’t Pascucci be described as an “aging retread” himself?
I was thinking the same thing
I agree with your thesis but not your conclusion Mike. While I believe the *core* of the Mets needs to get younger, namely the everyday group of guys you have to rely on, I see no harm in getting by all accounts, a good clubhouse guy who can also play a number of positions defensively, a spot of the roster, even if he is closing in on 40 years old. If Valentin can perform as a super sub, we shouldn’t deny him just based on age. By all acounts Pascucci is a total butcher in the field and there’s a reason why he hasn’t seen anymore than a cup of coffee in the big leagues.
PASCUCCI!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Val-mania is reaching ridiculous levels. give me Valentin, please. getting “younger” just for the sake of getting “younger” doesn’t really make the Mets any better.
As a season ticket holder for the Phillies new AAA team the “Lehigh Valley Ironpigs” and I can tell you Pascucci began the year on the team, was awful, and got cut from a squad that lost their first 15 games! My pet name for him while he was here was “The rally killer”. I don’t care what he did since he was signed by the Mets organization, this guy couldn’t hit to save his life and I wish references to him would stop. Valentin no, Pascucci no, younger yes!
FYI: You’ve got a train-wreck of a sentence in that post, Mike.
I want the real Val… entin. Let us relive ‘06 with a better outcome!
Seriously, why is Pascucci guy even being mentioned so much? I have to agree with most of the posters here, and I think he should not be singled out.
The person who put this blog together, probably has families ties with PASCUCCI,
Pascucci 29 yrs old 30 in nov
avg .299 games 33 lefties.382 great but right .262 not impresive
but lets look at others in AAA NOZ
(i.e) Jesus Feliciano 29 yrs old
avg. 321 games 56 lefties .362 great but right .307 ok…
MY POINT IS THAT PASCUCCI IS NOT THAT GREAT!!!!!!
MIKE be serious stop the PASCUCCI badwagon, its so obvious
I prefer Valentin to Val Venis.
I’m in the Valentin camp as well. If it turns out that he provides nothing more than a clubhouse presence I agree they should dump him but he should be given the spot before the other guy.
yea ….i’m already over this Val guy…Valentine can bring a good presence to the clubhouse, be a solid 2b backup, he’ll get a few hits here and there…
Val Pascucci isn’t the answer….. I really don’t get the big deal about him…i’d love to know the number of career minor leaguers who have had “crazy” numbers like his over time and how many of them turned into ANYTHING
Bobby can’t play 2nd…his hips are bad
You might be talking about Jose VALENTIN
:-) sorry…just a peeve of mine
The difference between Valucci and Valentin is that Valentin is a 2nd baseman. This season has demonstrated that a 2nd baseman is needed because Luis cannot consistenly play 6 games a week. Valentin also has intangibles that frankly, I never heard anyone say Valucci has.
People have counted out Valentin in the past (e.g., 2006) and he silenced those critics. Hopefully he will do so again this year.
i’m also all for bringing valentin back for a look to replace evans. right now, our bench includes castro, casanova, easley, evans and chavez. to my eyes, casanova can be replaced by pascucci, again, for a look, since we have a back up catcher in castro. essentially, casanova is being used as a dh anyway, so why not try out the schooch, who is basically a hotter hitting dh in the minors? what would we lose? maybe we can catch that proverbial fire.
i dont want valentin back, i wouldnt be shocked if he was on “something” when he went from hitting .115 in April to being great, to the next year being bad and then being hurt…
however, enough with Val Pascucci…enough…this is Craig Brazell part 3 (Mike Carp being part 2) except I think Brazell might be younger than Val.
we dont need anymore backup OF’s who cant play defense, we dont need the stache either. We need a real full-time LF and then Alou can be our big pinch hitter and then our 13 man looks pretty good, and even becomes a bonus with Angel coming back sometime this year.
Unfortunately, the only full-time LF the Mets have is not going to be in New York until next year. At the very least, he’ll get a September call-up.
its funny how the force of this blog alone is trying to make vascucci a real option. i’m in favor of platooning delgado, and if vascucci’s a right hander, and can play 1st, he might be worth a look, but as far as a role player off the bench valentine is a far better option.
I’d want to be sure Pascucci can actually “play” first, not just stand there and catch balls.
I’m sure he’s a great guy, and seems to be a pretty good hitter, but this is the NL, and we need baseball players, not just pretty good hitters. I like guys like this to get a shot, but there are tons and tons of guys in his shoes.
All of that said, I have never seen the guy play, and it may be that criticism of his defense has been exaggerated. If he’s a decent fielder, it might be worth switching him and Casanova.
Mike,
Adding Valentin back to the team doesn’t hurt us. Give Val a chance over Nick Evans who clearly doesn’t belong right now.
While it’s nice to be able to grow players on the major league team, we’re also trying to win a World Series. Having Valentin steal time from Castillo makes us a stronger team if he is healthy.
Valentin makes a lot of sense as a coach.. when do rehab hitting stats start entering the discussion?
anybody here actually ever SEE val p. play???? I have. big, slow, one plane swing like Pat Burrell but not even close to as good. Less range in the OF than Alou, and not much more at 1B than Delgado ( hard to believe but true ). He started out the season in Allentown Pa with the Phillies AAA team that began the season 4-23. Then they cut him, half because he had no future, and half because he was lazy and did not hustle. The Mets picked him up strictly as a roster filler – though he has hit since going to NO.
See my comments above. Pascucci played first and right field and stunk at both. He is slow footed and lumbering and couldn’t hit a soft let alone hardball!
Chris Aguila is actually the guy who should be getting a look. He’s been raking and can play decent OF defense.
Who the hell cares how old Valentin is? If he’s better than whatever else we have, then he should be playing. Having a 21-year old Nick Evans does not make us a better team than having a 38-year old Jose Valentin.
If Hank Aaron came back to the league and could still rake, would we not want him on our team because we want to get younger? Valentin is no Aaron, but he’ll be more productive than Evans, and likely Pascucci (the 30-year old with 62 MLB ABs).
I actually think the thing to do is replace Easley with Valentin and give Pascucci a shot. Easley hasn’t been a fraction of what he was early last year, and I’d probably be more comfortable with Valentin at the MI positions at this point. There’s no reason to carry both of them, and if you have Pascucci, Tatis, and even Castro on the bench the right handed hitter is expendable. Tatis and Pascucci can battle to hold onto the 25th spot on the roster when a more permanent LF solution can be established.
I understand that Pascucci makes Manny Ramirez look like a Gold Glove outfielder. And he strikes out a lot. Sound like a poor man’s reincarnation of Rob Deer.
The Mets certainly need to make a move to get younger in left field and first base. We should do what we need to do to get Xavier Nady – even if it meant trading Pelfrey. X-man has showed he could play in NY and he has continued to improve since he left the Mets. FMart is still probably 2 years away.
Matt, you should change the name of the site to PascucciBlog.com. Do you guys get some sort of a finder’s fee is he gets call up?
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