Sunday Morning Baseball Brunch

Not everyone is bubbling with enthusiasm at the thought of Reyes hitting third, despite a rather exciting debut in that slot the other day against the Marlins.

Here's a bit of interesting insight on Jose Reyes' mindset from teammate Jose Valentin but even more telling was an anonymous source on the Mets quoted as remarking with respect to Jerry's threat to hit Reyes third:

"He's at his best when he's not thinking too much at the plate," was the way one Mets person put it. "He's gotten better at getting on base, but sometimes has a tendency - he takes good pitches to hit and then swings at bad ones. Then he gets frustrated and before you know it, he's in a slump.

None of this speaks very much to Reyes' maturity or intelligence as a baseball player. Not that any of this is really much of a surprise to anyone in any event but one does wonder if Jerry's little mind games are going to be able to soak in through Jose's ADD-addled head.

Even King-of-the-Meaningless RBI teammate David Wright has commented on Reyes' lack of focus:

Wright has seen Reyes' mind wander while playing beside him for the last five years.

"That's a tough hurdle," Wright said. "You're talking about 162 games and staying focused on every pitch. When he is focused and when he has his mind right, I think he's one of, if not the best, all-around players in the game."

Adding to Jose's less than pleasant start to the 2009 season comes the revelation that Jose might not even be good enough to start at shortstop for the Dominican Republic.

It's an interesting concept for someone with Reyes' impact not even to be the best shortstop on his little island with Hanley Ramirez to compete with. Ramirez, of course, is also making a move on his own team sliding down from batting lead off to third in the order and has bulked up in preparation.

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Of course prattling on about Jose Reyes' flaws allows us to conveniently attempt to ignore the possibility that Superman Santana might not even start on Opening Day

"We have 162 games," Santana said. "What we have to accomplish takes 162 games. Everything starts April 6, if it's going to be me or somebody else. It's tough to say right now."

Now, it's early days of course and just like the meaningless of the Mets' fast, early and successful start to Spring Training games, Santana's sore left elbow might not be anything to set off the alarms and send Mets fans screaming through the hallways of the asylum, drool dropping from their gaping gobs as they remember that around this time last year that John Lackey, Josh Beckett and Scott Kazmir started having "minor soreness -- and they all started the season on the DL.

On the other hand, every single one of the teams they played for made it to the post-season so maybe it's not as apocalyptic an omen as it appears at first glance.

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I'm feeling a little more comfortable now that the Mets followed the euphoria of their first two Spring games with two consecutive pastings against the Cardinals and Tigers respectively.

It's all about getting the kids some playing time, you should remind yourself. That and getting everyone else in shape. September shape, we hasten to ad.

If one outing is any indication, the 5th spot is Livan Hernandez's to lose as both Niese and Fat Freddy Garcia were less than impressive.

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I doubt there will be too many dissenters here but for the thousandth time, Mike Fatty Francesa is hands down the biggest douchebag in the NY media now that the previous Champion Douchebag, his former on air partner, Mad Dog Russo has fucked off to potentially bankrupted satellite radio.

Both David Wright and Ryan Church are refusing to speak to Fatty Francesa whose garrulous gob is apparently run on beer farts rather than brain power.

And even their absence was sufficient to get Francesa to shut up. On Church, Fat Boy says:

"I don’t really care if Church comes on the show now or forever. Church is going to be out of New York long before I’m going to worry about whether he comes on my show or not. He’s not a big deal in any way."

Wright, who apparently means a little more, is spared the damning dismissal by Francesa, who only states that he thinks Wright is being very immature because he’s had a straight ascendancy and he doesn’t want any criticism . . . He needs to grow up.".

By the way, Francesa is officially the world's "worst":



And in a completely unrelated tangent having nothing to do with Euclidean space, in one of those articles hyper linked above, there was the following photo of Wright and his missus that caught my eye:



Now I didn't think too much of this but admittedly, as it's Spring and there's alot of free time to kill still wot with the games not meaning all that much yet, I did conduct a tentative search to find out who the mystery missus was and came across this gossip site treating the matter and some sort of bizarre cyber cat fight with the importance of a State of the Union speech.

Wow, what a strange and seriously demented world we live in.