Mack’s Morning Report – 1-27-14 – Sandy Alderson, Josh Satin, Curtis Granderson, QBC

Coming Up Later Today –

          

  11am – Christopher Soto - Are the 2014 Mets a Better Team on Paper? (Bullpen)

            2pm – Craig Mitchell - "Sweet Music" and the Salt of the Earth

            

Jim Callis ‏@jimcallisMLB - I like Zunino a little more, similar bat, better D & health. @jpmile: but would Zunino have ranked ahead of d'Arnaud?

Sandy Alderson –

“We each signed Japanese pitchers this week. They’re paying $155 million and we’re paying our guy month to month.”

Mack - The king of the Mets one liner has spoken again. He really is a funny guy, but this isn’t a funny team. I can imagine what is being left for him on his Twitter account today by the #MetsTwitter crowd.

I’m going to give him a break on this one. The Mets look like an A-ball team right now compared to the Yankees and I’m sick of piling on.

Josh Satin –

Josh Satin is continuing his work as an outfielder at his home this winter, according to Tim Rohan of the New York Times. Satin says he has consulted with former Met Marlon Byrd about improving as an outfielder after struggling to catch balls over his head during drills http://metsblog.com/metsblog/josh-satin-continues-to-work-as-an-outfielder-this-winter/

Mack – This falls into the ‘can’t hurt’ category. 

Satin has one major problem right now… the Mets never traded Ike Davis so there will already be two first basemen (Davis, Lucas Duda) in camp. Most pundits can’t see a L/L platoon, so my guess here is one of these guys win and the other winds up either DF’d or sent to Vegas. The problem with that is you really want 'the loser' in the way of Wilmer Flores learning this position for the AAA team. Satin and, in a pinch, Daniel Murphy, can spot (my winner out of camp) Davis. I’d like to see Davis get the period of April-June to show us he’s in it to win it and, if that doesn’t work, move him out and bring up Flores and let’s see what we have with him.

First base is going to a a work in progress in 2014, which is fine, but let’s just get this figured out by the end of the year so we can settle in with someone until Dominic Smith arrives.

Curtis Granderson –

“My comment wasn’t a dig at anybody, it was just some things that people said to me on a consistent basis. I’m excited to see the New York sports fans that are Mets fans come out in droves. I’ve heard great things about the past, and now to get a chance to be a part of it in the present and the future, I’m very optimistic about it.”

                        Mack – Come out in droves? Where?

Look, I love the excitement and all, but has this guy gone to a Mets home game lately? There are no droves anymore and there won’t be any until this team starts playing .500 ball and better.

Fangraphs –

Let’s talk first about the Mets. As ESPN reported earlier this week, the Mets used to host a winter caravan that featured players on the active roster at various stops around New York before the start of spring training. The Mets stopped doing caravans after the 2005-2006 offseason because “there is only so much they can ask of any player,” according to Mets VP of Marketing Dave Newman. “It’s how we use our players knowing what we ask of them, whether it’s related to media, community, business partners — the Citis of the world, etc. It’s a limited amount of time,” Newman told ESPN.

This year, some fans stepped into the breach and organized the Queens Baseball Convention, which was held last weekend at a restaurant at CitiField. Former players Ron Darling and Ed Kranepool attended and there was a panel with folks from the Mets ticketing and marketing department http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/its-fan-fest-season-well-for-most-teams/

Mack – It’s good to see that the QBC got some more national press here. It’s just stupid for the Mets to not have a fan-fest, like most of the other teams. As the article points out, only the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets, and Angels don’t have one of these events.

            Just stupid.