Winter Meetings

Well the winter meetings are about to come to a close....and the Mets are walking away with two pitchers. No...not Santanna and Willis, but Steven Register and Garry Bakker, both acquired in the Rule V draft today. Watch out Atlanta, third place here we come. I guess we have become so accustomed to chasing the Braves over the past decade, it doesn't matter if they are ahead of us or behind us. Each year it seems as if there is so much promise going into the winter meetings. The mets are somehow linked to every major player, message boards fill up with trade proposals, projected lineups, etc., and fans become overly optimistic for the next season. These meetings were no different, and most of these rumors came from a self-promoting Yankee field reporter, Sweeny Murti. A man no one outside of new york knows of, decided this year would be the year people would know the name SWEENY. He decided to spread false rumors, with the hopes that he would get some recognition. The first, was the fact that the buzz around the winter meetings was the the Mets and Orioles were "close" on Bedard. He was the first to report this, so he was cited on Metsblog.com and rotoworld. He had the exposure he wanted, and it didn't matter that there was no factual basis behind this rumor. The Mets and O's were never close on Bedard. He then decided to take this a step further later on, and discuss the fact that the Tigers were talking to the Mets about trading us Pudge/Willis. Once again this gave him more exposure, teased Mets fans, and ultimately was false. The Tigers had spoken with the Mets before the deal was announced, in an attempt to make a trade with the Mets immediately following the Marlins trade. Now it seems impossible as the Tigers fans are excited to have Dontrelle on their team, and there may be a backlash if he were to be traded to the Mets in a "money saving" move. So the rampid speculation that followed his report was for naught, as the talks had stopped once the deal became public. So thanks for the help Sweeny Murti...

The inactivity at the meetings has been the case for the past two seasons, and both meetings have ended the same. With Omar, giving some bullshit speech, about flexibility, controlling young players, and the fact that we don't need to make any changes and are a better team now then the previous year at this time. The off season isn't over yet, and hopefully Omar can pull a rabbit out of his hat(NOT LIVAN OR COLON) and everything will be better. But so far this off season is looking far too similar to last years off season in which he built a team that managed to become infamous, in sustaining one of the worst collapses in baseball history. We have signed an injury-plagued 41 year old Left-Fielder, resigned the incumbent second basemen to a questionable contract, and traded away solid young talent(Bell, Ring, Owens, Lidstrom, (last year) Milledge) for questionable players and projects. (Burgos, Adkins, Johnson, Vargas, Bostick (last year), Schneider, Church)

What's next? Losing a first round pick, to give Livan a 3 year contract? If that's the case, Shea will definitely be a circus next year. We can show up to watch the Great Cuban Defectors. Instead of trying to guess which Mets cap the baseball is hidden under, we can play games such as: Guess the combined age of El Duque and Livan? How much does Livan weigh? and a fan favorite: How far did the last bomb Livan gave up travel....things are looking promising right now.