Someone needs to get Howie Rose one of those Queens Real Estate handouts they have at the supermarket, as it might be easier to move back to the boro of his birth as none other than Mr. Islander, Chris Bota says the Skill Sets are ready to build an arena in the Iron Triangle and the Icelanders will move down the L I E and call it home:

  Jones Lang LaSalle, the project management company for the upcoming $500 million renovation of Madison Square Garden, has begun work on a feasibility study for an Islanders arena at Willets Point — the property surrounding Citi Field, the second-year home of the Mets.

“This is beyond the preliminary stage,” said the source. “You don’t bring in a big hitter like JLL unless you’re serious. This tells me the Islanders and Mets have made progress in a partnership to take the hockey team to Queens. If Charles Wang and Nassau can’t cut a deal, this will be a great option.”

It’s a bit puzzling why the Skill Sets would get involved in building an arena if they were not looking to either buy the Icelnaders from Charles Wang or just become a partner.  There is always the the idea of the Icelanders becoming much needed winter programing for SNY but I believe the team has a big time contract with MSG so that my or my not be tough to break.

I wonder who Mother Nature was more sick of, home plate umpire Mike Esterbrook or the inane droning of Joe Morgan but whoever it was, Mets fans thank her for the heavy rain that ended last nights Mets game and Big Plef’ heavy lifting pitching performance with a rain shortened win over the struggling Braves. For the Mets it’s about time they got a positive break and lost in this awful game was the fact the Mets swept the Braves, which should be big time news around these parts.

Pelfrey was not as bad as his line indicates; he was mostly the victim of Esterbrook’s tight as a fly’s asshole strike zone. If the game was on SNY instead of the steady in decline WWL (ESPN’s 2010 NFL Draft wasn’t even public access quality) we would have gotten the overhead view of home plate to see just where Pelf was missing. On the ESPN telecast it looked to me he was hitting the corners consistently.  

Of his 106 pitches, Pelf threw 61 of them in the first two innings, from the third to fifth it took him only 45 pitches to get through those frames. The ability to locate his fastball low in the strike zone and mix in the slider as well has been key for Pelf in getting ground ball out after ground ball out.

I haven’t verified this yet, but the rumor is when the game was called last night, Jerry Manuel sent Fernando Nieve to the bullpen to throw a simulated game. J-Man said he wanted to keep Nieve “sharp”.

A tip of the solid blue Mets cap to Caryn Rose (a/k/a Metsgrrl) for not only going to the game last night but for letting us know though her Tweets on Twitter, that the game was well attended even though on TV it looked like there was a major evacuation in Flushing. Seems now that we have a new fancy pants ball park, there are plenty of places to get high and stay dry. Whereas Shea, during a game in the rain your choice was get wet sitting in your seat or get wet standing in the concourse. I give anyone who went to the game last night a ton of credit as it was so cold and misserable last night in NYC, that I broke down and put the heat back on last night.  

The Hollywood Bums come to town starting tonight and the very hittable Hiroki Kuroda will start the first game of the series tonight against Ollie Perez. This game has the potential for both teams to hit double digits.  The Dodgers are statistically the best team in the NL but fall to the bottom in just about every pitching category in the league. The Mets have smacked around Kuroda every time they’ve faced him (0-2 one no-decision 10.1IP 23H 10.45 ERA) Ollie Perez has been OK Ollie so far this season but lets hope the outstanding pitching the starters have shown this past week or so rubs off on OP.

I hope you can join me tomorrow night at 10PM ET for THIS CALL TO THE BULLPEN on BLOG TALK RADIO. My guest will be Steve Slowinski of the DRAYSBAY site as we talk about the Tampa Bay Rays and their surge to the top on the AL East. I’ll have a recap of the Mets-Dodgers game as well and a look ahead to what is now a big weekend series with the Phillies. If you can’t join me live you can hear a replay of the show right here at Kranepool Society or at my show page on BLOG TALK RADIO.   

   20 days until pitchers and catchers

Unfortunately  I missed Mets Hot Stove last night on SNY but from reading Mathew Cerrone’s MetsBlog this morning it looks like Omar did his best Alexander Haig impression to let us Mets fans know the “He is in charge” No wonder I had a restless nights sleep.

From reading the Cerrone’s post, Omar seemed fixated on the lack of any good solid free agents this off season and Minaya is right about that, it was a weak crop. The Mets did corral one of the better freebird players in Jason Bay and the Mets abstaining from any of the free agent pitchers may turn out to be the right move. Time will tell. But Omar is acting like the free agent way is the only way to fortify the team.

I don’t know if the Mets ever called the Reds or Royals to engage in talks for one of my favorite trio of pitchers I’d like to see, the pitching firm of Harang, Arroyo and Meche, but I just find it very odd that Omar feels the only way to add talent to this team is through free agents and diving in the ballplayers with disabilities dumpster.

If you really want to know what a Mets fan is really like, you must read Faith and Fear in Flushing. Greg Prince has a post out this morning that deals with the identity of our team. This part of the post says it all:

Little wonder the Mets’ identity is frayed. No wonder the Metsosphere is continuously and maybe justifiably staticky, jittery and expressing discontent. We are, by nature, a gaggle of nervous crosstalkers when we don’t have an actual season to dissect. Right now it’s all nervous crosstalk for Mets fans. We, collectively, remind me of the middle-aged ladies who’d set up card tables in front of somebody’s cabana at the beach club to which my parents belonged when I was little. (That’s the Sun Life I remember.) Those ladies indulged in nervous crosstalk, too, just like us. All we’re missing is four floppy hats, a carton of Tareytons and a few hands of canasta.

 

Just walking by them made me jittery, and I was only six.

 

After reading that passage, I can’t get the image of the Brighton Beach Baths out of my mind.

Fernando Tatis has resigned with the Mets and for less than the $1.7 mil he made last year. Nice hometown discount eh? Tatis will also change is uniform number from 17 (that he should never ever have been given) to 6 4 3.

 

 

All this talk about Matt Holiday, Jason Bay, Curtis Granderson and Brandon Philips has me totally baffled. You could bring in all four of these guys in and it still doesn’t solve the Mets biggest off season problem PITCHING!!!!!

 

Of course the Mets need help in the corners of 1^st base,(I’m not abandoning my boy Murphy but I will concede a righty hitting dance partner would be nice)  LF and catcher both power wise and defensively but right now the Mets have one solid starter in Johan Santana .

 

The Reds are just about begging for teams with deep pockets to give them salary relief and with Aaron Harang, Bronson Arroyo and Brandon Phillips sitting there for the taking, there is no reason for the Mets not to go full bore in making a deal for this troika.

 

Ah, but who is in charge? As I linked yesterday to Joel Sherman’s story in the Post, Omar looks to be a dead GM walking. So who is in charge? Is it John Ricco? Sandy Johnson? Little Shit? Who damn it, Who is calling the shot out there?

 

If there were ever an off season where the Mets organization could really fortify the team it’s this one. So many teams are looking to either dump players with high salary or are arbitration eligible ready to cash in on a big raise or they are a year away for free agency and ready to be moved for cheaper labor. And here sit the Skill Sets who told us the money is not a problem so fuck that Bernie Madoff as he didn’t hurt this franchise because the Mets are truly solvent. Between being, what the second or third most valuable franchise according to Forbes and don’t forget the close to $20 mil a year coming in from those crooked bastards at $iti Group plus the ownership of SNY, there is no excuse for the team not to as aggressive as a Cougar at a frat party.

 

But who is in charge of the baseball decisions, inquiring minds want to know?

 

by the way can you spot the ex-Met in that picture?

 

The one ray of sunshine in this period of bad baseball the Mets have played is the emergence of Bobby Ojeda finally telling it like it is.

 

I wrote back in the winter when Ojeda was hired as the pre and post game analyst on SNY that it would be one more strong voice n Mets telecasts. Ojeda was a bit shaky in the beginning and then he went into shill mode for awhile with his candy coating of the the constant losing and bad baseball we’ve seen this summer by chirping the company line “but the injuries it’s all the injuries fault” but the last month or so something happened to Bobby O, something good. He got fed up like the rest of us with the piss poor performance of this team.

 

This reach a point after the game Angel Pagan forgot how many out there were and got his sorry ass picked off base. Ojeda for the first time this season, took off the velvet gloves and tore into the team they way I knew he could. Ojeda’s best line of the night was “If I were the manager I’d tell this team, don’t bother bringing your golf clubs to St Lucie next spring”

 

In order for this team to really show a turnaround there has to be a purge of the coaching staff, even the beloved HoJo needs to go. It’s not all the coach’s fault but this coaching staff has been here for the past years of suckitude and just to change things up they need to go. J-Man it looks like will be back next season for the most part due to he works cheap, but he must instill into the heads of his knucklehead players they better be ready for boot camp next March. What this team needs is a training camp that would make John Torterella’ Rangers camp look like ballet school.     

 

Maybe management lets John Ricco get more of his input into building the roster for next year as he is at least a guy you would take a new approach to adding to the roster and let Omar go and do some scouting. Some folks in the know say the Skill Sets love that Rico is more of a new wave front office type who uses stats and charts to compare players so if you can meld Rico’ way with the old school way of Omar Minaya maybe this train wreck can get back on track.   

 

I agree with most that Kayne West is a first class douchebag but if the Highlanders or Phucking Phillies win the World Series I might pull a “Kayne” when they have the trophy ceremony complete with a bottle of Hennesey in my hand and my jeans pulled down to my knee:

 

“Y’all aint shit my boyz in Queens be hurtin like a muther fucker. When we get healthy we gunna pay back all y’all sorry ass’s PEACE OUT! SHOUT OUT TO THE SKILL SETS!!!!! JEFFY BBBBBBBOOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY  J-GANGSTA and OMAR M!!!!!!!!”

 

I feel bad for the younger Mets fans, you kids in your twenties and thirties because you have heard about the losing and the angst and the despair of Metsfandom and I’m sure in all your smart ass way you all thought back in the beginning of the millennium  “that was the past old man, these Mets will be different” Well to that I say,  Welcome to the 70’s. If you make a trip to $iti Field before the end of the season, look around at all the empty seats, the shuttered concession stands, the fans sitting one per section, that’s how I and most of us middle aged Mets fan grew up. The only difference we walked around in stagnant puddles of water and over flowing toilets of Shea Stadium, ahhhhhh those were the days. But through all that we stayed loyal and stuck with our team. Now it’s easy for you youngsters to look to the Northern boro and see Paradise, but I tell you this, the team in the Bronx once went through a stretch in the mid-1960 to the mid-1970’s where they sucked and as bad as you can suck and still have people care about you. They had such hard times times drawing people to there stadium that did not seem very Cathedral like in thelate 60’s- early 70’s in fact it was more of run down tenement. Now you won’t hear these stories on Highlander run television or radio but it’s all true I tell ya, it‘s all true, back then the Mets were all that and a bag of chips. Now I’d like to say the tide will turn once again but I don’t have that much faith in ownership of this team to turn it around but I do hold out hope they will surprise me. I saw this organization win a World Series 40 years ago and at the age of 11 I thought that was the start of something great and as bad as some years have been in Flushing, when things are good here there is nothing better, and that’s what keeps me keeping on rooting for the New York Mets.

 

Don’t forget Amazin’ Tuesday tonight at 7PM at Two Boots Tavern   384 Grand St NYC

There are still plentyof seats on the Daniel Murphy bandwaggon for all of you who jumpped off after his rough start.

Lastings Millidges is hitting .325/.374/.442 since he joined the Pirates. I’m just sayin’. Why do get the feeling the Pirates will see a post seaon before the Mets.

Big Pelf was fantastic yesterday and watching him pitch like that verifies why I love the big lug. What drives me nuts though is his next start he could tank just as easily and that’s is the madness that is Mike Pelfrey.

How can the Mets bring Carlos Beltran back now? Who is going to lead Brooklyn to a NY-PENN League championship?

Maybe John Maine can start the first game for Brooklyn against Mahoning Valley instead of against Philly?

If you put Corey Sullivan’s brain with Angel Pagan’s ability you’d have a solid ML player. Pagan has talent but on the baseball field he’s dumber than a sack of rocks.

I see where SNY is going to add a couple of gimmicks to their game telecasts next week. One game there will be a silent inning where Gary, Keith and Ron will not speak for a full inning. Another game, SNY will let Gary stay home and allow Ron and Keith handle the play by play. Now that should be fun.  What would be even better is having bloggers do commentary during a game like a Mystery Theatre 3000 sceanrio, that would bring the network an Emmy.  

Enjoy you Labor Day

I was 11 years old (same as Gary Cohen) when the Mets became World Champions. You see all the negativism and anger from this current Mets fans base? Well now picture the complete opposite of that and you have the feel for what it was like around here in 1969.

Think of this for the first time in the history of newspapers the NY Daily News ran a COLOR front page just for the Mets. The news also sold buttons with GO METS on them and every Sunday had portraits of Mets players as inserts in the paper. Channel 9 the TV home of the Mets showed just about every game and all the games were on radio (WJRZ 970 AM) and Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Ralph Kiner were the guys we brought into our homes for every game.

The Mets were not just the talk of NY but of the whole country they were truly America’s team. This was an organization that was looked at as loveable losers until the Quiet Man took over and put an end to that kind of thinking. It was Gil Hodges who set the tone for the club. As Mets fans we all know of the love and devotion that Tom Seaver had for Hodges, not an appearance goes by when The Franchise doesn’t invoke the name of Hodges his stories. But the most told story about Hodges and his team always is about him taking out Cleon Jones during a game against the Astros on July 30 1969 for lack of hustle.

During his time on the SNY broadcast, Jones told that the only Hodges and he knew what really happened that day. Jones went on to say how Hodges didn’t yell or scream or get in his face he just told Jones that we can’t play like this if were going to win  and Jones realized right there that is wasn’t business as usual for the Mets. Hodges meant what he said in spring training that the loser mentality stops here and now and Jones knew after getting lifted from that game that the team was destined to win.

Some observation from last night’s ceremony:

I love how Eddie Yost came out and was still giving signs, and leave it to Howie Rose to remember that Lindsey Nelson would always say “and Eddie Yost, the sign man is coaching at third base…….”

Wayne Garret and Gary Gentry must have found the fountain of youth, both guys look like they could still play.

You know you’re an old time Mets fan, when you not only can recognize Duffy Dyer but your happy as hell to see him.

Here is the legacy of Yogi Berra, he is the only man other than the Pope who could get a standing ovation in both Highlander Stadium and $iti Field.

I loved how the music of 1969 was intertwined with the introduction of the players but I wish SNY would have left the cameras on the players instead of showing videos of them in their playing day. It’s called capture the moment fellas’

The biggest ovations of the night were for Bob Murphy’s widow and for Ralph Kiner and rightfully so.

I don’t I have ever seen Jerry Grote look so happy as he did last night. I wish he was with the Mets in some capacity as that is what the organization misses an Grote like mentality. I still can see him throwing back a ball to the pitcher at about 95 mph when he was pissed off at him for either crossing him up or not hitting his spot and non of the pitchers ever challenging him.

I’m glad Gary Cohen mentioned Ken Boswell not being there and not being acknowledged on the field. It seems Boswell had a falling out with the organization an declined the invitation to come. This is where the Skill Sets are absolutely clue less. With their track history, the Skill Sets are probably at fault here and should have made amends with Boswell to get him last nights ceremony. Boswell too should not be so cranky as to snub this reunion as I’m sure he feels hurt that the Mets treated him wrong (join the club Kenny) but he may regret it for a long time not being at $iti Field last night.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, Tom Seaver is THE FRANCHISE!!!!

There may be no more underrated sports performer in this town than Jerry Koosman. The chant back then was “We can’t loose with Seaver and Kooz”

 

Stop listening to the Minister of Mis-Information Omar Minaya. Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, John Maine and J J Putz are NOT COMING BACK THIS SEASON!!!!!!! For some reason Omar hasn’t gotten it through his head that all the talk of the injured has been undermining this team for the past month. While it’s not just Omar’s fault, J-Man was the early culprit in this stupid “Hold the fort until they get back” losers mentality but he finally figured out how unproductive that attitude was. Now add D-Wright to those slow learners that this “blame it on the injuries” lament is for losers which is what the Mets are right now.

 

Instead of Minaya spewing his bullshit on SNY and in the press he should be sitting down and figuring out how much of the deadwood on the player development side will be thrown out for salvage come the end of the season.

 

I hope you all have come to the realization that this season is kaput. The time now is to turn to who in the farm system is worth promotion to either see how they fit here in 2010 for to let them strut their stuff and entice other organizations to talk trade.

 

But the biggest movement here will be clearing out the front office. The only thing that will save Omar’ ass is the Skill Sets will in no way shape or form fire him and pay him to lay on the beach in the D.R. but at some point the Skill Sets may have to think of finding a baseball executive that Omar would report to.

 

Freddy Skill Sets realized a few years ago that he sucks as a baseball man but he didn’t have the heart to tell his little boy Jeffey that he wasn’t a baseball man either. The time has come for Freddy to have a heart to heart with the little shit and give him a dose of tough love that it’s time for Jeffey to stay out of the baseball business. That’s not to say that all contract and money spent won’t go through Jeffey as he is the owner and he is in charge of the money being spent (you think he gives his daddy grief about Freddy’s good buddy Bernie Madoff ?) but this off season I don’t want to hear that Jeffey is wining and dining free agent and calling agents and stalking Omar about personnel moves. The Mets need a President of Baseball Operations to run the entire spectrum of player personnel, pro and minor league along with amateur scouting. If Omar has a problem with that then let him resign and leave the money behind. I doubt that he would do that and as I stated the Mets won’t fire him so hiring a boss for him is the next logical step. The first name that comes to mind is Sandy Alderson who left the Padres earlier this year. Gene Michael would be another great choice and with the Bronx Robber Barron out of the picture maybe a substantial raise would lure him one boro over. Buck Showalter would be controversial and maybe not a fan favorite but his track record shows he can build a team and maybe it’s time for guy to rattle the cages in Queens. Could Andy MacPhail be fed up with Peter Angelos and come to NY to carry on the MacPhail NY baseball family legacy ?

 

The bottom line is it’s time to take the keys away from Omar and put Jeffey in the corner and bring in a Baseball CEO to save the franchise.

So with no Mets pre gamer I turned to YUCK and Suzyn Waldman’s baby sister Kim Jones comes on to give us details of Frankie and Bruney ready to rock and roll but all we got was a brief video of the Mets holding back Frankie and no site of any High Priced Highlanders 

Waldman lite told us that Rodriguez went over to Bruney and asked him if “he had something to say to him” and Bruney said “no” Bruney then went to the clubhouse to change his soiled pinstriped underwear.

Two things, what a piss poor job out of SNY with no pre game show and how lucky is Joe Giradi that the Bronx Robber Baron is incapicated?  Boss George would have given  Giradi an ultimatum to win today or be fired.

 

 

 

Was last night THE GAME? Most seasons there is THE GAME, THE GAME you look back on when the season turned around, (or GULP went down the drain) THE GAME they do documentaries about, THE GAME that books are written about, Yeah THAT GAME.

 

For all the problems with empty seats, obstructive views and figuring out whether to eat at the Shake Shack, Mama’s or the Taqueria, last night was the first REAL Mets game of the $iti Field era. Yesterday on his bloviating radio show, Mike Francesa railed against the New Highlander Stadium that there was “no juice in the building” and the overpriced seats in the front row are unoccupado, well, Mets fans hold your heads high as the same can not be said about you at $iti Field last night.

 

Now I wasn’t there but on SNY it came through my TV like the crowd was totally into the game and why not, in the fine tradition of Seaver, and Gooden we now have the newest must see, can’t miss a start, starting pitcher in Johan Santana. If the Skill Sets are thinking of erecting a statue of the The Franchise outside $iti, they better save some bronze for The Franchise II, Santana.  

 

Why did J-Man take Santana out after 7 innings? I know his spot came up in the order with Sheffield on 1^st and 2 outs but the Putz was not available and Santana had only threw 101 pitches, in the 7^th he threw just 9 pitches (6 K’s) and the Mets took the lead and he was on extra rest, the adrenaline rush from the crowd would have put him over the top. God forbid he would be allowed to pitch a complete game and shut out our most hated rival. I don’t know about you but when I saw Feliciano come in to pitch the 8^th  I started think about the puke bucket.

 

I think the reason Jason Werth Mackey Sasser-ed the ball in right that arrived there due to Pedro Feliz error in the 7^th was he couldn’t tell if Delgado was running or standing still.

 

Enjoy your trip to purgatory Ollie.

 

Mike Vaccaro is my hero. It’s all about the FUNDIES. The most frustrating aspect of coaching is showing a player something and the player not able to execute it. I have kids with great arms that pitch for me but trying to explain the mechanic of pitching they just can’t grasp it. I’ve simplified it by just asking that they land on the ball of their front foot and bend they knee. When the do that they throw a low strike and look back at me in amazement. But on the next pitch, they go right back to the bad habit of landing on their heel and the ball flys right out of the strike zone. UGGH!

 

Nice to see Jon Niese get the start over Ken Takahashi. Niese’ record is nothing to get excited over (0-2  6.55 ERA in 5 starts) but it could be a factor of pitching for a very bad Buffalo Bisons team. One encouraging number for Niese is his 25/8 K/BB so maybe moving up with the big club will help him.

 

Not only does Denis POTVIN SUCK but he’s out of work as well. Hey Fishstick fans your boy is more associated with the Florida Panthers than he is if the soon to be KC Scouts LOL.