Mack’s Morning Report – 2-25-14 – Vegas Pitchers, Ike Davis, Raul Ibanez, The Wilpons

Later today - 

    10 am - Christopher Soto - MM's Top 25- #10 CF Brandon Nimmo

      12 pm -  Christopher Wuensch - No Miracle On Ice This Year: A Look Back

        2 pm -   A Re-Review - Franklin for Montero

      5 pm -  Erick Fedde, Isan Diaz, Jakson Reetz, Luke Dykstra

      8 pm  -  A Quick Look - RHP -   Bryce Montes De Oca - Lawrence (MO) HS

Current pitchers ‘on paper’ for Las Vegas squad:

Starters (12) - Rafael Montero, Noah Syndergaard, Darin Gorski, Jake deGrom, Cory Mazzoni, Logan Verrett, Mark Cohoon, Chris Schwinden, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Giancarlo Alvarado, Mitch Talbot, John Lannon          

Relievers (17) - Jeff Walters, Adam Kolarek, Chason Bradford, John Church, Jack Leathersich, Chase Huchington, Daniel Herrera, Joel Carreno, Daryl Thompson, Miquel Socolovich, Ryan Fraser, Jon Velasquez, Ryan Reid, Kyle Farnsworth, Jose Valverde, Dana Eveland, Erik Goeddel     

Mack's Mets - @JohnMackinAde - @AdamRubinESPN - people can't possibly understand the amount of work put in on your morning reports - great work as ever - 24 Feb      

Adam Rubin - @AdamRubinESPN - @JohnMackinAde thanks

Thor and Matz will start Thursday’s  intrasquad  game. Other pitchers to be used:  Gee, Colon, Dice-K, Familia, Carreno, Torres, Valverde

Ike Davis said that he concealed an oblique injury for most of last season, even from the team.

Remember that old television commercial that said “it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature”?  And then, the word would come to an end.

Well, don’t be surprised if Ike Davis doesn’t survive the week in Port St. Lucie. Screwing with Mother Nature is nothing like lying to Sandy Alderson. Remember, Ike is not Sandy’s guy to start with so there is no loyalty factor here.

You may not get a Tyler Thonburg or Nick Kingham anymore here. In fact, you may be down to a bag o’ old balls.

What a stupid thing to admit at this point in the 2014 camp. It has to be a death wish to leave this team.

Davis is a funny guy. For reasons unexplained, he starts every pre-season talking to the same beat reporters and telling them things on the record… then, when the story comes out, he gets upset at the writer for writing about what HE said.

Nobody would really care if he hit 35-HRs, 95-RBIs and .280, but he doesn’t, so his mouth gets him in trouble. 

The last person you want to share something ‘on the record’ with, that is delicate,  is a beat writer. You just made that writer's next story.

            Let’s see what develops in the next seven days.

Raul Ibanez –

Although Ibanez is most famous for his terrible arm that doesn't mean he doesn't have other massive flaws in his fielding. Just because someone is awful at one thing it doesn't mean that they aren't awful at another. Personally, I refuse to withhold a perfectly good award from Ibanez just because he was in the running for another award, one that he ultimately lost to a more deserving candidate. As a result I'm honored to give the "MLB's Worst Tools Award" for fielding to Mr. Raul Ibanez. Keep checking in here at Beyond the Boxscore to see who's next in line to join the infamous five. http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/2/23/5437456/mlbs-worst-tools-awards-fielding-edition

A Pro-Jenrry Mejia post     

A moving post on the Mets and RFK 

John Zozo asked –

            Mack:

Why aren't other teams having this problem? Why are we the only ones? Most of the other teams have had new stadiums built in the past 10 years. We have paid our share every step of the way, and because they made lousy business decisions and put all their eggs in one basket we have to pay off their mistakes!!!

So to answer your question I don't think it's fair that the fans have to repay a debt that should have been allocated for already through the years. So they should dip into their pockets and pay up. They seem to have money for other projects that they want to build across the street?

No I am not gonna spend money on this team this year and I hope other fans do the same. They should just sell the damn team already.

Mack – John, John, John… I’m trying to come up with an easier way of explaining what has happened over on Roosevelt Avenue.

All you have to do is take two things off the table…

1.     The loss of a positive economy that resulted is a huge loss of value to the New York City real estate market

2.     The loss of both business and personal money to Bernie Madoff

The Madoff mess blew up in 2008, the year that the Mets spent $137mil on player salaries. The economy continued to tank, but Omar Minaya had the green light to operate how he wanted to.

So, what does he do? He signs a $36mil deal with P Oliver Perez and a $37mil deal with Francisco Rodriguez, and the Mets 2009 payroll goes up to $149+mil… a year after the Madoff mess hits the press and during the same time he is sent away for life.

I’m not trying to sound like a public relations director for the Wilpons, but there was a decent effort to operate this team. There was even around $143mil spent two years later (and three years ago). The problem?

Simple..  it wasn’t the money… it was the players.

            Gary Sheffield - $28mil

            Oliver Perez - $36mil

            Francisco Rodriquez - $37mil

            Luis Castillo - $25mil

            Jason Bay - $66mil

            Jeff Francoeur - $5mil

            Johan Santana – (last year) $25.5mil

These misfits represent $222,500,000 worth of dead or wasted money that went down the drain as fast as those checks to Bernie… and, you know what? Fred and Jeff Wilpon didn’t pick any of these players to be on the New York Mets. That job was left to his General Manager.

So, what you have here is a business family that specializes in real estate, dump a half a billion dollars into a new stadium for their baseball team, take a right in the stomach from the economy followed by a left from Madoff, and then their General Manager pisses away $222mil on bad baseball players.

John, you have to give these guys a chance to catch their breath, don’t you?

And regarding investing your own money into a business venture… it just isn’t done, especially at these levels of investments. You borrow other people’s money to operate this badly.