Foreign investment: Not that bad

A lot of people seem to be under the impression that every time a Middle Eastern sovereign wealth fund buys a stake in an American bank, the baby Jesus cries.

MoDo's column this morning, entitled "Red, White and Blue Tag Sale," is dedicated entirely to the phenomenon:

China and Arab countries have a staggering amount of treasury securities. And the oil-rich countries are sitting on so many petrodollars that they are looking beyond prestige hotels and fashion labels and taking advantage of the fire sale to buy eye-popping stakes in our major financial institutions.

The Democratic candidates were asked about this at their most recent debate in Las Vegas. Here's Hillary Clinton's response:

Brian, I’m very concerned about this... I think we’ve got to know more about them. They need to be more transparent. We need to have a lot more control over what they do and how they do it. I’d like to see the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund begin to impose these rules, and I want the United States Congress and the Federal Reserve Board to ask these tough questions.

I suppose she deserves credit for being the only candidate who actually answered the question, but boy what a horrible answer. The Federal Reserve? She can't possible think it's really their job to oversee who invests in what.

What I wanted Obama (or Edwards, but fat chance) to say was: "You know what? I actually agree with George Bush on this issue. The bigger problem would be if these funds weren't investing in our banks."

It would be perfect for his strategy of rejecting Bush-hatred, and would have the added benefit of being true. These are large stakes, yes, but they are nowhere near controlling stakes. The most recent Merrill placement didn't have voting rights at all. Meanwhile, our banks really need the money. Beyond the losses they've already taken in mortgage-related securities, they are holding other kinds of debt that's insured by companies like Ambac and MBIA, which are in very real danger of bankruptcy.

Demanding "more transparency"? Yes, let's demand that foreign investors undergo an extensive audit before we give them the privilege of putting billions of dollars in cash into our floundering banking system!

For all the hand-wringing about the size and supposedly favorable terms of these equity deals, Citigroup stock is down 50% in the last six months. Sure, if and when the banks recover as they did in 1992, some of that value will accrue to already-rich oil states, but at the moment they are taking a lot of pain.

In short, while it would make sense to regulate outright acquisition of major banks by government-controlled foreign entities, it makes no sense to make it harder for banks to raise capital wherever they can find it. The underlying problem that created this desperate need for capital had nothing to do with swarthy foreigners, and petrodollars look just like regular dollars on a balance sheet.

"Mets New Leaders in Santana Sweepstakes?"

That's the Yahoo headline I've been waiting all winter to see pop up in my RSS reader.

Instead I've been getting steady doses of Angel Pagan news and the thrilling drama of the Torrealba-Schneider musical chairs at catcher (the result of a Lastings Milledge deal which made them look stupid for not dealing him when he was still a glamor prospect).

Our pitching staff as currently constituted is an utter shambles. I'm on record saying that if we don't get Santana or at least two other decent arms, we will struggle to stay above .500 next year. But mostly what we need to do is get Santana. At any cost. This story reports that Omar was reluctant to trade Gomez and Martinez in the same deal. My response to that is "Tough shit." Pedro, El Duque and John Maine just cannot be counted on to hold down the fort.

Just give them what they want.

Clinton wins NH

Oh man. Catastrophe. Utter catastrophe.

Edwards was my first choice but it's over. He needs to endorse Obama. In his concession speech (which was nearly identical to the one he gave in Iowa) said he would stay in the race because too many people haven't had their votes counted... Sure, but hundreds of thousands of people have had their votes counted and it doesn't look like Edwards is going to win the nomination. Frankly he's also starting to disappoint me with this Poor Natalie Whatever-her-name-is schtick. I know it's merely an exaggerated form of his stump speech, but in a concession speech it repeatedly associates him with pathetic victim figures.

Also, is it the best idea to have one of the male actors on "Desperate Housewives" standing behind him? (Note: I only know this because it was pointed out to me.) If I were a right wing pundit I would definitely be coming up with witty jokes like: There are two desperate housewives on that stage! I bet there's something to that effect over on the Corner right now, but I won't give them the traffic.

Just overheard in Hillary's acceptance speech: "I want you to come join us at HillaryClinton.com!" It is to be an internet phenomenon. Look for a dyed-blond Bill under a white sheet screaming Leave Hillary Alone!

This is just utterly effing depressing.

Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson?

UPDATE:

Matt Yglesias passes along one theory: Hillary was disadvantaged in the Iowa caucuses because married women caucus with their husbands, not wanting to have to sit by themselves for hours. Sounds plausible enough to me.

"Maverick No More?"

Interesting that the first major news outlet to display an ounce of critical thinking about the resurgent McCain campaign is the Wall Street Journal.

Obama's Strategy and the Netroots

From Al Gore’s concession of the 2000 election to today, January 5, 2008, I have been awaiting the day of reckoning for the Republican Party. I was sure it would arrive in November of 2004, but it didn’t. The worst president in American history won re-election, and it appears he will serve out his full two terms, leaving the White House in disgrace but without having been impeached. The scope of the devastation he will leave behind is not merely political, economic or social. It is global, and surely would have been interplanetary had the technology been available to him.

He is widely disliked now, yes, but it’s crucial that the most pernicious theories that he relied upon (making them up where necessary) to advance his agenda have been sufficiently discredited to prevent them from becoming permanent fixtures in American government. That’s what needs to happen, and it hasn’t yet. We need to salt the earth that he sprang from so that nothing ever grows again.

Which is why I have to think long and hard about how I could possibly support a Democratic candidate whose stump speech includes the following:

“You know that we can’t afford four more years of the same divisive food fight in Washington that’s about scoring political points instead of solving problems; that’s about tearing your opponents down instead of lifting this country up.”

As Corrente’s Lambert writes: “What’s going on in politics today is a little bit more complicated — and much more important — than a “divisive food fight.” Indeed, the very phrase itself trivializes both the scale of the problem, and the efforts of those progressives who are fighting for solutions.”

It’s been obvious since well before his campaign began that Barack Obama did not intend to reprise Howard Dean’s role as the insurgent firebrand of the liberal base. It was obvious from his world debut convention speech in 2004 that that was not his style.

A few excerpts:

“And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do.”

“People don't expect government to solve all their problems.”

“John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life.”

As for the speech’s most searing indictment of Bush:

“When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Now -- Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found…”

So Obama’s rules for when (not if) we send our young men and women into harm’s way seem to include not lying about why we’re doing so and making sure we send enough of them. With McGovernite pacifism like that, it’s no wonder he felt compelled to make sure everyone understood he wasn’t saying that we have no real enemies in the world.

Of course, those were not his only objections to the Iraq War, but in a speech endorsing John Kerry, it would have done no good at all to call attention to the fact that unlike the candidate he had opposed the war. So while it was much less a call to arms than a call to hugs, clearly nothing in this speech can be used as evidence that Obama was consciously downplaying his opposition to the Iraq War, or distancing himself from antiwar Democrats.

But then in March 2006, and apparently of his own volition, he endorsed Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate primary:

"The fact of the matter is, I know some in the party have differences with Joe. I'm going to go ahead and say it," Obama told the 1,700-plus party members who gathered in a ballroom at the Connecticut Convention Center for the $175-per-head fundraiser.

"I am absolutely certain Connecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman back to the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf," he said.

It goes without saying that most Democrats do not simply “have differences” with Joe Lieberman, but revile him as the Democrat who not only did the most to lend the all-important bipartisan stamp to the Iraq War, but also repeatedly suggested that those in his party who criticized it, or any other measure Bush deemed necessary, were effectively committing treason. Just one example:

“It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril.”

Yes, Joe Lieberman said that in December 2005, three months before Barack Obama expressed his certainty that Connecticut (Republicans) would “have the good sense” to re-elect him. Despite the fact that Obama himself knew enough not to trust Bush on Iraq before the war’s stupidity had been demonstrated, and before the manipulation of the evidence for it had been fully exposed.

As evidence that Obama was more cynical office-seeker than man of deep conviction, this was stronger stuff than his appeals to unity and bipartisanship, and when he did it I figured he was at least considering a presidential run (why else, Barack?) and highly suspicious that he would be a candidate I’d want to see win.

On one hand, an Obama candidacy would be “serious,” in the positive sense of being shrewdly run and having a measure of support from the party establishment. But I dreaded the prospect of the campaign becoming Very Serious, which in the liberal blogosphere refers to the apparent inability of war advocates to lose their exalted status among elite opinionmakers, no matter how crazy and flatly wrong their arguments or how disastrous the results they help bring about. Examples include John McCain, Michael O’Hanlon, Joe Klein, Bill Kristol, and of course Joe Lieberman. The “unserious” people include the likely suspects: Howard Dean, Paul Krugman, Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich, Russ Feingold, and anyone else who didn’t have the wisdom, foresight, or moral fiber to argue for the invasion of Iraq.

One article of faith among the Netroots, many of whom are about my age and thus have only really cared about the 2000 and/or 2004 elections, is that Democrats lose because they fear the attacks of the Republican machine. They fear being tarred as profligate spenders or soft on defense, so they go to great lengths to emphasize their moderate economic policies and sound tough on defense, which instead of winning them the approval of the Republican machine, only gives it more fodder for its attacks on Democrats as spineless panderers who don’t stand for anything. A less charitable gloss on this tenet comes from Netroots antagonist and notional Democrat Mickey Kaus: “We don’t have to do anything differently to win elections besides be meaner.” Thus, there is a harmonious convergence between our desire to see Democrats win elections and our attraction towards candidates who openly thirst for Republican blood.

Though Obama never appeared a match for Edwards in this department, it wasn’t until fairly late in his campaign that the he first signs of real tension arose. Paul Krugman attacked Obama’s health care plan (or rather, the way he went about defending it), the Obama camp fired back hard, and things developed. Not many liberals, or people in general, know enough about insurance mandates to have a had a real beef with Obama on the subject. But Paul Krugman is one of them, and if he smells a rat, the savvy Democratic primary candidate does not respond by “Fact Checking” Krugman with previous statements of support for his plan and the accompanying charges of hypocrisy/flip-flopping. At least not one who’s at all concerned about pissing off the liberal blogosphere, which loves Paul Krugman, and now actually includes him.

Steve Benen of the Carpetbagger Report wrote on January 2, the day before the caucuses:

“It’s been brewing for quite a while, but over the last couple of days, a lot of prominent Democratic bloggers have been hammering Barack Obama for using “conservative frames” to advance his candidacy. It’s counter-intuitive, of course, given the circumstances — Obama is a top challenger for the Democratic nomination, so one assumes he’d be running to the left, not the right.”

He then lists a series of examples of Obama appearing to run to the right, with their egregiousness measured in Liebermans. He does not include Obama’s 2006 endorsement of Joe Lieberman, which would have presumably rated highly.

There is a popular notion that while Obama might very well be filled with righteous anger at the Bush administration and Republicans generally, his ascent to the presidency requires that he not show it. Because while America might elect a black man, the odds that we would elect an angry black man are not as good.

Though that sounds at least plausible to me, I also think this is a little convenient for the Netroots. It lets us write off a candidate who, by just about any reading of his biography, career, and legislative record, is very much on board with all the remedies to Bush governance we have been asking for. Why? Because his inability to give us all high fives, even though we’re sure he totally wants to, will doom him in the general. Rather than have to take it personally that he speaks of us as a liability to the party (and actually, the country), we get to attribute such comments to racial self-hatred and blame those damn bigots for keeping a good man (who’s surely as mad as we are, deep down) from speaking his mind. Because it couldn’t be that he’s a committed liberal but at the same time disagrees that the road to the White House goes through the Daily Kos straw poll. We know know that Democrats need a fighter. Someone who, to quote Lambert again, “will destroy the Republican brand and cripple the Conservative Movement.”

Mark Schmitt makes the case that Obama is a man of deep liberal convictions but departs from this Netroots orthodoxy that the most effective way to defeat the Republicans and achieve our policy goals is to rally around the blue flag and launch a frontal assault:

“Suppose you were as non-naïve about it as I am -- but your job wasn't writing about politics, it was running for president? What should you do? In that case, your responsibility is not merely to describe the situation exactly, but to find a way to subvert it. In other words, perhaps we are being too literal in believing that "hope" and bipartisanship are things that Obama naively believes are present and possible, when in fact they are a tactic, a method of subverting and breaking the unified conservative power structure. Claiming the mantle of bipartisanship and national unity, and defining the problem to be solved (e.g. universal health care) puts one in a position of strength, and Republicans would defect from that position at their own risk.”

In his book “The Big Con,” Jon Chait describes a poll taken during the Clintons’ effort to reform health care. Every element of the proposal enjoyed majority support when it was presented individually, but when people were asked about the “Clinton health care plan,” support dropped precipitously as the set of people who support the proposals but oppose the Clintons defected.

This is the problem Obama plans to solve. Democrats hold the popular advantage on virtually every major issue, but tribal loyalty makes otherwise persuadable Republicans less likely to give them a fair hearing. So if a Democrat wants to win power and see their agenda enacted, he or she must not present this agenda as Democratic, or its enactment as a Democratic victory. Because even though the brand is on the rebound after seven years of Bush, it’s still the case that Republicans benefit more from party solidarity than Democrats do. Universal health care is now a more mainstream position than it was in 1993, and the best tactic its few natural opponents have is to cast it as a socialist plot by statist Democrats like Hillary Clinton, because Democratic lawmakers want nothing more than to exert control over your medical choices.

Of course, the Republicans are already using that tactic, and have been from the outset. Those attacks will regardless of who the nominee is. But when John Edwards talks about the issue in terms of corruption and greed, Republican voters will naturally rush to their preferred explanation for/defense of the current system: that free markets are the best path to prosperity. Then they will remember why they like Larry Kudlow so much (he makes them feel good about opposing wealth redistribution), and suddenly they find themselves much less concerned about the plight of the uninsured.

And if it’s Hillary Clinton championing the cause, they don’t even have to bother examining their position. There is simply nothing she could do dispel the narrative that she is back for her vindication, to finally triumph over the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, but this time with the office to herself.

Obama sets himself apart from the other two by offering the whole country, Bush voters and all, the opportunity to claim universal health care as an achievement of bipartisan cooperation. That whole period where Republicans kept insisting that we have the finest health care system in the world and anyone who says otherwise was a Communist? Water under the bridge. Yesterday’s news, even if the current Republican candidate – no doubt a fine man - happens to still be saying it. Barack Obama isn’t in this to score points.

It’s appealing, but there are a couple things about this that worry me. The first one is best summed up by Atrios: People disagree about stuff. For all the broad (but clearly not universal) rhetorical appeal of blaming the country’s problems not on any one person or party, but on partisanship as such, it’s fundamentally dishonest. It implies the existence of a national consensus that, on all the pressing political issues of the day, does not exist. If there were consensus, then by definition it wouldn’t be a pressing political issue.

In practice, the exultation of bipartisanship can go beyond vacuous and become dangerous . It is just a demand made by the majority to the minority that they put aside their objections and get with the program, in the interest of national harmony. Of course, this doesn’t sound so bad when the minority is defending health insurance companies from legislation which will diminish the profitability of their business. But when the Republicans demanded support for the Iraq War, we needed a lot less eagerness by Democrats to reach across the aisle and a lot more eagerness to find out whether it was necessary.

That’s a fairly widely understood problem with Obama’s rhetoric, which most would agree is deployed to soft-pedal the idea that his “bipartisanship” is ultimately indistinguishable from “support for my policies.” But there is a more serious problem that I see this causing for him should he win the nomination: It will be extremely hard for him to beat on George W. Bush. I’m sorry, but that is a promising avenue of attack. He’s a big piniata with lots of votes in him, but Obama’s strategy depends on leaving him alone and telling people just to think about the future. I don’t think Obama will have trouble steamrolling John McCain, but what if he can’t? As soon as he has to go negative, they’re going to call the Hillary play: “What happened to the politics of hope?”

Also, by presenting himself as a uniquely uniting figure (which he seems to be in fact), he leaves himself more vulnerable to personal attacks. If any skeletons get out, we have a problem. His pitch is very high-minded and sanctimonious. I’m sure he’s smart enough to have background-checked himself extensively by now, but if the campaign is going to be all about him and not about the institutional uprising of the Democratic party, he better be so pure he floats.

But it seems to be working incredibly well. Republicans aren’t going after him at all. Edwards is not attacking him from the left, which on the one hand might be a pretty flatttering complement to the expected Clinton attacks from the right, but on the other hand gives the impression to Edwards supporters that Obama is a tolerable outcome.

I’m still supporting Edwards, but I’ve been convinced that Obama’s electoral strategy is sound, doesn’t involve him running away from liberal policies (just liberal advocates), and has a message which will be very tough for any Republican, especially John McCain, to defeat.


“[I]t must be a peace without victory…. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit."

- Woodrow Wilson, 1917

It Burns

WSJ: "Frustration Builds for Democrats"

A Cry in the Wilderness

If anyone reads this, please, tell Omar Minaya not to offer Jorge Posada a five year contract, through his age 41 season, or even a four year contract. I know the Mets can afford to waste money, but I just don't see even his 2008 being so good that it will be worth what will probably be a Javy Lopez-esque decline from his career year. Lopez was actually two years younger when he hit his 49 home runs than Posada was last year, when he (Posada) hit 20 home runs.

Yes, there are nice secondary skills, with doubles power and a keen eye, but damn. You just shouldn't give catchers that old deals for that long at dollars that big (reportedly low teens per).

Unless, of course, you think it will really spike the attendance numbers, but I'm not seeing it.

More like this

Not generally a fan of Slate’s political coverage generally or Fred Kaplan in particular, but I am very happy to see pieces like this which call attention to the fact that that Rudy Giuliani is a preposterous fraud.

(Via TPM)

My Ryan Crocker conspiracy theory

The U.S. Ambassador to Iraq was on "Meet the Press" this past Sunday (transcript). Watching him, I was struck by how meek and ineffective his presentation was. Looking and sounding like a slightly more youthful Peter Gammons, Crocker was so slow to come up with good answers to Russert's questions that I think Timmy took them on a decided turn for the fluffy in the second half.

Whatever might be said of the Bush White House, they are good at showmanship, and this guy was a glaring exception. I indulged in the sneaking suspicion that he was not given the Ambassadorship to lead any diplomatic effort in Iraq. Because if there's anything more ingrained in the administration than showmanship, it's an aversion to any form of diplomacy other than threatening varying degrees of economic or military action.

What they would want in an Ambassador to Iraq is a guy who seems genuine and hardworking but nonetheless helps convince the American people that diplomacy leads nowhere. I think Crocker fits that bill.

Crazy, right? I thought so too, but now I'm really starting to wonder. In today's WaPo: "Embassy Staff In Baghdad Inadequately Staffed, Rice Is Told"

Told by Crocker, that is. Some choice quotes:

"Simply put, we cannot do the nation's most important work if we do not have the Department's best people," Crocker said in the memo.

But surely our resolute Ambassador is making progress with the cards he was dealt, right?

"He's panicking," said one government official who recently returned from Baghdad, adding that Crocker is carrying a heavy workload...

What goes totally unmentioned in the article is what vital diplomatic efforts are being hindered by the lack of HR staff. But some things are crystal clear:

"They need a cohesive, coherent effort on all fronts," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Well I can see why, if he's going to drop bombshells like that.

Anyway I still, even after reading this article, don't have any proof that the White House is throwing the game at the U.S. Embassy. In fact, Crocker appears to be extremely, if not uniquely, qualified for the job. But this article sure makes him sound like the fall guy, and judging by his MTP performance he is perfect for the role.

The Triumphant Return of Jason Tyner

The Mets, under the steady hand of Steve Phillips, took Jason Tyner in the first round of the 1998 draft. In his last year at Texas A&M, he had hit .385/.418/.442 with 0 HR and 39 SB in 278 at bats.

Now, statistical analysis may not yet have realized fully mainstream acceptance, but my impression is that there isn't a GM in baseball at this point who would use a first round pick on a college outfielder who didn't walk or hit for any power at all.

But hitting singles and stealing loads of bases was enough to move him swiftly through the Mets system. After bringing the International League to it's knees in 2000 with a .321/.380/.349 line (mmmm.... similar...), Tyner got the call to Shea, and predictably excreted the worst cup of coffee in recent Mets history before being shipped to Tampa Bay.

Since then he's bounced repeatedly between the Devil Rays and AAA Durham, among other teams, basically doing the same thing all the time except for drawing more walks in the minors (because the pitchers are worse). Since 2005 he's been with the Twins/Rochester, and had been slightly above replacement level until this year.

So, a hearty welcome back to Jason Tyner. Even though he was taken waay too early, and never got any better, he was always good enough to be a fringe major league rosteree, and that's not nothin'.

Politico: Bush's dismal approval ratings good for Republicans

Not a problem, "an opportunity." Because everything is good for Republicans.

Mayor Lo Duca's Political Machine

"Be True to the Orange and Blue!"

That's what the Mets TV ad just told me to do. How does one stay true to the orange and blue, you might ask? By voting for Paul Lo Duca for the All-Star team. That was the sole message of the 15 second ad.

With two hits already tonight Lo Duca has raised his average above .300, which puts him right behind Brian McCann among qualified NL catchers. But Paul lacks any secondary skills beyond scrappiness. Look how the field stacks up on an OPS basis:

.806 Russell Martin (LA)
.763 Benji Molina (SF)
.749 Johnny Estrada (MIL)
.732 Michael Barrett (CHC)
.723 Paul Lo Duca (NYM)

That Martin character also leads NL catchers in runners thrown out (albeit on a lot of attempts) and has stolen 11 bags for himself, putting him ahead of the likes of Soriano, Freel and Beltran.

Hence the Mets' appeal to team loyalty in this TV campaign, which strikes me as rather unseemly given the team's natural market size advantage in the balloting process.
I mean there are already many, many more people voting for Paul Lo Duca than there should be, and God knows Reyes and Wright will win huge and deservedly so.

I'd much rather the team spent that money, say... scouting Adam Dunn than artificially and shamelessly maximizing its All-Star team representation.

10 Ks for Chien Ming Wang

That's really not his usual game. The guy's been awesome, and a very good #2 starter behind Andy Pettite, but but he's been doing it without missing a lot of bats (to say the least), relying instead on the heavy sinker and pitching to contact. Tonight every Mets starter except Lo Duca struck out at least once, and he only had one AB before leaving with a bruised left elbow.

El Duque did not look good. Not that Alex Rodriguez really seems to care what the opposing pitcher throws these days, but a slow fastball on the inside corner is guaranteed pain.

The high point of the broadcast was the trade speculation, which I hadn't been paying much attention to. Apparently Omar is in talks with the White Sox about Mark Buehrle, and Houston about Brad Lidge.

I would make Buehrle the top priority of the two. The Tom Glavine career death watch is back in full effect after is last two drubbings, and even though Hernandez, Maine and Sosa(!) have been solid there's no need to bank on their remaining so. And aside from a disastrous 2006 (36 HR allowed) Buehrle has been damn good, like a more durable if slightly less effective Chien Ming Wang.

Brad Lidge would also be handy, and given the way the Astros pulled his closer card in mid-April it's possible he's underappreciated in Houston. Lidge had to whittle his ERA down to 2.35, and get some help from Dan Wheeler to get the job back, and of course what does he do but cough up a one run lead in his first opportunity. So he's still technically save-less, which is unusual for a closer at this point in the season.

BUT, he's also struck out 44 in 34.2 innings with a 2.44 ERA. So I predict that if the Mets get him and have him pitch the 8th in front of Wagner like old times, he will get effusive praise for pitching the exact same way he had been in Houston, just because he will no longer be measured by the most ridiculous statistic in baseball.

Whomever the Mets deal for, the idea is that the consideration will include Milledge, Gomez, and/or Fernando Martinez. I'd be fine with that. That's what those guys are there for, at least while the Mets are a legitimate championship contender, which they are... even though they just got dominated by Chien Ming Wang.

US Open prediction

Okay, here goes: Tiger wins.

I watched the middle of his round yesterday. It's just uncanny. I mean sure, the greens are big at Oakmont but to miss only one of them is a sign that his new swing works okay. I think if he fails to win this tournament, or falls short of Nicklaus's record, it will be due to his putting. He's kind of like Ben Hogan in the disparity between his ball-striking and his short-mid range putting.

But better. I bet he'll win 25 pro majors.

UPDATE:

Close, but no cigar. I couldn't tell you anything about Angel Cabrera, but I liked that he was chain smoking, and hit a drive 397 yards.

Ann Althouse attacked me! Where's the support group?

As I anticipated, Ann Althouse's all-seeing eye of Technorati found my re-introductory post and my "confession" to being a troll on her blog. She throws it right in my kisser in the comments to this post.

As I pointed out to her, she of all people was well aware of my comments, being on the receiving end of them. Especially because I used the term "troll" to refer to myself on her blog, using the broader definition of "commenter who regularly antagonizes the blogger" rather than the formal "commenter who is only there to disrupt the conversation."

Anyway, she called me "a little shit who hates me and intends destruction -- by his own admission." So I'm feeling pretty proud of myself.

The issue at hand, btw, was her attack on Glenn Greenwald for this post, in which Greenwald addresses "the media's obsession with the faux-masculinity of GOP candidates in general, and the tough-guy military persona of Fred Thompson in particular..."

Ann's summary was as follows:

"Greenwald begins with the subject of how sexy and manly Fred Thompson is..."

That's the kind of unflinching dishonesty that characterizes the Althouse oeuvre. But it's not only that.

The main issue for Althouse isn't what Greenwald has to say about Chris Matthews (although she defends the Thompson business too as the kind of freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness thinking that she approves of). It's that in the same post Greenwald goes after the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds for bemoaning the state of American masculinity even though he "devotes his life to attending convention center conferences on space and playing around with new, cool gadgets in the fun room in his house, like a sheltered adolescent in his secret treehouse club..."

Of course she can't just come out and say: "Hey, that's my warm, supportive traffic generator you're talking about," so she argues that his accusation of hypocrisy is itself hypocritical (because it impugns Reynolds' masculinity). This isn't a good argument, but it's much better than her other main line of attack, which is that Greenwald uses too many words to make his points. This criticism is better founded but doesn't really discredit those points in the least.

Anyway, I just hope I can "leverage [her] popularity" as Jessica Valenti did (in Althouse's addled mind). I mean she got on Colbert fer cryin' out loud.

Perez vs. Clemens

Man I'd love to see Roger Clemens get smacked around, but I'm not sure it's in the cards.

8:39 - Reyes!

Man I'm Rusty

The west coast games are a killer. Bottom line: the Mets have dropped two in a row to the Dodgers, but the Dodgers are actually pretty good so it's not that surprising. Hong-Chih Kuo dominated the Mets lineup and cracked a home run, which is what you want to see if you're a Dodger fan.

I was going to comment on l'Affaire Mudcat and this Joe Klein/Ana Marie Cox podcast (both via the TPM media empire) but didn't get around to it. Short versions: Hiring Amanda Marcotte and Mudcat Saunders would seem to cancel the two out, and Joe Klein sounds like a raving madman ("38 years!").

More to come this evening, after I'm finished peddling my spare room to craigslist applicants (the horror, the horror).

The Flyin' Hawaiian (TM)

Shane Victorino, despite looking a little shaky with the bat, is having a pretty useful season. He's among the league leaders in steals, having only been caught twice. And he is the outright leader in outfield assists (Carlos Delgado helped add to the total this past weekend).

But I was a little surprised to read this at the bottom of this recap in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week, after his walkoff home run:

He hopes to trademark his "Flyin' Hawaiian" nickname and use it to market a clothing line. The logo will be his home state's island chain. The second-year player figures that sort of thing is a long way off.

"That stuff comes after you get famous," he said before the game.

Walkoff homers foster fame.

Indeed they do, but I think Shane is right to wait and see on the apparel-selling fame. It turns out he's not the first "Flyin' Hawaiian." In fact there's a drink called that already, among other things. The Google search lists as the #2 result the MySpace page of a guy who claims his friends have been calling him "The Flyin' Hawaiian" since 1990 (when he moved to Oklahoma).

My only point here is that the road to riches from the "Flyin' Hawaiian" name will be fraught with IP peril, and that's if, if he becomes a very famous baseball player. Fortunately his day job pays quite well.

Specter at His Wormiest

Arlen Specter is a truly bizarre character. Here he is on the floor of the Senate, explaining that while Republicans don't in fact have confidence in Alberto Gonzales, he doesn't expect them to vote that way and does so himself only grudgingly. He goes on to accuse Democrats of "outright political chicanery" for holding the vote.

Whenever an improper or illegal activity on the part of the administration is revealed, Specter's first move is always to distinguish himself from virtually all other Republicans by recognizing it as such and registering a certain amount of concern. But he never, ever, wants anything to come of it.

Illegal wiretapping? That's bad, says Arlen, but we should really legalize it retroactively, and make warrants optional in the future.

As the U.S. Attorney scandal was developing, Specter knew that Gonzales had lied at his press conference, and said as much. But he (Specter) wasn't going to "judge" on that basis alone, and was outraged at Sen. Leahy's efforts to get sworn testimony from DoJ and White House staff.

The question is: is this better than there being no Republicans at all who make noises over Bush administration lawbreaking? Or is it detrimental to have a "centrist" Republican who appears to be as outraged as the rest of us, yet tells us doing anything about it would be highly damaging to Republicans and therefore partisan and wrong? I'm on the fence, personally.

Jack Cafferty has the definitive Specter takedown.

Tom Glavine

I've been very wrong about Tom Glavine. Ever since his 2003 Mets debut, which was his worst season since the 80s, and the Mets' worst season this decade, I've been on career death watch. He wasn't even that bad (just below league-average ERA). But he was so damnably old! He was 37 that year, and I figured it was over. Umpires would stop giving him the extra one or six inches off the plate. His velocity would gradually approach batting practice range, and the flinty-eyed New Englander would have to call it a career.

Now, it could very well be the case that the umpires aren't giving him as much room, and his velocity has dipped, but it just hasn't mattered that much. He's been money in the bank.

There's of course the hoary cliche about the aging pitcher who, late in his career, makes up for his lost velocity by changing speeds and improving his command. Well in Glavine's case it's absolutely true. Yes, he was kind of a finesse pitcher even in his prime, but in each of his age 38-41 seasons he's walked 2.3 batters per nine, below his overall career average of 2.6. He's been every bit a front of the rotation starter.

Until today. Today he got mugged like that 101 year-old woman in the highly-rated YouTube video. Yes, it's grainy but that's Tom in the vestibule.

Is this thing on?

So it's been almost a year since I stopped blogging, and I'm starting to get that itch. I've spent my time in the wilderness, grown a beard, been nominated for a Nobel Prize... oh wait that's not me.

To recap the time that I missed, the Mets did indeed make the playoffs, then there was that called strike three, then the offseason, and now here we are.

There are a couple changes in format to announce, one thematic and two stylistic.

To begin with the thematic, I had shied away from including politics on this blog for a couple reasons:

a) blogs that cover multiple subjects are never going to have the same depth as specialized blogs and
b) it would mean forfeiting the readership of conservative Mets fans.

In retrospect, these were ridiculous concerns. My posts are less than a thousand words each, which isn't enough for much "depth" no matter how laser-focused they might be. And as for losing conservative readers... I hardly have any readers to lose. And who needs wingnut traffic anyway? Not this guy.

Actually, that may not be true. A few people probably stumble on this site from my Blogger profile, which occasionally people click hoping to answer the question: "Who is this guy who hates Ann Althouse so much?" It's not something I'm especially proud of, but yes, I am probably one of her most prolific trolls. I can't stand her. I just can't, and I want to do my small part to discourage her from blogging, or at least to denigrate her in the eyes of her readers. That may sound sad and petty, but I ask that you withhold judgment unless/until you're familiar with her work, which is truly a force of evil in this world (pretty photos, tho).

But in any case I figured people don't want their sports and their politics mixed. This could be true of a lot of people, but they are welcome to take their eyeballs elsewhere. This is not going to become a massive media empire, so I'm going to talk shit about Republicans if I want to.

Which brings us to my first stylistic change: "Now With Profanity!" The decision to keep this blog G-rated, like the decision to keep it apolitical, was motivated by the desire to keep readership as broad as possible. It wasn't that restrictive, actually, no matter how frustrated I got with the Mets, but it would be simply impractical for me to write about politics without having a few F-bombs at my disposal.

The second stylistic change is a much needed move away from simple recaps of each game. I did too much of that, and I'm sorry. If you were reading this blog you didn't need to be told who hit a home run and who booted a ball at second base. You were looking for insightful analysis that can only be found here. That's the value-add, and I'll try to do a better job of focusing on the bigger picture.

So that's it. I've lost weight, I've won Best Documentary, I've lost the boring persona and started telling it like it is, and I'm ready to announce my return to the blogosphere.

Go crazy folks. Go crazy.

Good Night, and Good Luck

I'm hanging it up for a while. Over the last few months, I've become increasingly "distracted" shall we say by the political state of affairs in our country. Hamdan decision notwithstanding, it's a catastrophe, and it's taking up more mindshare these days than even my beloved Mets.

As well as the Mets are playing, at this point virtually guaranteed of a playoff berth, it seems like an odd time to jump off the bandwagon. I'm not off the bandwagon, I just need to take a back seat for a little while.

I had toyed with the idea of writing a lengthy diatribe in this farewell post, but that's not what anyone comes here for. Suffice it to say that at this point I feel debating the managerial decisions of Minaya and Randolph is fiddling while Rome burns. Plus, they seem to have done a much better job than I gave them credit for.

Thanks for reading. Lets go Mets!

Mets win in high style

Keith Hernandez was talking about the DH rule the other night. It was pretty rough sledding. He's opposed to it, for reasons involving fairness and machismo. I also dislike the rule, mostly because it doesn't lend itself to interesting managerial decisions.

But I realized tonight that there's something else I dislike about the DH rule. It robs the game of one of its rarest and without question its most demoralizing event: the pitcher home run. No other sport has such a gross mismatch (pitcher facing pitcher) built into it. Thus, no possibility for the kind of public humiliation Elizardo Ramirez had to endure as Steve Trachsel touched 'em all.

Sure they're all professional athletes, but they're not all professional hitters. When a guy has a career .401 OPS in 614 ABs, it means he can't hit. When he does hit a home run, unlike when a position player does, it naturally calls into question whether the pitcher can pitch. I know it doesn't have any such real significance, but it's humiliating nonetheless.

As for the game: if my excessive and perhaps unseemly attention to the Trachsel homer left any doubt, the Mets won big.

It did get close briefly, as Trachsel left a mess in the seventh inning for Sanchez to clean up. But clean up he did, allowing one run to score on a sac fly and inducing a double play.

Offensively, non-pitchers Xavier Nady and Carlos Delgado had three homers between them, and Reyes got two more hits to raise his OBP on the year to .340. That's 40 points higher than it was last year, and his SLG is 61 points higher. He's getting much better.

Lastings Milledge had his third outfield assist of the season. It was pretty impressive. In case you didn't see it, Ryan Freel hit a liner down the left field line, the kind that speedsters like Freel can usually stretch into doubles because the left fielder's momentum is pulling him the wrong way.

Not our young phenom. Milledge not only cut the ball off, but took the textbook curved route to it (meaning he was pretty much running along the left field line when he got to it) and threw a perfect strike to second. Freel was still very much en route when the ball arrived.

Milledge has got the range, he's got the arm... let's give him a pass on the glove for the time being. I'm convinced he's pretty damn toolsy.

Of course it's a good thing Milledge is showing some spark, because sure enough, Cliff Floyd was placed on the DL. I point this out only because it's relevant to the size of Milledge's cup of coffee (if he gets sent down at all), and not because I take any satisfaction in having my suspicions of the "official story" legitimized. C'mon, Omar, don't pee on our leg and tell us Cliff's day-to-day.

In NL East news, the Atlanta Braves lost their eighth straight, and assumed fifth place in the standings. The Marlins, on the other hand, have reeled off nine in a row and are just three games behind the Phillies. I still like our chances.

Reds take opener

Theo Epstein might be kicking himself a little bit this evening, or whenever he gets word of tonight's game. Wily Mo Pena looked promising in April, but has been injured for weeks. Meanwhile the player he traded away is, as of this writing, very much in the NL Cy Young picture.

The Mets couldn't get much going at all against Bronson Arroyo tonight. He went the distance on 116 pitches. This is after his last two outings of 127 and 111 pitches. As you might expect for a good Cincinnati starter, he's getting yoked like an ox. Carlos Beltran drove in both runs, one on a solo shot.

Orlando Hernandez pitched a great game. He had to work around some trouble but for the most part did so successfully, and he struck out seven in as many innings.

I didn't quite understand Willie Randolph's decision to leave him in as long as he did. With two outs in the top of the seventh, it was a one-run game with two Reds on base. Hernandez had thrown over 110 pitches, and had to face Felipe Lopez, who was hitting .301 (with little power) against righties.

Why wasn't there anyone even warming up at that point? What's the point of having such a deep bullpen if you're going to use a visibly tiring Hernandez in that spot? As it turns out, he retired Lopez on a weak flyball, and runs 3 and 4 didn't score until the Feliciano/Bradford eighth. I still think it was a totally unnecessary risk, and one which was probably taken purely to put on a show of "total confidence" in the old warhorse.

This isn't a knock on Hernandez, who ended up throwing 119 pitches (more than Arroyo needed for his CG), and did get out of trouble. But that was a bad gamble in a very important situation.

***

Yahoo's Jeff Passan examines the ways in which MLB.tv is a terrible product. I guess we should consider the source (which also provides real-time baseball content for fun and profit), but the blackout restrictions are ridiculous. Especially when they advertise the ability to watch your team's games, which are always blacked out.

Sweep avoidance bullet points

- The Mets took the third game of the Baltimore series by the score of 9-4.

- David Wright had a spectacular game, going 3-4 with five RBI. There was a grand slam involved. He's now hitting .336, and is on pace for 36 homers.

- Glavine gave up four runs, but it took him a while to do it, and his peripherals were very good. I think this is maybe the kind of outing we may have to get used to seeing from him. Not that they're that bad, but they seem disappointing after his recent stretch and they probably shouldn't.

- Heilman a good inning, which I didn't think would ever be that newsworthy but probably is now. His recent stretch has been ugly.

- Eli Marrero had quite a nice debut for the Mets, reaching base three times, stealing two bags, and making a few nifty plays in the outfield (only one of which I saw).

- Ramon Castro showed once again that he's better than Paul Lo Duca.

- Jose Reyes stole his 30th base of the season.

- Milledge took the size-4 collar.

- According to Baseball Prosepectus's "Playoff Odds Report," the Mets have a 96.9% chance of making the postseason as of tonight. Did I mention I'm not superstitious?

- With that figure in mind, I don't even know how much it matters that the Red Sox are probably going to beat the Braves tonight. Those poor bastards.

- Speaking of the Braves, Marcus Giles looks more like John Malkovich than Brian Giles.

Is this for real?

Yeah, they won again. It was closer this time, so Phillies fans can take some comfort in that.

There seems to be a pattern developing here: Mets score a bunch of runs, our starter turns in a respectable performance, and the bullpen gives up extremely little. Whether or not that's going to be the formula for the rest of the year, I think we can all agree that it's a good one. I'm just going to take a few sentences on the sustainability of each;

As for scoring bunches of runs, I think the Mets can do this on a pretty regular basis.

The team's OBP (.336) is not quite where I'd like it to be. In terms of league rank, we're just above the median, but it's a crowded field and only the Reds, Cardinals and Dodgers (in ascending order) really set themselves apart in the category. And how long can St. Louis stay there without the services of Pujols?

The SLG is in the sweet spot. The Beltran/Wright/Delgado-fueled .453 mark is just behind the Reds for league honors, and (besides employing Adam Dunn) they play in a bandbox on the Ohio River. They don't know what headwinds are.

Speaking of the Shea effect, it may deserve some of the credit for the home team's pitching performance, but certainly not all.

Pedro has been incredible, and I have a lot of confidence that it will continue. Glavine has also been incredible, but I don't expect it to continue. Trachsel is a known quantity. Hernandez and Soler are not (though I have my hunches).

I think the rotation is in the greatest need of a midseason upgrade... but a) that's what the pride of Wichita St. is for, and b) as long as the bullpen keeps doing this kind of work, the starters won't have to be any good.

To pick a totally arbitrary measure of pitching depth, the Mets have no fewer than ten (10) pitchers with an ERA of 3.33 or lower. All but one of them are currently active.

If I had been asked which two relief pitchers led the Mets in VORP, I would not have answered Darren Oliver or Pedro Feliciano, but there they are. The latter has been especially vicious. I had lost track of them in the Wagner, Sanchez, Bell and Bradford mix (Heilman's in the doghouse). Probably because they had all been so impressive, too.

Of course, there were also innings pitched by Bartolome Fortunato and Jose Lima, so the team ERA is 3.93 (maybe a few basis points higher after tonight's game). That's still good for best in the National League.

As for the original question: of course this start is for real. Just look at the standings, as I do more often these days. The record in one-run games (aka the '05 White Sox Luck Meter) has been unusually good, but the underlying performance is there, too. When the #1 pitching team in the league is also the #2 slugging team, that team should be expected to win.

Will it last? I hope so. The pitching has overachieved somewhat, but the offense hasn't.

Biggest lead since 1988

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow, nor gloom of night shall keep this team from its appointed beat-downs.

The rain delay may have actually helped the Mets by knocking Orlando Hernandez out of the game. He did strike out three in his three innings, but also gave up two including a solo home run (Rollins, again). Of course, it didn't matter because once again the Mets built a healthy lead in the early innings.

I obviously made too much of the difficulty of getting to Brett Myers. The suddenly unstoppable Mets lineup, with a lot of help from the Philly defense, touched him up to the tune of six runs on nine hits in 2.2 innings.

Jose Reyes had four hits, Delgado drove in three, and David Wright hit a solo home run for the second consecutive night.

Heath Bell just put them out of their misery with a clean ninth inning. Final score: 9-3. Darren Oliver, who did a nice job in his three innings after the delay, picked up the win.

***

I don't even know what the baserunning mistake Lastings Milledge made tonight that drew the ire of Willie Randolph. Whatever it was, making a big show of berating His Royal Crunkness in the dugout struck me as characteristic drama-queenery.

Update: he looked over his shoulder at a fly ball with two outs, rather than just running all out. Yeah, it was an obvious mental mistake, but at least it wasn't laziness.

***

Mike Pelfrey is now officially dominating the Eastern League. Since his so-so early performances, he's improved his strikeout rate (10.2K/9IP) and ERA (2.83) considerably. Before I get accused of getting overly excited about a college pitcher's mastery of Double-A, his rate numbers are still not as good as Alay Soler's were (albeit in fewer innings) at the same level. While Soler has probably pitched well enough to stick, he hasn't yet looked like a real difference maker.

I still have concerns about the Soler/Hernandez tandem long-term, but they're not going to pitch us out of contention anytime soon, given the way the team is hitting right now. One nice thing about having a whopping 8.5 game lead in June is that Omar doesn't really have to rush him.

All the same, I think Pelfrey, with his polish and velocity and 6'7"-ness, would probably be an upgrade right now if pressed into duty. Of course, the team doesn't really seem to need one.

"Yankees Suck! Yankees Suck!"

The Mets just teed off on Ryan Madson, including back-to-back homers by Beltran and Delgado, and held on for a 9-7 victory. That makes six in a row, and the ample cushion in the N.L. East standings grows even ampler.

Though the run support made it less of an issue, Tom Glavine had his second bad start in a row. That's the first time that's happened so far this season; I almost feel ungrateful for pointing it out, he's been so good. But four home runs in four innings, including two to the non-beastly Jimmy Rollins, is at least a yellow flag.

The game would have still been a blowout if it hadn't been for Aaron Heilman's brief, disastrous outing. Ol' Aaron got just one out before surrendering a single, a double, and a three-run homer to David Delucci. I guess that's why we don't start him... Or was it because he's so good?

In any case things got a little bit interesting in the bottom of the ninth when Wagner walked Abreu to bring the tying run to the plate. Fortunately, David Wright made an outstanding play at third to initiate the crucial 5-4-3 double play.

As an aside, I think the loss of confidence in Wagner is ridiculous. Even if he had been bad enough to merit concern, Willie's decision to warm up Duaner Sanchez before Wags even started pitching couldn't have been much of a morale booster. The guy's ERA entering the game was 2.40! How much better to people expect him to be? This goes back to the marathon Pedro-Webb game I attended and noticed that the crowd was decidedly cool in their reception and started groaning loudly when our fireballing lefty allowed a baserunner (who didn't score).

In other promising news, which might be taken for a box score misprint at first glance, Jose Reyes walked three times in the game (one intentional). This brings his total for the year to 29, shattering his record for walks in a season. It was an embarassing record, to be sure, but it's nice that he's broken it and it's still June. He also rapped out a couple hits to improve that unsightly batting average.

How good is this team?

The new division rival

The Mets begin a three game series tomorrow night against Philadelphia, or, for those New York Times readers among you, "the new Williamsburg." While I think it would be funny to see the Mets take on an all-hipster team in an exhibition game, no such entertainment is in the offing, and the Phillies are no joke.

A brief rundown of the pitching probables:

Tom Glavine gets the ball in Game 1, hopefully fully recovered after getting battered on three days' rest his last time out. He'll be opposed by Ryan Madson, who may or may not be getting the hang of starting.

Madson has been a good example of a guy who's been much better as a reliever than he has been in the rotation. Though I'd still like to see Heilman get a chance to start at some point, I admit that there are guys like that out there.

Game 2 is to be started by Orlando Hernandez and Brett Myers. Advantage: Philadelphia.

Game 3 is a virtual push between Steve Trachsel and Cory Lidle. Both are perfectly competent but unlikely to put up dueling zeros.

As for the offenses, ours certainly appears to be clicking after the productive Arizona trip, but the Phillies lineup is pretty formidable. Jimmy Rollins has been a disappointment so far, but Howard, Utley, Abreu and noted Mets-killer Pat Burrell are as good a foursome as you will find in any lineup.

***

Just when I start to lose faith in All-Star balloting as a ridiculous exercise that rarely identifies the most deserving players, I read that David Wright is the leading vote-getter among N.L. third basemen. The system works!

Mets bestride the N.L. like a colossus

The four game humiliation of the Arizona Diamondbacks is in the books. 37-9 on aggregate. The Mets have the best record in the National League at 39-23, and enjoy a 6.5 game lead on the Phillies.

This afternoon, The Team and the Time hung 15 on Russ Ortiz and friends, without benefit of a home run. Carlos Beltran is very locked in, going 2-4 with a double to raise his average to .297 (also still on pace for 50 homers).

The only starter to go hitless was Reyes, but even he drew three walks and stole two bases. The D-Backs managed only a solo HR against Pedro, who was more or less his usual self for five innings and 91 pitches. It was a low-stress affair.

On Saturday, Alay Soler threw a complete game shutout on 108 pitches, lowering his ERA from 5.00 to 3.33. It's good news that he has performances like these in him. I still worry about the poor peripherals, but maybe he's just got that Brian Bannister mojo.

Kaz Matsui was traded to the Rockies for Eli Marrero. I think it's a fantastic move.

For starters, Matsui wasn't doing anybody any good. Jose Valentin, whose head I was calling for after in May, has really come on strong at the plate. His defense is a little shaky, but not terrible.

I held out hope as long as anyone, but now it's time to make my peace with the fact that Kaz was really, truly awful. There was just no getting around, or past, the .504 OPS that was his swan song in a Mets uniform.

I agree with Joe McDonald that you can't really blame a guy for being terrible. I would even go a step further and say it's hard to blame the Mets (under Duquette, I think) for signing him. Remember at the time how huge a phenomenon Ichiro was for the Mariners, both on the field and financially. In Kaz, the Mets saw a guy who the scouts supposedly said could be one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball. And most importantly, his offensive numbers in Japan suggested he could hit at least a little bit in the majors.

Obviously that wasn't the case, but who knew?

Meanwhile Marrero might have some real value. His average has fallen off precipitously in various part time gigs (for four different teams) in the last two years, but he appears to still have some decent pop. Encouragingly, his unconventional but wholly decent batting line of .217/.347//.467 owes more to his road games than those at Coors. Plus, he's played four different positions this year: catcher, both outfield corners and first base.

One question the trade does raise is whether the Mets are being a little disingenuous about the condition of Cliff Floyd. If he weren't going to miss at least enough time to warrant a retroactive move to the 15-day DL, this trade would make for a rather crowded outfield. I don't really understand why Floyd is expected to just shake off a high ankle sprain, an injury which has put far more durable players than Floyd out of commission for longer than two weeks.

Even if Floyd proves me wrong, the Matsui deal is something for nothing. At the risk of damning with faint praise, I think it's clearly Omar's best minor move for the Mets.

Milledge vs. Francoeur

The Mets won the rubber game of the Dodgers series, 9-7. Pitching on three days rest, Tom Glavine said afterward he felt "too good," which is a little strange considering it was a pretty terrible performance. But it was good enough thanks in no small part to Lastings Milledge.

Milledge's batting line through a mere 26 AB is .308/.321/.692. Except for the average being not quite as gaudy, it's more than a little reminiscent of Jeff Francoeur's debut last year, and I think the comparison holds up pretty well.

Both were highly touted outfield prospects who were drafted out of high school, put up great numbers in the minors, and were considered Five Tool players, but still had their weak spots: Milledge showed little home run power and Francoeur little plate discipline.

I don't know how long this comparison will look reasonable, but I think it's clear that you could say of both of them that on their best days they are capable of being tremendously valuable major leaguers. But you need only look at how far Francoeur has regressed this year (.701 OPS) to get an idea of why I'm still reluctant to get too attached to the idea of Milledge being the toolsy OF equivalent of David Wright.

That's exactly what he looked like last night, though, and the Mets now have the best record in the N.L. and lead the Phillies by four games. The Braves? Still "biding their time" seven games off the pace.

Grimsley Update

There's a post up on deadspin.com that identifies (or reports the identification of) strength and conditioning coach Chris Mihlfeld as one of the main suppliers. You'll never guess who his client list includes. The really damning article, if it is indeed Mihlfeld in the affidavit, is actually the one that it links to.

Grimsley drops a small fortune in dimes

The Mets are underway in Los Angeles, with a 5-1 lead in the second inning of the rubber game.

As for the injuries: Floyd has a sprained ankle, and is listed as day-to-day. He has said that he won't require a trip to the DL. I'm going to go ahead and cross my fingers just in case.

Beltran is showing no ill effects from his strained oblique, with two singles already tonight. Reyes is out of the lineup with his sore wrist.

Of course, the story of the day is Jason Grimsley.

I strongly recommend the IRS-Criminal Investigation (not a TV show, yet) agent's affidavit. Just incredible stuff. "Naming names" doesn't go far enough to describe the level of cooperation he provided.

He told them absolutely everything. He gave up as many prominent names as possible, the details of their use/distribution, even the names of people he just suspected were juicing. For extra credit, he even called his supplier with a bugged phone at the agents' behest to provide evidence of their past and planned activities.

A particularly jaw-dropping excerpt:

Grimsley identified, in his words, "Latin players," as a major source for the amphetamines within baseball. He stated that it was common knowledge that you could get amphetamines from "Latin players." He stated that he got amphetamines from "Latin players" whenever he needed them. He stated that "Latin players" had boxes of them.

One major "takeaway" from his statements, as they relate to the efficacy of the recently imposed testing regime, is that its effect was to confine his performance-enhancement to Human Growth Hormone alone.

Given that he had been injecting a variety of conventional steroids before testing began, a "glass-half-full" observer could call that a qualified success. Unfortunately, that qualification is a rather large one.

There's also the familiar refrain of the apprehended (or confessed) steroid user: "boatloads" of players are using them.

The names in question have been redacted from the document, but apparently it's only a matter of time before a clean copy gets leaked. In the meantime, you can try to figure out who he's talking about from the unedited details like what team a player was on or when they started using. I tried but failed.

Whether or not he's in any of Grimsley's little black books, I'm still trying to implicate Roger Clemens in this fiasco. I'll do it myself if I have to. Look at this picture of him and Koby and tell me that his kids weren't raised on peanut butter and Winstrol sandwiches.

One thing's for sure: Jason Grimsley is going to be much more famous (and useful) as a state's witness than he ever was as a relief pitcher.

Floyd pulls a Barbaro

Too soon?

Cliff Floyd had to be helped off the field in the first inning. He appeared to have turned either his left ankle or knee pulling into third base, and crouched immediately to take weight off it. Hopefully it's just a "tweak" that won't require a DL stint, but Floyd is no stranger to leg injuries, and I'd be surprised if he avoids one.

Disappointing. I thought he was a good bet to recover from his terrible start. He was hitting the ball hard, but usually at people, and in recent weeks he'd started to heat up. More significantly, the counter reading "214 Games Since Last Significant Injury" has to be reset to zero. It may not go that high again.

Assuming he does miss some time, Lastings Milledge's place on the team looks very secure, and Endy Chavez will probably get the majority of starts in left. With Beltran in center, it makes for a kind of irregular outfield in that most teams have power hitters in the corners and a speedster in center. We would have a power hitter in center and speedsters everywhere, which should prove especially helpful at Shea.

My confidence in the offensive production of both Chavez and Milledge is still low. I know they've been great, but think for a minute what your reaction would have been in spring training if you'd been told those guys would be starting in June. Nervous? Yeah. It's too early to throw caution to the wind.

Ideally, Victor Diaz would have been hitting well enough to be a respectable Plan B for the Milledge callup. Unfortunately, his numbers at Norfolk are just atrocious. I had thought that he had been passed over, but clearly there was very good reason to do so.

[Segue alert!] You know where OF help isn't going to come from? Today's draft. The Mets took a junior RHP from Villanova named Kevin Mulvey with the 62nd pick. With their next selection, the Mets shamelessly pandered to the growing legions of Mormon fans by selecting Joseph Smith, reliever from Wright State.

Seriously, I don't know who any of these guys are. Would you expect to see maybe one position player in the first five picks? I did, but in general I'm a fan of the college pitchers and supposedly this Mulvey guy slid.

As for the jewel of last year's draft (Pelfrey), I think it might be go time.

"We've fallen a long way from Mickey Mantle..."

The furor over Lastings Milledge's post-homer celebration is deeply, disturbingly stupid.

The idea that his celebration is made worse for the fact that he's a 21 year-old kid hitting his first home run seems exactly backwards. Is the issue really that, as a rookie, he hasn't "earned the right" to high-five fans, or is it just that such a celebration is a little over-the-top? I would hope it's the latter, and that under the circumstances you might cut the kid some slack.

But no, this us just too golden an opportunity for talking heads like Karl Ravech* to bloviate about how much the kid has to learn about humility and respecting his elders. It's part of the same "old school" seniority/hazing nonsense which kept David Wright in the bottom half of the order.

I would contend that if Wright had been the one to do something like this in his debut, the uproar would have been quieter. I don't think the scrutiny is coincidental to the fact that Milledge is black, has braids, and sported an unusually large cross pendant in his debut. There, I said it.

At gunpoint, I'll admit that concerns over excess celebration in sports have their place, but they should be relegated to short pieces on the very slowest of news days. It isn't the stuff of national controversy. I think this is just the sports media sniffing out the next Terrell Owens, who as anybody whose watched ESPN in the last two years can tell you is their No. 1 meal ticket.

Bill Madden is all over the story in today's Daily News. The article is less harsh than the headline (which he probably didn't write), but he gets bonus points for botching the Armando Benitez story too.

"But say this for Milledge: The kid has come here as advertised. He's a no-doubt-about-it talent who can do just about everything a manager could want on a ballfield - and a lot of other things that are going to need to be corrected if he wants to avoid getting a rep as a self-absorbed showboat."

Herein may lie the real crisis: I'm afraid that Milledge is still not a "no-doubt-about-it talent." At the very least, I don't think it's a given that he's already a major league hitter. But in the interest of putting the proverbial fannies in the seats, Mets management is probably going to be reluctant to demote him even if it becomes apparent (and I'm not saying it will) that he's not quite ready yet.

Should yesterday's showing buy him some time? Absolutely, but it's still too early to call him even a 20-HR (annualized) threat.


* Here's a paraphrase of the SportsCenter interview, in which Ravech mistakenly assumes that Joe Morgan is eager to participate in the Circle of Condemnation:

Ravech: What does a Hall of Famer like you have to say about a rookie doing something like that?

Morgan: I think it's great. It was just youthful exuberance and what's wrong with that?...

Clearly unprepared for the point of view that Milledge's behavior was non-horrible, Ravech looks confused and uneasy. Rather than taking the cue from Morgan's initial response and maybe adapting the tone of his questioning, Ravech makes the ill-advised decision to treat the witness as hostile:

"What about the fact that it was a tie game? You celebrate ties, not wins?"
I don't remember Morgan's response exactly, but he digs in a little, probably wondering what part of "I don't have a problem with it" he had left unclear, and basically reiterates that it was a big situation in his first game, etc.

I don't think I've ever written anything positive about Joe Morgan in this space, but this was great.

Mets lose despite Milledge heroics

Damn. I suppose you can't win'em all, but still, damn.

Earlier in the game, I was actually wondering how long it would be before Lastings Milledge hit a major league home run. I was thinking more in terms of months than hours, but he just smoked the ball against an intimidating, hard-throwing pitcher at a crucial juncture.

It was pandemonium in the broadcast booth as well as certain living rooms in the SNY market. The word "karma" was used frequntly, as were shots of Ray Knight crossing the plate in 1986. The ability to consistently come back. The resiliency, chemistry and whatnot.

While extra inning games, one run games or "walk-off" games are definitely more fun to watch, they don't have any more value in the standings, or prove the winning team to be championship timber. The Mets have been very successful in these nailbiters, which is great, but at the end of the day it's something to be thankful for, not evidence that we're better than our record. In fact, it's the opposite.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited that the team is playing at this level. We're not lucky to be in first place. The pitching has been the best in the league by (the arbitrarily selected metric of) OPS-against, and second behind the Cardinals in the higher profile ERA.

But the offense has been a little heavy on the slugging (4th in NL) and light on the OBP (11th). The former number is impressive given the hostile home environment but the latter has to give some pause.

Anyway, it also occurs to me that I may not have been making a big enough deal out of how good it is to still have Pedro Martinez healthy. Whatever your take on how the rotation has been constructed and handled, I think the number of starts we get from Pedro is the greatest predictor of the Mets success. Concerns over the usage or availability of any other pitcher pale in comparison. Credit to Peterson, the Mets medical staff, Willie for keeping him in working order (can't blame them for the recent slip and fall).

Meanwhile, Steve Trachsel is an absolute stud of a fourth starter. I realize he's our third starter, but that's how I like to think of him. Does he have the occasional blowup? Sure, but he mixes in enough games like today's to keep the numbers pretty tidy. He's boring to watch, but I'd rather be bored than terrified.

Heath Bell was not sharp, giving up a single and a double (the walk was intentional). I wish he would really slam the door a few times in a row, both because it's preferable to letting inherited runners score and because it might get him a little breathing room on the roster.

In any case, it's disappointing to lose a series at home, but it's only the second such mishap this season. Pending the conclusion of the PHI-LAD game, we still have a five game division lead. This is in spite of some suprisingly bad offensive performances (Floyd, Reyes, Delgado recently), and that dark age when we were starting Jose Lima and Jeremi Gonzalez. While it's way too early to crank up the '86 nostalgia machine (if only because Keith is insufferable enough as it is), I'm pretty happy with the first two months of the season.

Doubleheader underway + Stumpy responds!

The monsoon has stopped long enough for the first game of the twinbill to get started, about three hours late.

Orlando Hernandez had a rather shaky first inning, but thanks to Endy Chavez, whose defense is really noticeably awesome, only one run scored. He caught a line drive and then got the throw into first in time to double up Bonds, who had strayed waay too far.

Since it's early in the game, I might as well get the obligatory Bonds discussion out of the way. Here's an interesting article on Slate which at first I thought was going to be annoying but actually makes a lot of sense.

The headline is "Pee No Evil: Why Are Sportswriters Pretending the Steroid Era is Over?"

The first case is of course Pujols, who, while he is at least the right age to be doing it, is on pace for 76 home runs.

Is Pujols abusing steroids or human growth hormones? I don't know. But what's alarming in this era of deceit is that nobody seems interested in finding out. A little more than one year removed from congressional hearings that produced the most humiliating images in the game's history, baseball writers have a duty to second-guess everything. Instead, everyone is taking Pujols' test results at face value. Have we forgotten that Barry Bonds has never failed one of Major League Baseball's drug tests?

I disagree that no one is interested in finding out, but as long as there are ways of working around the MLB testing regimen (and it's my understanding that there are), you'd think that every 50+ HR threat would be under a little suspicion. Clearly that's not the case.

The thing that really gets me though is Clemens, who is now getting another round of fawning media attention for the "comeback" that everyone knows is just a return from a nice long vacation.

Here's a guy who just challenged Bob Gibson's single-season ERA mark at age 42. He's lowered his ERA each of the last three years. He had an incident, which Mets fans should remember well, which certainly seemed consistent with the symptoms of 'Roid Rage. His head seems wider than it was in his youth.

But what do we see on SportsCenter? Reel after reel of him running and lifting weights with his good friend Andy Pettitte.



***

Stumped1: my name in lights, how cool is that? hey, maybe i came off a little strong as well. but ya, we do disagree a lot of the time and i love these heated exchanges. and no, you can hurt my feelings, im usually the minority in these things so im used to it. as far as all the moves go it seems you mostly get down on trades where the mets have to give up something. the nady deal, the loduca deal, benson, seo and these last ones. i know the argument about cameron bein a center fielder. but after fielding offers for 2 years on him dont you think omar knew what he could get, and just looked for some youth and potential? not to mention the money to get delgado, which you liked. while benson may have what would be the 3rd best vorp on the team, that is not sayin much with all those injuries. if he was here the rotation would still be weak, and we be waitin for that inevitable dead arm period. i can find the numbers to spin my feel on benson just as easily as you can using vorp. its just a matter of perspective. and when looking at this trade as well as many others, you have to take into account omar's scouting background. it seems to me he has more of an eye for potential than your average gm. that is why i think he goes after a guy like maine. take julio for example. he saw the stuff that guy had, and after a horrible start he has been doing very well. and remember he had almost no time in spring working with the coaches. its like people wanted him to be a lights out closer type, but imo, thats asking a little much for a benson.i have no problem with people passing judgement when a trade happens. but, lets be realistic when its done. benson and seo were both mediocre starters, something the mets had plenty of. benson was ripped for 2 years on these boards because of inconsistancy and dead arm, but when he is traded he all of the sudden becomes quality and is worth so much more. i never look at it that way, at least i try not to. in the last 2 years i cannot find 1 trade that i disagree with. even the phillips-ishii thing was to fill a need. they just stuck with ishii way to long. and if seo or heilman had a bigtime spring that year it probably would never have happened. i am first to admit that the kazmir deal was a botched trade. i originally didnt mind it that bad. i thought zambrano had a huge upside and i dont buy into every prospect panning out.(kazmir appears to 1 of the few that might) but it was by the prior front office. i dont fear every trade because of that one when its a totally different theme bein played by omar. to say that omar has to be smarter than other gms is hogwash. omar just has to be smart enough to know what his team needs. the idea of trading isnt to get the best of your trading partner, its to build your own team.feel free to look at the mistakes of the past by a different batch of guys. the alomars, vaughns and cedenos were all bad moves, and i thought so from the get-go. i would have loved for them to surprise me and turn out, but as each deal wound up sucking i got more down on that regime. but i dont see how anyone can compare that with what omar has done. different guy, different approach. how you cant think they are doing a good job is beyond me. a last place team has been built into a 1st place team in less than 2 years. they are younger and deeper, and yet you cant accept that they know what they are doing. you like the delgado thing. it wouldnt be possible if they hadnt traded cameron for nady, which in itself has been a good deal. loduca for gaby is a no-brainer as well. maybe omar the scout noticed that gaby was havin trouble in A ball too. id take hernandez and maine in a heartbeat for benson. id take hernandez alone for benson. benson has never had a stellar year and has never had to pitch under pressure. hernandez acually pitched well 2 years ago for the yanks and also came up big in the playoffs. i dont care what vorp says, that stuff matters. maine was guy a lot of teams were up on. he still has the potential which is what the minors are for. you seem to want norfolk to be loaded with 5 #3 types ready for the call. and then to call the williams trade acitivity without progress is insane. the guy is closer to being a help at the major league level than the no-name schmo that they gave up. the guy puts up great numbers against lefties(i think it was lefties) and could actually figure into a bullpen role. that my friend is progress. i too think this is an excellent team. you point out that they rely on the financial resources more than smarts. tell me then how omar changed this team from a doormat to a contender in less than 2 years without increasing payrole. ya, the money is still up there, but its being spent a lot smater than before. give credit where credit is due.

An open letter to Stumped1

I'm reproducing here the full text of a comment [the second one] by regular reader Stumped1 on Thurday's post. Rather than confine the heated debate to the comments section, I've opted to give it the massive exposure that this space provides, along with my indulgently lengthy response.

As you can tell, it's not our first go-round, and now that I have to call attention to the thread, I'm embarrassed that I was as mean as I was in my initial response. He's one of a very few posters here (wonder why?) so I know he can take it. And in the spirit of Edward R. Murrow, I will grudgingly put any response he wishes to make in the main section of the blog.

The basic argument that we've been fighting on several fronts is whether Mets management is doing a good job. I'm usually on the "No" side, Stumpy on the "Yes" side. This thread is specifically about my criticism of the Benson-Seo deals and more recent Julio-Hernandez trade.

***

Stumped1: "I need no moment of vindication [I had mocked him for claiming one]. It just seems to me you'd complain about any move that this team does before you see any results. Is this how you make yourself feel good? It's like you can't wait to be the 1st to say I told you so when something goes bad. But guess what, it hasn't been going bad. Julio was an asset, which you hate to admit. Benson would still be a liability, look at his line. I'll say it again, every move doesnt have to be a major upgrade. In fact there doesn't have to be an upgrade as long as a need is being filled. MDK [the third poster on the thread], if the Dbacks use Julio as their closer is not relevent here. He was pitching well since those 1st couple of outings which may be attributed to no spring training. What irks me is when fans hate a guy from the get-go. Like Doyle did with Julio. Then they turn around and [whine] when those guys they hate are traded for something other than a Cy Young winner. Fact is, the rotation was hurting and you aren't going to get major help there when so many teams are still in the race. This filled the need with a decent starting pitcher, not great, decent. The D-backs traded Vazquez for him, so they must have thought he still had something left as well. Who are you going to believe? Doyle, who complains about trading for a guy [Dave Williams] to fill a hole at AAA, or the heads of 2 playoff calibre teams?"

***

Dear Stumpy,

On the charge that I'd complain about any move: I can see how it might seem that way, but remember I was very much in favor of the Pedro, Beltran, Delgado and Wagner acquisitions. I gave Omar full credit for those deals, and didn't scoff that they were rather obvious moves or whine at all about the size of the contracts (a little about the length, maybe). I wrote glowingly of the 2006 roster, and picked the Mets to win the division.

As for the deals which turned Benson and Seo into Sanchez, Hernandez and Maine, I wasn't a fan.

Sanchez has been lights out. His 12.3 VORP is better than such starters (the metric is playing-time dependent) as Maddux and Mulder. Meanwhile Seo has been less than a run better than replacement level. On that deal, so far, advantage Omar.

As for Julio. I have admitted that his K:BB had improved substantially, but it was only 21 innings, and he gave up four home runs and a 5.04 ERA. For all his apparent improvement, he was 1.4 runs worse than replacement level, and three runs worse than Heath Bell (whom you said needs to learn how to pitch) despite the fact that Bell has thrown a third as many innings.

In any case, his value to the Mets is now moot. It’s a question of whether Benson for Hernandez and Maine was an upgrade.

First of all, I want to point out that I do indeed pass judgment on transactions at the time they are made. It’s the best and really only appropriate time to do so. The advantage of hindsight is a big one, and I’ve never blamed Minaya or Phillips for unforseen injuries or bad performances (see: Beltran’s 2005). Plus, it’s very early in the season, and there’s a long way to go before the playoff run that I fully expect.

But as for giving the front office the benefit of the doubt, I’m sorry but I just can’t do that. Mets general management, going back well before Omar, has been incredibly inept. We regularly have the biggest payroll in the league, and yet we never, ever, win the division. I’ll spare you any further discussion of a certain recent high profile trade which has not helped matters in the least.

I don’t wish for them to screw up so I can call them on it. I want the Mets to win a championship. But the whole reason I write this blog is because I think I have an informed opinion about how best to accomplish that goal, and if I think a move was stupid, I’m going to write as much. As for the “He’s the GM and you’re not” angle, it’s quite true. He obviously wins because he has my dream job, but in this little corner of the internet, I get to critique his decisions. And don’t forget that there are equally qualified professional baseball executives on the other side of all these trades. He doesn’t just need to be smarter than me, he needs to be smarter than the guys in Arizona (not easy) and Baltimore (not hard).

So anyway back to the moves at hand… You’re right that Hernandez has been excellent away from Chase Field. 28 strikeouts against seven walks in 22 innings is nothing to sneeze at. But even though you can adjust his performance at home for the hitter-friendly environment, you can’t just ignore it. For one thing it was a comically bad 28 innings, including 16 walks and eight home runs. For another, it’s a lot harder to ignore stretches like that when they come from 36 year-old pitchers with a history of long ball issues. He hasn’t pitched a decent full season since 2002.

As for John Maine, one thing that’s hard to ignore about a 25 year-old pitcher is a lack of success above the Double-A level. Again, he may prove useful (nice rehab start) and I would be happy about that, but there’s not much evidence to suggest he’s ready to hold down a job.

So how bad has Benson been, really? I admit that his having been the ace of the Orioles staff says more about the Orioles than it does about Benson. But not only is his 7.7 VORP the best among Baltimore’s starters (remember when Bedard looked so good?), it would actually rank third behind Pedro and Glavine in the Mets rotation (not counting the injured Bannister who got off to what is widely considered an unsustainably good start). His peripherals have been poor, except for his decent home run rate, but given that he’s five years younger than Hernandez, and coming off a very respectable 2005 campaign, I would like his chances of being our number three starter, and would take him over El Duque and Maine.

As for Williams, I wrote a few words about him, just pointing out his acquisition as another example of activity without any progress.

In summation, I think in general the Mets are an excellent team which relies more heavily on its financial resources than in the executive talents of its front office. As long as they win, that's fine with me.

Pedro vs. Webb (postgame)

The pitchers' duel was as good as advertised, and it continued well into extra innings. Pedro, Wagner and Sanchez were all outstanding. The D-Backs did not advance a runner past second, that I can recall. It was just a question of finally tallying against an equally effective pitching performance by Webb and a whole slew of relievers.

Lastings Milledge did not look good at the plate. Sure, Webb is probably the best pitcher he's ever faced at this point in his career (i.e. game two), but he looked overmatched. However, he might very well have saved the game for the Mets with an incredible throw from right field to third base. It was a thing of beauty. My eyes tend to glaze over when people talk about tools, but that was a fantastic play that not many big leaguers make, and it was a major contribution to the win.

Willie Randolph did a nice job tonight. I like that he brought in Wagner in when he did, and that he stretched out Sanchez for three innings (that only took 27 pitches).

I will produce a more substantive post sometime soon, but it's getting very late.

Pedro vs. Webb

Only slightly daunted by the washout of my last trip to Shea, I'll be taking the storied 7 train to see this matchup.

Brandon Webb is looking about as dominant as any pitcher in recent memory, and Pedro is one of the very few who can still claim to be better.

Webb's ability to induce ground balls is not just "for real," it's the realest. For every ball that clears the infield, he gets at least four wormburners. That's not a fluke. It's been over four the last two years, and for his career it's 3.8. He's given up five home runs in 82 innings, which is a little less than half what your average pitcher surrenders.

His strikeout rate is only decent, but when you can "pitch to contact" and still get guys out (not many can), you get the underappreciated benefit of a relatively lower pitch count. His last two starts were complete games of 101 and 106 pitches against the Braves and Reds, respectively.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not rooting for Brandon Webb to establish himself as one of the game's elite pitchers. I certainly would like to see him take his first loss tonight at the hands of the home team. But he's really good, and I respect that.