Stuff - Kelly Shoppach, $90mil Payroll, $40 Donation for ST, Past Weekend

Kelly Shoppach

It turns out that Adrian Gonzalez was not the bad guy on all the Boston Red Sox text message bullship to the owners. It turns out that it was now-catcher Kelly Shoppach that was writing the owners of the team about Bobby Valentine. He just happened to be using Gonzalez’ cell phone.

Naturally, nobody is confirming anything and my question would be did Gonzalez know his phone was being used or was this a pussy move by Shoppach?

This is the kind of player we want on the team? What’s he going to do here, write the Commissioner about the owners?

Look Sandy, you did this deal and let it run for the remainder of the year, but no one wants a creep like this on the team. It’s like having a beat writer or thread posting fan playing behind the plate.

Cut fish.

$90mil Payroll

According to Adam Rubin: Although general manager Sandy Alderson publicly said last week a formal budget has not been established for next season, the Mets are likely to have a payroll comparable to the slightly more than $90 million they have committed in 2012, according to a person briefed on the current internal planning.

If this is true, and the Mets do renew both David Wright and RA Dickey’s contract, well, here’s looking at your team.

Cot has the team at $54,475mil. Add $16mil for Wright and it’s $70,475mil. Add RA at $5mil and Jon Rauch at, let’s say, $4mil, we’re now at $79,475.mil.

So, you dump Mike Pelfrey’s $5,6875mil (replaced with Matt Harvey), Andres Torres ($2.7mil), Ramon Ramirez ($2.65mil), Kelly Shoppach ($1.35mil), Tim Byrdak ($1mil) and Manny Acosta (875K).

You re-sign Ronny Cedeno at around $2mil, Scott Hairston at say, $3mil. This brings you in at around $82,575mil.

Your 25-man (two over) at this point is:

Rotation (6) Santana, Dickey, Niese, Harvey, Young, Gee

Pen – (7) Francisco, Rauch, Edgin, Parnell, Carson, Familia, Mejia

IF –(6)  Davis, Murphy, Tejada, Wright, Cedeno, Turner

OF – (6) Bay, Hairston, Duda, Baxter, Valdespin, Nieuwenhuis

C – (2) Thole, Johnson

You now have around $18mil to go after someone like Michael Bourn and a couple of secondary players. You still have to deal with that fact that most of the FAs are going to be offered more by other teams, and most of the agents advise their players not to sign with the Wilpons, but this is basically your 2013 team.  Around 80 wins.

$40 Donation for Spring Training

Thank you to ‘anonymous’ who sent $40 to my Paypal account (macksmets@gmail.com) for next spring’s trip for Pitchers/Cathers, and the first week of spring training. Room/food/gas will run around $950 and I now have $140 raised. I’m off to a great start, having the first day covered

Past Weekend

Sorry for being offline since Friday night and also sorry for the lack of post from other writers here. I'm back now and should be able to keep up four posts a day.