Tag: Francisco Rodriguez

Santana, Mets Over Brewers 1-0 April 18, 2009

Score 4.18.09Johan Santana threw seven shutout innings again only giving up five hits and no walks. His season ERA is down to 0.46. There’s no slow start to the season for Santana. Once again, the bullpen shut down the Brewers over the final two innings with J.J. Putz and Francisco Rodriguez combining to preserve the shutout. I can definitely get used to this bullpen!

The only run for the Mets, and in the game, occured in the bottom of the seventh. Omir Santos pinch ran for Ramon Castro and scored on a fielder’s choice by Jose Reyes. Scoring the run in the seventh earned a win for Santana.

The Mets go to 6-5 on the season and go for the sweep tomorrow afternoon against the Brewers.

Box score

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Mets News Top Stories April 10, 2009

gary-sheffieldThe Mets arrived in Miami last night to begin their weekend series with the Marlins. The biggest story looming is the addition of Livan Hernandez to the roster so he can start tomorrow night. Of course, this wouldn’t be an issue if Gary Sheffield hadn’t signed as a free agent last week. The big decision is whether the Mets release Marlon Anderson, owing him $1.1 million for this season or go to 11 pitchers. Likely, Darren O’Day would be the odd man out if that was the case. Jerry Manuel has hinted that Anderson will be out.

Also of note is that O’Day and Francisco Rodriguez were teammates last season of Nick Adenhart, who was tragically killed in a car accident after starting for the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday.

An interesting media story is that Chris “Mad Dog” Russo is not allowed to do his Sirius satellite radio broadcast from Citi Field or Yankee Stadium. CBS Radio and WFAN have exclusive deals with the Mets and Yankees about radio broadcasting rights. Apparently, this was even an issue during spring training last month as well.

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Mets Spring Suffers Huge Loss

tradition-fieldIn the middle of the worst U.S. economy since the Great Depression, the Mets felt the effects more than any other team in the Florida Grapefruit League this spring according to a report in the NY Post. Tradition Field suffered a year over year loss of 16.3% in ticket sales this year. That’s an average of almost 1,000 fewer fans per game over their 16 game home schedule. Compare that to the Yankees loss of just 1.6% over last year’s spring ticket sales.

The Arizona Catcus League losses were even worse. From the NY Post:

Teams in the Cactus League in Arizona suffered far worse drops, however. The Padres’ attendance fell a whopping 30.8 percent, while Texas dropped 26.2 percent and the Angels 25.1 percent.

In my mind, this goes to show that the Mets organization severely underestimated the effect that the current economy would have on spring attendance. They should have adjusted ticket prices and promotions to compensate for the environmental factors that they were up against.

The Mets didn’t bring in any “big splash” free agents that would draw fans to Tradition Field. Francisco Rodriuguez doesn’t really qualify in the same way that CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira did for the Yankees. Hopefully, the Mets learned a lesson the hard way and will apply what they learned to the high-end ticket prices this season at Citi Field.

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New York Mets Top News Stories April 7, 2009

http://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/Resources/Javascripts/PisV3.jshttp://cdn.pis.picapp.com/IamProd/Resources/javascripts/DataV3.ashx?ImageId=823807&PublisherId=0MLB: FEB 26 Spring Training - Marlins at Mets

The Mets had a nice win on opening day yesterday against the Reds. The weather was cold and dreary but it was great to see Johan Santana get a win that he didn’t have to pitch a complete game to get. The bullpen held up just as Omar Minaya drew it up in the off-season. Of course, every media outlet is running stories this morning about how the Mets bullpen problems are fixed. I’ve seen about 50 of those columns today and I’m sure more will be coming during the day today.

Onto the news of the day:

Dave Singer at New York Sports Dog has a great post about the Mets all-time record on opening day. He lists every opening day game result and starting pitcher back to 1962. Very cool post. Its incredible to see how things went down hill after Doc Gooden left in 1995.

Darren Rovell of Sportsbiz at CNBC has a good post about the Mets and Yankees official sponsors. Did you know that Kozy Shack is the official pudding of the Mets? I didn’t either.

Andy Knight of the Cincinnati Enquirer has a good photo slideshow of the opening day parade in Cincinnati yesterday. It was good to see Frank Robinson back in Cincy.

Adam Rubin of the NY Daily News writes sarcastically about how confident we would have been to see last year’s bullpen save the game for Santana yesterday.

The New York Post has some video of Francisco Rodriguez talking about his save yesterday after the game.
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Mets WBC Returns: Wright, Putz, And K-Rod

David WrightThe World Baseball Classic has mercifully come to an end for the United States team at the hands of the Japanese team. The U.S. suffered a 9-4 loss last night at Dodgers Stadium. So we can finally get the whole team together for the Mets spring training.

The Mets are expecting Francisco Rodriguez, David Wright, and J.J. Putz back to the team to resume preparing for the 2009 season. The farce of a tournament is over. We don’t have to suffer through anymore 4-out saves for K-Rod or broken toe nails for David Wright.

Although the players got a few games played in for the tournament, it certainly wasn’t the same as playing five or six games a week in preperation for the season. There were a lot of days off between games as Chipper Jones complained about publicly to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Mets have serious business ahead of them this season. Specifically, they need to redeem themselves for two late season collapses in a row. Playing in a silly exhibition tournament was poorly timed for Mets players that need to get ready for a fast start this year. There’s no room for error.

Mets Oliver Perez Due Back In PSL Today

Oliver PerezStarting pitcher Oliver Perez is due back at Mets spring training today from his short sting with the Mexican team in the World Baseball Classic. Perez was pretty bad for the Mexican team, pitching 6.2 innings and giving up eight runs ( seven earned) on 13 hits including five home runs.

We can thank the folks at Major League Baseball, the WBC, and Mexico team manager Vinnie Castilla for abusing Perez while he was there. Perez threw 85 pitches in his final game against Cuba on Monday.

At this point in the spring no starting pitchers are throwing 85 pitches in a game. In my mind, this is an outrage. And if Oliver Perez starts out the regular season poorly for the Mets there will be questions all season long about what could have been if Perez avoided the WBC exhibition games.

I won’t even get into how disgusted I am about Venezuelan team manger Luis Sojo abusing our new closer Francisco Rodriguez with 4-out saves. K-Rod hasn’t thrown a 4-out save in MLB in two years. And Sojo is doing it in an exhibition game? The Mets ownership and management have every right to be appalled by what’s happening to their players in this ludicrous WBC exhibition event.

Audio: Mets Minaya, Santana, K-Rod, And More

Mike Francesa, hosting the annual Bar-A end of...
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Yesterday’s visit to Port St. Lucie didn’t go as planned for Mike Francesa of WFAN. We have some clips below from his interviews. But the big news is that Francesa couldn’t get interviews with David Wrigh and Ryan Church. Both refused to do interviews with him and even meet with him to discuss their problems.

Francesa went on to say that he tried to work through Mets PR man Jay Horowitz to meet with both players to discuss the situation. Both players refused the meeting. Wright didn’t like Francesa’s comments about his problems hitting in the clutch. And Church didn’t like Francesa’s comments about Church disliking New York.

Francesa said during the show that Church didn’t matter but Wright was immature about the situation and that he has some growing up to do. He also likened Wright’s immaturity about the interview to his problems hitting in the clutch.

It sounded to me like sour grapes that he couldn’t get the player interviews that he wanted. Francesa comes across as pompous at times. I think he was planning on generating some big ratings by having both players on to discuss their problems. When it didn’t happen, he was upset and lashed out at both labelling Church as inconsequential and Wright as immature. Good stuff…

Onto the interviews that Francesa did get:

Omar Minaya

Carlos Beltran

Francisco Rodriguez

Johan Santana

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