All The Best Mets Are Hurt or In The WBC

Due to incessant coverage blogging over at Sports Amnesia, the Army has taken a knee with the Mets these last few days.

But it does seem difficult to get excited about watching this season's Norfolk team parade around in Mets uniforms whilst the real Mets are mostly off injured, recovering, resting or playing in the WBC...



(Happy times for Carlos Beltran in a Team Puerto Rico uniform...wonder if he'll be sliding head-first into first base for the Mets any time soon...)

You've got to admit, the WBC, despite everyone's initial skepticism, is a wee bit more interesting at the moment than watching split squad games in Spring Training.

Some developments on the homefront however:

Despite three errors in seven games and a batting average hovering in the neighborhood of Mediocre and Embarassing, manager Willie has conceded that Kaz Matsui has the "upper hand" in the competition for the second baseman's job. The only hand? The hands of stone?

C'mon. This is ridiculous.

But apparently, with Jose Reyes away, sitting on the bench at the World Baseball Classic, (what a useful way to spend Spring Training,) manager Willie whinged that he probably will not get to see Anderson Hernandez enough at second because he's filling in at shortstop. So with split squads, why not have him playing second base? Why not let some single A guy get his chops at short? Why play your potential starting second baseman out of position all Spring??!!

In a little bit of better news, Steve Trachsel started and threw four scoreless innings on Sunday against well, it was just the O's but what the hell. Trax allowed just three baserunners -- all in the second inning -- and erased one on a 5-4-3 double play. He retired the final seven batters he faced.

The O's later beat the Mets in extra innings, 3-2.

A few things over the weekend we noticed:



The Saga of Spring Continues

1. Pedro is making a leetle progress. Saturday's 81 pitches, 60 of which were thrown "hard", zero of which were thrown against live batting, were a high for Pedro this Spring.

2. Mets still LOSERS against Braves, even in the bloody Exhibition Season! Yeah, split squad, sure, that's the spirit. Anderson Hernandez, Keppinger, Milledge, Diaz, Castro Ramon, not Fidel), Martinez (not Pedro), Tejeda, Gomez, Ramirez(not Manny) and Ventura (not Robin) - not much of a batting order although a killer lineup for perhaps Norfolk. And Mets starter, John Maine allowed six earned runs in two innings of work.

3. Watch out world, here comes David Wright: After a slow start, Wright hit his first homer of the Spring on Saturday against the Marlins, with two runners on base and the Mets scored 7 runs in the 5th to disable the Marlins 10-6. Even Kaz Man had an rbi double! Jose Lima, doing his Victor Zambrano imitation, held the Marlins hitless through three innings but allowed four runs and four hits and two walks in the fourth.

The Mets will return home to Port St. Lucie for a Monday night game against the Washington Nationals. Tom Glavine will get the ball for New York, and he'll be matched up against Washington's Pedro Astacio at 7:10 p.m. ET.