Shannon Shark

November 20, 2008

Mike Mussina To "Hall of Garvey"

As Mike Mussina heads off to retirement, it's time to nominate him for the Hall. No, not the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Garvey.

The Hall of Garvey is where the almost-greats go. It should be obvious who the founding member is.

Don Mattingly? He's in the HOG. Keith Hernandez? First ballot HOG.

Moose had a good career but he was never the best. You never looked at him and thought he'd be the one you told your son about. He didn't win championships. He had a solid very good career.

Cooperstown? No.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

November 19, 2008

A’s Owner Suggests 1 Game Wild Card Round

The owner of the A’s wants to shorten the season by making the first round one game instead of five. I think he’s on the right path, but his plan is unfair to the good teams.

I like the Costas Solution.

Shorten the season by playing something called single-admission doubleheaders. I know, crazy. Think of how much money the Marlins will lose by not playing 4 extra home games in front of 4,000.

Add a wild card to each league. The two wild cards play a one game playoff the day after the season. The winner of that game plays the #1 seed at the stadium of the #1 seed. So had the Mets tied the Brewers they would have had to kill themselves to win Sunday (in my alternate universe), killed themselves to beat Milwaukee on Monday and then had to open at Chicago on Tuesday. The Cubs would have had their pitching all lined up and the Mets would have had no choice but to start Four Inning Pedro.

November 19, 2008

Wild Speculation On Mets 2009 Colors

I got the MLB Christmas catalog yesterday and noticed that there are quite a few Mets items with a very dark blue, almost a Casey-era blue. These aren’t random oddball caps or things labeled “Cooperstown Collection” – they’re right there with all the normal items from the other teams.

I’ve looked around the internet and I can’t find any images, and none of this dark-blue stuff appears on mlb.com, and I’m too lazy to hook up the scanner right now.

At the end of the season there had been a rumor of some darkening of the blue that would make the orange pop – we talked about it here off a mention by Mets By The Numbers.

Anyway what I saw in the catalog matched the rumor from October 8th, which was denied the next day. Let’s hope it was accurate.

https://metspolice.com/2008/10/no-more-black-unis.html

November 18, 2008

Cool Steroids Play Opens Tonight

Back Back Back opens tonight at the Manhattan Theater Club.

The play is a fictionalized inquiry into the strange saga of former Oakland A’s teammates Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. The daring and talented playwright tosses in a third teammate, the lesser known shortstop Walt Weiss, as a pretty good device to get some of his own points across.

Vote No On Pedro (and yes on Andy)

Pedro Martinez wants to pitch another year. He’d like to do it in Flushing. Omar should say no.

The problem with Pedro is that he doesn’t eat innings.

It’s OK to have a back-end starter who goes something like 10-15 as long as the guy chews up 6+. The old adage is that no matter what you do you will win 60 and lose 60. The Pedro days last season really chewed the awful bullpen.

Andy Pettitte wants more money than the Yankees want to give him. Andy made 33 games last year and pitched 204 innings. While he wasn’t the Andy of old, that does average to over 6 innings per start. Sure his arm is about to fall off (as if Pedro’s isn’t) and sure $16 million is a lot of money, but as I’ve said in recent posts, this is all TV programming for SNY in a new ballpark.

This is not the season for the Mets to act like they are the Marlins. Spend the money. You’re going to make the fans give it to you anyway.