Category: General

Can the Mets Make a Deal for Marcus Thames?

There’s been a lot of talk about potential trades to get through Moises Alou’s hernia injury. We’ve discussed Thames, Nady, and Jay Payton as potential targets for Omar Minaya. The Tigers seem to make the most sense as a trading partner. They’ve got a great offense, pretty good starters, and a questionable bullpen. The Mets are looking to deal some of their relievers so working out a trade for Marcus Thames seems natural.

I got some good information about Thames from Blake over at The Spot Starters blog. It’s a great site for Tigers information and lots of MLB commentary. Take a look at the site. Blake gave me his impressions of Marcus Thames:

On Thames, he’s a nice guy to have. He’s primarily an OF and DH but just starting playing first base last year. He’ll never be confused with a Gold Glover but he gets the job done and makes up for it with his bat. Obviously he hits for some serious power, that’s his game. As someone who watches a lot of games though I really think that most good pitchers can get him out almost all of the time. He’s one of those guys. It feels like he beats up on shady pitching but I never feel confident with him at the plate in the 9th inning.

It sounds like he could be really valuable to the Mets if he can play the corner outfield positions and first base. He could even platoon with Church in right when Alou gets back. At this point in Delgado’s career, it looks like we’ll need a solid backup there as well.

Marcus Thames

Braves Fans Can’t Stop Talkin’ Mets Baseball

I love reading the Atlanta Braves blogs because they’re filled with posts about the Mets. Over at WordPress Chief Noc-A-Homa describes in great detail the “curse” of the Mets over the last three years. Of course, the end of last season felt like a curse mostly thanks to Tom Glavine. I reminded the Chief that in 2008 the Braves have Glavine and we have Johan Santana.

New York Mets Single Game Ticket Sales

Single game tickets go on sale tomorrow morning March 9th at 9:00am. Don’t forget about changing your clocks to daylight savings time tonight! The Mets box office is at phone (718) 507-TIXX.

Buy the Phillies series tickets before the Philly fans do. They’ve been campaigning all over the Internet this off-season to buy up the tickets at Shea this year. Don’t let them do it. Buy tickets for the Philly series on:

April 8-10

July 22-24

September 5-7

Ken Rosenthal on the Mets Options in Left Field

Fox Sports Ken Rosenthal isn’t ignoring the Mets this week. In fact, he addressed the Moises Alou situation in this column. In addition to the Tigers/Marcus Thames scenario, Rosenthal discusses the possiblity of Xavier Nady or Jay Payton coming back. He also mentions Kevin Millar and Paul Konerko in the column. Omar Minaya would be insane to trade for Konerko unless he could unload Schoenweiss and Jorge Sosa on the White Sox. Konerko hasn’t played one game in the outfield since he was with Cincinnati in 1998. So that doesn’t really help with the Moises Alou situation.

Omar is Looking to Fill Some Gaps

Joel Sherman of the Post reports that Omar Minaya has to word out that several players are available for trades now. Joe Smith is apparently available now. Sherman writes:

Aside from Smith, the Mets also would consider trading Orlando Hernandez, Scott Schoeneweis, Jorge Sosa and Anderson Hernandez. Ruben Gotay, who was out of options and, thus, could not be sent back to the minors without facing waivers, also was on that list before injuring his foot.

The Mets will need to pay a big portion of Schoenweiss’ bad contract to unload him. That was one of Omar’s biggest missteps. Three years was utterly ridiculous for him.

Baseball Analysts: 2008 NL East Rookie Preview

The Baseball Analysts have a good site if you’re into stat-heavy analysis. Today they published their 2008 NL East rookie preview. The Mets have no rookies that expect to get significant playing time this year, so there’s no Mets on the list. But there are some rookies that sound pretty good like Cameron Maybin in Florida (from the Tigers) and Carlos Carrasco in Philly.

Of Carrasco they wrote:

“As mentioned above, the need to hurry Carrasco has been lessened, but the likes of Benson and Adam Eaton won’t keep him down for long. Carrasco has been moved through the system aggressively and has responded well, although his numbers did dip noticeably in Double-A. The biggest warning sign was the increase in his walk ratio (5.89 BB/9). That obviously has to improve. Although Carrasco handles lefties almost as well as righties in terms of batting average allowed (.252 vs LH, .248 vs RH at Double-A), lefties are much more successful at getting on base and hitting the ball hard .855 OPS vs .690 OPS at Double-A), which is something the soon-to-be 21 year old will have to work on. If Carrasco can show improvements in the first half of 2008, don’t be surprise to see him recalled in July or August to add fuel to the Phillies’ playoff run.”

Camreron Maybin

Carlos Carrasco

The Walking Wounded

It seems like everyone is injured. The list is long: Gotay, Beltran, Schneider, Delgado, El Duque, Church, Anderson… is there anyone left? The longer El Duque stays out, the better Pelfrey’s chances are of making the team out of spring training. He pitched three more innings today, two hits and no runs. It’s early but if this keeps up there’s no denying Pelfrey the fifth spot in the rotation.

Pelfrey