Author: Shannon Shark @metspolice

Yay, Reyes looked good in a workout today. Whew.  It has been so long since good news that I don’t know what to do.  Yes, I have been quite pessimistic about Jose, and I am glad to be proven wrong.

A friend and I were talking about this whole Rays to NJ thing that Peter Gammons started.

Depending on where it is, Rays Stadium might be easier to get to from Mets Police HQ than Citi Field is, the Rays might make for a fun team to passively follow.  I’d still get SNY in my house and could still buy my zero season tickets for Citi, just like 2010 and always love my Mets.  Every 50 years the Rays will play the Mets in the World Series and I’d root for the Mets, but a random Saturday afternoon with an hour less driving?  Could be tempting.

I wonder if the market is viable, or if they would just be the Devils of baseball.  Probably both.

If I’m the commissioner of baseball, I’m stacking the schedule every year to make the Rays play the Mets and Phillies  in interleague every year.  Sorry if that makes the schedule unfair, but it would be too cool to pass up.

The NJ Rays would play the Yankees and Red Sox the standard 9 times a year as AL East opponents…you could be looking at 24 sellouts out of the gate if MLB adopted my stacked-interleague plan (the Sox sell out Philly easily, and there’s even a lottery to get Sox at Phils tickets this year.)

The briantrust had some other suggestions:

“Swamp Rays”

“Devil Rays” (Steal the hockey team’s NJ logo)

“Original Rays” complete with a pizza box logo. (I think that’s been done).

Would you go to an NJ Rays game more than that first time to see the stadium, and the three games where the Mets visit?

From time to time I will mention that I think Paul LoDuca was a missing piece from these recent Mets teams.   Paul is up there now so I’m not saying he’s the magic potion, but this excerpt from Metsblog’s interview with John Maine caught my eye:

Matthew Cerrone:  Was there a specific catcher you liked working with?

John Maine:  I liked Paul LoDuca, just because when I’m out there he got of my attitude.  Brian Schneider was more technically sound than him, LoDuca just had this way about him, this attitude about him.  You’d feel bad to let him down… It was like, if you don’t go out there and do your job he’d chew you out.  I like that.