Headline Potpourri

It's been a while since I have written here consistently and I make no promise that I will start to again now, but I do like spouting off about things and pretending that people are reading it and I am influencing the masses (even though I can look at the Google analytics and see that usually only 4 people read anything on here...which just tells me that my mom must log in from different computers).

So here's my scattershot look at the sports world these days.

Omar Minaya needs to be fired. I am pretty sure that his main qualification when he was hired was being a life-long Mets fan. Well, I want the job then. I can identify the highest profile star free agent and sign a huge check to bring him in. I can misidentify the abundant mid-level talent that actually wins ball games. I can sign over-the-hill stars in a transparent attempt to sell tickets. I can trade away young talent without having any real sense of if they'll be any good or not. I can sign and resign bad pitchers to hugely overvalued contracts, while passing on others that would have been cheaper and more effective.

According to a blog on the MLB.com network, Joel Pineiro was all set to sign with the Mets this offseason.  He is close friends with Alex Cora, who told him that Minaya had said they were gonna get it done.  Pieneiro was excited.  Then Minaya settled on the same crap that had lost nearly 100 games last year and Pineiro eventually signed with the Angels for just $1 million more than the Mets initial low-ball offer.  If you're wondering, last year Pineiro had his best year as a full-time starter with a 3.49 ERA and 15 wins.  His ERA is 2.77 this year, including dominating the Yankees in New York yesterday.  Good call Omar. 

Jerry Manuel also needs to be fired. He over-manages the bullpen to the point where most games are unwatchable because of the constant pitching changes. And this makes all of the pitchers tired because they all warm-up every day and most pitch every day, so mid-way through the season, all of them are fatigued. He over-manages the lineup to the point where no one knows exactly what his role is. If Jose Reyes is your 3-man, put him there and shut up about it. If not, don't...and shut up about it. If Angel Pagan is your centerfielder until Carlos Beltran comes back, then put him out there and let him settle in. If you are trying to find extra time for Gary Matthews, Jr. so you can trade him when Beltran returns, then do it and leave him in there so he can settle in. Set a lineup and stick with it. One bad offensive day doesn't mean you blow the whole thing up and start over. But two years of the same crap not working over and over, does mean to start over.

And Gary Matthews, Jr., you are 36 years old. Drop the "Jr."

Oliver Perez needs to be released. Damn the contract. There must be any number of pitchers available (Pedro Martinez, Jerrod Washburn, any minor leaguer) who can come in and throw a great 4 innings here and there, and then give up 5 runs and 6 walks in an inning here and there. Screw this guy. He stunk when we signed him. He stunk under the last pitching coach. He stinks under this pitching coach. Stop stroking his ego and trying to ease his psyche so he can find the freaking strike zone. Let him use the money you're paying to go to Fiji and hire a sports psychologist and figure it out on his own. There's no reason he needs to parade out there every five days like an albatross around the necks of your fans and the rest of the team just so we can figure out if he's still an overvalued lunatic. (Note: This program does not allow for photo captions, but the one above would have been, "Ctrl-Z".)

John Maine...you're next. Quit screwing around.

Sharks fans: your mascot has one syllable. Luckily the convention of sports fans has standard crowd-roaring cheers for just such a situation. And they have other cheers for two syllable mascots. Stop using the wrong one. "Let's go Sharks! - Let's go Sharks!" Memorize and repeat. You've watched too many Yankees and Red Sox games on ESPN (though that is all they show, so I can't blame you) and are trying to make "Sharks" a two-syllable word. Stop it. "Let's go Sha-arks." I can't believe I have to listen to that for at least 1 more home game, possibly as many as 15 more times this postseason.

Sharks players: What the hell? How many former Stanley Cup winners and Olympic Gold medal winners do you need to join you before you stop being choke artists?

Ben Roethlisberger is an idiot. Can we move on though? He didn't get drunk and crash his $200,000 car into a pedestrian. He didn't run a dog-fighting ring. He didn't shoot himself in the leg in a nightclub. He just keeps sleeping with the wrong women, once he crashed a motorcycle, and he has a really bad barber. If he's ever convicted of rape, then I will change my story here. But for now, he is a really rich, kinda fat, kinda ugly 28-year-old dude who likes going to bars and hooking up with women.

Elin Woods is allegedly pissed at Tiger for playing in the Masters just 5 months after their marriage blew up. Not that Tiger has to work, given his financial success, but golf is his job. I think 5 months off is a reasonable amount of time off from work before restarting some normalcy to life without being callous. In the real world, people go back to work the next day after catastrophe hits. That said, she should be pissed (and allegedly is) about the Nike commercial where they spliced together things his dad said into some kind of eerie, post-mortem, lecture to Tiger about being a scumbag. It is disgusting, shameful and sad. From Nike's point of view, what was the purpose of this: "We will get unrelated statement made by his dead father, who he was really close to, and chop it up so it sounds like he is scolding Tiger. And this will make people want to buy shoes." Are they really exploiting his infidelity as an avenue for sales? It's one thing to keep him as a spokesman since he is still a great athlete, even if he's a scummy person. But it is another to advertise his scumminess.  And he signed off on it.  Oh, and he had sex with all those skanks.  Screw the pre-nup saying you have to be married for a certain amount of time, show him that at least you can't be bought. 

Can we stop looking at Tiger's father as some kind of model for all parents? He raised a son who is arrogant, petulant, rude, condescending, and adulterous. During the US Open this year, which is always on Fathers' Day weekend, I hope I don't have to hear about what a wonderful man it was that raised and was so close to this huge asshole. He may have been a good guy, and maybe all these problems with Tiger are not his fault. But as a former teacher, I often saw that if a kid was a good kid, you saw why when you met his parents. And visa versa.

It took Milton Bradley 5 games to have a blow-up on his new team. And this is after being fired from his last team for having blow-ups all the time. Which is after a litany of blow-ups throughout his career despite his consistent insistence that it's never his fault. Newsflash Milton: opposing sports fan heckle. Especially those in cities where you formerly played. Especially when you had a huge contract and stunk and got run out of town because of behavior problems. So at this point, I am starting to think it isn't Bradley's fault. It's the teams that keep hiring him.

Phil Jackson just criticized NBA referees for the preferential treatment that Kevin Durant gets. I'm sure this blatantly transparent and pathetic whining has nothing to do with the fact that Jackson's Lakers are playing Durant's Supersonics in the playoffs this week. I am sure Jackson would have spoken out about this had the Lakers not been playing the Sonics. And I am sure that Jackson is aware of the fact that his 10 championships are partially a result of the fact that Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kobe Bryant have always gotten better preferential treatment from refs than Tiger Woods would get at the Bunny Ranch. NBA officiating is a joke, Phil. If you score 20+ points per game, or get 15+ rebounds, you get any call you want. It doesn't matter who you are, just that you're somebody.

I know they're not the Supersonics anymore, I just still can't believe it. And Jim Britt deserved better, so that's for him. (By the way Jim, sorry about Milton Bradley being insane. Who saw that coming?)

I went to the Giants-Pirates game yesterday and saw what I think was my first inside-the-park homerun. I have a vague sense that I saw someone hit one at a Padre game at the Murph when I was in college, but I can't quite place it. Eric Young?  I think it was a Rockie.  In any case, this one yesterday was awesome and Aubrey Huff probably hopes he never gets a funny bounce like that again. He looked like the only way he was gonna make it home was on a gurney.

In related news, I rode my bike to the game. This is significant for a number of reasons. One: it's awesome. Two: I was not worried about my bike being stolen or myself being stabbed at any point before during or after the game. Maybe moving away from LA wasn't so bad. I've been to two games at AT&T Park now this season. 0 waves. 0 beach balls. 0 fights. 0 drinks/food thrown at opposing fans. 1 Braves fan in a Chipper Jones jersey in the front row who spent most of the game facing the crowd with a smug look on his face and his arms out in a "That's right, we're winning, what are you gonna do about it?" posture who deserved drinks and food thrown at him, then a fight, but got none. 0 violent incidents outside the stadium.

I have eye glasses but I don't wear them very much, though I should. Last night I was sitting pretty far from the TV watching the Sharks-Avs game and had a hard time spotting the puck. There is obviously an easy way to remedy this situation for the Kings-Canucks game tonight. I need a bigger TV.

Fantasy baseball is frustrating for a lot of reasons but here are two examples from this past week: The Braves got shelled but I couldn't fully enjoy it because I had their pitcher, Jair Jurrjens, on my team. Then the next day, the Mets got shelled even worse by the Rockies. But at least I have one of the Rockies' big hitters on my team so I benefitted there, right? Nope. He had the night off.

Tracy McGrady made the announcement today that he intends to retire if he cannot regain his form. Thanks for the update, Tracy. I think I speak for most fans, and probably most GMs when I say, Tracy McGrady is still in the league?

Mets Sleepwalking Their Way To An Early Fall

It is only July 1 and there are 84 games left, so it is a little early for Mets fans to be crying that the sky is falling and a change needs to be made, but the sky is falling and a change needs to be made.

I understand that the roster is badly depleted by injury and once those players come back, there is a good possibility that the Mets will again become a playoff contender. But there is also the possibility that Delgado, Beltran, Reyes, Maine, Perez, Pagan, and the rest won't ever really be healthy this year. And the possibility that by the time they do come back, they'll be too far back to help.

Right now the Mets are in third place in the East, three games behind Philadelphia. They're five behind San Francisco for the Wild Card. Both of those spots are reachable and all of the teams they're chasing are extremely flawed. But the Mets also went 9-18 in June and show no signs of holding onto their spot, let along of gaining ground on anyone.

Was Mark DeRosa the solution? Probably not. The Indians reportedly wanted Bobby Parnell in return, and no matter how bad the offense gets, the Mets probably can't trade a young potential pitching star for an aging journeyman utilityman (two euphemisms for "not relly good enough to lock down a position anywhere"). DeRosa is versatile and has some power, both of which the Mets need. But he isn't good enough to supplant any of the injured players once they return. If a trade happens, it needs to be for a full-fledged star who can make the offense go, and who will stay in the lineup when the Mets are healthy. An outfielder is most likely (goodbye Pagan and Church).

Right now there are too many teams in the hunt (that is, too close to be willing to trade away good talent) for the Mets to make the kind of move they need to, so perhaps Omar Minaya can be taken off the hook. Dumping a young pitcher for another .270 guy who will hit 15-20 homers is not a move they can make. They need a stud and considering how terribly the rest of the East is playing, the Mets can wait. But that window is closing fast. And Minaya is to blame for signing Oliver Perez at a premium instead of Derek Lowe.

And as unfair as it may seem to start pointing fingers at the manager with this many starters on the disabled list, I am continually baffled by some of the things Jerry Manuel does. It seems that every game I see on TV, I am confused by some critical move he makes, so I have to assume it happens in the ones I don't see as well.

On Sunday the Mets trailed the Yankees by 1. Frankie Rodriguez had two runners on base with two outs in the top of the 9th. Derek Jeter was batting with Mariano Rivera on deck. What did Manuel do? He had Frankie pitch to Jeter. Once the count got to two balls, they then intentionally walked him. But they gave Derek Freaking Jeter three pitches to drive into a gap somewhere rather than just putting him on and going after a guy with two career at bats.

Then they were on TV again on Monday against the Brewers. With runners on 1st and 2nd and one out in the top of the 2nd inning, the Mets had Brian Schneider hitting. I'm not sure what you know about Brian Schneider, but let's just say he must be a really, really good defensive catcher if he's still in the league. Luis Castillo was on deck and Castillo has been hitting well of late. So obviously, the play is to have Schneider bunt the runners both into scoring position and have Castillo take a shot at driving them in with two outs because you can assume that the Brewers won't walk Castillo to load the bases for the pitcher in only the 2nd inning. And even if they did, at least you force their hand...make them make the tough decisions and put their pitcher on the spot. If nothing else, you make the pitcher throw 5-10 more pitches. Nope. Nothing doing; Schneider stuck out, Castillo flew out. Braden Looper cruised through 5 more easy innings, Brewers roll.

Many times Manuel doesn't seem to make proper situational pitching substitutions. They've become the NL leader in stolen bases, but still don't seem to have any kind of identity on offense. They don't seem to hit-and-run when it's called for. They seem to miss many bunting opportunities. They don't exactly play small-ball, but they have no power game either. And they've made a number of baserunning blunder. He doesn't have any semblance of a consistent batting order to allow his players to feel comfortable in a role. The announcers hammer the players every single time they're on ESPN about not having leaders, but I don't think it is the players that are problem. Wright leads the league in hitting, catches everything hit at him, is the first off the bench for high fives and does everything that is asked of him. Santana clearly is the anchor for the pitchers. Sheffield is a model citizen and is having a great year. They have leaders in place who are leading. But there seems to be no direction from the club.

Manuel seems like a good guy. He has a sense of humor. He is intelligent. He is good with the media and deflects attention well. But he doesn't seem like the kind of manager who will light a fire under these guys and after 5 years of being calm and composed and mechanical and average (under Manual and Willie Randolph), maybe they need someone to come in and scream at them every now and then. Like Bobby Valentine.

New Shea Welcomes Baseball, Mets' Outfielders' Gloves Do Not Welcome Baseballs

Monday was opening day at New Shea as the Mets hosted the Padres. Yes, this was the third time that the new stadium hosted a "first ever" baseball game, but as they said in Oceans 13, those first two were "soft openings." While watching the telecast on ESPN and keeping track of where I need to visit and what pictures I want to take when I go to the ballpark next month, I took notes on some of my thoughts on the game. So consider this a non-live live blog on the game.

There is no way in hell I am going to remember that Jody Gerut was the first player to get a hit and first to homer in a regular season game at New Shea. I guess that makes the trivia question more valuable down the line. Remembering that David Wright had the Mets' first hit will be easy. For the record, Luis Castillo had the Mets' first RBI.

I could have sworn that the Rays lost the World Series, but at their home opener Monday against the Yankees, they raised an AL East Champs banner, an AL Champs banner, and handed out rings. Rings? For losing? What is this, little league and everyone gets a trophy?

Orel Hershiser picked the Rays to beat the Mets to win the World Series this year. I knew I liked Orel. The L.A. Times' Bill Plaschke and Sports Illustrated picked the Mets to win it all. I like them too.

If Mets' G.M. Omar Minaya really only goes after Latin players, how come the Mets start four white dudes? I would venture that that is the most white starting players of any team in baseball. Daniel Murphy, David Wright, Ryan Church and Brian Schneider. And two of the five starting pitchers are white (John Maine and Mike Pelphrey). And three of their most significant off-season additions (J.J. Putz, Sean Green and Jeremy Reed). Crazy, Obama has been president for two months and I am already arguing someone is not racist because he employs a fair number of white people. Anyway, can we finally put the Minaya-only-signs-Latino-players argument to bed?

ESPN got the cameras set correctly for this game. When they aired a preseason game from here last week, they cameras weren't quite right. The outfield looked like Yosemite and the standard pitch-view camera was way too far zoomed out. I couldn't figure out of the ballpark was just bigger than everywhere else by 300-400 feet or if they just hadn't fine-tuned the production. Fortunately it was the former, though the Mets hit 3-4 balls to center field that looked gone by a mile that wound up being lazy fly balls to the front of the track. This park is good for baseball, good for pitchers, good for speedy slap hitters, but not good for casual fans who like homers.

Murphy officially got the first Bronx cheer in the new stadium. After dropping a can of corn Sunday that cost the Mets the game, he had another Monday that he put away easily. As the ball went up and the fans realized it was going to Murphy, you could hear them start to buzz louder and louder until he caught it and got a sarcastic standing ovation from some fans. Murphy had a big grin on his face as he tossed the ball back in. I like this guy. He hits, he learns his lessons (two hands this time) and he can laugh at himself.

I think I figured out why I am scared of Mel Kiper (besides that he looks like an angry bird). He has utterly no sense of humor despite that looking at him, you would have to assume he presents himself the way he does as a joke. He is terrifying. They now have this commercial for ESPN's NFL draft coverage where Mel and His Hair stand there looking dead-serious as they go over an imaginary draft board in front of them. It is like in Minority Report when Tom Cruise is moving around little video clips and files on a giant virtual computer screen/wall. Only Kiper is doing it with potential draftees' names and teams. But you get no sense he knows this is insane. You know he was standing on an empty sound stage and pretending to be doing things and they added in the graphics later, but he is so serious and intent. Does he really see those draft names when he is walking around in the real world? Is that commercial a visual representation of Mel Kiper's universe. I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but that man scares the hell out of me.

At the end of the 2008 season, on a Mets game broadcast, Gary Cohen and Keith Hernandez were talking about what it would be like to have Shea be gone. One question Hernandez asked was what would happen to all the cats that live in the stadium (like the famous black cat that cursed the 1969 Cubs during a game when it ran out onto the field, stopped in front of the Cubs dugout and stared them down). I remember Cohen saying not to worry about the cats and that they'd be fine. For those fans who were worried, fear not. They survived. One of them ran out onto the field and then disappear back into the stadium's bowels in the middle of the game. He was like a little blond cat-messenger. "It may be newer and shinier, but we still own this place."

I don't know what I expected from the Mets fans when Gary Sheffield would be introduced for the first time there. I did not expect a collective yawn. The cheer that went up from the 41,007 on hand when Shef pinch hit for Mike Pelfrey might as well have been for Alex Cora.

Trivia: first Mets' homer: David Wright. It is strange as a Mets fan to think that in a four inning bullpen-vs.-bullpen game, we've got 'em. In any of the last few years, I would have been thinking, "oh man, we need to score 4-5 more times to win this one."

Trivia: first player to also be an umpire and single-handedly win a game for a team, ruin the Opener of a new stadium, and ruin my life: David Eskstein. With a runner on third after Ryan Church pulled a Murphy and dropped a fly-ball for a three-base error, David Eckstein called a balk on Pedro Felciano, the home plate umpire deferred to Eckstein authority and confirmed the call. (Eventual game-winning) run scores. Does this ump ask for help on balls and strikes too? This is the circumstance I have ever seen a call be made under ("well, he's a veteran and he says he saw it, so I will call it") and one of the worst calls I have ever seen. I played this alleged balk over at least 10 times, even in slo-mo and there was no balk. Feliciano crouched over on the mound, came set, lifted his head maybe an inch or two, and Eckstein called the balk for faking a movement towards the plate and stopping. I know I am biased as hell here, but this call is absolute garbage and that ump should be ashamed at the way he called it because a player told him to. Feliciano's hips, shoulders, hands, arms, legs, nor feet moved. Just his head tilted up. I hope the league reviews it and the ump gets a fine or suspension given that it wound up deciding a game. If the Mets lose the division by one game, I am gonna lose it. Bruce Dreckman, we are no longer friends.

The Padres do not have a single left-handed pitcher. That has to cost them down the line once all the teams get a scouting report on all these no-name new guys they have in their pen. But for the time being, these guys are getting it done. I didn't understand why the Mets tossed Duaner Sanchez last month and watching him Monday made me still not see why. He's like mini-Frankie, goggles and everything.

Brian Schneiders' intro-music is by Creed. Ouch. Consider yourself knocked down a few pegs, Mr. Schneider. I can only hope he didn't choose this and someone way out of touch just threw it in there because they wanted "white-guy music" for him.

Heath Bell came out Monday and ripped ESPN for their East Coast bias, particularly their Mets-Red Sox-Yankees bias. I completely agree with him on that. They just made this big deal out of having a West Coast Sportscenter beginning at 10 P.M. Pacific time and besides the anchors being different, if you watched both shows, you'd never know the difference. The set is identical, the content is identical. How is this the West Coast Sportscenter? However, Bell also said that the Mets trading him away is one of his primary motivations. I am all for using something like that to fire you up, but the guy was traded three years ago. Move on.

Well there was no late-inning magic at the new park and the Mets now officially lost their Shea opener, Shea closer, and New Shea opener. And now I have to wait for two days before they play again to wash this mess out of my mind.

Offseason Shopping List

Baseball's Opening Day and the NFL Draft are both a little more than two months away so I was thinking about my shopping list before those big days. It's a short list.

1 - "Reyes moves over to third on the single by Wright as the Mets are off to a fast start here on Opening Day. And that will bring up new leftfielder Manny Ramirez."

Clearly the Dodgers don't want to really sign Manny because they keep low-balling him to a ridiculous degree. They want to be able to tell their fans that they tried, but it didn't work. Then they'll get third in the West, win 78 games, but sell 3,000,000 tickets and be one of three teams to turn a profit.

I don't understand why more teams aren't at least going to Manny with two and three year deals worth a little less per year than he's asking. At least that would be a middle ground. He wants four years and around $25 million a year. Not gonna happen. But couldn't the Mets land him for 3 years and $65 or so? Wouldn't he make up for his salary with jersey sales, wig/hat sales, and ticket sales? Wouldn't he love playing in New York and being on the back page, and sticking it to the Dodgers 8-10 times this year? The Mets are going to platoon an average youngster and a past-his prime veteran in left field. Really? Reyes, Wright, Manny, Beltran, Delgado. Name a better top 5.

Omar Minaya likes making big splash surprise moves. He allegedly likes only going after Latino players. Jerry Manuel said last month that he'd love to have Manny. The team has a hole in left field and a Gold Glove centerfielder to cover for some of Manny's gafs. And they have an offense that is potent (second in runs last year), but still somehow not intimidating. So go get one of the best two or three hitters in the game and stick him right in the middle of all of it.

2 - "Manning drops back, steps in front of the rush, picks up a block from Jacobs as he pumps underneath to Houshmandzadeh and heaves one deep to Boldin..."

Plaxico Burress is toast and no one else on the team (Amani Toomer included) can be a #1 receiver right now. Boldin wants out of Arizona and Housh is a free agent. Signing either one makes the Giants instant favorites in the NFC considering that arguably the conference's best defense played without its best player last season, and the one thing missing at the end was a serious threat at wideout. Signing both makes the Giants Super Bowl favorites. Who gets the double-team with Housh on one side, Boldin on the other, Steve Smith in the slot, Boss at tight end, and Brandon Jacobs behind Manning, who is behind the best offensive line in the league? These guys are both blue-collar star receivers (which is almost a contradiction in terms). They don't cause clubhouse problems. They don't make waves in the media. They don't even celebrate scores really. They block, they are good route runners and they stretch the field.

Is that really so much to ask?

I Hate Baseball

Today is one of those days that I wish it was socially acceptable for a grown man to cry in public at the drop of a hat like those two guys in the double-stroller in the Taco Bell commercial.

While the word "collapse" seems to be the word-o-the-day for sports writers and talk radio folks when talking about the Mets, I hardly think that that is fair. After all, the Mets were 13-12 in September. By comparison, the Brewers (who are the heroic September-survivors) went 10-16. Yes, the Mets went .500 for the final month and that wasn't enough to get it done, but keep in mind that they were out of the Divisional race by 7.5 games two months ago and out of Wild Card by four games three weeks ago and roared back into both races, surviving until the last day.

That said, they should never have been in either race and should have been able to run away with the division in June, thus making September irrelevant and that is why Omar Minaya absolutely needs to be fired. Of course if you have been paying attention, you saw that he apparently was just given an extension.

Minaya takes flak from some fans for supposedly being too Latin-player-centric in his personnel moves. Personally, I think this is ridiculous. His flaw is that he is too over-the-hill-player-centric and expects big name moves to solve all of the small problems. Anyone can sign big names to huge-dollar contracts. A good general manager find diamonds in the rough, and Minaya doesn't. Many of the star players on the team had good years, in fact David Wright and Jose Reyes had arguably their best years, but there were so many glaring holes that they simply couldn't overcome them.

The team won 89 games despite some huge, obvious problems that were clearly evident in last year's team and not fixed in the offseason or at the trade-deadlines. There was no doubt that the bullpen was a problem last year, yet Minaya made no significant move to fix it. It is unfair to pin the whole season on the bullpen, but look at it statistically: this season there were 654 blown saves in 1837 save opportunities in the Majors - so saves are blown 36% of the time. Among playoff teams (including the Twins and White Sox since they are both still alive), they blew 195 out of 600 opportunities, 33%. Mets relievers blew 31 saves in 72 opportunities - an average of 43%! They blew one save almost every five games. Essentially, they lost one game that they had a lead in late per week. By comparison, the Phillies blew 16 of 66 chances, 24%. Had the Mets' bullpen completed this task at the League average, they would have won the East by three games. At their divisional rivals Phillies' average, they would have won the division by 12 games, won 103 games, and had the best record in Baseball.

But we all knew the bullpen stunk. This isn't news. So the Mets bullpen was far worse than the league average, let alone a playoff team's average. The offense was among the league's best, so that should have cancelled it out. Or were they? Of the players who usually started for the Mets (Ryan Church, Carlos Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes and Carlos Delgado), all had good seasons. They made up for 73% of the home runs hit and 63% of the RBI by Mets this season. They also made up about the same percentage of the team's payroll. By no means am I suggesting that any of these five should be dealt, but the point is that nearly any G.M. with this payroll could have found these types of players. The problem I have with Minaya is that the role-players all stink.

The team was decimated by injuries during the course of the season. Four starting left-fielders were injured for the remainder of the year in succession (Moises Alou, Angel Pagan, Trot Nixon and Fernando Tatis). Church was injured and missed nearly half of the year as well. But Minaya did hardly anything to replace these players and in the end, the Mets bench consisted of players like Endy Chavez (.267), Robinson Cancel (.245), Argenis Reyes (.218), and Marlon Anderson (.210). Most of the players who were injured for significant time (Alou, Orlando Hernandez, Damion Easley, Tatis, Nixon, Pedro Martinez, Billy Wagner and Anderson) are in the waning years of their careers and injuries like these could easily have been foreseen.

In the offseason, Minaya traded for Johan Santana to fix the starting rotation. This was a good fix for a huge concern for 2007, but anyone would have made the same move. Minaya also planned on using Martinez and Hernandez despite that it was clear neither would be any use in 2008. No players were brought in to fix the hemorrhaging bullpen and it proved disastrous. Ryan Church replaced Shawn Green and was only a moderate improvement (thanks largely to his injury) and Brian Schneider was brought in to replace Paul Loduca and was hardly an improvement. Midseason, the manager was fired and this proved to be a key move that catapulted the team into the playoff race that they'd eventually lose by a nose. However, they should have already won that race by that time and Minaya is to blame.

My only solace in this whole situation is these three things:
1) Dodger fans and the L.A. media seem to whole-heartedly believe that this is their year despite not apparently realizing that their "amazing, Manny Ramirez-fueled August/September run" is the seventh best record among the eight* playoff teams in that time. They are actually worse than the Brewers who overcame a massive collapse to survive, and the Mets who supposedly blew it down the stretch! Whoops.
2) While CC Sabathia's 2 wins, 26 K's and 1.88 ERA over the last two weeks ultimately doomed the Mets, they helped my fantasy team win the league.
3) My Giants won the Super Bowl, so for at least a decade more, I am good to go.


*Winning percentages in August and September: Red Sox .641, Rays .618, Cubs .615, Phillies .611, Angels .593, Brewers .569, Dodgers .556, White Sox/Twins .519; Mets .574

Erosion Wears Down Mediate And Randolph

Last week, Rick Reilly wrote a typically inspired column in which he urged fans to root for Phil Mickelson to beat Tiger Woods. Essentially his point was that it is too easy to root for Tiger because he wins all the time. "It's like rooting for erosion," he wrote. It's just gonna happen whether you want it to or not. Watching Rocco Mediate try to beat Tiger in the U.S. Open playoff was a perfect example of a guy getting worn down by erosion. Mediate played beautifully, and of course the run he put on to go up by a stroke through 17 was incredible, but he had to be perfect on every shot in order to be close.

Mediate gained over 100 spots in the world rankings and is now in the 50's. Tiger hasn't played in two months and is firmly planted as #1. So you knew going in that it was going to take a miracle. They battled back and forth all day but the final two holes were a microcosm of this entire playoff.

Tiger teed off on the par five 18 and landed about a mile-and-a-half down in the fairway. Mediate teed off and came up well short of Tiger and in some trouble. Mediate's second shot put him back into the fairway, one shot from the green and in front of Tiger's ball. The trouble is, no matter what Mediate did on his drive, it was going to take him three shots to get to the green. It was a par five, so that is appropriate. But it was only going to take Tiger two shots to get there.

So now they were both hitting onto the green, Tiger from a little over 200 out, Mediate from around 140, with Mediate's one-stroke lead essentially gone already. If those two guys play that hole 100 more times, Tiger gets there in two 90 times and Mediate wouldn't get there in two once. It is like the guy plays on a different course. It is like watching two guys play one-on-one basketball, only one guy is shooting at an 8-foot hoop.

Granted, Mediate is not the biggest hitter in the world, and lots of other guys would be able to do just what Tiger did. But the thing with Tiger is that he doesn't miss shots. His putt on 18 wasn't great - he left himself a tough 6-footer to finish with, but the first one was from about 40 feet!

So like erosion, Tiger just did what he always did and steadily continued along until his opponent couldn't match him anymore. The difference this time was that his opponent never really crumbled, he just was playing on a different course at the end.

Speaking of golf, it looks like Willie Randolph will have some time on his hands to pick up the sticks. I like Randolph. He seems like a good guy. And the expectations placed upon him were impossible to fulfill. But the team stinks and he simply makes no changes to fix things. They can't score runs and he doesn't change the line-up to shake things up. The pitchers struggle and he just keeps running the same relievers in the same scenarios out there until it's too late. The team has no energy and while he may get a bad rap for seeming to be calm when in reality he may be much more fiery, it is his job to get them to wake up, and whatever he has been doing isn't doing it.

It is not necessarily the manager's fault when a team struggles, but you can't fire 25 players so someone has to go, and when the biggest problem with a team is that their attitude stinks, that is the manager's fault. But really, has there been any doubt this was coming?

That said, Omar Minaya had better work some magic very soon because he must be on a very, very short leash. The way Randolph was fired was cowardly and few of the big moves Minaya has made have benefited the Mets in the long run at all. He's been give the money to "win now" for four years in-a-row and they have nothing but an NLCS loss and a monumental, historical collapse to show for it.

Milton Bradley Lost It, The Sun Set, And Other News This Week

It has been over a week since I have written anything sports related because this page was not loading properly and I couldn't post to it anyway. To say the least, it has been an eventful week, so today will be just a quick recap of the biggest sports stories of the week in my world:

Everyone is piling onto Mets' manager Willie Randolph because the team stinks. For a long while I thought this was mostly unfounded, but the more they lose the more you realize that something needs to change. I wonder though, why is Omar Minaya's job so safe. After all, he is the person who spent all the money and equipped Randolph's clubhouse with all of these chumps. So Carlos Delgado seems to be hitting again, but the Mets' regular bench consists of Damion Easley, Endy Chavez, Marlon Anderson, Fernando Tatis. Granted, there have been a lot of injuries and the team has had to dig deeper into the bench than Minaya could have expected, but these guys combine for a .209 batting average, with 32 runs, 27 RBI, 16 extra base hits, 15 walks and 49 strikeouts in the equivalent of about 90 games played.

Granted: if Pedro Martinez, El Duque, Ryan Church, Moises Alou, Angel Pagan, and Luis Castillo hadn't all been on the DL for extended periods this season, they could easily have accounted for the 6.5 games that the team trails the Phillies, but every team gets injuries. This team fills holes with old, slow, injured, has-beens with no minor league prospects to be found. When do we start blaming Minaya?

It is hard to give any credence to what Tim Donaghy says about games being fixed in the playoffs because Donaghy is a crook who could likely just be throwing blame around, but the guys sure picked interesting games to mention. And not that I think we should go around believing every scrumbags conspiracy theories, but didn't the world react the same way to Jose Canseco's wild claims until they turned out to be almost 100% true? And David Stern is not doing the league any favors by being a smug, arrogant prick that almost makes you root for the other scumbag to bring him down.

Soon I will research the worst current contracts in baseball. The Dodgers' announcers were ripping the Mets last week for having this crazy payroll and I have a feeling they would not be happy with that I discover (I am looking at you Esteban Loaiza, Andruw Jones and Jason Schmidt).

The Orioles sent Steve Trachsel to the minors the other day. Since he has been gone, the league-wide average game time has dropped by 11 minutes.

Kevin Garnett did a commercial for ABC's Finals coverage in which he makes sweet love to the Finals Trophy. I don't like players holding a trophy they haven't won and talking about how good it feels to hold it. You don't touch it until you deserve to touch it.

Through three games, the Lakers' fans are proving what everyone things about L.A. sports fans: lazy, unintelligent and uncreative. They don't cheer unless the scoreboard tells them to, and the best chants they came up with were "Boston Sucks," and "MVP." Really? OK, so "beat L.A." is not much better than "Boston sucks," but it is better somehow. But Laker fans cannot compete with a Boston crowd that chants "No means no" at Kobe Bryant on the free throw line. Absolutely classic.

ABC pulled the most shameless in a long line of shameless promotional plugs in Game 3. They actually had a 3-D cardboard Wall-E ad in the seats for the game. This makes Fox look tasteful and dignified. Well, not dignified...actually, just forget I wrote that.

Chris Simms has asked to be released from his contract because he says he doesn't see himself fitting into their QB plans and wants to play somewhere. I have two thoughts here: the Giants should sign him and win Super Bowls with father and son (son on the bench of course), and why did Simms feel no hope for playing time in Tampa? San Diego Torero Josh Johnson, baby!

Michael Strahan pulled a John Elway and retired at the pinnacle of his career. Thank you Michael!

Dontrelle Willis was sent to the Minors because he was struggling. Not big news there. Except that he wasn't just struggling: his ERA was 10.32, and he had 5 strikeouts and 21 walks in 4 starts. And he wasn't just sent to the Minors, he was sent to Class A! Ya think his $29 million contract will be on my list?

Kobe Bryant got a technical foul in Game 2 and another in Game 3 for whining for calls on the only two plays that there probably was no actual contact. He hasn't punched anyone yet though, so thus far his behavior has been well above standard, except the pouting, screaming at teammates to stop shooting and give him the ball, whining, posing and almost total avoidance of the team's actual offensive strategy.

The Celtics are not as bad as everyone thought they would be and the Lakers are not as good. It is very likely that Kobe will not pass the ball once for the rest of the series (1 assists in the "must-win" Game 3). And as long as I watch the games with my friend Justin (who went to Gonzaga but I am the forgiving sort), the Celtics will win if the pattern holds.

5 points goes to any reader who can remember the first and last name of Big Brown's trainer without looking it up. Post it in a comment to this post. It has only been 5 days and already no one cares. But hey, at least everyone thought he was a complete ass during the duration of his 15 minutes.

It is weird to think that I have played golf on the course on which the U.S. Open is being played today/this weekend. That almost makes me a pro. I want free clubs. When I played at Torrey Pines, it was the week after the Buick Invitational in 2000. The course was tough and long, the rough was deep and the empty grandstands and T.V. towers were very intimidating. This week, the course is playing a lot tougher and a lot longer, the rough is probably 2 inches deeper and the grandstands and T.V. towers will be full. I am starting to think that professional golfers might be better than I am.

Milton Bradley blew up and tried to kill someone yesterday. Not news, I know, but it is a funny story: the Royals announcer said that Bradley would be well served to own up to his mistakes and move past them like Josh Hamilton has done. Bradley went nuts when he heard the comments, stormed through the clubhouse and had to be restrained from going into the booth to apparently take the guy's life, thus proving the guy right. He then was dragged back to the clubhouse and began sobbing about how no one thinks he's changed and gotten over his anger problems.

Maybe it was the scouting report on the Diamondbacks, but on Tuesday John Maine threw 104 pitches. 80 of them were fastballs. How about mixing in an off-speed pitch once in a while (that said, he struck out seven and was in line for a win before the bullpen blew another lead and the offense feel asleep in the last half of the game again).

Milton Bradley just screamed at me from the street. He's coming upstairs...I have to go.